Good Carb, Bad Carb

Beans. I’ve rediscovered the bean as a tool that can help me ride my bike. No, not as a propulsion aid, as some of my more vulgar readers might presume. Such a crude idea had not even entered my mind. And if that was your first thought I would suggest you take a serious look at yourself: how old are you anyway?

I’m talking about good carbs, bad carbs. The bad carbs are the ones that send you skyrocketing up with boundless energy in two seconds, only to drop you spiraling back down to sluggish reality minutes later. Like cookies. The good carbs are the ones that take you up more slowly and allow you to fly at a lower altitude for a longer time. Like the dignified legume.

Those are my findings so far, but I’m not going to give you more examples for fear of disseminating inaccurate information. I’m only just learning all this, so don’t rely on me. The goodness or badness of the carbs is, I believe, measured by a thing called the “glycemic index” or something. Where you find that tool, I’m not sure.

I tried to make a big chart showing everything I ate and when, and how much I was exercising. I also wanted to include the value of everything I ate, meaning how much fat, carbs, protein, etc. This was to figure out what causes the bonk effect.

And by the way, if you read my last post, it should be clear what I mean by bonk. Any other meaning that might come up for you obviously does not apply here and is part of your own illness.

Anyway all this record keeping and calculating was really taxing my non-numerical brain. Designing the chart alone was a real piece of engineering work. I thought, "There must be an easier way. Surely someone else has already invented this and all I have to do is find it.”

So I went online, and presto! the first thing I found was exactly what I needed. It’s called MyFoodDiary.com, and it measures everything you can think of. You want to know why you’re wearing a tire in spite of exercising like a maniac, you click a button and it tells you exactly why. You want to know why you lack enough energy to fuel your ride home in spite of the fact that you’re eating like Porky, you click a button and there it is.

It takes a certain time investment initially to enter in all the foods you eat, And you have to suffer through the photograph of the wan waif on the front page of the site, who looks like the most athletic thing she’s ever done is bat her eyelashes. But if you can maneuver past those roadblocks, and you’re willing to pay the $9 a month, you can find help there.