Date: 3/30/22
Training Day: 115
Miles: 4.2 (fast finish, treadmill)
Time: 58 min
Shoes: Xero HFS
Activity: Strength

How It Felt: The run felt pretty darn good! I enjoyed picking up my speed at the end. Even though I slept pretty well last night, I was kind of tired during the strength workout.

Commentary: Counting calories sucks! It’s tedious, especially if your food doesn’t have a barcode, like my sweet potato hash and tofu scramble. But I’m doing it. And I’m often hungry. Probably because I work out so much? I have no idea what a good calorie deficit is considering my workouts and walking, but I’m thinking I might not be eating enough.

Taylor, the guy from the Boise State University Human Performance Lab, told me that it’s fairly safe to use my watch to track my calories burned for the day. My Garmin says I burn about 2,000 calories a day, on average. Rest days it’s lower. Doubles days and long run days it’s higher.

According to my calorie tracking, I have only eaten about 1,300 calories a day. A pound of fat is approximately 3,500 calories. At this rate I should lose 1.4 pounds this week.

Tracking your weight on a daily basis isn’t the greatest idea since weight fluctuates so much day to day. The “them” that is “they” say your weight can fluctuate up to five pounds each day. Back in the day when I was obsessed with the number on the scale and weighed myself everyday, I never saw more than a couple pound fluctuation.

Out of curiosity, I weighed myself this morning. I’m a little concerned with how much the number has gone down so far. If I go by the assumption that my weight usually only fluctuates by a couple of pounds, that means I’m still down two pounds in two days. Did I lose fat? Muscle? Did I burn off all of my glycogen stores? Am I doing something wrong?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions or how to find the answers. So, I’m just going to eat more calories each day and see what happens.

Training Journal cross training exercise fitness ifit journal running strength trail running training treadmill volt athletics walking