A day late because I was traveling this weekend.

For the next couple of weeks, probably, the numbers might be a little wonky. My new bike is more challenging to ride, but I’ll be doing the 20-mile rides on it with my wife! I won’t be having the same intensity as before, not until I get comfortable on the Cruzbike Sofrider.

Diet-wise, it was a bit of a mess this past reporting period. We traveled this weekend, which means we ate poorly. Of course, that shouldn’t matter, since all the food companies assert that a “calorie is a calorie,” and the composition of one’s food is irrelevant save for the calorie count! Which is absurd, but it’s what they say.

(In other news, the Sofrider feels faster than any bike I’ve owned. I’ve heard they’re kind of fast but we weren’t going that much slower than normal, and I was not putting much effort into riding. And while I’m wobbly much of the way, on the 5% grade hill up to our place, instead of not being able to make it, I made it up the hill faster than my wife. While it’s too early to tell for sure, my first ride up a hill went very smoothly, which bodes well for the future.)

For the numbers! In the past week and one day, I rode 148.28 miles. MapMyRide says I burned 15,118 calories. I lost 3.2 pounds during that eight days and 10.8 lbs since I’ve started the experiment. During this eight days, as calculated, I lost 1 pound for every 4724.4 calories I used. Which is, of course, dramatically in error, since a pound of fat has 3500 calories.

Since starting this experiment, I’ve ridden 513.49 miles, using 53,700 calories. So I’ve lost 1 pound for every 4972 calories I’ve burned, which is even more inaccurate than my weekly total!

I know I haven’t done many of these, but the rate of error seems consistent. Which might mean that MapMyRide uses a bad formula for determining weight loss. But when I plug the numbers into Strava, they’re about half of MapMyRide – and saying I lose one pound for every 2200 calories I lose during rides is also a dramatic error! Both are bad, then, If you use MapMyRide’s numbers, one might feel that they “should” be losing more weight than they are. If one uses Strava’s numbers, they could promote lack of effort if it looks like it’s “easy” to lose weight. Though, perhaps, I simply enjoy accuracy as a value onto itself.