Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
Gosh, Friday afternoon and not a thought in my head. I had a couple of friends keep me up late last night, and it’s my nature to get up around dawn this time of year anyway, so I guess you could say I’m tired. Exhausted.
I’m on my second week of not driving and exclusively riding my bike—and no, I still haven’t gone to court, you’ll read about it when I do—but I think bicycle riding uses calories in ways the gym doesn’t. I don’t have any harebrained theories about why that may be. OK, maybe one harebrained theory.
Here’s the thing. A couple of years ago, I lost a bunch of weight. I’m not sure exactly how much—between 50 and 60 pounds. I did it by reducing unhealthy carbohydrates in my diet and increasing fiber and animal fat. After I’d lost most of the weight, I started working out, which basically stopped the weight loss. (I lost about 40 pounds in the five months before I started working out and the rest in the last two years.)
And now that I’ve written all that, it occurs to me that my theory is not so harebrained at all. By riding my bike to work, I’ve increased my calories expended, but I haven’t changed my eating habits. That means I’m getting an extra hour of exercise a day, which a quick internet search suggests I burn about 800 calories a day. That’s 4,000 extra calories during the work week.
So, there are several bottom lines to this. First, I think I’m the same weight I was when I was 21 years old. Second, my bike ride to work takes me almost the same time as driving. (It’s about five miles downhill.) Third, I’m saving three-quarters of a tank of gas a week.
And that, my friends, leads us to the punchline: Late to bed and early to rise makes the man—how’s that go again?