Silver Case

He is not amused

Sadly, both the North Korean soccer squad and I failed in our ideological struggles.

The North Koreans? By losing 7-nil on live TV.

Me? By very nearly scoring an own goal on my otherwise very scrupulous calorie counting.

The background, depending on which calculator and which assumptions you make, my daily caloric input for no weight change ranges between 2150-2450kcal. A week of 500kcal deficit = one pound of fat (3500kcal) burnt. I’ve found it pretty easy to assiduously keep <= 1800kcal as long as I monitor closely my intake. Overall, it feels like I’m eating 30% less than I nomally used to. That I’m not hungry even with that amount makes it clear that I was overeating before.

Anyway, so what happened? Saturday is going along as per normal. Then we made all this kimchi. Of course I start nibbling some after we had potted it. NIce spicy, garlicky, salty taste. Every hallmark of a good bar appetizer. Why not have a beer–I was still easily on track for the day.

Then five beers later it was time to drink the korean berry wine I had tossed in the freezer.

Then it was upstairs to watch Rome. With continued itchy-mouthy and diminished self-control, I woke up the next morning to realize I’d eaten the better part of a bag of tortilla chips and an ingot of cheddar choose. “Uh oh, this will not be pretty,” I thought to myself.

And it wasn’t.

Totally boned. I set myself back by five day’s progress rate, over a bunch of beers (good), korean wine (so-so), mass-produced cheddar cheese (not worth it) and tostitos (blech).
When I woke up this morning I had my customery short double latte and got to work gardening. As the day went on it occurred to me that since I’ve been tracking calories closely, I have a finer sense of my appetite. And what I was sensing today was that I wasn’t hungry at all. Hmmmm. So I just ate a small bowl of rice with a huge wad of kimchi before I rode to my workshop. I hate have that low glycogen feeling. I ate a handful of grapes while I was there, and cycled home to another small bowl of rice/kimchi and my customary fruit juice.
So what’s the accounting of this odd day?

I think I managed to neutralize my saturday night own goal!
whew.

Just uploaded the power telemetry from my afternoon bike ride. It was the exact same ride I did last sunday. I felt more tired today. That I had a hangover and was riding in 4pm sun didn’t help. Anyway, 68kilometers in 2:30. My device says I did 1396 kilohoules (kJ) of work today and 1365 kJ last week. That number doesn’t mean much too me — what is the significance of having burnt and extra 31kJ today.

It’s either 0.83 x metabolic energy of one gram of fat or 1.8 x the metabolic energy of one gram of sugar or protein.

That is, today’s ride burnt an extra half-packet of sugar. Fantastic.