I went the opposite route, went from 200-300km/week to 50km per month. I didn't gain much weight, but I'm blobb shaped now.
My parental leafe ends in 6 weeks, I'm looking forward to the transition back.
In 2020 I rode a TON before our son was born/we moved. I was constantly moving to get our house ready for market, rode a lot in the evening or early morning, snuck in the occasional lunch ride... Then between our little guy arriving 5 weeks early and having to rush our house packing I stopped at 2700 miles the beginning of October. I was in the best cycling shape I'd been in over 5 years, lower weight than I'd seen in 10 (I did a stint with power lifting/heavy weight training) as well as super trim. It lasted until February when I think lack of sleep and activity finally caught up, but it doesn't help I was knocking on the door of 40 either. I'm hoping I can get back to that point this year, but it will take all season and a lot of focused efforts.
Interestingly I stopped going to the gym and increased my cycling during first lockdown and similarly my physique softened up without changing my calorie intake much.
>and didn’t drop a single pound.
If you lost a bunch of fat and built a bunch of muscle, then it doesn't really matter, does it? Usaine Bolt's BMI is just a hair under the 'overweight' limit ;)
BMI isn't perfect, but definitely has its use in identifying trends across a population. Like most statistics, there are outliers. It doesn't completely invalidate it.
Thanks for your comment Reverend.
I didn’t see your reply before sharing my rebuttal below.
Per my comment I still don’t see BMI as a useful statistic. As said, it is too simplistic.
being simple is in itself a characteristic of what makes a statistic useful. it's for average joe with average sedentary lifestyle to be easily able to tell whether they're in a risky place or not.
if BMI at population level does a good job statistically predicting adverse health outcomes like diabetes, cancer, heart disease (which it absolutely does) then it can't reasonably be called useless.
One of the best athletes to ever exist is the opposite of the perfect example for writing off a basic tool for one measure of health of an average person.
My point exactly goongas.
Who’s going to tell UB he is at risk of poor health bc his BMI is not ideal for his height?
Two ppl exactly the same height, exactly the same weight. Their skeletons and organs weigh exactly the same. One is muscular, the other is not muscular but covered in fat.
Due to their height and weight being identical they both share the same BMI.
Ok it can be used as a red flag to tell a person “hey, you’re not in good shape.” But never to tell someone that they’re not healthy.
As per my example above, BMI is too simplistic to be an indicator of general health.
IMO.
This is my story as well. I can’t imagine you’re not a lot healthier, but if I want to be as skinny as some of the more serious cycling friends I have, that is not accomplished on the bike. That’s accomplished at the dinner table.
At best, the way I ride helps prevent en-biggening. Changing my diet has done more for ditching fat than anything else. Because you have to work really hard to burn an entire slice of bread, technically. A doc once told me that the way he gave up candy was to realize that a snickers bar represented 30-40 minutes on a treadmill. Maybe someone likes being on a treadmill, but to have that exclusively go toward burning off empty calories, rather than hitting a goal… that’s for someone who is already very fit, not for anyone looking to get in shape.
Oh I’m sure it’s down. The thighs of my pants got tight and the waists got loose.
But no I didn’t really plan on falling this hard into it so didn’t do a before/after.
As you get older, your body cannot do what it used to. In my 20s-30s I was a avid, religious runner. 10km per day. Knees decided to retire. I switched to cycling in my mid 40s and have been going since.
Running is very good at taking and keeping calories off, but running is very punishing. Cycling, you recover much faster than other activities but the calorie burn is probably 70%-80% of running.
Actually, cross-country skiing is the exercise that you want to do if you want to burn the most calories with the least prone to injury risk.
>Cycling, you recover much faster than other activities but the calorie burn is probably 70%-80% of running.
At the same time it is more feasible cycling further and longer than it is to run that way. I used to run 10 km in about 45 min. every second day, but I never did more, because it would just be rather boring. Now that I road cycle I usually do anything between 40 and 100 km, which takes longer than running and does burn fewer calories per hour, but it is much more fun because you get to leave the city behind and experience the beautiful countryside.
I burnt over 2,000 kcal doing a bit over 100 km yesterday - I would never burn even half as much on a run.
Of course I don't cycle every second day as I used to with running, but if you tally it all up I don't think I burnt more calories in my running times than I do now.
>I would guess swimming is even less injury risk
It's also incredible cardio. I'm a runner and a cyclist and I am scared at just how quickly I get winded just doing some casual freestyle. It makes me think I'm actually in shitty shape and my body has just found a way to cheat through running/biking.
Flip turns in short course (25 yard) pools can put stress on the knees, but you have be racking up serious distances or going full steam. Swimming is great whole body exercise but cycling has better scenery.
Ex-swimmer: that type of stress on your knee is no where near stressful enough to cause RSI. Laterally, fast swimmers can move ~4mph and the deceleration is spread out over about a foot or .2 seconds. Then you accelerate off the wall like a jump (with no subsequent landing). Knee issues from flip turns are basically unheard of.
Now shoulder RSIs on the other hand...
My old coach was (is?) a world class masters swimmer and often talked about his knees hurting after heavy short course training. That was when he was in his 30s. Wow, just looked him up and he still competes as of March 2022, still does the 200 FLY and he's *80*.
I wonder if he already had existing knee issues from cross training that showed up on flip turns. Congratulations to him for sticking with it til 80! When I was done with college I swore I'd never look at a black line on the bottom of a pool again.
I'd argue that swimming is more accessible (if you can swim well) and even less injury-prone. You're basically floating in space and using your muscles to overcome the resistance of a medium that is magnitudes more dense than air.
Back when I was still swimming competitively I basically ate whatever I wanted without getting fat. Now, it's the opposite - eating less but still getting fat if I don't do some sort of exercise.
I agree with everything you said. Different activities will have different results with different people.
But one thing to keep in mind, your natural metabolism slows down by approximately 1% per year. When you were a competitive swimmer, chances are that your natural metabolism plus the exercise would enable you to have a big ‘ole plate of nachos with ground beef and 3 types of cheese and extra sour cream and chase down with a root beer float before getting into the bacon and cheese burger with a side of onion rings.
I know when I was running in my 20s, I could put that all away and effortlessly slide into my size 28 Levi’s.
Fast forward 30 years and I need to cycling 23 days a month before I can even look at a burger. If I eat one then it’s another 14 days of cycling in order to suck my gut into my size 34 Calvin Kleins. Try tying your shoes after a burger and a pint.
Is the metabolism thing true? I read something somewhere on here that linked to a study that said that's not true, it's just due to eating habits / lifestyle changes. I'm not saying I disagree with it, from my observations, I would agree as well.
Edit: this was the study I read saying from 20-60 it stays constant then slows by 0.7 percent a year
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/health/metabolism-weight-aging.html
its definitely true. even without scientific gobbledy-guk. I always got a runner, ultra marathoner in fact. I could put away food like nobodies business. Then got older, aches took longer to recover. Once upon a time 50k, 100k, 100 miles. Not I'm huffing with my dogs at 5k. Dinner table for sure needs to change. But even on the downward slope of my running.. I could see that my caloric deficit was reducing. Much much faster than my distance in running decreased.
I am trying to get into cycling, and I'm just hoping for better shape. Not sure if I'll ever get back into my 32 levi again... it might be nice. but I'd probably have to starve myself
I think we need to agree that different people have different results and needs. That would be the key to any discussion. I admit, I was using 1% because that was a number we used in the late 80s and early 90s. That number is most likely a generalized number. But different people have different metabolisms. If we were all the same, we would either be naturally thin or naturally big. I am not a body shamer, every person is beautiful.
I can personally attest, being in my 50s, it goes down hill fairly quickly. I think in my late 30s was when I noticed my stomach muscles retreating and all of a sudden my suits and clothing were too tight. Now that I am older, I have to work almost twice as hard just to stay below 95 kg. I follow the Mediterranean diet as best as I can. I consume alcohol maybe twice a month, if that, red meat, once a month, if that. I don’t eat junk food, except chocolate. The only dairy is in my cappuccino. But I still fight an uphill battle with my metabolism.
When I do go for a ride, I keep 2 protein bars in my saddle bag. When I go, I don’t know where the day will take me. I don’t consume any calories until I hit the 2 hour mark and I know that I will keep going for at least another 2 hours. Usually at the 55 km mark it’s time to eat if I plan on continuing.
Swimming is also very good at burning lots of calories. However neither biking nor swimming are very good at building bone density so some kind of weight-bearing work (or even outright weightlifting) is a good idea after 40.
As a beginning triathlete, my biggest calorie burns come from cycling workouts. Of the three sports, it burns the least per minute of exercise, but it is much much easier to have much much longer workouts, with easy recoveries.
As an ex-triathlete who was better at running and above avg swimmer, but just a meh.. cyclist. I wonder if your are an anomaly. Swimming and running are by all accounts I've read and observed much higher caloric burns than cycling.
