@Leaves; The cranberry coconut peanut butter is from a company called
Yumbutter. They churn out small home-style batches of nut butter every week so that each jar is super fresh. I love their almond butter and they also have a dark chocolate almond butter that is awesome.
I’m kind of a nut butter freak.
@nineteen; that’s awesome. I love almond butter even more than peanut butter. Have you ever tried pecan or hazelnut butter? Both are amazing… And congrats on getting back into the 130’s!
@Hoopty; I hope that you have a safe flight back to Germany. Don’t stress over what you can’t control. Focus on what you do have control over: following good habits. Sit down and plan ahead so that you are prepared to take some healthy foods with you when you travel. There are a lot of good options that can be easily packed and stored in a cooler or a backpack: organic meat sticks, canned tuna, chicken, sardines, or oysters. Bananas, apples, almonds, individual cups of plain Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, a zip lock baggie of baby carrots, cut up celery and peppers. Hard boiled eggs! There are plenty of healthy travel-friendly foods out there.
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Check In: Good morning, Feathers! Yesterday was a crazy day for me. I did so much exercise! Because of how much exercise I did, I had to eat more than 1,500 calories. Otherwise, I would have been starving myself and that wouldn't be good. Yesterday, I biked over 25 miles outdoors, did a 45 minute TRX class and a 35 minute indoor spin class! I also took my dog for a 30 minute walk. Whew.
I felt really good about yesterday, even though I had to eat more than my meal plan called for. I want to be flexible and honest with myself. And on days when I do a ton of exercise, I know that I should be eating more. Sports performance demands fuel!
At the same time, I'm having a difficult time reconciling my fat loss goals with my love for exercise. Cycling, weight lifting, and group exercise classes demand a certain base level of calories and body fat! Being ultra lean for an aesthetic purpose isn't conducive to sports performance. My best bet to reaching 105 is to only do a light to moderate amount of cardio followed by a more restrictive eating plan. If I want to continue to do a crazy amount of exercise (and, I'm a bike commuter as well), then I need to be eating more. It's a hard toss up.
Sports performance vs. aesthetic goals.
Does anyone else struggle with this problem?
There is an interesting article series by my favorite exercise scientist, Lyle McDonald that talks about the topic of too much cardio on a lowered calorie exercise plan. A lot of folks think that doing as much cardio as possible on a diet is a good thing. The reality is that is can actually slow down and hurt fat loss, and lead to binge eating:
I understand the reality of this problem. Being super thin and dieting (lowered calorie amount) will always lead to a decrease in sports performance. And I can't expect to keep the same amount of high activity level while being at a lower than normal body fat level ..for very long.
Anyway, enough of that. So, I exercised a ton yesterday and ate much more than my meal planned called for because of it. I'm happy that I got out and had fun but it's not helping my fat loss goal any.