tandempower

This is an old yet perennial issue of LCF. Electric bikes and scooters come into vogue, along with ride-sharing, autonomous vehicles, etc. to give us more motorized transport without us having to take on ownership and liability as operators, but through all those discussions, we sometimes forget the basic exercise benefit of biking. I like this article because it mentions a great acronym I haven't heard before, PASTA:
I also like that it combines the issues of sustainability and exercise. To me this is a no-brainer. When you integrate biological power (power from living bodies fed by biological food/fuels) and productive effort, you get a sustainable feedback loop of health and productivity. Machines (other than those that run on body power) give us more speed but take away the relevance of our ability to propel ourselves with our own body power, and turn pasta into fuel for fat while forcing us to mine other fuels or battery materials out of the ground to feed the machines we are driving while our bodies are making fat out of pasta.

Machka 

Perhaps you forget, but that's one of the reasons I ride my bicycle.

Other reasons are ... challenge, adventure, fun, stress relief ...

Robert C

I am just going to throw in that I use a bicycle for general transportation and I am still obese. I use a bicycle because walking just plain hurts (leg length issue puts an odd pressure on my lower back, it hurts a lot less if I use a walking stick, which I usually do). As is often mentioned, bicycles are actually a poor choice for weight loss; they are designed to achieve the most "go" for the least "in."

I have also started riding with a VA group that is focused on fitness. Of course, after a couple hours if intense riding, the take us to lunch that more than counters any gain from the riding. When I rode from Kansas to Utah I noticed that I didn't loose much weight. Now I jokingly told people that I spent a lot of time in restaurants along the way pondering that very fact; but here is the truth, I ate in a restaurant less than once every other day. It comes down to cycling being poor exercise.

tandempower

No, the exercise is always foremost on my mind. What I meant was that the hope of making LCF more convenient as an overall lifestyle choice leads to all sorts of issues and discussions that include motorized e-bikes, scooters, (autonomous) ride-sharing, transit, etc., which are all important developments when it comes to making it easy for people to live without owning/driving a car. But there's another side to it, which is that motorized transport in whatever form removes the opportunity to exercise from the transportation impetus. In other words, if you opt for a motorized solution when you plan a trip, you're depriving yourself of the exercise you could get by biking or walking instead, and I think many people forget that when they get caught up in the glamour of all the multimodal innovations, which are admittedly really neat and helpful for the project of making LCF a more convenient option overall.

Oso Polar

Very wrong. Of course, if instead of walking 1 mile, you'll be biking this 1 mile, this will not help. However, if instead of driving 50 miles, you'll bike these 50 miles, believe me, you will find out that it helps with weight loss. A lot.

Colnago Mixte

It's always fun to dream about the perfect city, where you can ride your bike to work an optimum distance, and do all your shopping on it safely. Breathe pristine air and drink pristine water. Grow food on your roof, have solar panels to take you off the grid. Lots of leisure time to pursue the arts.

When you look at cities in the ancient world like the Roman city of Pompei, they were probably as close to this as you could get, provided you were not born a slave. They walked everywhere or rode in carts, grew food locally, ate fresh fish, breathed clean air and drank clean water. Seemed to have a lot of spare time. Even had running water and sewer systems. They didn't have our modern medicine, but they probably needed a lot less of it than we do these days, living the way that we do.

I'm not so sure we're headed in the right direction sometimes.

Nightcap

cloakssaves

Need solar roof top solar system equipment, But i don,t know the cost of those equipment. Any one can help me for that ?

tandempower

It's a good point. You could say that there have always been moments in history where at least some humans were headed in the right directions in some ways, but then there are always things that go wrong in other ways, or misconceptions that take culture in wrong directions despite good intentions. In spite of what some self-proclaimed 'realists' might say, human affairs/societies are always a mixed bag, headed in different directions in different ways. They are not unified collectives progressing in one direction and not others. That is a fiction for the convenience of human minds, whose strength is to name something as an entity (e.g. 'society') and then imagine it in terms of unified motion or change. It is a subconscious bias built into the foundations of human cognition.