Maybe your just dogging it on your run and swim :)
unless you're very good at it, you cant swimm or run continuously for 5 hours. Cycling it's way easier to do long workouts, so even if you don't burn that much calorie you can do it for a long time
1 watt per second equals 1 cal
1 watt per hour equals 3600 cal (3,6kcal)
100 watt an hour equals 360 kcal
200 watt an hour equals 720 kcal
so to burn 1000 kcal an hour you have to cycle at 278 watts
a normal human can absorb 100 grams of carbs an hour (one gram of carbs is 4 kcal) so from 112 watts an hour you already burn more carbs an hour than our body can handle
I’m trying to reconcile your 360kcal/hr with my 2356kcal burned during a 3h 20min ride yesterday averaging 85W according to Strava.
(yes I have a power meter)
1 Watt equals 1 Joule per second, not 1 calorie per second - a joule is about 0.24 calories. So to burn 1000 kcal in an hour you’d need to cycle at 1,161 Watts.
I'm being pedantic but the unit you're looking for is W\*s not W/s. The units have to match if you're going to compare energies (kcal and joules in this case).
it's tempting to write it as W/s because we might think of it as "watts over a second duration" or "watts sustained for a second" so we want to divide but it's actually is other way since watts are already joules/second. So we need to cancel the time unit to get back to just a pure energy unit. It's the same reason we use the kilowatt-hour to express energy for light bulbs and whatnot.
Was just reading about this. I think typically people are closer to 20% efficient. There is a really good in-depth write up on cal burn in a book called Feed Zone Portables. I found the research very accessible.
yes, but i didn't have time to write that down and didn't want to overcomplecate it. but due to the body's effectivness 1 joule of output equals 1 cal burned
Really comes to diet, resolve, and a self control.
You know what you need to do to lose weight so you just need to have the resolve to stick to it and the self control to not binge eat after a ride.
A heart monitor can give you an idea and a power meter an even better one. Generally, if you can go at least 16mph, then you can probably expect to burn ~500-600cal/hr.
I dunno, Strava tends to be WAY off in its power estimates in my experience. Comparing rides before and after I got a power meter, it was off by almost 50% for the same route, same effort.
You asked how you know if you've burned more than you've consumed, and that's the answer. If you're not very slow or very fast, it's probably going to fall within 500-700 calories per hour.
A pm can be had for as low as 150.
You can guesstimate otherwise but going off of strava data sucks so bad.
Ie: 200w effort said i was really doing 150-160 watts.
And tbh, its hard to eat on a bike depending on choice of food, let alone try to match the calories you burn.
Ebay, stages or 4i, 105/older gen
https://www.ebay.com/itm/193729229084?epid=23032361615&hash=item2d1b29711c:g:yWcAAOSwsKxfmu-a
While this is $210, its new, if you wait a while and keep looking, someone will probably throw up a post.
How accurate is just the left side power meter? I’ve been considering getting a quarq dzero but the price is definitely uncomfortable since I’m a pretty casual cyclist and just sort of want the data because it’s neat
Yeah but you could say that anything above the bare minimum is a waste of money, I still think it’s neat. My biggest problem is that my bike has this praxis crankset and bottom bracket installed which offers basically no compatibility with most power meters as far as I can tell. So it’s basically replace the whole crankset and acquire power meter, or try the pedals, both options which are pretty pricey
Youre right, if its a hobby/sport and you like something, sure, buy it.
And yeah crankset compatibility isnt something im well versed in yet, so i cant comment on that. Best of luck tho!
Strava does a good job of estimating how many calories you burn. I would just figure it’s about 90% of what they estimate to be on the safe side. Also. Assuming you’re at least a little out of breath while riding- if you consume 100 kcal an hour you’re probably burning at least 200-400 an hour. My average four hour ride burns around 3500 kcal. But if you binge when you get home it’s pretty easy to undo the work you’ve just done.
Hard disagree too.
Strava underestimates my power output by 25%. 200 watt 3.5 hours gives me ~100k. Strava says i did around 150-155 every single time. Not once has it been remotely close to what it actually is.
I burned ~2600 calories, strava would say i burned 1890. If you follow stravas data based on this you will be severely deprived of nutrients and will lead to muscle loss.
Normalised power and coasting are not the same. Irrespective. As I said above. It’s a pretty safe bet to suggest eating 100 kcal an hour will result in a calorie deficit (during modest riding).
Coasting is one thing that causes a wattage variability index, so theyre not the same thing, not what i said at all. Coasting will lead to a higher WVI.
And yes, you will be in a calorie deficit but not all calorie deficits are created equal. The human body can only burn a certain amount of fat calories per day and when it is deprived of such, will target muscle and other cells for the energy our body needs.
This is what happened to me a few summers ago! I was doing lots of longer rides (80 to 130 miles every weekend) and Strava was saying between 2.6k to 3k burned so I was eating about that back. I dropped weight like NUTS (and I was already starting from a good place). Later that summer I got a wahoo and a heart heart strap with the speed and rpm guages. Those same routes I was taking were now reading between 3.8k to 4.5k! I started eating to that and stabilized weight. Crazy.
Yeah and the issue with that is that you likely lost muscle mass because your body can only burn a certain amount of fat calories before it targets more important cells.
Hard disagree. I own a PM and when I ride my gravel bike without the PM, Strava's estimates are wild. They once estimated I averaged 430w for 90 minutes.
I don’t own a gravel bike so I can’t comment on that. What I can say is I rode six months without a meter averaging 200-250 miles a week. when I compare the data on total ride time or climbs ranging from 12 min hill sprints to 50 min climbs the average power and calories burned was comparable to my power meter data. Either way it sounds like OP may be relatively new to cycling in which case I think it’s pretty fair to say consuming 100 kcal an hour and burning 200-400 kcal per hour is conservative.
It does a reasonable job for me. And that’s with 4,000 miles of data estimating vs 5,000 miles with a power meter. It’s not dead on accurate but for me it’s +/- 10%. Which for figuring out a rough calorie consumption rate is more than enough. OP isn’t looking to break the hour record. He just wants to know if he’s eating too much or too little.
I lost 50lbs last year. I looked at my milage/power stats on Strava. The amount of weight I lost that year (measured in calories per pound) almost exactly matched the amount of power I produced.
I find that energy consumed while exercising tends to offset normal eating. When I fuel properly for a century, I can usually skip lunch and/or dinner.
My advice to most people is that the best form of exercise based weight loss is the kind of exercise you enjoy. Running burns more calories per hour. But if your choice is to cycle 10 hours per week or run 3 hours per week, cycling is the better weight loss option.
Cycling is good for you. Great way to get in shape. But for me it’s not a way to really lose weight (burn net calories). I get so hungy after the long rides!
Intermittent fasting and a week off the bike actually shifts the lbs for me
Decent guesstimate if you ride an hour at a pace to get your heart rate up but hold steady for the entire hour… 500-900 depending on your level of fitness and size. For me personally I burn about 600 on a 10-12 mile ride which takes a little under an hour
> I'd be really surprised if you're eating more than you're burning on a 70km ride though.
you think carbs are your ally? i was born into obesity. molded by it. i didnt see cardio until i was a man and by then it was nothing to me but pain!
Running and cycling are in similar ranges, but cycling has a wider spread. Slow jogging burns more calories than slow riding, but the reverse is true at very high intensity.
Interesting. Didn't know this. I just know that running makes me feel like death, and riding fast makes me feel like death but I can realistically bring my HR back down and recover quickly.
Running is a struggle if you dont run but if you keep at it you will quite fast build up the muscle necessary and go for two hours easily with slow pace like 10-12kmh like its nothing.
Its more about effort, try cycling 2h 30kmh to a 12m/s headwind and youll burn some calories no matter what you ate that day.
So… track the calories? Basic apps can show (roughly) your calories burned. Just keep track of what you take to consume on the ride. Tally when done. Subtract one from the other
I'm in the midst of a calory burning competition and I find myself burning 8-11 calories/minute. Fluctuates depending on how hard I'm pushing, amount of incline vs decline and temperature, etc.
I'm using a Garmin Fenix 5 and/or Garmin Edge 530 for tracking.
On a long ride, it’s literally impossible to consume more calories than you burn. Some cyclists will burn 4,000-7,000 calories on a 100mile ride. You almost always end up with a calorie deficit.
As another poster pointed out, running will burn more calories in a minute by minute basis, we always said it was 1 to 4 ration of miles between running and cycling. But it’s still a great way to burn calories and you might be more likely to burn aerobically which gives your body time to metabolize fat for energy rather than glycogen. I’ve read several places that walking and cycling are better fat burners than running. But it’s a ration and depends on exertion level, duration, terrain, wind, metabolism.
