Posted: 8/31/2009 5:11:00 PM EDT
| Tired of being fat, I have recently made some changes. I no longer dip (three months without, woo!!), I cut back to almost zero soda (maybe 20 oz. a week, compared to sometimes 60 oz. plus a day a couple months ago), not eating out much, and when I do, it's smaller portions and less crap (nothing fried, very small amounts of salad dressings, etc). Anyway, I am about 6'4", 270lb and have recently taken up bicycling, and am really enjoying it. Today was the longest I have gone in the three weeks I've been doing it ( 2 -3 times a week), 12.4 miles total, took me about an hour or so. Proud of myself, but damn I am out of shape ... Question is, how much is this going to help me with losing weight? How is bicycling for calorie burn? This is all on a bike trail that is relatively flat. |
| Anything you do with the big muscles will burn fat. You're going to gain some mass, because those muscles are heavier than the fat that's going away. Exercise, especially cycling, is about a lot more than weight loss. Pump, breathe, pump, breathe. Eating less, especially less starch, will rock your world. Wouldn't hurt to do some strength training, too. |
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For a 90 min period cycling at a pace where you can just old a conversation without catching your breath and jogging are identical. Running at close to your Vo2 max will always burn the most calories, but unless you are an 18 year old with 4% body fat you are asking for knee injuries. Keep your cadence up and take a calcium sup. It was found that low impact sports that cause you to lose a lot of electrolytes leech calcium from your system. A lot of old school riders found they had the heart of a 17 year old and the bones of a 70 during that study. If you enjoy it, find a way to do it every day. Don't get into the mentality that you get to eat more because you earned it when you are losing weight. You eat to lose or you eat to gain (muscle). But you can't do both. One of the best things you can do is find a restaurant or salad place you love and use that as your daily reward for cycling. No salad bars. People overeat and load up on ranch. I had a Buffalo Ranch chicken salad for mine today.  You will find the pounds just melting off. |
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A lot.
I've been doing the same thing for about 2 months. Quit dipping almost a year ago. "Quitting" over and over again really made me balloon up because I ate to keep from dipping. Now it's time to get it all back off. No soda, no alcohol, no fast food, no fried foods, no sweets, no fatty stuff. I eat normal foods, but try to make better decisions; keep the mayo, cheese and ranch off stuff. I usually eat a turkey and mustard on wheat bread everyday for lunch. Not the best or worst thing in the world, but much better without the mayo and cheese. Look at labels and stay away from calorie dense foods. Eat more fruits and veggies and eat enough to fuel your fat burning. I have one cheat meal (greasy fast food burger) on Saturday which helps me eat better during the week because I tell myself to wait until Saturday. It's a mental game. An hour of biking 3-4 times a week and cleaning up your diet will drop weight. Probably not real fast, but in 6 months you could probably have dropped 20-30 pounds with not much effort. Biking is a really good exercise because it's low impact and you can do it forever without tiring out. When your legs can't go on, you drop gears and find a flatter road until you're ready to push it again. If you want to lose it faster, exercise more. No reason you can't bike 6 days a week. Start upping your distance and then timing your ride and cutting time. Find hilly trails or roads to push your effort. And don't have a leisurely ride. You should keep a good speed the whole time to keep your heart rate up and your lungs working. If you're not riding hard and sweating, you're wasting your time. I also run, lift and do some other stuff. Putting on muscle will help you achieve your goals. More muscle means more calories burned throughout the day and a higher metabolism. I do some type of exercise every day. I run or bike 6 days a week and lift 3-4 days. Instead of driving 5 blocks to go visit my buddy, I walk. I also spend a lot of time reading about nutrition and exercising to find new stuff to try and to keep my mind on the goal. I watch UFC a lot because it makes me want to work out. It comes off slow, but it's worth it in the end. If you can really eat a clean, healthy diet, it will come off fast, but I'm in this for the long term and eating crap I don't want to eat isn't going to help me after I'm sick if it. Once you start making better choices, you'll get more and more motivated to change what you eat. The hardest thing is to keep going even when you don't see results. Especially for us guys with guts. You just have to be patient and keep it up. My cargo shorts no longer stay on without a belt. :) Good luck! Maybe by this time next year you can change your handle to SkinnyFellor. |
