I think that longer, moderate paced rides are better. I'm not nearly as hungry afterwards. And as a previous comment mentioned, moderate steady paces let your body adapt to burning fat reserves in addition to carbs. That's good anyway, for efficiency as a rider.
It's way too easy to eat back the whole ride's calories in one meal. I had a power meter, which also reports kilojoules for the ride. That number matches up to approximately the number of extra calories burned, probably within 20% or better. ( Because a calorie is approx 4 kjoules, but most riders only put around 25% of their calorie burn into pedal output. The rest is wasted as heat! ...as we find out.)
Bikes are "too" efficient!
Some example rides. I'm around 170 lbs. These calcs assume the kilojoules equal the calories, which is close enough.
A fast for me club ride, with lots of small roller hills: 28 miles, 1:37 riding time, 17.2 mph average speed, 960 feet of elevation. 723 kjoules.
About 450 calories per hour. Or 26 cal per mile!
A long exploring ride with a half dozen 300 foot climbs: 52 miles, 4:09 riding time, 12.5 mph with these hills, 2800 feet. 1402 kjoules.
About 340 calories per hour. Or 27 cal per mile.
That actually surprised me. Around 22 to 30 cal per mile is a good rule of thumb for many different rides. Lots of rides have hard, high wattage efforts, but often periods of easy pacing or coasting.
But I thought the full hard effort, shorter ride would be much higher.
Last edited by rm -rf; 11-28-20 at 07:49 PM.