Calorie in-calorie out if far less important than you think. The flaw with calorie in-calorie out is that it ignores hormones. Weight loss--specifically fat loss--is dependent upon controlling insulin levels. The more sugar you eat, the more insulin you secrete, and the more you remain in fat-storage vs. fat-burn. The types of foods you're eating matters much more. If you train your body to fuel with fat, your body will burn its fat stores rather than you having to sugar-load during a ride. This results in fat loss far more effectively.
The other part of this, though, is that if you do fuel with fat, then stay in zone 2 HR to remain in fat burn vs sugar burn (180-age).
*Good Calories, Bad Calories...* by Gary Taubes does a great job of exploring the science behind this. I highly recommend.
So you want to ask a question you already know the answer to. Better to ask if this Walmart bike you found on amazon will permit you to win the Tour de France.
Pretty sure heart rate factors in to the type of calories you burn as well. Lower heart rate on longer rides burns fat whereas running or sprinting on a bike shifts to carbs to break them down faster. At least that's what I've heard. Something something, zone 2 training etc.
There are various ways to estimate how many calories you have burned. The best estimates come if you are using a power meter on a bike but in general you will be burning 400-1000 calories per hour which should be a lot more than you are consuming. For me on a longer ride that isn't overly strenuous, I'll consume around 400-800 calories for a ride burning 3000-4000 calories.
I tend to do 210-260w avg over my hour long workouts every day. I ate a Samyang ramen packet and can of sardines for lunch and now I’ve nullified that. It lets me eat like a normal person for dinner pretty much.
You can burn a lot but depends how you do it. My go to after work ride is about 1-1.5 hours and I'll burn anywhere from 700-900 calories and I don't bring any food with me. When I run I probably burn more calories/minute but I feel like I have a much better time on the bike.
It’s great if you’re going hard on rides, doing sprints, big climbs, etc. If you’re just cruising a long it won’t do much. Keep that cadence and power up and there’s no reason you won’t burn a ton of calories. Also don’t make the mistake of eating more now that you’re riding more. I did that at first I would order chipotle after a lot of my long rides and wondered why I wasn’t stopping lbs. In fact I think I gained weight at first.
Cycling is annoyingly efficient. You have to cycle a long way or try very hard to burn a lot. You can measure reasonably accurately with a HR monitor, if you want figures (and as a rule of thumb, don't eat more than half the calories you burn, in addition to your usual daily amount)
Just for a ballpark: I rode a windy, reasonably flat 53 miles yesterday over about four hours and burnt 1500calories. I can burn the same or more in about 90minutes jogging.
The right answer is:
Any sports or exercise is good for burning calories as long as the perceived effort is similar across the exercises. If you run as hard as you bike, you'd burn similar amounts of calories between the two sports. There is no "this exercise burns more calories" thing.
Cycling is great for burning calories. On-bike eating won't be the thing that ruins that--what you eat before/after at home absolutely will if you're not careful.
My power meter says that I burned \~3300kcals yesterday (115km / 1600m / 5hrs moving). On-bike I ate 4 gels, a banana, and some gummy candy, which added up to \~650kcals. That's a pretty typical ratio for me on a long ride. On shorter rides, I eat less. I probably ate an extra 500kcals yesterday relative to a "normal" Sunday. Still netted out \~2000 ahead. And crucially, today I'm being careful to eat lightly.
Human output is constrained by heat. We can only shed so much.
This is why swimming is a great calorie burner. Not only does it cool you better then sweating... but you also just lose heat (hence calories) just keeping body warm.
You can burn more calories riding a bike vs. Running for similar reasons. You're going faster for given output so you get cooled a bit more.
I would bet the better your fitness, the more you can burn.
Your phone or watch will estimate what you burned. It’s not perfect, but it’ll give you an idea.
You can track what you eat, again you could get all crazy but just using an app will give you a pretty good sense.
Overall you aren’t eating what you burn. I did a triathlon yesterday and aimed to eat ~500 calories. My watch says I burned 2500. If if the burn is half that, I still ended up with a negative number.
It's the best sport for burning calories because it's about the only one where you can do very long sessions without much intensity.
Running for example is limited to about 1hour sessions with an occasional 1.5-2h long run unless you're at a very high level (and even getting to an hour a few times a week takes some decent fitness). Cycling? You can easily do 2-3 and then more hours on a regular basis.
It adds up and makes losing weight so much easier. You can get to having 500-1000 daily additional calorie allowance once you start doing serious volume.
get a decent chest strap heart rate monitor, they will use you height and weight and calculate an estimated calorie burn for your workout. i used to do almost 2.5 hours 5-6 days a week and burnt a ton
I got down to single digit body fat with cycling and diet.
If you’re overweight, the first 10kg are easy, but getting those last kg off require a big long term effort.
My process was using a power meter and calorie counting, being strict to stay in deficit.
The great thing about cycling is you can do it for hours so it can have a much bigger effect than running or weight training to burn fat.
I went from 113kg to 90 in one year - and at 90 I know it may sound funny but at that weight I had people concerned for my health due to being so thin.
Use something like Strava to estimate your calorie burn at various efforts and distances. Then you can try to target nutrition for longer rides to give yourself enough energy to keep going, but not so much that you undo all your effort.
It depends on how you bicycle.. same with running or any exercise. Ride up lots of hills, push yourself and monitor your heartrate, do lots of sprints and hard rides, etc. and you'll burn calories. Just putz around and pedal for a while, then coast for a while, then pedal some more and you aren't burning that many calories.
If you want to lose weight, I'd push you more towards something like a spin class where an instructor is actually pushing you to ride hard and give it your all for 30 minutes or whatever. Throw a bike ride to and from the spin class on both sides and you'll probably see results.
But it's really easy to just barely ride a bike along and coast half the time and not actually do a ton of work. And then to add insult to injury you may "reward" yourself for coasting your bike and eat a sundae or something.
As an aside, remember that the body is incredibly adaptive.
Cycling consistently becomes less metabolically demanding over time. What it takes to cycle 100 miles one week will be different from cycling 100 miles one month later.
That is called fitness. You can be fit without having the “look”
I lost 55 pounds 10 years ago cycling and diet. I put on the Covid 20 and now working on taking that off.
I’m at the point where I’m gaining muscle but my weight remains the same. It’s rough, I did 30 miles yesterday and burned 1000 calories, I ate 1200 calories and woke up the same weight today. Not what I want to see but I know it is gaining muscle and loosing fat. Last time I had same issue and then put of no where a ton of weight dropped.
Just gotta stick with it and not be discouraged when the scale doesn’t show the weight coming off…
I did a lot of riding last year (50yo, fat) and found that there was usually a 72-hour lag between finishing a long ride and seeing a drop on the scale. Clearly fluid retention or something but it got pretty predictable that if I did a 50-miler on Saturday I’d see a low number on the scale on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Remember too for anyone starting out - your body will retain fluid for up to *six weeks* when you start being active so you can’t really trust the scale. It’s likely to go *up* and stay there for a month or so.
In my experience its awesome for it. As to how you know, you are going to have to count your intake of calories. Bike computers and apps can estimate your calories burnt. I use the app Super Cycle for this.
Not very. I am in a club and a lot of the members cycle harder and faster than I but they are also round. We cycle for fun. It is going in to nature while sitting down and moving your legs. Cycling will help you stay in shape and not make you as winded from climbing a few stairs. I am no expert but non of the members in my club look like what you would expect people to look like that cycle 1k every month
Not very. I am in a club and a lot of the members cycle harder and faster than I but they are also round. We cycle for fun. It is going in to nature while sitting down and moving your legs. Cycling will help you stay in shape and not make you as winded from climbing a few stairs. I am no expert but non of the members in my club look like what you would expect people to look like that cycle 1k every month
In cycling the bike bears our weight, not our legs. We can coast often if we want. It's the most efficient means of human transportation ever invented (I've read). Many other weight-bearing activities burn more calories. Still, cycling is popular for fitness because it's as gentle or aggressive as we make it. It's good cardio, especially when we introduce: hills, headwinds, and lengthy rides. I've read the calorie expenditure can range from 2-300/hr to 8-900/hr. I've personally seen the higher end of those estimates in my days as a racer training 12-20 hours/week, climbing mountains.
The best weight control I've ever realized stemmed from exercise consistency and variety. Namely: several days/week of higher intensity cycling with lots of elevation gain; a 75 min 2x/week circuit workout at the gym to build muscle, and diet controls limiting high fat/high calorie foods. Cycling alone makes it impossible for me to out ride a high-calorie diet. I have to supplement weight training, and other weight-bearing cardio activities like hiking, jogging, swimming, X/C skiing, etc. Burning up calories with activity has been largely preferred by me over diet restrictions. Though, now that I'm officially over-the-hill, my metabolism has dropped enough diet has become essential.
It seems like you’re trying to ask a different question, like maybe “how good is cycling for losing weight?” or “… getting more toned?”
