The training ride I had done with a few other fellows had been particularly tough. But as I rode to my father's house afterwards, something new tortured me.

My hunger.I had that I-need-food-now feeling, so I took a shortcut. The shortcut increased my sluggish pace only because it increased my already-out-of-control appetite.How'd that happen? The shortcut led past an eatery that emanated the aroma of fried peppers and onions.Is there anything that can get you hungrier than the smell of a favorite food when you're already famished?As I scarfed down my typical, after-a-long-weekend-ride meal - a massive mixture of mushrooms, green beans, and shirataki noodles - I told my father about the enticing aroma. That night, he shared the story with his girlfriend Sylvia, and reported back that she'd love to have me over for supper sometime for fried peppers and onions.I rolled my eyes. Shook my head. I thought my father knew all the details about my diet."You know I'd never eat that.""But why not? You know she'd use healthy olive oil.""Fat is fat," I said.I saw a confused look on his face, so I told him that because it is a monounsaturated fat, olive oil is indeed considered "healthy" and for many good reasons.A rather recent study, for instance, found the prudent use of olive oil could actually reverse the ill effects of a long-term high-fat diet. Numerous prior studies had already established the ingestion of olive oil boosted HDL, the "good" cholesterol, without increasing the production of LDL, the "bad." Moreover, other studies had linked it to protecting memory in senior citizens, lowering blood pressure in those who had high blood pressure, and reversing metabolic syndrome before it developed into type 2 diabetes.For all these reasons, I told him Sylvia should continue to cook her meals with it, but that I wanted to avoid the stuff because what I said is true: fat is fat.Good fat, bad fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat: all share one troublesome stat. Every tablespoon of any type contains between 104 and 124 calories.And someone like me, trying to stay as light as possible to be at my best climbing hills on a bicycle, has to make every calorie count. Using olive oil with vegetables "wastes" calories.At the Food Network website, for instance, I found a tempting recipe for roasted broccoli with garlic that uses much less olive oil than many of the other recipes I checked out.I am sure I would enjoy it, but here's the reason why I will not make it.The recipe that supposedly serves four calls for about 1 1/2 pounds of broccoli, which is just a bit more than the amount I often eat as part of my supper, yet the dish contains 444 calories, a few more than the total of my entire typical supper.The same amount of broccoli steamed and eaten with a sprinkling of a salt substitute contains only 184 calories. For me, a slightly better taste isn't worth 260 extra calories.Now this example is not designed to keep you from cooking with olive oil or any cooking oils or suggest you eat all your veggies steamed and naked. But it is supposed to leave one important impression.Every food selection has a consequence. Even some of the healthy ones I eat in abundance, like broccoli, onions, soy-based products, whole wheat, fat-free cottage cheese, and a great-tasting, all-natural sugar substitute with virtually no calories: erythritol.I selected these foods from my diet specifically because they all contain, with the exception of the cottage cheese, "really healthy" complex carbs and fiber and a fair amount of fiber.They also, the cottage cheese included, contain carbs that are fermentable, meaning you can have difficulty digesting them. Serious enough difficulty that eaten in abundance they can cause irritable bowl syndrome (IBS), an affliction that affects about 35 million Americans for all sorts of reasons.Now most people get IBS by eating excessively large meals, excessively fatty and/or spicy meals, or drinking an excessive amount of carbonated or alcoholic beverages. While I indulge in none of that, I do get IBS once every two or three years.That's because I eat too many fermentable carbs, such as oligosaccharides, disaccharide, monosaccharides, and polyols (now known as FODMAP foods). In fact, I get such intense abdominal pain that I'm reduced to the fetal position for upwards to an hour. Then the discomfort abates, and I go about my normal day.Once - only once thankfully - it occurred during school. I spent my prep period curled up in a ball on the floor of the darkened conference room until I had to teach again.Now if you're thinking I'm foolish for not going to the doctor to get tested for IBS, don't be. There is no conclusive test for it.IBS is simply the term for any intestinal distress when all other causes that can be determined by a test do not to exist.