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Forgot to add, if you are new to dieting, do yourself a favor and pick up Body for Life. Once you know more and can see which diets are fads and which aren't you will be good to go, but it's a great jumping off point. Your waistline, no matter how much you workout, starts and ends on the dinner plate. |
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For a 90 min period cycling at a pace where you can just old a conversation without catching your breath and jogging are identical. Running at close to your Vo2 max will always burn the most calories, but unless you are an 18 year old with 4% body fat you are asking for knee injuries. Cycling burns a lot fewer calories than running. My bike workout tonight was about 90 minutes with 55 of that spent at or above the max power that I could hold for an hour. Extremely challenging. Calorie burn ~ 1200, determined by a power meter that uses strain gauges to measure work, not the BS calorie counters in an HRMs that are wildly inaccurate. During the "on" portion of my interval workout, holding a conversation would not have been possible, at least not after 5 or 6 minutes at that level. To burn 1200 calories running would mean knocking out about 8 miles. That works out to an 11:15 pace over 90 minutes - a very slow jog, slower than my Ironman marathon pace. At 11:15 I could probably hold two or three conversations 
VO2max is an exertion level that an elite athlete could hold for maybe 8 minutes. A moderately trained age grouper, 5 or 6, and an untrained individual 3-4. |
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My opinion.....running is the absolute best bang for the buck (most oportunity to burn calories for the amount of time invested)
Biking is probably my close second, especially if you are riding a lot of hills. I let myself get way out of shape (yeah, I know, round is a shape) several years back. I'm 6'4" and had gotten up to 265, mostly fat and next to no endurance at all. I was always atheletic as a kid, could bench almost 300lbs in my teens and up until my early 20's was in pretty damn good shape. Then the partying and disregard for a healthy lifestyle took over.....for over a decade. It took its toll, and I finally got sick of it one day and made some changes. Riding the bike is an awesome way to start the ball rolling....and its exactly what I did. I started riding places that I actually wanted to go....so that there was always some other, underlying goal for the trip (not just a workout) Gradually I added a lot of hills to my circuits, and yeah, they kicked my ass for a long time until I built up the endurance to handle them. I started running after I felt like I had gotten into an active enough lifestyle....but still, my endurance wasnt even close to what it needed to be....I couldnt run for more than 1-2 minutes without stopping and that only got me about 1/10th of a mile (and I felt like I was going to drop dead doing just that distance. My point....it takes time...so dont be in a rush, and dont set yourself up for let downs by expecting unrealistic results. Riding the bike will get you where you want to get....running will get you there more quickly (and walking is just as effective as running, it just takes longer to cover the same number of miles) I dont have any exact numbers on calorie burn for biking....too many variables honestly. For walking / running you will burn about 100 calories per mile, more going uphill. Set goals for yourself....small ones that you can slowly work up to. My first goal when I started losing weight wasnt even a number of pounds....I actually decided that all I wanted was to be able to complete a 5k run without walking. I knew that if I could do that I would burn off a lot of the weight in the process of building up to it. I was right. It took me 6 months to be able to run 3.1 miles non-stop....and in that time I lost about 50 pounds! Although I am talking mostly about running...wether you bike, hike, or hit the gym, there is one common theme to success.....set a goal, stick to it, and have fun working toward it (because if it isnt fun in some way you wont be sticking to it for long) Maybe set a goal for 15 miles....then 20....and when you feel up to it, maybe plan a day long ride, 15-20 miles out to some town...stop for lunch, then ride home. Keep upping the distance......or....keep the distance the same but work toward getting it completed faster and faster. When got my mountain bike I was really happy knocking down 5-10 miles. Within a year or so I was able to do a 60 mile out & back trip with only one stop (for food and water) You mentioned diet....reasonable portions are the best thing you can do. I've never been able to give up the foods I love...and the foods i love arent exactly healthy. All things in moderation...if I am going to be bad then I try to compensate by being good the next day(s). Watch your calorie intake, stay active, set goals, and keep at it! 
