Originally Posted by
Mobile 155
Like many here I discovered cycling allows you to consume more if you wish but even a 20 mile ride at 20 mph 3 or 4 days a week will not burn off the average burger and beer. It takes diet and dedication, way more than the magic of commuting five days a week 2 miles at 12 MPH avoiding sweat.
Measured in isolation, one two-mile 12mph ride per day might not burn as many calories as a 20 mile 20mph ride, but it depends on the overall lifestyle. E.g. if you're getting up, not eating breakfast, maybe having coffee to get pepped up enough to drive your car to work before crashing at your desk until lunch time, and you go through your day lethargic until you finally schlep your body to the gym or for an exercise ride, which you often end up skipping because you're tired out from your predominantly sedentary lifestyle, then you're basically just trying to use exercise to counteract the depressing effects everything else you're doing is having on you.
If you get up and eat a healthy breakfast and get pepped up on a two-mile 12mph commute to work, and your mitochondria are activated by light exercise instead of caffeine, you're not going to crash or get into a cycle of caffeine dependency to keep you going until you can finally manage a gym workout or workout ride. If your 20 minute 12mph work commute makes you feel good, you will be hopping around your work as well, and you won't be worn out at the end of the day either, so you will have plenty of energy to do shopping and/or run some other errands after work.
With LCF, you are basically taking exercise from being an isolated thing framed within an overall sedentary lifestyle and turning your whole day into a lot of light, physical activity. It's a different paradigm in the relationship between your body and everything else you do, really. And I think your mitochondria like it and reward you with a steadier stream of energy, which can cause you to seek out less artificial pepping up with things like caffeine and sugar.