I eat too much

A few years ago at a rather lovely restaurant I tried lobster for the first time. The waiter took our order and then rather theatrically hooked two of the live crustaceans from a tank nearby and brought them to our table for me to choose. On the tray was a skinny small one and a big fat one. I swear the look of resignation on the big fat one's face still brings a tear to my eye. He looked with his beady black eyes at his competitor on the tray (who I might add was looking rather smug) and then looked at my huge bloated sun burnt face beaming down at him and I am sure I heard him say under his breath, "Oh no, it's Peter Griffin - I'm dead". I still wake up now with the sound of his screams coming from the kitchen (of course I made this up: I'm sure he didn't suffer and if it's any consolation I didn't really enjoy him and I've not eaten it much since...much).

I tell this story because one of my Etape goals was to get down to 82kg and the problem is not that I don't do enough exercise but that, like most people, I eat too much. Or more precisely I'm just bloody greedy, I eat more calories than I need to fuel and repair. Reading a couple of magazines while on holiday there were 3 reminders that this is the case.

1) An amateur who spent some time training with a pro cycling team. He did less than half the riding than the pro he was profiled against but was amazed at how restrained the pro was with his food intake.

2) A letter in a tri magazine from someone who wondered why despite all the training they didn't seem to lose any weight. The answer is obvious - you are overestimating how much food you need.

3) In another tri magazine a look at the daily diets of some pro triathletes. The diets in some cases were far from perfectly balanced but despite the fact that these people are training for up to 5 hours a day I definitely eat more than them.

When I lost 10kg in about 6 months I did it by following a strict diet I was given and timing my carb intake to sit around my workouts. Some days I could get by on 1800 calories and it worked. I got down to 87kg and the weight has stayed off (now 85kg ish) even though I am more relaxed about my eating. I'm doing much more cardio work now so I need to look afresh at my dietary requirements so I can lose that extra 3kg+ without Etape performance suffering.

So let's have a go at my daily calorie intake. Using the calculation in the The Time Crunched Cyclist (Mifflin-St. Jeor):

• My resting metabolic rate (RMR) is coming out at 1750
• As I have a desk job I will use the lifestyle factor of 1.25 so that's now 2187.5

Now this is where it gets tricky. How much to add on for calories burned during workouts and ensure I get a deficit? This is going to vary day by day but on work days I will do roughly 3 hours of training and the calorific expenditure is going to vary with the effort or work-rate. Going by the book I could add 1000 calories to my total per hour. Looking back at my Garmin stats for my cycle commute I can burn over a 1000 each way but even with my greediness I cannot see me eating over 5000 calories per day and lose weight. When I look back at my food diary from when I was dieting 3000 calories looks like a fair amount of food to leave me satisfied and what I will do is start there and if I am feeling underpowered then I will up the carb/protein intake.

How to split that 3000? I will go for 50% carbs (low GI as much as poss), 25% protein, 25% good fats. So that's 187.5g of protein (sounds perfect, 1g per pound of bodyweight), 375g of carbs, 83g of fats.

It's a bit of a pain but I have found it absolutely essential to weigh everything and keep a food diary. I will add daily intakes to my blog if only because it helps to achieve goals if you share your aims with others (peer pressure/embarrassment of failure and all that).