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For a 90 min period cycling at a pace where you can just old a conversation without catching your breath and jogging are identical. Running at close to your Vo2 max will always burn the most calories, but unless you are an 18 year old with 4% body fat you are asking for knee injuries. Cycling burns a lot fewer calories than running. My bike workout tonight was about 90 minutes with 55 of that spent at or above the max power that I could hold for an hour. Extremely challenging. Calorie burn ~ 1200, determined by a power meter that uses strain gauges to measure work, not the BS calorie counters in an HRMs that are wildly inaccurate. During the "on" portion of my interval workout, holding a conversation would not have been possible, at least not after 5 or 6 minutes at that level. To burn 1200 calories running would mean knocking out about 8 miles. That works out to an 11:15 pace over 90 minutes - a very slow jog, slower than my Ironman marathon pace. At 11:15 I could probably hold two or three conversations
VO2max is an exertion level that an elite athlete could hold for maybe 8 minutes. A moderately trained age grouper, 5 or 6, and an untrained individual 3-4. I'd SWAG that if matters where and how you run/ride. Flat road on a road bike is vaslty different than riding up a rocky trail on a mountain bike. Same with running laps on a track, or running hills/trails and with or without a weighted backpack. |
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I'd SWAG that if matters where and how you run/ride. Flat road on a road bike is vaslty different than riding up a rocky trail on a mountain bike. Same with running laps on a track, or running hills/trails and with or without a weighted backpack. Of course it does, but the post to which I was responding described the intensity levels. I may have misread that post though - probably isn't that far off. Very hard cycling is about equal to a plodding jog in terms of calorie consumption per unit time. |
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Cycling burns a lot fewer calories than running. My bike workout tonight was about 90 minutes with 55 of that spent at or above the max power that I could hold for an hour. Extremely challenging. Calorie burn ~ 1200, determined by a power meter that uses strain gauges to measure work, not the BS calorie counters in an HRMs that are wildly inaccurate. During the "on" portion of my interval workout, holding a conversation would not have been possible, at least not after 5 or 6 minutes at that level. To burn 1200 calories running would mean knocking out about 8 miles. That works out to an 11:15 pace over 90 minutes - a very slow jog, slower than my Ironman marathon pace. At 11:15 I could probably hold two or three conversations
VO2max is an exertion level that an elite athlete could hold for maybe 8 minutes. A moderately trained age grouper, 5 or 6, and an untrained individual 3-4. Jolly, do you have the new Cinco Quarq? or Powertap? |
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Cycling is awesome for a bigger guy ––- at 265 or 270 pounds, you are one wrong step away from a crippling knee injury if you run –––– i concede that running is a quicker workout, but i love cycling and loathe running A gentleman made the analogy that cycling on a flat road is different than riding a mountain bike up a rocky trail. Its true –– but i have another take on that ––- i feel that cycling on the road or on a wide flat dirt trail is superior to mountain biking for getting into shape because it allows you much less recovery time and you can keep your heart rate consistent. My mountain bike riding consists of a lot of singletrack with some moderate climbs in my area –––– (your area may be different of course) –– but i have found that on singletrack, i cannot keep my HR at its optimum level because there is too much coasting, and if you big ring it, it doesnt take long to be going too fast for the terrain and i start hitting trees (i'm a NORBA expert class rider and former ABA and NBL Intermediate, so my technical skills are fine). On the road, i wear a HR monitor and dial the effort up to my desired HR for the day and just hold it there if it is a recovery ride or a weight loss ride –– my intervals and speed work are much more consistent this way too. You dont necessarilly need a HR monitor if you are just starting out, but now they are fairly inexpensive and are a great way to know if you are in an ideal fat burn zone or not (for me thats about 140 bpm –– which as another person said, is just about at the right level to barely be able to hold a conversation) |
