From the first day I started my trip across America, I've weighed myself every day.  I would weigh myself in the morning after breakfast and then I would weigh myself after my ride.

Here's the results after 3 weeks:

I started off at 191 lbs and weighed in this morning at 176.2 lbs after 3 days of rest.  So  far I've lost about 15 lbs and am currently hovering in the 170's.  I would like to get in the mid 160's so I've got 10 more pounds to lose.

Here is what I have discovered so far.

1)  The lost pounds make it a lot easier to get over the mountains.  When I was climbing the Sierra Nevadas in California, lugging that extra baggage made the mountain climbing pretty tough.  By the time I got to the Rockies I was a lot lighter and in good shape and the Rockies were easier to tackle.

2) Jaine doesn't want to sleep next to me any more.  When I go to bed at night I'm as hot as a furnace.  My metabolism is really jacked up and I seem to be burning all the time.  That means any fuel I take in seems to burn up relatively fast.  Surprisingly, I would bet I lose more weight sleeping than when I'm awake.

3)  My daily weight fluctuation is about 5 to 6 lbs a day after a ride.  I'm guessing this is mostly water weight.

When I first started riding in California, I was very concerned about cramping up so I drank a lot of Gatorade and ate a lot of food.  What I found was that my food and water intake should be based more on the  temperature of the day and the distance (or stress level) of the ride if I want to lose weight.

For example, on a really hot day coupled with a long distance ride (like 100 miles), I'll be drinking mostly Gatorade, maybe diluted with a little water, but not much.  If it's a moderate ride of 50-60 miles or a mountain clime on a hot day it'll be half Gatorade half water.  If it's a moderate day on a cool day (like 70 to 80 degrees on an overcast day) it'll be just water.

I started off in California meeting with Jaine for lunch every day but as we got into Nevada, I started to go with just a Clif bar for lunch after a light breakfast.

Today I am going to ride about 120 flat miles on a relatively hot day from Pueblo CO to Eads CO.  Because of the flatness of the terrain and the long distance, I'm going to go with half Gatorade and half water, a light breakfast and meet with Jaine for a light lunch in Ordway CO about 60 miles into the ride.  I'm going to guess I'll weight between 171 and 170 lbs at the end of the ride.

I'll let you know tomorrow if I guessed right.

When I was 25 years old, I taught chemistry and physics at high school at Brodhead and was the wrestling coach.  I used to wrestle with the kids and I weighed about 167 lbs.  If I get to the 160's on this ride, it'll have been 35 years since I've been able to get to that weight.