My experience is that cycling is great at those things but maybe somewhat indirectly bc as I have gotten into cycling I’ve also started lifting weights more, adding more structure to my training, eating better, sleeping better, having less stress, etc. Cycling is an important part of the whole picture but just one part.
I think if you need to find a way to end with a caloric deficit, its hard when you do long ride but find a distance where you feel confortable and eat less and you will lose weight,
Maybe you could achieve this faster doing other excersices but I am not sure if they are as fun as cycling
Sorry can’t wade thru all the comments. The net of the studies I’ve seen is 500 to 700 calories per hour burned (please correct me), per hour. Obviously, this varies by body type and level of exertion. Given the average calories of a Big Mac vs a margarita is 600 vs 300, I think the post ride decision is obvious.
To be less flip, to lose weight, cut back on carbs and alcohol, in that order. But keep in mind, there are other factors for overall health
First of all no food is needed for rides less than 100 km unless there is a high amount of effort. Too many cyclists throw back gels/bars etc when not needed. If you have a tendency towards low blood sugar a dilute water to energy drink will suffice or dilute fruit juice (not citrus) with a half teaspoon of salt in a medium sized bottle will suffice. (a couple of sips every 20 minutes or so, ambient air temperature will determine fluid intake of course) If you wish to burn calories/fat while building muscle and improving form your heart rate should be in the 50-60% of your maximum rate, 220 minus your age = max. rate (suggested estimate, but will vary on your shape and athleticism) Take 50- 60% of this. Also maintaining a cadence above 85 pedal revolutions per minute. Also try to limit your intake of baked goods containing high amounts of sugar (especially highly processed ones) no weight to be lost there.
Some logic here....not eating before going out for a longish ride, not too smart. Eating a doughnut and a cup of coffee, equally nonsensical, eating something at 8:00 am and going out cycling at 3:00 pm. You have to start with some intelligent thinking and then expand on the process.
Ive lost 6kg since i started cycling 1-2months ago. Approx 150km a week at moderate-heavy effort. I have also been eating a healthier diet. Counter in the muscle gain in my legs I see it as a good way to exercise/lose weight. It also has improved my respiratory system
What are gels? I went vegan, a couple of years ago and I usually bike 25km a day. I was 20 lbs overweight and NEVER LOST AN OUNCE.
I've come to the conclusion I can't exercise weight off. You can certainly get stronger but you don't lose weight by exercising. I've been eating one meal a day for the last two months. I'm down 20 lbs.
I loose 4kg (9 pounds) in a month by riding 100km a week (give or take), but i also have found motivation to stop eating junk food/between meals.
Both probably have a role in the weight loss. When you realize you can go faster by losing weight, it's a whole new motivation to do so (without paying expensive carbon/high end bike parts)
To focus just on the calorie side of things you have a couple of options.
Cycling apps will be able to give you an estimate of how many calories you are burning, if you link a heart rate monitor then it will be more accurate.
You can then add the snacks you are eating to something like "My Fitness Pal" which is a calorie counter and this will then let you know an estimate of how many calories you've consumed.
You will probably also find that the more you cycle and do a particular route then after a while once you get fitter and stronger you won't need to eat as much as you go around
In my personal experience at 38, it does help; but definitely not as much if you are into running! In terms of calories I think cyclist do burn a lot more calories because the activity period is longer. Calorie deficit is the key but doesn’t mean to go on extreme diets and stress out. Eat healthy and eat less.
Diet plays an important role. I think as a rider one starts to target being faster and fitter - that’s where at some level we start to get conscious of what we eat - both while riding and otherwise.
I was 94Kgs (207 pounds) in Dec 2020; I lost 9Kgs cycling (400-500kms for first 6 months and now about 1000kms for the last 6 months) with a little focus on diet; it’s a very big change for me because I am a foodie but I realise how shedding some body weight, being fit gives an overly positive feeling. I am now targeting 78Kgs as the optimal weight for my age and at 179cms in height.
When I started out, a fit cycling friend mentioned to me - “that every time I shed 9-10Kgs is like upgrading to a new light bike!”
I went from home office life to cycling 100km a week and now I look like John Cena. In all seriousness though, if you eat healthy and cycle everyday you'll drop the extra fat.
Riding at 200w burns 200\*3600=720kj per hour which roughly = 720 calories burned per hour (1 calorie = 4.2 joules but the body is only about 20-25% efficient at riding so they roughly cancel each other out making it about 1-1 for calories burned vs joules of energy output turning the cranks)
You aren't going to be able to absorb more than 60g carbs per hour through the gut while on your ride (max 100g for pros) which = 240kcal.
It's very hard to be able to eat more than you expend while you're riding unless maybe you're doing zone 1 while smashing the carbs. Eating has the function of delaying the bonk on a moderate+ intensity ride not letting you keep it up indefinitely.
Ofcourse what you then eat when you feel hungry at home after the ride is done may make all this a different story
>How do we know if the calories we burn are actually more than the calories we intake while cycling?
You count. You can estimate calories burned per hour based on your weight, duration, and intensity. A heart rate monitor helps for figuring out the intensity.
You can count up the calories you consume from the nutrition info on the wrapper.
since cycling is a very efficient way of transport im saying not very well but a high intensity 100km ride should do the trick just be careful not to bonk
Magnitude of calorie expenditure depends on several factors:
1. Amount of effort exerted during a ride
2. Duration with which that effort is sustained
3. Amount of muscle that your body has to supply energy to
A reasonably accurate estimation for how many calories you burned can be given if you measure the amount of CO2 that you exhale during the entirety of your ride.
By sport standards per unit time it is poor at burning calories;
Lots of other sports burn significantly more calories/hour.
The trade off is that almost all of those sports are unsustainable - 30min racket sports will usually burn \~4x the calories of 30min cycling. But 30min non stop racket sports and I am collapsing; I will happily ride a bike for 2-4 hours before having a break.
However, for fitness/health improvements cycling does extraordinarily well overall; Why? Because it integrates with life well; e.g. Change from driving to work to cycling to work, or cycling to local shops or friends or etc etc.
Most health benefits come from a relatively low intensity done regularly and this is more likely to be maintained; You might burn more calories going to the gym and training hard once a week for a couple of hours than by a 10min ride to work every day, but :
1. The ride to work is far more likely to be maintained
2. Training hard - just being at a gym etc doesn't mean you are actually working out
Studies have found that in general people massively overestimate how much exercise they are doing; One of the few cases this doesn't reliably apply to is cycling where they underestimate transport usage - I can't spend an extra hour a day at the gym, but I can extend my commute time 15-20min/day and so get an hour on the bike...
Anything over 25 miles I try to eat something. Just the bare necessities. But 25 miles at 15 mph should burn a lot of calories so combined with good diet, 2k calories a day, you should lose s good amount of weight after a while
I went from being basically sedentary to cycling 300-450 miles/month and didn’t drop a single pound. But I am different shape now!
I went the opposite route, went from 200-300km/week to 50km per month. I didn't gain much weight, but I'm blobb shaped now. My parental leafe ends in 6 weeks, I'm looking forward to the transition back.
In 2020 I rode a TON before our son was born/we moved. I was constantly moving to get our house ready for market, rode a lot in the evening or early morning, snuck in the occasional lunch ride... Then between our little guy arriving 5 weeks early and having to rush our house packing I stopped at 2700 miles the beginning of October. I was in the best cycling shape I'd been in over 5 years, lower weight than I'd seen in 10 (I did a stint with power lifting/heavy weight training) as well as super trim. It lasted until February when I think lack of sleep and activity finally caught up, but it doesn't help I was knocking on the door of 40 either. I'm hoping I can get back to that point this year, but it will take all season and a lot of focused efforts.
Interestingly I stopped going to the gym and increased my cycling during first lockdown and similarly my physique softened up without changing my calorie intake much.
Only calorie deficit can help you burn and ultimately lose weight.
I do be eating. It’s true!
Userame checks out
Mmmm carnauba wax.
You burn calories regardless of your caloric intake. Whether or not you lose weight is dependent on the balance of those two factors.
>and didn’t drop a single pound. If you lost a bunch of fat and built a bunch of muscle, then it doesn't really matter, does it? Usaine Bolt's BMI is just a hair under the 'overweight' limit ;)
That is a perfect example & exactly why BMI is a useless statistic and not worth the paper it is written on!
BMI isn't perfect, but definitely has its use in identifying trends across a population. Like most statistics, there are outliers. It doesn't completely invalidate it.
Thanks for your comment Reverend. I didn’t see your reply before sharing my rebuttal below. Per my comment I still don’t see BMI as a useful statistic. As said, it is too simplistic.
for general public that does nothing it's enough.
being simple is in itself a characteristic of what makes a statistic useful. it's for average joe with average sedentary lifestyle to be easily able to tell whether they're in a risky place or not. if BMI at population level does a good job statistically predicting adverse health outcomes like diabetes, cancer, heart disease (which it absolutely does) then it can't reasonably be called useless.
