Feeling Good, Looking Good, And Being Fast

Over the last few years I have put on some pounds. My caloric intake and expenditure have not been equal and I've gained a few pounds each year. Last year I finally got my calories equalized and have slowly started reversing the upward trend.

I have three big reasons I want to maintain a healthy weight.

1. I want to feel good. Having three children under the age of 5 takes a lot of energy and my children deserve a Dad who will be around for a long time and has the energy to keep up with them. Also my job, my church calling, and my other endeavors in life require that I feel good and have energy.
2. I want to look good. Something about having a pair of pants get tighter over time, having a gut, or bulging out of my bike clothes isn't cutting it for me. I'd like to get back to the point where I look like a lean athletic guy.
3. I want to be fast. Since I ride my bike a lot I am all too aware of anytime there is a hill. Northern Virginia is filled with nasty little climbs every mile or two.  I could never figure out why they seem to hurt more than riding a mountain pass in Utah a few years ago and then I came to the obvious conclusion. Weight is not the friend of a cyclist. On a bike, being lean means being fast and I love riding my bicycle as fast as I can.

So those are my three big motivators for wanting to be thinner.  It has been a big challenge to reach my goals. Over the last few weeks I've been trying to make faster progress. As I've done a lot of reading, experimenting and working this is what I've learned.

Knowing Your Calorie Needs

Most people have no idea how many calories they consume per day, how many calories they should consume per day and how many calories they would need to burn to lose weight.

I've used some different websites/apps in my quest. The best is www.myfitnesspal.com. You can download and app for you iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Blackberry or you can just go online.  It helps you set goals, keeps track of caloric intake, record progress and know how much you should be eating. 

Steps to Track Progress

Although I like the program I don't have an iPad or iPhone with 3G/4G internet. So I remain old school for tracking my calories on paper. Here is how to do it on paper

1. Knowing My Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Basically this is a calculation of the number of calories I use if all I do it wake up, eat, and watch TV. http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
2. Determining My Calorie Expenditure. Then I calculate the number of calories I actually use by multiplying my BMR by the Harris Benedict Equation for my activity level. http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/
3. Adjusting Calorie Intake. I adjust my activity level down because I keep good track of the calories I burn while exercising. I can do this because I have a nice heart rate monitor that gets me in the ball park for calories consumed exercising.
4. Setting Daily Calorie Deficit. Next I established my weight loss goal based on the idea that burning 3500 calories equals a pound of lost weight. So if you want to lose a pound a week you need to burn an extra 500 calories per day over what you consume.
5. Keeping Tracking of Caloric Intake. I count calories religiously and keep a running total on a sheet of paper, any sheet of paper. Since I am in training right now, my notes books have lists of random numbers on the side of pages. Counting calories without a program can be tricky if you have never thought about it and have no idea how many calories you are consuming just keep a running list of what and how much you eat. Then go home and use MyFitnessPal to enter your calories.  When I first started I was horrified to find out how much I was really eating and that that second or third donut is really dangerous. 
6. Weighing in Daily. Weigh yourself every day. A quality digital scale that is accurate and reliable is essential. Tanita makes great scales, but there are others that are pretty accurate. Knowing who you are doing keeps you honest.

Tricks of the Trade

This is very much a learning process for me and I am getting better each day. It isn't about starving or killing yourself through exercise. It is about taking a measured approach.  Here are some things to remember.

1. A couple days of indulgence can cost you a week.
2. Try to eat healthy calories. 4 oranges give you the same calories and more energy than the yummy Krispy Kreme.
3. Indulge reasonably. Unfortunately this means two, maybe three Oreos at most.
4. Plan ahead. Plan prevents blowing the calorie budget.
5. Adjust based on how the day and week went. No more oh-well I guess I blew it so now I am done.
6. Look for opportunities to move. I love walking because the only thing you need to do is keep moving. The days I walk from the Metro to work are pleasant because all I say to my self is walk and some how a half hour later I end up at work and have had a great flood of ideas for the last half hour.

Feeling Good, Looking Good, and Being Fast

I have my goals, my motivation and the science of weight loss figured out. Over the next year I'll continue to work hard to reach racing weight. With 2300 miles of bike riding in my legs since July last year I  am feeling good and have lots more energy. Now to conquer looking good and being fast.

"Noodle" Cake: Lost and Found

This is the last cake post for a while, I promise! But this is BIG!

