Some of my typical routes

Some of my observations

• A good workout ride for me averages around 50 calories per mile.
• Weight loss is tricky, as we all know. Scale readings vary based on hydration level, time of day, etc. Muscle weighs more than fat per unit volume, and it's normal to gain some muscle mass early in the season from cycling.
• Early weight loss is more rapid than later weight loss. Our bodies adapt to changes in calories consumed and activity levels.

While I pretty quickly dropped near 10 pounds, I then hit a plateau, which I expected. I didn't become discouraged, since the rules are basic and I'm following them: burn more calories than I consume, every day. I know I've gained some muscle mass, nearly all of it in my quadriceps. I feel it and it's visible. While I didn't take measurements at the start of the season, my jeans and slacks are a little more snug in the thighs than they were at the start of the 2024 season. I don't think my waist has changed much, however.

Science says 1 pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories. That means that even if you burn 500 calories more than you consume each day, you'll only lose 1 pound in a week. For many Americans, 500 calories is fairly easy to remove from your daily diet (we consume too much, and too much high-calorie food and drink). While I love food, I don't think I've ever been a high calorie consumer. My worst offenders would be cold cereal and bread. However, most of my cereal consumption is Wheaties, with some Life, Raisin Bran, Raisin Bran Crunch and occasionally some Frosted Mini-Wheats (which I wish they made unfrosted, i.e. without all the added sugar). Once in a great while, Cocoa Krispies as a treat. I've always used skim milk for cereal.

My daily offender is the chocolate milk in my coffee, which is whole milk.

I'm not strictly tracking my calories, mostly because it's not all that easy if you are using a lot of unprocessed foods. How many calories are in the bit of iceberg lettuce, slice of tomato and half of a cut up chicken breast I just used to make a sandwich? Yes, I can indeed figure this out, but it's more work than it's worth to me at the moment. What I'm doing at the moment is remaining conscious of 'empty' calories and eliminating them. No peanut-butter-filled pretzels. No tortilla chips. No muffins. No donuts. No Gatorade. No frozen burritos. No pizza.

I've never been a big fast food eater, so that's not an issue for me. I'm not a soda drinker, so that's never been an issue. I do love a chocolate shake once every few months, but I think I've only had one in the last 6 months. I eat a lot of bananas, they're my main snack and have been for as long as I can remember. I eat quite a few apples in the fall, since I love going to the orchards. I eat up to 5 greek yogurts per week, but it's in spurts; I haven't had one in months. I did eat ice cream once a week with my ex, but I'm not doing that anymore.

So... my main issue the last many years hasn't really been a diet issue. It's simply been lack of activity. It's never been a mystery (my Apple Watch has been telling me for years!), nor rocket science. How to get motivated...

A long time ago, I was a cycling fanatic. Specfically, BMX. I was a serious racer from the age of 13 to 16, with my poor mom taking me to the tracks 5 times a week. I was good at it, and I spent all of my spare time on my bike. Almost every waking hour when I wasn't at school. I 'retired' after being hit by a car on my bike. I was OK, but my racing bike went under the car and came out the other end looking like crumpled aluminum foil. Given this was the summer before my senior year in high school, and I was working full-time, I decided to not spend the money on a new bike. I needed to keep saving for college. But I bought a new BMX bike at the start of my freshman year in college, and it was my main transportation in Ann Arbor for my entire college career. After college I bought a Klein Attitude rigid mountain bike, which I still have! I was on it as much as possible for several years.

Life moved on, I got very busy with my career, and I slowly stopped cycling. My best workouts became jumping rope (which I've always enjoyed for cardio). Eventually a combination of injuries from a car accident and a nasty fall waterskiing ended my jumping rope. Today it's pretty hard for me to jump rope simply due to joint pain. I bought a 24" SE Quadangle years ago, which I rode a bit but I mostly bought it because the 20" is the bike I wanted when I was 16.

I became sedentary. For decades. My job is sitting in front of a computer screen (like so many of us). Most workouts are boring as hell to me, and I struggle with motivation as a result. Lift weights or write code? I prefer to write code. :-)

But e-bikes had come a long way, and I knew I'd like to be back on 2 wheels. And I wanted to lose some weight. Not to mention the endorphins (there's almost nothing better for keeping your head straight). So at the end of 2023 I bought a Biktrix Ultra FS Pro 3, which is a full suspension fat-tire bike. It's very heavy (about 88 pounds with the battery, rear rack and fender). I actually bought it with the hope of getting my ex interested in cycling since she had expressed interest in a fat-tire e-bike. It's not the bike I would have bought with only my own considerations; I would have bought a much lighter bike, probably with 27.5" rear and 29" front wheels, class 1, maybe 80Nm max torque. But at the time I figured it would be awesome to get my ex out of the house with me, and that the fat-tire would be useful in the winter. So I also bought a set of studded winter tires. As it turned out, I didn't ride it in the winter since we had a sloppy slushy/muddy winter instead of any periods where I could ride on frozen ground. I wasn't motivated to be cleaning mud and slush off the bike in 35F temperatures.

