Taken today, 193.0 pounds.

I can barely recognize the top picture but it has given me motivation to get on the bike right now, at 8:55 pm.  Even at 193 though, I'm still about 20 pounds overweight for my height of 6' 1".  Sorry about the scruff, I would have shaved but I was testing out my new camera and was shocked to see myself.

My shins were hurting today so Amy suggested I try the Stairmaster.  My Dad had a nice commercial one of these a few years back and I never really thought they provided much of a workout.  It was too easy to cheat when you started to get tired.  I felt the design was flawed and never really paid attention to these type of machines.  This one is a little different with a real set of stairs on a treadmill like belt.  There's no real way to cheat or you will fall off, similar to a running/walking treadmill. 

Amy said her previous record was level 6 for 45 minutes so of course I started at level 8 and set it for 61.  This thing was a monster.  Even though I must have looked like I was just plodding along like a lazy bastard, I estimated my heart rate to be in the 160's and within 20 minutes, my t-shirt was completely soaked.  I struggled through another 30 minutes and then upped it to level 9 for the last 10.  When I was done, I was so knackered that I could barely stand.  I walked over and did about 36 minutes on an elliptical trainer next to Amy which didn't really do anything for me.

Using the Bodybugg (God, I hate that name) has been a real eye opener for me in terms of my caloric burn.  For example, you can clearly see that I burn significantly less calories on the bike (even while riding for hours at my lactate threshold) than I do while running (at a pace I can easily sustain for an hour).

 
At my LT, I'm burning approximately 10 calories per minute (2 rides here).

 
When running, I'm burning about 15.2 calories per minute.

While this isn't surprising, I've learned that running can be a real help when trying to maintain a 1,000 - 1,500 calorie per day deficit.   I needed to take today off the bike so I went with Amy down to 24-Hour Fitness and ran on the treadmill for an hour (30 minutes at 165+ bpm) and it went pretty well.  I'm not really a gym person but finding flat roads to run on here is just about damn near impossible.  It's not the uphill that kills, it's the downhill.

So far, so good on the weight loss front.  After a two sketchy weeks, I'm finally starting to drop.  About a year ago, I was 269.5 and I checked in this morning at 217.0.  Goal weight is 180 by the last Sunday in July and 170 by the end of this year.  After that, I'll just want to maintain and work on my power output (more on using a power meter this week) and getting back into racing next year.  My motivation is a little different than most peoples.  Instead of wanting to look good, fit into certain clothes or be healthy, I just want to go faster up hills.  I've already got decent power output and if I can change the "mass" part of the equation, I can be competitive again.

Since I'm already riding 3-4 hours a day, six days a week, I knew there wasn't much room to ratchet up my exercise habits.  I had to cut calories.   In order to do that effectively, I needed a way to accurately measure how many calories I took in and how many I was burning.  Enter the Bodybugg.

When Amy first moved here to Colorado, she wasn't working and decided to dedicate most of her time to losing the weight that she had gained after we first met.  She joined 24 Hour Fitness, got a personal trainer and purchased a Bodybugg.  The Bug program consists of two parts; a device that straps to the back of your arm and a web site that allows you to enter your meals in and graph your physical activity, comparing your intake and output.

Though it was clearly working for Amy (she lost over 40 pounds in 5 months), I was EXTREMELY skeptical.  I've had an interest in human physiology since I can remember and I know how difficult it is to measure caloric burn for a person.  There are just too many variables and we don't have the technology yet to do this accurately.

The device was pretty expensive (about $200 on sale) and it seemed like a real drag to have to enter every single thing I eat.  But there were some upsides.  1) I was desperate.  The Mt. Evans hill climb is less than five months away and I am still 40 pounds overweight.  2) I LOVE stats.  If it can be quantified, I want to measure and track it over time. 

So on leap day, I finally gave in to Amy's incessant nagging about it and took a leap of faith.  I've been fairly pleased with it so far and it really is accurate.  I can use my Saris PowerTap power meter on my bike to judge my kilojoules of work and translate that into calories burned, comparing it to the Bodybugg.  They are both within a 1% variance range.

Will see how it works long term.  I was 225.5 pounds on Monday 2/25 and weighed 220.0 when I woke up this morning.  I'll report my progress here.

My plan calls for a 1,000 calorie a day deficit to get to 190 pounds by 7/1/08.  Here's my data from yesterday.  On the graph below, you can see my two rides of 1:15 and 1:41 clearly.