2 1/2 Hours in the Park or 1 Hour in Baton Rouge

Blue sky, the moon, and a few autumn leaves.

Joy here...After the epic two loop ride of the park in the rain, the sisterhood figured it was time for another Sunday loop of the park.  I think this is my 18th loop of the park this season, but Cili Padi tells me my count is off, so I may have to go through this blog for the summer and count them up again.
In any case, we met up for what might be the final loop of the park with all the sisterhood together.  With The Professor back in the classroom after the summer break and The Trainer moving her gym from one location to another and the weather slowly but surely turning cold, our chances to get out for good Sunday rides are getting more and more limited.  As I've written about before, life does get in the way; trying to find time to ride a bike or go for a run often takes a great degree of motivation and organization, and it doesn't always happen.  And as our lives are getting busier and busier these days, we know that the summer of the sisterhood rides is slowly coming to its close, and we won't be able to count on each other being ready and willing to run out our doors every Sunday to push our bodies to the limit and laugh and talk with each other while doing so.  Autumn always brings its changes...change of scenery, change of temperature, and change of pace.

So we wanted to make this one count...burning calories, pushing our legs, and getting up and over those hills...

1,900 calories of baby back ribs.

...because, you see, another friend of ours told us the calorie count for a meal at the chain restaurant, Baton Rouge.  She said that one meal there was 5,000 calories.  Now I've done some searching online, and I can't find those stats, but the restaurant itself publishes its nutritional information for its meals.  It's one heck of an interesting read.

1,290 calories in a sandwich.

For instance, Baton Rouge's 16 oz BBQ pork back ribs (one of their signature dishes) has 1,900 calories in it.  Or, let's say you're not headed there for a full dinner, but just for a quick lunch with some colleagues from work and so instead of a big, rib dinner you'll opt for a sandwich of some sort.  Let's say you'll have their Louisiana Chicken Sandwich.  Well, if that's what you had, you'd be eating 1,290 calories.

And neither of those calorie counts includes the count for the fries that accompany the meal.  Those fries are another 860 calories.

So whether you head to Baton Rouge for lunch or dinner, there's a good chance that you'll be eating over 2,000 calories in one sitting (and don't even talk about the salt and fat intake).

Now let's put this into perspective for a moment.  Someone of my age and weight should probably have 2,000 calories PER DAY with moderate exercise, just to maintain my regular weight.  So if I went to Baton Rouge, and ate a meal, that would be my only meal of the day...but wait...if I did that, then I'd slow down my metabolism and tell my body that I was in starvation mode, so those calories wouldn't all be consumed and burned as energy, but stored on my body as fat.  Great.

The start of the Fortune Climb.

So what does this have to do with my Sunday morning bike ride with the sisterhood on a sunny day in the middle of September?  Well, it's all about perspective.  You see, those meals at Baton Rouge (at around 2,000 calories) require a heck of a lot of exercise to be reasonable meals for anyone.  Our Sunday ride was 2 hours and 28 minutes of cycling (so not counting the important moments when we had to stop and chat with each other, that added on about another 30 minutes or so to the total door-to-door time out).  Our Sunday ride was also 55kms door-to-door for me, up over hills with an 8% incline.  And for that 2 1/2 hours worth of effort, I burned around 950 calories...so not even HALF the calories in one of those Baton Rouge meals.

I would need to ride in the park for around 5 hours, completing over 100kms of hilly bike riding just to be able to come out at an even, no-gain position to be able to eat either one of those meals - BBQ back ribs or a Louisiana Chicken Sandwich - at a restaurant that is obviously popular enough to be a chain with branches in many different cities and countries.

The 950 calorie view from Champlain Lookout.

Now I don't want to preach and try to convince people to ride their bike rather than eat crap, but I do think that it's worthwhile to have some real-world comparisons at one's fingertips before making food decisions.  I mean if you're not planning on a 5 hour workout to burn off that meal, then how can you justify eating it?  It would be like saying, "heck my car only has a 40 gallon gas tank, but I'll just fill up the trunk with extra gas because I want to."  I mean, obviously if we did that to our cars, we would see how stupid and dangerous that is, but somehow we do that to our bodies all the time.  Why?

I for one, would rather spend my Sunday riding up to Champlain Lookout with my friends, feeling the camaraderie of the sisterhood, the burn in my legs, the strain on my breathing, and the sense of accomplishment rather than head to a restaurant to eat a meal that is just so over the top.  If I'm going over the top, it's over the top of a steep climb on my bike to get a view that is truly breath-taking.

Can you beat this view?????

So if invited for a meal at Baton Rouge, I'm likely to say..."no, sorry, I'd rather burn my calories than be burned by them, thanks."

Over and out,
Joy