Do you ever "not worry about it?"

I can’t calculate on weekends (the bulk of my work week). I know it’s off. But why stress all the time? I make up for it by being at least healthy in my choices.

Guessing from your profile pic you are talking about riding motorcycles. As a fellow rider I try to eat light on long ride days. I don't race on the track but I ride my 636 for 4-6 hour rides quite often during the summer months and I just feel better in my riding position when I don't feel stuffed.

HoneyBadger155 wrote: »

Most of the time in my day-to-day life, I keep a relatively close eye on what I'm eating and burning through exercise. Things seem to be pretty accurate, and I've steadily progressed in the way I've been wanting to over the winter.

Spring is here, however, and race season has kicked off. Historically during races I didn't care what I consumed - at all. Since I'm a bit more fitness focused, I'm trying to make sure I'm giving my body the fuel it needs, but this past weekend the last thing I did was track what I was eating.

Part of the issue is that I also have no way of tracking my burn (which can be pretty high I think).

I did make more of an effort to not consume too much in the way of liquid calories (ie beer or other calorie laden drinks) and limited those pretty carefully. Food, however, I just went with the "listening to my body" and ate until I was full (not stuffed) and food choices were a combination of what was available and what I felt like I needed.

Do you ever have times or activities where tracking just becomes nearly impossible and you just don't worry about it? Or have you found ways to calculate everything you need even during "unusual" events?

I don't track, but yeah...I have days when I just do whatever...those days are in the minority however, so they are pretty meaningless in the bigger picture.

I'm not planning on anything major this year, but for the past few years I've spent the late spring, summer, and fall doing 1/2 century and metric century races as well as some time trials...those days and long training ride days I pretty much just did whatever because I needed to eat or otherwise I'd just be on my *kitten* and wasn't meticulous about anything...granted, I've never been in season trying to drop weight...I'm always in maintenance when I'm in season and sometimes just drop a tiny bit of weight on accident.

HoneyBadger155 wrote: »

Do you ever have times or activities where tracking just becomes nearly impossible and you just don't worry about it? Or have you found ways to calculate everything you need even during "unusual" events?

Yep.

I can track how many calories I burned (approximately, of course) but I don't bother tracking how many calories I consume during long distance bicycle rides, other than the fact that I do need to keep eating.

If I "don't worry about it" over a period of several weeks or months, I gain weight back.

But every now and then is okay. For instance, last Saturday I went way over on calories, due to a certain full bucket of movie theater popcorn, with butter! Once we got home I still wanted "real food", so I proceeded to not worry about it, and ate like a regular dinner. I about doubled my usual calorie allowance that day, but I know I can make it up over a few days eating at a deficit.

So for me, every now and then is ok. So far, over the long term, I'll gain weight back if not tracking.

On most Jewish holidays (including Sabbath), there are certain things that are not done, which include writing/typing and precise measurements (including weighing). When I'm going to be home for them, I pre-log. BUT I'm going to my parents' in Montreal for all of Passover. And actually a few days before, to help my mother prepare.

While holiday dinners are already something I need to be wary of, I'm also dealing with the fact that on Passover, the exception of matzah, most grains and grain products (just about everything but quinoa) and legumes are verboten. I'm ovo-lacto vegetarian. Which means that my protein for eight days will be coming from eggs, dairy, nuts, quinoa, and the gram here, gram there in certain vegetables. Add in that I won't have access to my home gym for strength training (it may not burn many calories, but I find when I exercise, it cuts back on stress and boredom eating and I don't feel as hungry) and that for the days before the holiday, we'll probably be going out to eat a lot and...

I'm going to do what I can to be mindful, but there will be a lot of repeating "Two weeks off-track won't put back everything I've lost over the last 16 months".

My "less than normal" activity is that I'm a volunteer cancan dancer at a living history museum. Once a month (usually) we do 3 shows of 3 dances each and some singing and a lot of standing around talking to guests. I can't wear my Fitbit (I lost my Zip that I was able to wear under my dress) so I don't really have a good way of tracking my calories burned on show days. I don't go completely into "I don't care about my calories in" mode but I do know that if I go over my goal calories for that day it isn't really a true representation of the day. But then, it's once a month so in the long run one day of "off" tracking won't really matter anyway.

HRM would be interesting out of curiosity to know what your heart is doing but will be useless for calorie estimates. The adrenaline, excitement and stress will boost your HR massively.

I used to be able to hear my HR in my ears while just waiting on the grid for the green light. Sharing track space with a load of other nutcases gets the fight or flight reactions pumping.

Even just stress can boost it massively. I had a gym assessment after my normal bike commute across London and it was up 20bpm over my usual level.