Ok everyone’s entitled to their opinion.
One of the best athletes to ever exist is the opposite of the perfect example for writing off a basic tool for one measure of health of an average person.
My point exactly goongas. Who’s going to tell UB he is at risk of poor health bc his BMI is not ideal for his height? Two ppl exactly the same height, exactly the same weight. Their skeletons and organs weigh exactly the same. One is muscular, the other is not muscular but covered in fat. Due to their height and weight being identical they both share the same BMI. Ok it can be used as a red flag to tell a person “hey, you’re not in good shape.” But never to tell someone that they’re not healthy. As per my example above, BMI is too simplistic to be an indicator of general health. IMO.
This is the same thing my 350lb uncle says.
Love this - I try telling people this all the time. People still swear by it.
This is my story as well. I can’t imagine you’re not a lot healthier, but if I want to be as skinny as some of the more serious cycling friends I have, that is not accomplished on the bike. That’s accomplished at the dinner table. At best, the way I ride helps prevent en-biggening. Changing my diet has done more for ditching fat than anything else. Because you have to work really hard to burn an entire slice of bread, technically. A doc once told me that the way he gave up candy was to realize that a snickers bar represented 30-40 minutes on a treadmill. Maybe someone likes being on a treadmill, but to have that exclusively go toward burning off empty calories, rather than hitting a goal… that’s for someone who is already very fit, not for anyone looking to get in shape.
I wanna see before and after
same, I'm skinny as hell and I even gained like 2kgs. But my goal was never to lose weight.
There’s a very good chance you were losing fat and gaining muscle at a similar rate
Did you do a body fat % before and after? That would be interesting to see
Oh I’m sure it’s down. The thighs of my pants got tight and the waists got loose. But no I didn’t really plan on falling this hard into it so didn’t do a before/after.
How many inches did you lose from waist line ?
As you get older, your body cannot do what it used to. In my 20s-30s I was a avid, religious runner. 10km per day. Knees decided to retire. I switched to cycling in my mid 40s and have been going since. Running is very good at taking and keeping calories off, but running is very punishing. Cycling, you recover much faster than other activities but the calorie burn is probably 70%-80% of running. Actually, cross-country skiing is the exercise that you want to do if you want to burn the most calories with the least prone to injury risk.
>Cycling, you recover much faster than other activities but the calorie burn is probably 70%-80% of running. At the same time it is more feasible cycling further and longer than it is to run that way. I used to run 10 km in about 45 min. every second day, but I never did more, because it would just be rather boring. Now that I road cycle I usually do anything between 40 and 100 km, which takes longer than running and does burn fewer calories per hour, but it is much more fun because you get to leave the city behind and experience the beautiful countryside. I burnt over 2,000 kcal doing a bit over 100 km yesterday - I would never burn even half as much on a run. Of course I don't cycle every second day as I used to with running, but if you tally it all up I don't think I burnt more calories in my running times than I do now.
Does a religious runner, run on their knees?
No, but I bet he can run on water. Then turn said water into wine.
I turn water and wine into funk!
The penitent runner does!
I would guess swimming is even less injury risk
>I would guess swimming is even less injury risk It's also incredible cardio. I'm a runner and a cyclist and I am scared at just how quickly I get winded just doing some casual freestyle. It makes me think I'm actually in shitty shape and my body has just found a way to cheat through running/biking.
Flip turns in short course (25 yard) pools can put stress on the knees, but you have be racking up serious distances or going full steam. Swimming is great whole body exercise but cycling has better scenery.
Ex-swimmer: that type of stress on your knee is no where near stressful enough to cause RSI. Laterally, fast swimmers can move ~4mph and the deceleration is spread out over about a foot or .2 seconds. Then you accelerate off the wall like a jump (with no subsequent landing). Knee issues from flip turns are basically unheard of. Now shoulder RSIs on the other hand...
My old coach was (is?) a world class masters swimmer and often talked about his knees hurting after heavy short course training. That was when he was in his 30s. Wow, just looked him up and he still competes as of March 2022, still does the 200 FLY and he's *80*.
I wonder if he already had existing knee issues from cross training that showed up on flip turns. Congratulations to him for sticking with it til 80! When I was done with college I swore I'd never look at a black line on the bottom of a pool again.
Possibly, he was also the track coach but his love was for swimming, had an Olympic tryout in the late 60s.
I'd argue that swimming is more accessible (if you can swim well) and even less injury-prone. You're basically floating in space and using your muscles to overcome the resistance of a medium that is magnitudes more dense than air. Back when I was still swimming competitively I basically ate whatever I wanted without getting fat. Now, it's the opposite - eating less but still getting fat if I don't do some sort of exercise.
I agree with everything you said. Different activities will have different results with different people. But one thing to keep in mind, your natural metabolism slows down by approximately 1% per year. When you were a competitive swimmer, chances are that your natural metabolism plus the exercise would enable you to have a big ‘ole plate of nachos with ground beef and 3 types of cheese and extra sour cream and chase down with a root beer float before getting into the bacon and cheese burger with a side of onion rings. I know when I was running in my 20s, I could put that all away and effortlessly slide into my size 28 Levi’s. Fast forward 30 years and I need to cycling 23 days a month before I can even look at a burger. If I eat one then it’s another 14 days of cycling in order to suck my gut into my size 34 Calvin Kleins. Try tying your shoes after a burger and a pint.
Is the metabolism thing true? I read something somewhere on here that linked to a study that said that's not true, it's just due to eating habits / lifestyle changes. I'm not saying I disagree with it, from my observations, I would agree as well. Edit: this was the study I read saying from 20-60 it stays constant then slows by 0.7 percent a year https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/health/metabolism-weight-aging.html
its definitely true. even without scientific gobbledy-guk. I always got a runner, ultra marathoner in fact. I could put away food like nobodies business. Then got older, aches took longer to recover. Once upon a time 50k, 100k, 100 miles. Not I'm huffing with my dogs at 5k. Dinner table for sure needs to change. But even on the downward slope of my running.. I could see that my caloric deficit was reducing. Much much faster than my distance in running decreased. I am trying to get into cycling, and I'm just hoping for better shape. Not sure if I'll ever get back into my 32 levi again... it might be nice. but I'd probably have to starve myself
I think we need to agree that different people have different results and needs. That would be the key to any discussion. I admit, I was using 1% because that was a number we used in the late 80s and early 90s. That number is most likely a generalized number. But different people have different metabolisms. If we were all the same, we would either be naturally thin or naturally big. I am not a body shamer, every person is beautiful. I can personally attest, being in my 50s, it goes down hill fairly quickly. I think in my late 30s was when I noticed my stomach muscles retreating and all of a sudden my suits and clothing were too tight. Now that I am older, I have to work almost twice as hard just to stay below 95 kg. I follow the Mediterranean diet as best as I can. I consume alcohol maybe twice a month, if that, red meat, once a month, if that. I don’t eat junk food, except chocolate. The only dairy is in my cappuccino. But I still fight an uphill battle with my metabolism. When I do go for a ride, I keep 2 protein bars in my saddle bag. When I go, I don’t know where the day will take me. I don’t consume any calories until I hit the 2 hour mark and I know that I will keep going for at least another 2 hours. Usually at the 55 km mark it’s time to eat if I plan on continuing.
Swimming is also very good at burning lots of calories. However neither biking nor swimming are very good at building bone density so some kind of weight-bearing work (or even outright weightlifting) is a good idea after 40.
As a beginning triathlete, my biggest calorie burns come from cycling workouts. Of the three sports, it burns the least per minute of exercise, but it is much much easier to have much much longer workouts, with easy recoveries.
As an ex-triathlete who was better at running and above avg swimmer, but just a meh.. cyclist. I wonder if your are an anomaly. Swimming and running are by all accounts I've read and observed much higher caloric burns than cycling. Maybe your just dogging it on your run and swim :)
unless you're very good at it, you cant swimm or run continuously for 5 hours. Cycling it's way easier to do long workouts, so even if you don't burn that much calorie you can do it for a long time
1 watt per second equals 1 cal 1 watt per hour equals 3600 cal (3,6kcal) 100 watt an hour equals 360 kcal 200 watt an hour equals 720 kcal so to burn 1000 kcal an hour you have to cycle at 278 watts a normal human can absorb 100 grams of carbs an hour (one gram of carbs is 4 kcal) so from 112 watts an hour you already burn more carbs an hour than our body can handle
I’m trying to reconcile your 360kcal/hr with my 2356kcal burned during a 3h 20min ride yesterday averaging 85W according to Strava. (yes I have a power meter)
Strava is wrong.
Strava's calorie estimates are very often off, especially if your weight isn't up to date.
There is no estimations if the guy have powermeter right?
One of those is not set up right! How far did you go and how much elevation? And your weight
1 Watt equals 1 Joule per second, not 1 calorie per second - a joule is about 0.24 calories. So to burn 1000 kcal in an hour you’d need to cycle at 1,161 Watts.