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Cycling is awesome for a bigger guy ––- at 265 or 270 pounds, you are one wrong step away from a crippling knee injury if you run –––– i concede that running is a quicker workout, but i love cycling and loathe running 
So you're saying I shouldn't have been running at 330-340 pounds? I did it and I'm about OP's height. With running when you're that fat, you can only run a bit then walk. As you slowly increase running time in proportion to walking time, your body will adapt to running and you'll also lose weight. I think the fear of injury with regards to running is overblown. I have yet to see someone as fat as I was push it so hard that I thought they may hurt themselves. The body adapts. OP, sure cycling is great. Buy a good bike. Be prepared for sticker shock, but if you buy a good one it will last as long as you want it to. |
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Cycling is awesome for a bigger guy ––- at 265 or 270 pounds, you are one wrong step away from a crippling knee injury if you run –––– i concede that running is a quicker workout, but i love cycling and loathe running
So you're saying I shouldn't have been running at 330-340 pounds? I did it and I'm about OP's height. people frequently do things they probably shouldn't be doing and live to tell about. At 340 pounds, i would probably be happy to keep it at a fast walk unless i am a former D-1 lineman or something like that with knee cartilage like steel cables. Congrats on your success, but you gotta admit, its not for everybody. Just as i am not going to divulge my workout routine to a new cyclist and tell them it is the best for them either |
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Cycling burns a lot fewer calories than running. My bike workout tonight was about 90 minutes with 55 of that spent at or above the max power that I could hold for an hour. Extremely challenging. Calorie burn ~ 1200, determined by a power meter that uses strain gauges to measure work, not the BS calorie counters in an HRMs that are wildly inaccurate. During the "on" portion of my interval workout, holding a conversation would not have been possible, at least not after 5 or 6 minutes at that level. To burn 1200 calories running would mean knocking out about 8 miles. That works out to an 11:15 pace over 90 minutes - a very slow jog, slower than my Ironman marathon pace. At 11:15 I could probably hold two or three conversations
VO2max is an exertion level that an elite athlete could hold for maybe 8 minutes. A moderately trained age grouper, 5 or 6, and an untrained individual 3-4. Jolly, do you have the new Cinco Quarq? or Powertap? I have a 2008 PowerTap wireless - actually 2 hubs and one CPU. One hub in an Open Pro and another in an 808. |
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I think that with mountain biking, you're using much more of your upper body, so it's a 'better' workout.
I also like to work in push ups and dips -I use picnic tables in the park where I ride, chin ups on trees, and manybe a few knees-to-elbows on the jungle-gym @ the park. For me- road biking would be endless, mind-numbing hours to get good results. I prefer to do a shorter, 2-3 hour workout/ride. I use a HRM so I stay in the aerobic zone. Without a monitor, I spend most of the time anaerobic. I train for overall fitness, or general puropse strength and conditioning. In a fight, or other stressfull situation, you need to be able to exert power quickly, and it's will probally be an anaerobic event, not a long, slow distance event. Oddly enough- it turns out that anaerobic WILL increase your aerobic ability. But I use LSD (Long, Slow Distance) to build an aerobic base, mostly because I like to ride longish distances on a bike. So on Monday, i lift weights in a semi-high Intensity Interval style. I keep my sets close together as possible, but I don't lift while i'm out of breath. I'll let my heartrate drop back to 125-130 before I do my next set. Tuesday is recovery and eating. Wed LSD hiking with a weighted backpack. But I have started doing intervals on the hikes where I run and get upto 165-170 and then do an active/walking recovery to get back to 120, and then run again. I also do push ups, lunges and overhead presses with big rocks during the hike. Thurs recover Friday General Physical Training- agility work, pull ups, medicine ball, tire drag and plyometrics- mostly short, intense anaerobic workouts. |
