Cravings

This weekend, tired of becoming sick from working out too hard, I started to do something very uncharacteristic: I counted my calories.

No. I'm not trying to lose weight.

I just couldn't figure out why, at 19, I could run 80 miles a week and lift weights for two hours, three days a week, and maintain a college student's schedule and pace and now, I can't workout 6 days a week for more than a couple weeks without getting sick.

I'm older now, I know, and I recover slower and injure more easily, but I also get more sleep and am generally less stressed out. I build into my workouts slowly-- I started way back at the beginning of the summer with two to three days a week. What was happening? I snooped around online and this is what I found:

The daily caloric expenditure for a man my age, hight and weight is approximately 1600 if I never even get out of bed. Add about 500 more for just getting up and having a normal, exercise free, day in the office. Add another 500 for getting a little bit of exercise. That's probably about what I eat in a normal day. In order to sustain myself while working out the way I like to, I needed to find room for another 500 calories-- more if I actally want to build any muscle. This is harder than you think.

Do you know how many calories are in a salad without dressing? Less than 30. I need my veggies, but on this caloric schedule, how can I possibly spare the room in my tummy?

It's been an interesting experience-- and one that I hope not to do for more than a few weeks. Once I get a sense of how much food I need, I'll stop and take it from there.