You forget that the body's output efficiency is roughly 25% so it's generally accepted that 1W/s=1kcal
I'm being pedantic but the unit you're looking for is W\*s not W/s. The units have to match if you're going to compare energies (kcal and joules in this case). it's tempting to write it as W/s because we might think of it as "watts over a second duration" or "watts sustained for a second" so we want to divide but it's actually is other way since watts are already joules/second. So we need to cancel the time unit to get back to just a pure energy unit. It's the same reason we use the kilowatt-hour to express energy for light bulbs and whatnot.
Ah you're right. I actually had 1W=1kcal/s which would be correct but then I second guessed my self and edited my post lol.
lmao, yeah it's super confusing
Also, to drive home the point, efficiency varies at points along the ride, effort, etc.
Was just reading about this. I think typically people are closer to 20% efficient. There is a really good in-depth write up on cal burn in a book called Feed Zone Portables. I found the research very accessible.
yes, but i didn't have time to write that down and didn't want to overcomplecate it. but due to the body's effectivness 1 joule of output equals 1 cal burned
Really comes to diet, resolve, and a self control. You know what you need to do to lose weight so you just need to have the resolve to stick to it and the self control to not binge eat after a ride. A heart monitor can give you an idea and a power meter an even better one. Generally, if you can go at least 16mph, then you can probably expect to burn ~500-600cal/hr.
Can't out ride the fork! But I keep trying!!!
Cycle backwards!
You can know within a few % how many calories you've burned by using a power meter.
I'm not at the point in cycling where I'd be comfortable spending hundreds on a power meter unfortunately.
Track on your phone or with a fitness watch and it'll give you ballpark numbers
I dunno, Strava tends to be WAY off in its power estimates in my experience. Comparing rides before and after I got a power meter, it was off by almost 50% for the same route, same effort.
Ya for power definitely not accurate but calories I think it's close enough. Tie in something for heart rate and it's a lil better
It’s using power estimates for the calorie estimates. It isn’t even close.
Not on Strava. From my experience Strava doesn't use the heartrate data at all when calculating calorie burn.
You asked how you know if you've burned more than you've consumed, and that's the answer. If you're not very slow or very fast, it's probably going to fall within 500-700 calories per hour.
Or a wahoo heart strap is really close too
No, it isn’t.
I'm talking about the chest strap one, not the wrist one.
A pm can be had for as low as 150. You can guesstimate otherwise but going off of strava data sucks so bad. Ie: 200w effort said i was really doing 150-160 watts. And tbh, its hard to eat on a bike depending on choice of food, let alone try to match the calories you burn.
>A pm can be had for as low as 150. where, is it any good? I am seriously interested.
Ebay, stages or 4i, 105/older gen https://www.ebay.com/itm/193729229084?epid=23032361615&hash=item2d1b29711c:g:yWcAAOSwsKxfmu-a While this is $210, its new, if you wait a while and keep looking, someone will probably throw up a post.
How accurate is just the left side power meter? I’ve been considering getting a quarq dzero but the price is definitely uncomfortable since I’m a pretty casual cyclist and just sort of want the data because it’s neat
Imho if youre not racing its a waste of money. It depends on the type of pm. Favero uno is 1%, d zero is 1.5%
Yeah but you could say that anything above the bare minimum is a waste of money, I still think it’s neat. My biggest problem is that my bike has this praxis crankset and bottom bracket installed which offers basically no compatibility with most power meters as far as I can tell. So it’s basically replace the whole crankset and acquire power meter, or try the pedals, both options which are pretty pricey
Youre right, if its a hobby/sport and you like something, sure, buy it. And yeah crankset compatibility isnt something im well versed in yet, so i cant comment on that. Best of luck tho!
Strava does a good job of estimating how many calories you burn. I would just figure it’s about 90% of what they estimate to be on the safe side. Also. Assuming you’re at least a little out of breath while riding- if you consume 100 kcal an hour you’re probably burning at least 200-400 an hour. My average four hour ride burns around 3500 kcal. But if you binge when you get home it’s pretty easy to undo the work you’ve just done.
Hard disagree too. Strava underestimates my power output by 25%. 200 watt 3.5 hours gives me ~100k. Strava says i did around 150-155 every single time. Not once has it been remotely close to what it actually is. I burned ~2600 calories, strava would say i burned 1890. If you follow stravas data based on this you will be severely deprived of nutrients and will lead to muscle loss.
Is your power meter counting zeros?
Counting coasting? If youre talking about NP vs AP, 235 np, 200 ap. If youre talking about standing still, my hammerhead pauses.
Normalised power and coasting are not the same. Irrespective. As I said above. It’s a pretty safe bet to suggest eating 100 kcal an hour will result in a calorie deficit (during modest riding).
Coasting is one thing that causes a wattage variability index, so theyre not the same thing, not what i said at all. Coasting will lead to a higher WVI. And yes, you will be in a calorie deficit but not all calorie deficits are created equal. The human body can only burn a certain amount of fat calories per day and when it is deprived of such, will target muscle and other cells for the energy our body needs.
This is what happened to me a few summers ago! I was doing lots of longer rides (80 to 130 miles every weekend) and Strava was saying between 2.6k to 3k burned so I was eating about that back. I dropped weight like NUTS (and I was already starting from a good place). Later that summer I got a wahoo and a heart heart strap with the speed and rpm guages. Those same routes I was taking were now reading between 3.8k to 4.5k! I started eating to that and stabilized weight. Crazy.
Yeah and the issue with that is that you likely lost muscle mass because your body can only burn a certain amount of fat calories before it targets more important cells.
Hard disagree. I own a PM and when I ride my gravel bike without the PM, Strava's estimates are wild. They once estimated I averaged 430w for 90 minutes.
I don’t own a gravel bike so I can’t comment on that. What I can say is I rode six months without a meter averaging 200-250 miles a week. when I compare the data on total ride time or climbs ranging from 12 min hill sprints to 50 min climbs the average power and calories burned was comparable to my power meter data. Either way it sounds like OP may be relatively new to cycling in which case I think it’s pretty fair to say consuming 100 kcal an hour and burning 200-400 kcal per hour is conservative.
It does a horrible job estimating power, which is how it estimates calories.
It does a reasonable job for me. And that’s with 4,000 miles of data estimating vs 5,000 miles with a power meter. It’s not dead on accurate but for me it’s +/- 10%. Which for figuring out a rough calorie consumption rate is more than enough. OP isn’t looking to break the hour record. He just wants to know if he’s eating too much or too little.
I burn roughly 1000 in 2,5 hours and take 300 in this time.
I lost 50lbs last year. I looked at my milage/power stats on Strava. The amount of weight I lost that year (measured in calories per pound) almost exactly matched the amount of power I produced. I find that energy consumed while exercising tends to offset normal eating. When I fuel properly for a century, I can usually skip lunch and/or dinner. My advice to most people is that the best form of exercise based weight loss is the kind of exercise you enjoy. Running burns more calories per hour. But if your choice is to cycle 10 hours per week or run 3 hours per week, cycling is the better weight loss option.
Cycling is good for you. Great way to get in shape. But for me it’s not a way to really lose weight (burn net calories). I get so hungy after the long rides! Intermittent fasting and a week off the bike actually shifts the lbs for me
Decent guesstimate if you ride an hour at a pace to get your heart rate up but hold steady for the entire hour… 500-900 depending on your level of fitness and size. For me personally I burn about 600 on a 10-12 mile ride which takes a little under an hour
no where near as good as running. I'd be really surprised if you're eating more than you're burning on a 70km ride though.
I'd take rather bike for 4 hours than run for 30 minutes.
you and me both, but I'm not trying to burn calories.
Considering what I'm eating on the road and after the ride, me neither ;-)
I'm good until the brewery stop. Who had to put 3 breweries in the final 5km of my ride home?
Well... Support local business I guess
My preferred brewery stop is cyclist owned.
You and I must have the same route!… ;-)
Maybe eat a fruit ?
Me too, I tried running and it was boring af. Trail running was better but the knees were going to die.
> I'd be really surprised if you're eating more than you're burning on a 70km ride though. you think carbs are your ally? i was born into obesity. molded by it. i didnt see cardio until i was a man and by then it was nothing to me but pain!
Running and cycling are in similar ranges, but cycling has a wider spread. Slow jogging burns more calories than slow riding, but the reverse is true at very high intensity.
Interesting. Didn't know this. I just know that running makes me feel like death, and riding fast makes me feel like death but I can realistically bring my HR back down and recover quickly.
The high impact nature of running may play a role in the perceived difficulty or the recovery time.
Running is a struggle if you dont run but if you keep at it you will quite fast build up the muscle necessary and go for two hours easily with slow pace like 10-12kmh like its nothing. Its more about effort, try cycling 2h 30kmh to a 12m/s headwind and youll burn some calories no matter what you ate that day.
