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I was watching the debates on Yahoo! News and Bill Maher asked Senator Biden what he thought was a bigger threat to Americans. Air polluted by coal plants, high fructose corn syrup or terrorists. I love Bill Maher he always cuts right through the bullshit.

According to the CDC obesity accounts for about 300,000 deaths per year in this country. Over the course of the last 7 years terrorism has accounted for approximately 4,000 deaths in America (taking into account the Ground Zero workers who died years later). In the same amount of time obesity killed 2,100,000 people. Even if you account for all the deaths related to terrorism worldwide you still won’t come close the the staggering number of obesity related deaths.

Why does the government focus on such a statistically insignificant threat?

Yesterday we put Coco down. She had been sick for quite a while and she had recently gotten worse. It was a tough decision for us because she was such a good dog. We got her when she was a puppy. She was this pudgy little thing running around with such enthusiasm. She loved all the things your quintessential retriever would do and nothing made her happier then to be able to play a game of fetch. She could catch just about anything in the air. She loved everyone and would get so excited to meet new people. When you laid on the floor to play with Grace she would have to snugle right up against you. She love to sit on our feet while we watched TV. After a long day, she would lay down and make this groan like a tired old man and fall quickly asleep. At night she would rub her body on my feet and lay down at the foot of our bed. She was such a sweet dog, I’m really going to miss her…

Last Friday was the last day in my 1st bike to work month. So before I give my perspective on biking to work lets go over the stats. I rode 19 out of 23 possible days, I telecommuted for 3 days and had equipment issues for the other. I rode 503 miles and burned 31,325 calories. My average heart rate was 150 bpm with a max of 182 bpm and my average speed for the entire month was 15.58 mph (damn lights!). I have 3 saddle sores and now use globs of Vaseline in my shorts to reduce the friction. I had 7 close calls, 5 involving women and 2 involving men. I also got harassed twice for taking a lane, both by women. If I ran on gasoline I would get 497 mpg. I lost ZERO pounds (more on that later).

I have to admit I really love commuting to work on my bike. I thought I would have gotten sick of it after the 1st week but I kept looking forward to the next morning. On the days I telecommuted I really missed my morning ride. I took the weekends off completely only riding on the weekdays so I could have a couple of recovery days. I almost organized a few Sunday rides but couldn’t get my friends to join me. I figured that was a signal to just take it easy.

My biggest challenge was nutrition. I didn’t eat enough calories to support my riding. I kept a food journal for a couple of days and I calculated that I was only getting about 2800 calories a day. According to several websites I should have been getting about 3300 calories and that was if I wanted to loose 10 pounds by January 1st. Which brings us to my theory of why I didn’t loose weight.

I think my body went into starvation mode and started holding on to fat and calories. If you want to loose weight you should only eat 100-200 calories less then you burn to loose a pound a week. I look thinner in my arms and face but my gut is still as big as it was when I started. My legs look bigger too which is understandable since I did ride my ass off. I remember from when I lost weight last time that I felt like I was eating everything in sight. Eating 2800 calories was a lot of food, 3300 seems damn near impossible.

This month I’m going to eat as much food as I possibly can, big breakfasts, big lunches, big dinners and a few snacks in between. Amanda suggested I should just eat a whole chicken for dinner which sounds ridiculous to me. But according to Boston Markets’ website a whole chicken is only 600 calories which is nothing for a 3300 calorie diet.

Yesterday Amanda was looking at me and asked if I was flexing my legs for her. I said, “Nope! they are just naturally muscular!”