Here’s the problem with a loaf of white bread. It’s not the gluten, and it’s not the 42 chromosomes. It’s the 500g (1.1 lb) serving size. Of course, I didn’t intend to eat the whole thing in 15 minutes, but when it’s soft and fluffy with no fiber to slow you down, and there’s a couch and a tv, what do you expect to happen?

There may be something to that “insulin spike”, because I felt sick after eating it, and crawled into bed to sleep it off. A few hours later, I woke up dehydrated and regretful. The good thing is that at 1500 calories, it’s not too much more than my normal 1000+ calorie dinner. But I’d never feel sick like this after eating 1500 calories of my normal, unprocessed food.

Lesson learned, I’m not going to buy a loaf of white-flour bread again. I never see any dark, heavy whole-wheat loaves, so I guess I’ll stick to rye and pumpernickel.

I joined the Gitman-Holland club ride up Kitchen Creek to Mt. Laguna, just to see if I could do it on my Cinelli fixed 48×16. The answer is, “yes, but it hurts”. The ride covered 93km, with 1800m of vertical climbing. The main Kitchen Creek climb was 21km with typical 5% – 6% gradient hills, and a 0.8km section @ 11%. Ouch. I hung with the guys for the first 15km of climbing, then finished up at my own pace. We all re-grouped at the store on the top of the climb, and everyone gave me kudos for the effort.

I’ve lost 24kg so far, but will still lose another 10kg. So, at 70kg, my power:weight ratio should be 11% higher than today. That’ll really help up the hills.

I burned 3000+ calories, so I thought I’d try some fast food back in Pine Valley (population 1,408). A bunch of bikers-for-Jesus on their Harley’s were eating there. I ordered a hamburger and fries. It was okay, but I only ate half the fries (from frozen). I still prefer my own cooking, with the complex tastes of fresh ingredients. So I made some chicken fajitas when I got home.

When I first started losing weight, I followed everything in the Forks Over Knives movie, and believed that meat gave you cancer. I proudly called my diet “plant-based”, and told a few people that “I’ve finally found the way I was born to eat.” I even tried to convert a friend to a plant-based diet, who politely listened to me for an hour.

But one of the first things you learn about your lifestyle transformation, is that unless you can guarantee amazing results with no effort, people don’t want to hear about it. It’s just a lecture.

That’s one of the first signs that you’re in a diet cult. Sure, people don’t want to listen because they don’t want to make an effort to lose weight, but also because they don’t want to hear yet another faddish set of arbitrary dietary rules. So while I’m attracted to the extreme high-concept diets in theory, I’m actually practical enough to tone it down for everyday life. I realised eating butter, oil, fish, and meat wasn’t going to kill me.

So my current diet is somewhat flexible, but is starch-based with small amounts of meat, lots of vegetables, and probably 30% of calories from fat. I’m hoping it falls under what Matt Fitzgerald calls healthy agnostic eating in his recently released Diet Cults. The book is a fun read, especially if you’re obsessed about diet and nutrition, and want to understand our natural tendency to judge other people’s dietary preferences, and why we otherwise attach ourselves to particular diets.

The overall message is reasonable, and re-assuring. We’ve evolved over millions of years as omnivores, and individuals today can adapt and thrive on almost any kind of diet. Fitzgerald’s chapter on how the 1804 Lewis & Clark expedition ate off the land for 2 1/2 years is fascinating.

Of course, people want to believe in gimmicky diets, demonize certain foods, and heal with superfoods. But Fitzgerald’s chapter on the National Weight Control Registry (database of people who have lost 30 lbs, and kept it off for a year) show what really works for weight loss: motivation. It’s the only thing that matters, and people will chose the diet that works for them. Motivation trumps will-power (self-control), and anyone that really wants to, will lose the weight and keep it off (through 1hr/day exercise). Don’t believe anything else.

I took the fixie up to the hills of the East County, and rode for about 4 hours, climbing about 1300m (4270 ft) over 90 km (56 miles). My Strava recording for the ride says I burned 2400 calories, which might be close, since it’s easy to compute the work required for climbs.

I made it out to the Golden Acorn Casino, which looked pretty empty @ 10am. You’ll look out-of-place on a fixie in a rest stop that only cars can get to. Most people aren’t very active, and you’re really going against the trend to end up in the middle-of-nowhere, off the freeway, on a track racing bike with no gears.

I’m eating less on these endurance rides, now that I know what my body needs. You’ll burn fat on these rides whether you’re on a ketogenic diet or not.