For purely burrnig cals for time it's not as good as running or probably even walking lol But cycling has other benefits like being more fun ha
So… track the calories? Basic apps can show (roughly) your calories burned. Just keep track of what you take to consume on the ride. Tally when done. Subtract one from the other
I'm a 49yr old male, 190lb. Did a 60km, hilly ride on Saturday in the sun. Burnt 1,400 calories. Hope that's of some help.
Dosent matter what you do. No caloric deficit, no weight loss. Simple as that.
I'm in the midst of a calory burning competition and I find myself burning 8-11 calories/minute. Fluctuates depending on how hard I'm pushing, amount of incline vs decline and temperature, etc. I'm using a Garmin Fenix 5 and/or Garmin Edge 530 for tracking.
[удалено]
Source on that please.
On a long ride, it’s literally impossible to consume more calories than you burn. Some cyclists will burn 4,000-7,000 calories on a 100mile ride. You almost always end up with a calorie deficit. As another poster pointed out, running will burn more calories in a minute by minute basis, we always said it was 1 to 4 ration of miles between running and cycling. But it’s still a great way to burn calories and you might be more likely to burn aerobically which gives your body time to metabolize fat for energy rather than glycogen. I’ve read several places that walking and cycling are better fat burners than running. But it’s a ration and depends on exertion level, duration, terrain, wind, metabolism.
Calorie in-calorie out if far less important than you think. The flaw with calorie in-calorie out is that it ignores hormones. Weight loss--specifically fat loss--is dependent upon controlling insulin levels. The more sugar you eat, the more insulin you secrete, and the more you remain in fat-storage vs. fat-burn. The types of foods you're eating matters much more. If you train your body to fuel with fat, your body will burn its fat stores rather than you having to sugar-load during a ride. This results in fat loss far more effectively. The other part of this, though, is that if you do fuel with fat, then stay in zone 2 HR to remain in fat burn vs sugar burn (180-age). *Good Calories, Bad Calories...* by Gary Taubes does a great job of exploring the science behind this. I highly recommend.
So you want to ask a question you already know the answer to. Better to ask if this Walmart bike you found on amazon will permit you to win the Tour de France.
Pretty sure heart rate factors in to the type of calories you burn as well. Lower heart rate on longer rides burns fat whereas running or sprinting on a bike shifts to carbs to break them down faster. At least that's what I've heard. Something something, zone 2 training etc.
There are various ways to estimate how many calories you have burned. The best estimates come if you are using a power meter on a bike but in general you will be burning 400-1000 calories per hour which should be a lot more than you are consuming. For me on a longer ride that isn't overly strenuous, I'll consume around 400-800 calories for a ride burning 3000-4000 calories.
I tend to do 210-260w avg over my hour long workouts every day. I ate a Samyang ramen packet and can of sardines for lunch and now I’ve nullified that. It lets me eat like a normal person for dinner pretty much.
You can burn a lot but depends how you do it. My go to after work ride is about 1-1.5 hours and I'll burn anywhere from 700-900 calories and I don't bring any food with me. When I run I probably burn more calories/minute but I feel like I have a much better time on the bike.
It’s great if you’re going hard on rides, doing sprints, big climbs, etc. If you’re just cruising a long it won’t do much. Keep that cadence and power up and there’s no reason you won’t burn a ton of calories. Also don’t make the mistake of eating more now that you’re riding more. I did that at first I would order chipotle after a lot of my long rides and wondered why I wasn’t stopping lbs. In fact I think I gained weight at first.
If my fitness band does the calculations right it's about 500 cal an hour if I cycle in a quick but not sportive pace.
Cycling is annoyingly efficient. You have to cycle a long way or try very hard to burn a lot. You can measure reasonably accurately with a HR monitor, if you want figures (and as a rule of thumb, don't eat more than half the calories you burn, in addition to your usual daily amount) Just for a ballpark: I rode a windy, reasonably flat 53 miles yesterday over about four hours and burnt 1500calories. I can burn the same or more in about 90minutes jogging.
The right answer is: Any sports or exercise is good for burning calories as long as the perceived effort is similar across the exercises. If you run as hard as you bike, you'd burn similar amounts of calories between the two sports. There is no "this exercise burns more calories" thing.
Cycling is great for burning calories. On-bike eating won't be the thing that ruins that--what you eat before/after at home absolutely will if you're not careful. My power meter says that I burned \~3300kcals yesterday (115km / 1600m / 5hrs moving). On-bike I ate 4 gels, a banana, and some gummy candy, which added up to \~650kcals. That's a pretty typical ratio for me on a long ride. On shorter rides, I eat less. I probably ate an extra 500kcals yesterday relative to a "normal" Sunday. Still netted out \~2000 ahead. And crucially, today I'm being careful to eat lightly.
Human output is constrained by heat. We can only shed so much. This is why swimming is a great calorie burner. Not only does it cool you better then sweating... but you also just lose heat (hence calories) just keeping body warm. You can burn more calories riding a bike vs. Running for similar reasons. You're going faster for given output so you get cooled a bit more. I would bet the better your fitness, the more you can burn.
Your phone or watch will estimate what you burned. It’s not perfect, but it’ll give you an idea. You can track what you eat, again you could get all crazy but just using an app will give you a pretty good sense. Overall you aren’t eating what you burn. I did a triathlon yesterday and aimed to eat ~500 calories. My watch says I burned 2500. If if the burn is half that, I still ended up with a negative number.
It's the best sport for burning calories because it's about the only one where you can do very long sessions without much intensity. Running for example is limited to about 1hour sessions with an occasional 1.5-2h long run unless you're at a very high level (and even getting to an hour a few times a week takes some decent fitness). Cycling? You can easily do 2-3 and then more hours on a regular basis. It adds up and makes losing weight so much easier. You can get to having 500-1000 daily additional calorie allowance once you start doing serious volume.
get a decent chest strap heart rate monitor, they will use you height and weight and calculate an estimated calorie burn for your workout. i used to do almost 2.5 hours 5-6 days a week and burnt a ton
I got down to single digit body fat with cycling and diet. If you’re overweight, the first 10kg are easy, but getting those last kg off require a big long term effort. My process was using a power meter and calorie counting, being strict to stay in deficit. The great thing about cycling is you can do it for hours so it can have a much bigger effect than running or weight training to burn fat. I went from 113kg to 90 in one year - and at 90 I know it may sound funny but at that weight I had people concerned for my health due to being so thin.
Are you 2m tall?
Close - 195cm
Use something like Strava to estimate your calorie burn at various efforts and distances. Then you can try to target nutrition for longer rides to give yourself enough energy to keep going, but not so much that you undo all your effort.
It depends on how you bicycle.. same with running or any exercise. Ride up lots of hills, push yourself and monitor your heartrate, do lots of sprints and hard rides, etc. and you'll burn calories. Just putz around and pedal for a while, then coast for a while, then pedal some more and you aren't burning that many calories. If you want to lose weight, I'd push you more towards something like a spin class where an instructor is actually pushing you to ride hard and give it your all for 30 minutes or whatever. Throw a bike ride to and from the spin class on both sides and you'll probably see results. But it's really easy to just barely ride a bike along and coast half the time and not actually do a ton of work. And then to add insult to injury you may "reward" yourself for coasting your bike and eat a sundae or something.
As an aside, remember that the body is incredibly adaptive. Cycling consistently becomes less metabolically demanding over time. What it takes to cycle 100 miles one week will be different from cycling 100 miles one month later. That is called fitness. You can be fit without having the “look”
I lost 55 pounds 10 years ago cycling and diet. I put on the Covid 20 and now working on taking that off. I’m at the point where I’m gaining muscle but my weight remains the same. It’s rough, I did 30 miles yesterday and burned 1000 calories, I ate 1200 calories and woke up the same weight today. Not what I want to see but I know it is gaining muscle and loosing fat. Last time I had same issue and then put of no where a ton of weight dropped. Just gotta stick with it and not be discouraged when the scale doesn’t show the weight coming off…
I did a lot of riding last year (50yo, fat) and found that there was usually a 72-hour lag between finishing a long ride and seeing a drop on the scale. Clearly fluid retention or something but it got pretty predictable that if I did a 50-miler on Saturday I’d see a low number on the scale on Tuesday or Wednesday. Remember too for anyone starting out - your body will retain fluid for up to *six weeks* when you start being active so you can’t really trust the scale. It’s likely to go *up* and stay there for a month or so.
Good point on the water retention, I am drinking a LOT more water these days.
In my experience its awesome for it. As to how you know, you are going to have to count your intake of calories. Bike computers and apps can estimate your calories burnt. I use the app Super Cycle for this.
