Keeping it Real

I woke up this morning and first thing that popped into my mind was getting outside on this most glorious of days to ride my bike. I live in a beautiful area and I love riding my bike! I'm not a racer or hard core cyclist. I have a hybrid that allows me the flexibility of a road bike that can handle dirt roads and packed dirt trails. It's very versatile and is a good all purpose bike. It is not so good for long distance riding however. I would say it works for 40 miles and anything over that starts to get uncomfortable.

Riding my bike is my preferred source of exercise. It’s fast, fun and does not negatively impact my knees. I love being outside and having the world zip by. I mostly ride on bike paths, (rail to trail type paths), that go through natural areas. Don’t care much for riding in traffic. I’m not a walker. I'm too lazy and walking is too slow for me. I like to cover a lot of territory and stop along the way to take in the sights.

The main reason for my starting this diet to begin with was because my breathing issues were preventing me from riding my bike. Any uphill riding was increasingly difficult, causing light headedness with a significantly increased heart rate. I just couldn't catch my breath and it was so out of character for me. It was definitely preventing me from doing something that I loved.

The reason I bring this up is that a big part of my “diet” is to not dwell so much on loseing weight and focus more on just leading the type of lifestyle I want to live. I mean isn’t that the point of it all? Sometimes I think we focus so much on the ways and means to get somewhere that we forget where it is we want to go. I can easily get hung up in the bells and whistles of dieting fads, weight loss supplements, health clubs and everything I’m “supposed to do” to take control of my weight loss. The simple fact is that I am overweight because I eat too much at night.  No supplement or exercise plan will ever help until I address this.

My point is that so often we burn out by obsessing about weight loss. You don’t need to overthink it. Just accept it and get on with the day. There are other fish to fry, (well actually poaching or grilling would be a better option), and so much of what we focus on actually distracts us from the living the life we want for ourselves.

So off I go out into the wild blue yonder beautiful day to enjoy riding my bike for what it is, (always an adventure), and not just because it is good exercise that will help me lose weight...