mr,grumpy 

Wow. A lot of god advice and I'm lax to quote every one and reply point by point but I feel a need to respond!

I LIKE bike riding. It's fun and it's something that I can share with my whole family. As I said, I know that there are ways of exercising that would burn more calories but they are less fun and I might not stick with them as much, and doing them won't make me a better cyclist. The fitness IS foremost, then the enjoyment, and then the weight loss. I'm not that big, fortunately and, just as I have a hard time loosing weight, no matter what I try, I am no likely to get much bigger than I am right now, no matter how lax I become.

My wife recently asked me to teach her to cook better foods. I told her stop buying any thing with a picture on the package, in fact, stop buying any thing with a package! Clearly, that is a little simplistic, but it makes the point. Whole foods from scratch are the way to go. Of course, that's how I have "mostly" eaten for a long time. Work kills me. ZERO free time for 24 hours. Have to eat what I can when I can. Often times I get to tuck into a nice Salad but other times....... it's so gross.

Also, keep in mind that I typed in what I would NORMALLY eat in a day and that, boys and girls, was hovering at three grand a day. Every day. For years. No weight gain.

As far as calories burned goes: no, I don't have a power-meter. Nor am I likely tog et one. I can be riding any one of three diferent bikes on a regular basis, so I'd need three, right. What I HAVE done is cross-compared milages from my GPS and Map My Ride and they are pretty close. MMR is usually a little shorter than real GPS. I have also take the easily provided values rom MMR and compared them to other calorie calculators and they all come out pretty similar. Is the margin for error? Sure (especially if they are all using the same algorithm)! It seems to be a pretty good indicator though and whatever I am taking in it's less than 2400 and sure as **** less than 3 THOUSAND!

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions and support! I don't plan on giving up onnincreasing my fitness, I just wish that there were a corrosponding weight loss as well!