First, the story behind so-called Noodle Cake for those unfamiliar with Lundberg family traditions: For years, My mom made a fantastic, moist, fluffy chocolate cake. It was so awesome that we never even bothered to ice it, something I credit for my ambivalence about frosting in general. It was a one-bowl cake and was so easy to make, it was considered fool-proof.

One time, when we were having it for a Family Home Evening treat, my sister asked for a REALLY big slice. My mom humored her by making a long, thin slice down the length of the 9x13 pan. My sister said it looked like a noodle cake, and the name stuck.

We probably made Noodle Cake at least once a week and took it to countless potlucks. When I was fourteen or so, I had to take a treat to a Young Women's meeting at church so, of course, I took a noodle cake. Everyone loved it and Kathy Koch, an expert baker and the source of the only sugar cookie recipe I will ever use, begged for the recipe. A day or two later, we made a noodle cake and...it was a total flop. It rose in the oven and then collapsed the moment it came out of the oven into a pile of goo. In spite of our best efforts and many attempts, the recipe never worked again. I even gave it a try when I was in college, thinking that the different oven might make a difference. It didn't, and over time we lost the cookbook that held the recipe we used to have committed to memory.

My mom found a new chocolate cake recipe and we even called it Noodle Cake, but it wasn't the same.  It was fine, maybe even good. But it didn't have the wow factor that kept us from grabbing a cake mix instead. After my success with the yellow cake the other day, I decided to see if I could bring back the noodle cake magic. I looked at the Smitten Kitchen favorite, but it called for "3 oz fine quality chocolate." Not only did that seem a bit snooty to me, but we didn't have so much as a chocolate chip in the house. So I turned to my other go-to recipe sight, MelsKitchenCafe, where she has a section titled "best recipe" and contains what she considers the best version of basic recipes - the best whole wheat bread, the best chicken noodle soup and...the best chocolate cake. I looked at the recipe and noted the similarities to original noodle cake, both in the ingredient list and her description of the final cake. I gave it a whirl.

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2010/09/the-best-chocolate-cake.html

Make. This. Cake.  THIS is Noodle Cake and I can't tell you how happy I am to see it again. Word of warning: this makes a huge batch. I filled two 9-inch pans, one 8x8 pan, twelve cupcakes and still had a bit of batter left for tasting. I think next time I would make a 9x13 and a bunch of cupcakes. It has odd measurements, making me think that it was scaled down from a massive recipe used in a bakery or something. Anyway, none of that matters. What matters is that this is truly the best chocolate cake and it will ruin you for cake mixes for life. That's not a bad thing.

Homemade Yellow Cake aka Mission: Accomplished!

I finally found it!


When I was a teenager, I went on a bit of a baking bender. I even made a gluten-free orange chiffon cake that we all loved. But the one thing I never managed to make work was a basic yellow cake. This was unfortunate, since it's my dad's favorite cake. I resigned myself to using a cake mix and moved on. Fast forward a few years, and I saw a recipe for yellow cake on my favorite food sight - SmittenKitchen. What peaked my interest was her comment about how so many people fall back on Duncan Hines because they do a freakishly good job of creating a cake that is always plush and moist, something that homemade yellow cake recipes fail to do. They are dense, crumbly and - in my experience - have an odd after taste. 
What finally convinced me to give it a try was the batch of cupcakes I made for the 4th of July. They were from my usual box, and they tasted like...food science.  I make my own yogurt, for crying out loud, surely I could handle making this cake without the aid of twenty mystery ingredients.


So today, I finally gave it go. I made a half recipe and tried to keep my expectations low, but I needn't have. It was a huge success! And timely, because now I don't need to take a 2 year supply of cake mixes with us to Norway. Or, worse, by them in bulk(!) from Ramstein. Nobody needs that kind of trouble laying around the house.


Here's the link if you'd like to give it a try:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2012/07/flag-cake/


She's talking about a flag cake in this post, but all you really need is the cake recipe. One tip from me is to make sure you bake the cake until a toothpick/knife poked in the center comes out CLEAN. This cake will not bake or rise as fast as a box cake. The texture and flavor of the cake makes me dream about turning it into an Italian Cream Cake for Cameron's Birthday, but we are enjoying it with chocolate frosting, or even just a dusting of powdered sugar and fruit. I suspect that my Dad will actually still prefer the box version - sometimes you just want the Twinkie, you know - but for all other occasions, this is my new go-to basic cake. Give it a try!