David Reuteler wrote in message ...
gds wrote:
Don't yo just feel more hungry? Of course if you excersize more you'll
need to replace more calories. But do you really need to calculate
this-especially as the calculation is probably not much more accurate
than your guesstimating that you "need" an extra helping of lasagna.

this doesn't work for me when burning a *LOT* of calories (5,000+ cals
on high mileage days) for days on end. for me this usually means touring
and yea, i've lost a fair bit of weight without being hungry in the
slightest. i have to make a mental note to eat more than i feel is
"correct" and i'm not exactly carrying around a lot of body fat (6'2" 175).

in normal usage i don't have this problem & weight maintenance is pretty
easy.

Interesting! I understand about not feeling especially hungry when
going through periods of very high work levels- I think exhaustion
tempers the hunger feeling. But I (and most other folks I think) know
that when you do really big days- 80+ miles say- that you are going to
need to eat a little extra. In a period in which you sustain burning
5000 calories per day for several days you will lose weight at any
level of fitness as I think it very hard to replace that quantity and
have the digestive system work well enough to sustain the work.
But back to the issue. What good does an (inaccurate) caloric
consumption estimator do? At any level to be useful it would have to
be accurate and then you would have to be equally accurate at
measuring the calories that you consume- another less than accurate
activity other than in laboratories.
I think I'll just stick with having another glass of red wine with
that extra slice of lasagna. Oh! and I'll have that cookie over there
too!

Seriously, can't most of you who work out regularly estimate your
weight within 2 lbs? I have a pretty good sense of both water loss and
actual weight change in that range as do most of my sports friends. I
too am lean and am not interested in losing weight as a goal- but I do
keep track of it because I find that my performance is best within a
quite small range.