Theoretically, you could start with the ancient city you describe and then add sustainable modern technologies while subtracting slavery and other bad aspects and end up with the exact same final product as if you started with a modern city, started subtracting bad aspects and adding sustainable technologies. It's sort of like imagining that lt's easier to develop a horse and buggy culture into a bike culture, but then realizing you could also develop a car culture into a bike culture because the car essentially evolved from origins as a 'horseless carriage.' It's fun to think in terms of historical continuity but I think it's also ultimately relatively meaningless when you realize that anything can morph into pretty much anything else in the same category given the fact that it all evolved from the same fundamental aspects of ancient life and even pre-human evolution.

canklecat

I'd guesstimate one third to half the cyclists I know from local group rides are overweight. And they're doing just fine. But I'm not seeing much evidence that cycling alone helps with weight loss. It's still mostly diet.

And unless your commute is long and/or challenging enough to be a high intensity interval workout, it probably won't burn enough calories to matter unless we're also cutting way back on unnecessary sugar, etc.

Over the years since a 2001 car wreck injury limited my mobility, I've dropped from a lifetime high of 205 lbs (about 50 lbs overweight for me) to 160 lbs. As I get closer to my optimal weight, it gets more demanding of sacrificing goodies in my diet. It's hard to get motivated to give up a little sugar and cream in coffee, a beer every couple of days, etc., when we've already given up 90% of our dietary vices.

My typical errands, commutes and one hour workout rides burn about 600 calories. That's just maintenance level exercise. It only keeps me wherever my weight happens to be.

It takes a hard 30 mile ride or longer causal ride to burn 1500-2000 calories and make up for those extra beers and muffins. Sometimes I'll take the heavier, less efficient hybrid rather than the road bike for casual group rides to compensate for the more relaxed effort over 40-50 miles.

But a typical commute alone won't have much effect on weight without some dietary sacrifices.

We just need to decide how much sacrifice is enough before it sucks all the joy out of living.

Personally, I wouldn't worry much about weight. Enjoy riding your bike. You're probably still faster than I am on climbs.

Mobile 155

Oso Polar

Yeah, cycling by itself will not help - one will just compensate by eating more. Typically you'd want to both cut on calories and increase your activity. Cycling and AFAIK swimming are excellent starting choices to overweight people as they are relatively delicate on the joints (compared to other popular choices such as walking or running).

If it is about sacrifice then it is difficult to maintain it in the long run. Because it is sacrifice you'll constantly need to control yourself and this is not easy. It should be about a change of eating habits: getting rid of the bad ones and acquiring new ones. And, of course, enjoying the new ones! You need to like what you eat, it shouldn't be sacrifice, it should be a new norm. "Give up a little sugar" is as realistic as "give up a little heroin" for a drug addict, this simply doesn't work in the long run.

Machka 

As far as exercising making me lose weight ... I have to exercise at least 90 minutes a day (average 10.5 hours a week) to see any weight loss. That's without modifying my diet. If I modify my diet, I can exercise a little bit less.

Exercise can be walking, cycling, or seemingly even more effective ... stair climbing.

tandempower

Whether you are losing weight or not, it's really about how you feel at a metabolic level. You can exercise all the time and never get rid of stubborn belly fat without doing something extreme like going on a long distance hike, but you'll still feel better if you go out walking and/or biking frequently than if you sit around sedentary.


And by default, the more time you spend cycling or walking the less time you're sitting sedentary contemplating another snack.


If you are experiencing sacrifice as sucking the joy out living you're doing it wrong. Done right, things like fasting increase the joy of life and you even get more pleasure out things, such as eating, when you postpone them to achieve a higher level of desire before satisfying that desire.