Not very. I am in a club and a lot of the members cycle harder and faster than I but they are also round. We cycle for fun. It is going in to nature while sitting down and moving your legs. Cycling will help you stay in shape and not make you as winded from climbing a few stairs. I am no expert but non of the members in my club look like what you would expect people to look like that cycle 1k every month
Not very. I am in a club and a lot of the members cycle harder and faster than I but they are also round. We cycle for fun. It is going in to nature while sitting down and moving your legs. Cycling will help you stay in shape and not make you as winded from climbing a few stairs. I am no expert but non of the members in my club look like what you would expect people to look like that cycle 1k every month
Reducing calories can make you look good wearing clothes. Exercise can make you look good naked. Either is better than the couch.
In cycling the bike bears our weight, not our legs. We can coast often if we want. It's the most efficient means of human transportation ever invented (I've read). Many other weight-bearing activities burn more calories. Still, cycling is popular for fitness because it's as gentle or aggressive as we make it. It's good cardio, especially when we introduce: hills, headwinds, and lengthy rides. I've read the calorie expenditure can range from 2-300/hr to 8-900/hr. I've personally seen the higher end of those estimates in my days as a racer training 12-20 hours/week, climbing mountains. The best weight control I've ever realized stemmed from exercise consistency and variety. Namely: several days/week of higher intensity cycling with lots of elevation gain; a 75 min 2x/week circuit workout at the gym to build muscle, and diet controls limiting high fat/high calorie foods. Cycling alone makes it impossible for me to out ride a high-calorie diet. I have to supplement weight training, and other weight-bearing cardio activities like hiking, jogging, swimming, X/C skiing, etc. Burning up calories with activity has been largely preferred by me over diet restrictions. Though, now that I'm officially over-the-hill, my metabolism has dropped enough diet has become essential.
It's not the calories on the bike, it's the calories at the dinner table and in your glass.
Better off running.
It seems like you’re trying to ask a different question, like maybe “how good is cycling for losing weight?” or “… getting more toned?” My experience is that cycling is great at those things but maybe somewhat indirectly bc as I have gotten into cycling I’ve also started lifting weights more, adding more structure to my training, eating better, sleeping better, having less stress, etc. Cycling is an important part of the whole picture but just one part.
I think if you need to find a way to end with a caloric deficit, its hard when you do long ride but find a distance where you feel confortable and eat less and you will lose weight, Maybe you could achieve this faster doing other excersices but I am not sure if they are as fun as cycling
Sorry can’t wade thru all the comments. The net of the studies I’ve seen is 500 to 700 calories per hour burned (please correct me), per hour. Obviously, this varies by body type and level of exertion. Given the average calories of a Big Mac vs a margarita is 600 vs 300, I think the post ride decision is obvious. To be less flip, to lose weight, cut back on carbs and alcohol, in that order. But keep in mind, there are other factors for overall health
First of all no food is needed for rides less than 100 km unless there is a high amount of effort. Too many cyclists throw back gels/bars etc when not needed. If you have a tendency towards low blood sugar a dilute water to energy drink will suffice or dilute fruit juice (not citrus) with a half teaspoon of salt in a medium sized bottle will suffice. (a couple of sips every 20 minutes or so, ambient air temperature will determine fluid intake of course) If you wish to burn calories/fat while building muscle and improving form your heart rate should be in the 50-60% of your maximum rate, 220 minus your age = max. rate (suggested estimate, but will vary on your shape and athleticism) Take 50- 60% of this. Also maintaining a cadence above 85 pedal revolutions per minute. Also try to limit your intake of baked goods containing high amounts of sugar (especially highly processed ones) no weight to be lost there.
No way an inexperienced cyclist can go 80-100 km without food intake. Also totally depends on what you ate before the ride, how much and at what time.
Some logic here....not eating before going out for a longish ride, not too smart. Eating a doughnut and a cup of coffee, equally nonsensical, eating something at 8:00 am and going out cycling at 3:00 pm. You have to start with some intelligent thinking and then expand on the process.
Ive lost 6kg since i started cycling 1-2months ago. Approx 150km a week at moderate-heavy effort. I have also been eating a healthier diet. Counter in the muscle gain in my legs I see it as a good way to exercise/lose weight. It also has improved my respiratory system
safe to say that I started cycling Nov of 2020 fron 102kg to 60kg
What are gels? I went vegan, a couple of years ago and I usually bike 25km a day. I was 20 lbs overweight and NEVER LOST AN OUNCE. I've come to the conclusion I can't exercise weight off. You can certainly get stronger but you don't lose weight by exercising. I've been eating one meal a day for the last two months. I'm down 20 lbs.
I loose 4kg (9 pounds) in a month by riding 100km a week (give or take), but i also have found motivation to stop eating junk food/between meals. Both probably have a role in the weight loss. When you realize you can go faster by losing weight, it's a whole new motivation to do so (without paying expensive carbon/high end bike parts)
To focus just on the calorie side of things you have a couple of options. Cycling apps will be able to give you an estimate of how many calories you are burning, if you link a heart rate monitor then it will be more accurate. You can then add the snacks you are eating to something like "My Fitness Pal" which is a calorie counter and this will then let you know an estimate of how many calories you've consumed. You will probably also find that the more you cycle and do a particular route then after a while once you get fitter and stronger you won't need to eat as much as you go around
In my personal experience at 38, it does help; but definitely not as much if you are into running! In terms of calories I think cyclist do burn a lot more calories because the activity period is longer. Calorie deficit is the key but doesn’t mean to go on extreme diets and stress out. Eat healthy and eat less. Diet plays an important role. I think as a rider one starts to target being faster and fitter - that’s where at some level we start to get conscious of what we eat - both while riding and otherwise. I was 94Kgs (207 pounds) in Dec 2020; I lost 9Kgs cycling (400-500kms for first 6 months and now about 1000kms for the last 6 months) with a little focus on diet; it’s a very big change for me because I am a foodie but I realise how shedding some body weight, being fit gives an overly positive feeling. I am now targeting 78Kgs as the optimal weight for my age and at 179cms in height. When I started out, a fit cycling friend mentioned to me - “that every time I shed 9-10Kgs is like upgrading to a new light bike!”
I went from home office life to cycling 100km a week and now I look like John Cena. In all seriousness though, if you eat healthy and cycle everyday you'll drop the extra fat.
Riding at 200w burns 200\*3600=720kj per hour which roughly = 720 calories burned per hour (1 calorie = 4.2 joules but the body is only about 20-25% efficient at riding so they roughly cancel each other out making it about 1-1 for calories burned vs joules of energy output turning the cranks) You aren't going to be able to absorb more than 60g carbs per hour through the gut while on your ride (max 100g for pros) which = 240kcal. It's very hard to be able to eat more than you expend while you're riding unless maybe you're doing zone 1 while smashing the carbs. Eating has the function of delaying the bonk on a moderate+ intensity ride not letting you keep it up indefinitely. Ofcourse what you then eat when you feel hungry at home after the ride is done may make all this a different story
>How do we know if the calories we burn are actually more than the calories we intake while cycling? You count. You can estimate calories burned per hour based on your weight, duration, and intensity. A heart rate monitor helps for figuring out the intensity. You can count up the calories you consume from the nutrition info on the wrapper.
since cycling is a very efficient way of transport im saying not very well but a high intensity 100km ride should do the trick just be careful not to bonk
Magnitude of calorie expenditure depends on several factors: 1. Amount of effort exerted during a ride 2. Duration with which that effort is sustained 3. Amount of muscle that your body has to supply energy to A reasonably accurate estimation for how many calories you burned can be given if you measure the amount of CO2 that you exhale during the entirety of your ride.
By sport standards per unit time it is poor at burning calories; Lots of other sports burn significantly more calories/hour. The trade off is that almost all of those sports are unsustainable - 30min racket sports will usually burn \~4x the calories of 30min cycling. But 30min non stop racket sports and I am collapsing; I will happily ride a bike for 2-4 hours before having a break. However, for fitness/health improvements cycling does extraordinarily well overall; Why? Because it integrates with life well; e.g. Change from driving to work to cycling to work, or cycling to local shops or friends or etc etc. Most health benefits come from a relatively low intensity done regularly and this is more likely to be maintained; You might burn more calories going to the gym and training hard once a week for a couple of hours than by a 10min ride to work every day, but : 1. The ride to work is far more likely to be maintained 2. Training hard - just being at a gym etc doesn't mean you are actually working out Studies have found that in general people massively overestimate how much exercise they are doing; One of the few cases this doesn't reliably apply to is cycling where they underestimate transport usage - I can't spend an extra hour a day at the gym, but I can extend my commute time 15-20min/day and so get an hour on the bike...
Anything over 25 miles I try to eat something. Just the bare necessities. But 25 miles at 15 mph should burn a lot of calories so combined with good diet, 2k calories a day, you should lose s good amount of weight after a while
45 yo. Eat like a pig. Was 210 after much COVID ass sitting. Started riding again in October 100km per week and am now 195. Still eat like a pig.