However, in the spring of 2024 I put the regular knobbies back on the bike and started riding in earnest. I still don't love the heavy fat-tire e-bike, but I've been very happy with being motivated to go out and ride every day. I do most of my small errands on the bike. I've done more than 25 miles in a day (less than 2 hours). I'm burning 500 calories a day fairly regularly. I've lost weight, and I've gained some muscle mass. I can't take the bike on some of our nice bike paths since it's not a class 1 bike, but that's OK given that I live in a dirt road area and many of my rides are push-hard rides, not just leisure rides. The dirt roads work well for my purposes: little to no traffic, 4.5 miles to town, enough to clear my head and get 35 or more minutes of exercise. Day in, day out.

So for me, having an e-bike has been a game changer. I was able to start easy (pedal assist level ECO 4), and work at my own pace while still being able to take longer rides and runs to town or the local dairy farm for milk, etc. On July 15th, 2024 I took two rides totalling 26.3 miles, nearly all of those miles spent in ECO 2, with ECO 3 only used for two steep climbs. I never use ECO 4 now, and I haven't used the throttle in months. I could technically remove the throttle, but I like having it available for security when crossing one of our busy 2-lane highways without the advantage of a stoplight; the bike is heavy, it's not easy to get it moving fast from a stop. I've never used SPORT modes 1 through 5, so I can't really speak to what they're like. It's slightly hilly where I live, but I have never needed more than ECO 4 to climb any of the hills here. They're all around 5% grade at max, I think. The July 15th ride was 2 laps of the same 12.15 mile loop, about 408 feet of climbing per lap. Relatively piddly, but in ECO 2 I'm at full human power on some of the climbs (out of the saddle for parts) because the bike is so heavy. From my watch, they're 1 to 2 minutes in heart rate zone 3.

Later in the 2024 season, all of my rides were done in ECO 1 and ECO 2. Some of them completely in ECO 1, even with a couple of short but steep climbs.

Speaking of out of the saddle riding... it took me quite a while to get used to being out of the saddle on a full-suspension e-bike. All of my previous bikes were fully rigid acoustic bikes, where all of my pedal power was directly translated to force applied to the ground. I had to acclimate to the movement of the suspension, and additionally, the electric motor behaviour by way of its torque sensor. It's pretty much a non-issue now. I was initially tempted to lock out the front fork on steep climbs, but on my first 10+ mile ride I realized it was a bad idea. I bought a full-suspension bike because I have right hand and wrist arthritis from a car accident, and even with the full-suspension fat-tire bike, I get some painful tingling and numbess in my right wrist and hand beyond 10 miles. Sometimes I can avoid it by riding no-handed in short sections and putting more weight on my left hand in others, other times I just have to block it out and keep going. It's kinda funny, to be honest... for most of the terrain I cover, I don't need a full suspension bike (except the bad potholes I might not see in time to react at night). But on the days where the dirt roads are miles of washboard at a time, I'm thankful for the full suspension. It doesn't eliminate the washboard vibration, but it definitely dampens it.

I intend to keep the fat-tire bike, despite its heft. It's a good commuter and very useful for errands with the rear rack and bag with flip-down expandable paniers. I also have the extended battery for it, which makes it good for longer adventures like those I intend to do in the fall. But I'd like a second e-bike, a much lighter class 1 mountain bike with trail/enduro geometry. One I can legally ride on all of the trails, and get in/out of my truck without using ramps. Say a Canyon Spectral:ON CFR, which is 49.83 pounds.

2024 Cycling Goals

My start-of-season goal was to get to 500 miles by July 1st. Despite it being a wild guess of what I could do, I reached that goal on June 26th. It was just enough to get me out every day I could go out, and to make up miles for the days I couldn't go out.

I set a new goal of 1,000 season miles by September 1st. I wound up reaching 1239.6 miles.

I then set a goal of 1,500 miles by October 1st. Possibly overly ambitious, but it's just a goal. I track miles and calories for each ride.