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depends on what your after. I dont train on my bike with the thought of how it will help me perform in a fight. I'm not 12 years old anymore and i'm not in the MMA or a collegiate wrestler. A 2-3 hour bike ride is not short, and if you can complete a sub 4 hour century with the lead pack you will realize that most of the ride is anaerobic too. (to do a hunskie in sub 4 hours, you will likely be at least a cat-3) Mountain biking does dick for the upper body in comparison to supplementing your road cycling with a little gym work. Granted, there is a little more activity going on –– but likely not enough to equal 2 or 3 15 minute pilates classes at the Y (not hatin' on pilates ya'll––- its awesome for the core) One solid interval workout with myself or another experienced roadie and you would not question road cycling again because it may take a few minutes of cool down to realize that you survived and your heart is not going to explode just yet –––– road cycling is good stuff. Track cycling too ––- trackie training is even more high intensity for shorter amounts of time. Some of those guys weigh over 210 with 28" thighs and big upper bodies. I'm not knockin your program –– it sounds like its a bit "Crossfit derived" though rather than being sport specific |
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I prefer to do a shorter, 2-3 hour workout/ride. I use a HRM so I stay in the aerobic zone. Without a monitor, I spend most of the time anaerobic. Quoted:
A 2-3 hour bike ride is not short, and if you can complete a sub 4 hour century with the lead pack you will realize that most of the ride is anaerobic too. "Anaerobic" I do not think that word means what you think it means |
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I prefer to do a shorter, 2-3 hour workout/ride. I use a HRM so I stay in the aerobic zone. Without a monitor, I spend most of the time anaerobic. Quoted:
A 2-3 hour bike ride is not short, and if you can complete a sub 4 hour century with the lead pack you will realize that most of the ride is anaerobic too. "Anaerobic" I do not think that word means what you think it means Would you prefer i use "lactate threshold" instead?  I believe in this context we would be referring to rides done at 90-95% lactate threshold (which would be a very hard ride) –– anaerobic has just become a fairly common term for any hard effort, even if the word itself is not 100% correct
Admittedly, a fast road race is not an "anaerobic" event if we want to get technical about it , but there are some brief moments where you may cross that line (when your about to get dropped, or the finish line sprint if you are in a position to contest it) . Conversely, a flying 200 meter sprint done on the track is almost purely anaerobic ––and when done correctly, the heart rate usually lags behind the effort for 20-30 seconds before it starts spiking |
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How is bicycling for calorie burn? To answer your original question, bicycling is not bad for calorie burn. It's not as good as running. The best exercise for burning calories is the one that you will consistently perform. Even though running is the best, or very near, if you hate running so much that you can only force yourself to do it once per week, it's not so hot for you. |
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For me- road biking would be endless, mind-numbing hours to get good results. I prefer to do a shorter, 2-3 hour workout/ride. I use a HRM so I stay in the aerobic zone. Without a monitor, I spend most of the time anaerobic. Not sure what "good results" means, but it certainly doesn't require "endless, mind-numbing hours" to dramatically improve fitness. My most productive workouts are about 90 minutes long. -15 minute easy warmup -5 minutes at 100% of max 1-hour power (i.e. Functional or lactate threshold) - still part of the warmup -5 minutes easy -20 minutes at 100% of max 1-hour power -5 minutes easy -20 minutes at 100% max 1-hour power One could end the workout here with a 5-10 minute cool down and have a nice 1h15m session (this is what I do when indoors). Because I have to get back to my starting point and there is a nice 3.5 mile unobstructed stretch of road to get there, I will normally finish with: -5-7 minutes easy -10 minutes all out (which is typically just a bit higher (5-15 watts) than 1-hour max) -5-10 minute cooldown Exercising near threshold is the most productive endurance training zone. This level of exertion maximizes mitochondrial enzymes/density. Mitochondrial are the muscular engines that allow the body to burn fat. Want to get faster, burn more fat, and maximize limited training time - spend it here... Unless you are in the 40-44 age group. In that case, I strongly recommend the endless mind numbing hours of training. 
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