Is cycling actually a terrible way to lose weight? I heard it's massively inefficient

Is cycling actually a terrible way to lose weight? I heard it's massively inefficient

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >I heard it's massively inefficient
    The problem with biking is that it's such an efficient form of movement that you don't use nearly as much energy as you would running to cover the same distance. It's only harder when going uphill.

    I bike to work. Going to work it's mostly straight and some downhill. When there's no incline I can bike without breaking a sweat unless I really gun for it, same with downhill gravity does all the work. It only gets harder when biking uphill.

    It's what you make it. You're going to have to go faster on a bike for more time to make it a good way to lose weight.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Thing is, the distance covered in a bike ride for a given time is significantly longer than running.
      The burn rate per hour ends up being about the same as running.
      However cycling isn't as hard on your joints and you can do it for much longer, so you can burn more calories per workout.
      However for it to be hard you should be doing some 25-30 km/h on average.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's a matter of how much effort you put in. I've burned 1500+ calories on many 2 h rides.

    If you crawl along with 100 watts you're not gonna burn a lot of energy. The formula goes:

    Energy (kcal) = Power (watts) * Time (hours) * 3.6

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Your formula gives you energy in kilojoules leading you to overestimate the calories burned by a factor of 4.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It factors in human efficiency which is only ~25% for cycling. So for convenience sake you can just let joule conversion and that factor cancel each other out.

        Of course this is just an approximation and there's better calculators online which factor in your weight and other stuff.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Great way to be impotent

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It doesn't use as many muscles as running, swimming, hiking, or rowing, so unless you train a lot for biking, you tire out before you burn too many calories.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Cycling is a great way to burn calories/lose weight. The problem is that it's actually really difficult to pedal well, so it's difficult for a beginner to be able to do a hard, high-calorie workout.

    The best advice is that if you are interested in cycling or biking, go ahead and do it for weightloss. Otherwise, take up jogging. It took me a solid 6 months of cycling to be able to get my heart rate high enough that I was actually able to get something out of the workouts. As a beginner, you don't pedal throughout the stroke so you end up burning out on a single muscle (ie quad, push quadrant of the pedal stroke) and you can't continue, thus not burning very few calories.

    If you do become proficient at pedaling, you can burn moronic amounts of calories & fat without significant effort but there's a huge time investment to be able to do it.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Just buy a fixed gear

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Fixie makes the issue slightly worse since you can't change gears to keep your cadence up. But regardless, you need to be able to distribute force throughout the pedal stroke.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        fixies are the gayest fricking things I've ever seen lol. all the highschooler's in my town ride bright blue fixie bikes.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Absolutely not doable if you live somewhere with hills.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Start with changing your diet if you want to lose weight.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    inefficient in terms of calories burnt per hour? yes, it's harder to eke out your performance while cycling compared to running or swimming. inefficient in terms of weight loss? not really, it depends. if you have some time to spare cycling is better because you'd be able to sustain your exercise for longer with less strain to your body.

    tbh weight loss is done on your kitchen table. cardio is there for endurance training and cardio health.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    For losing weight, swimming is always king. You constantly lose body heat to the water surrounding your body so you end up expending a lot of calories even if you were to not swim that hard.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you ride a light road bike for efficiency and speed then you'll be a DYEL. Also, make sure your spandex matches your purse.
    If you ride an overloaded mountain bike doing HIIT uphill sprints then you'll become a muscular chad.

    t. mountain bike CHAD

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      *looks at sprinters*
      In what world is Robert Förstermann a dyel twink?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >comparing sprinters to long-distance skellties

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      fatty cope

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Road cyclists are scum

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >muh efficiency
    >muh productivity

    Quit watching podcasts and listening to israeli charlatans grifting off yuppies. Just fricking stand up and don't sit back down until you're covered in sweat and out of breath.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    All ways to lose weight via cardio are massively inefficient. Cardio is good for cardiovascular health, but for losing weight, you should instead just do fork putdowns to failure.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >All ways to lose weight via cardio are massively inefficient.
      I lost 12kg in 8 months running, eating more and I'm not fat. When j started cycling I lost 1kg/month doing 2-3 hard sessions per week while eating a lot.
      If you're not losing weight you're probably not working hard enough.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It’s great if you end up spending +20 hours on the bike in one go but horrible otherwise. Whenever I went for under 3 hours I always gained weight because I ate a lot more. If you want to lose weight then make sure to stay on the bike for as long as you can.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Notwithstanding weight loss being primarily a diet thing, cycling is fine cardio. Swimming is good, but something about it just makes me starving, and I've heard others say the same. Running is probably better, but harder on your joints long term. As others have mentioned, sprinting and riding uphill are the most intensive, but if you're a novice, you can easily get reasonably out of breath with a 30 min ride three times a week.

    Personally I ride my bike a lot because I feel to accomplish more going further. Something about the movement just feels better than running. I love swimming also, but don't do it so much for the cost.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Summertime is just around the corner, I love getting up at 6am and biking to the lake, swim for 45minutes and have breakfast at home afterwards.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    For me it is like that: cycling = face fat, running = belly fat. But that's my personal metabolism. never heard anythnig like that anywhere else.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    cycling to work is good way to force in some cardio if you are too lazy to do it otherwise.
    it's also way less humiliating than running if you are out of shape and just starting to do something about it.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mountain biking is where it’s at. That being said if you’re pushing and on some challenging trails you will eat shit at some point wear a helmet and gloves and hope it isn’t too bad when you do
    t. cracked 2 ribs shredding trails this New Year’s Day

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Stationary bike is the best thing for weight loss imo. Most people spend HOURS AND HOURS every day staring at screens reading bullshit like IST or watching movies or whatever. Just make a rule that you have to do it from the bike, set some minimum output and spend 3 hours a day biking, with the occasional lord of the rings marathon. I lost so much weight when I made that rule and destroyed the bearings on that bike within a year. Distance running wrecked my knees and I can't go further than a few miles without being in extreme pain (I'm in my mid 30s fwiw). Biking doesn't hurt your joints like that.

    Doubly a good idea if you're a woman. It overdevelops the posterior chain.

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