Payback
Whew. 1100 calories burned on the elliptical today... Payback for the junk I ate yesterday. I really should have gone to the gym last night, but it got to be too late. I was 550 calories over maintenance yesterday, so I really needed to be on my game today.

I adjusted my plan to aim for a 25% deficit on my low day which is about 1850 calories. As I've mentioned in several posts, my plan is to eat my maintenance calories every day (appx 2500) and use exercise to create the deficit that I need. With 3 low days for every 1 high day, that typically means I have 5 days of cardio per week.

Math is Hard When You're Sweating *laugh*
Since I blew it yesterday, I decided to make up the difference with cardio today. To reach my low goal, I needed 650 calories of cardio. To make up for the 550 calories of junk yesterday, I needed that much additional cardio. I wasn't sure if I would have the energy to do this today, so I didn't really plan this calculation ahead of time... At the 50 minute mark, I realized that I still had energy to spare, so I did some quick mental math and figured that I needed to go to 1100 calories. Unfortunately, this figure was wrong - I needed to go to 1200. Kind of an embarrassing admission for a self-professed math nerd... I blame the sweat *laugh*. It's a shame that I was off. Burning another 100 calories at the end of a workout like that would have meant another 10 minutes at most! Probably 5 or 6. I'll just chalk up another 100 calories when I do my workout tomorrow.

The Plan for Today
Since I'm using 450 of my cardio calories to knock down the totals for yesterday, I need to net 1850-450, or 1400 calories for the day today. It sounds difficult, but honestly, all I have to do is consume the 2500 calories that I planned to eat today and it will work out perfectly! 2500-1100 cardio= 1400

Weight Training
It's actually good that I'm starting out with only cardio right now because it makes the math simple. Once I start weight training + cardio, I'll be burning a tremendous amount of calories. Unfortunately, cardio is a necessary component for weight loss, so even if I burn 650 calories during a workout, I still need to put in 30-60 minutes of cardio to get the long term burn going. The end result of this is that I will need to eat MORE on my low days than my high days.

Pitch for Speed. Throttle for Altitude
It is so strange to think this way. It reminds me a little of when I was first learning to land a Cessna. With an airplane yoke, people commonly know that you pull back to go up and push forward to go down. That works fine while you're flying, but when you come in to land, you use the backward and forward motion to control your speed and the throttle to control your rate of descent. So, if you're approach is too high, you don't push the yoke forward, you use the throttle to bring the plane down faster.

As long as I'm just doing cardio, I'm flying... and I can use cardio to regulate my calories; but as soon as I start weight training, too, I'll have to start adjusting my foods to regulate my calories.

I suppose I could just back the cardio off to where I end up with 650 calories burned per (low) day, but, as I mentioned, I need the aerobic benefit of at least 30 minutes of cardio.

Tom Venuto
I'm a big fan of natural bodybuilder Tom Venuto. He's a straight shooter who has chosen to "tell the truth as he knows it" rather than accept endorsement agreements to peddle supplement junk. While 85-90% of the information I use today came from my trainers years ago; Thanks to his many interviews and references, Tom has given me some strong messages that I carry in my head everywhere I go.

* "I have never been overweight, but if I were, I'd probably do 45-60 minutes of cardio every day - maybe even twice per day - until the weight was off..."

* "On a typical day, I eat between 4500 and 5000 calories." (Tom is ripped... He's also 5'8 and 190lbs - but to consume that amount of calories, he must work his hinder off at the gym!)

* "I plan every meal out in advance, but I have found that I tend to eat the same basic foods over and over again. To keep things simple, I have two menus up on my fridge, and I'll just eat one of those sets of meals for the day."

* "I'm not a big fan of cardio. While it is a necessary, valuable tool, I only do as much as I need to do - no more - no less."

Doing All That Is Necessary
That last quote (well - paraphrase) could be misleading without defining the "need" that he's talking about. The "need" for cardio doesn't stop at calories burned - there is cardiovascular health and the metabolic boost. When Tom was leaning out for a contest in 2005, he did 7 days of cardio at 30 minutes per day (appx 430 calories). When he is gaining muscle in the off season, he does hardly any. The amount of cardio you do depends on your goal. If your goal is fat loss... go back to that first bullet up there. Do it daily... maybe even twice per day.

PS - If you think I write a lot in my blogs, you should see Tom's http://www.burnthefatblog.com/