When you eat, you are not just eating for your stomach but for all your tissues. So it follows that by exercising your legs and other muscles, you are making them more hungry by burning up their glucose and activating cellular repair processes that are 'hungry' for nutrients. Eating hungry is healthy while eating because you're bored or seeking comfort or craving flavor without actually being hungry for it, etc. undermines health.


Getting around by human power is really just "part of this complete breakfast" as the breakfast cereal commercials used to say. You can approximate the age-old tradition of getting around on foot by making time for artificial exercise activities, and many such activities can be fun, but integrating physical activity with destination-achievement transportation goals adds a dimension of motivation that you can't get with a treadmill or at the gym or even crossfit. It's not as hard to skip going to the gym as it is to skip biking/walking to the supermarket or for some other errand that needs to get done. Necessity is the mother of invention, so why not make it the mother of exercise and fitness?

Machka 

Almost all my walking (737 km so far this year) has been utility walking.

https://www.bikeforums.net/living-ca...-today-46.html


How about you? How many kilometres have you walked this year? How much of it has been utility walking? How about cycling? If this is something you do, feel free to tell us about it in the thread above.

tandempower

I wouldn't say that I keep track that accurately, but my routine breaks down more or less as follows: I bike for errands when I am short on time, and when I have time to walk, I do that instead. I also go out for exercise/fresh-air walks when I notice I am stagnating and spending too much time on the computer. I find it harder to go outside during the summer when sweating/stinking is the price you pay, along with sun exposure. If I wait until later in the afternoon and go out until dark or so, I can watch the sunset and listen to the animals and insects shift into their after-dark mode.

Mobile 155

indyfabz

Yep. There he goes with the royal we again.

Mobile 155

Considering that exercise is almost 100 percent of the reason for the 6.2 billion dollars of the US bicycle industry it is the reason the vast majority of people ride their bikes. 90 plus percent anyway.

badger1

Quite remarkable, isn't it? Still and yet, makes for great entertainment.

linberl

Cycling can help you lose weight but your diet has to change as well. My son rides an insane number of miles (50 per day) and lost weight and trimmed up nicely but he also stopped eating crap and started eating healthier. Now I ride because I just plain love it, it makes me happy and mentally at peace, and it is also my main form of transport because I literally hate driving after so many years of commuting. But cycling helps me maintain my weight - I'm not losing any - it just allows me to eat ice cream and goodies that WOULD push my weight way up if I didn't cycle. My metabolism is slowing down (senior here) so I have to do something to counter balance the tasty calories or
I will have to stop eating them (nooooo!!). Seriously, I don't overindulge but I couldn't eat anything but carrot sticks if I didn't cycle. However, my knees are getting more painful every year (arthritis) so I will be adding an electric boost soon. I'm picking a system that adds so little weight I won't need to use it all the time to counterbalance the added drag; I will just be using it to ride hills where my knees grind too much or to ride on days when the pain would be too much (low effort spinning does help). I love the feeling of propelling myself down the road, and the motor will just mean I can ride even on days when I'd be likely to skip it and at least get the mental health benefits on those days.
Every day I ride I see this guy on his mountain bike - he started out so large he had to wear a huge tee shirt. Now he can fit inside a visibility cycling vest. He's out there every day, no matter how hot or cold, riding hard and sweating his arse off. I'm guessing he's also doing a dietary change, because there's no way he would drop what looks like 100 pounds in 7 months otherwise. He's a real inspiration; we have a "thing" now where I give him a thumbs up when he rides past and he gives me a little "salute".

cloakssaves

If anyone wants to cut down their weight, cycling can indeed be a great activity. Coupled with a proper diet, the method can work wonders. Sometime earlier I used to cycle around a decent number of miles per day but my diet was not at all taken care of by me. After sweating out so much, I would instantly hog on cheeseburgers and nuggets without giving any thought. This went on for some time until one day a friend pointed out to me that I did not change much irrespective of so much outdoor activity. From then on, I have tried to cut down on fast and junk as much as possible. Vegetables, fruits and adequate amount of water can work wonders. I am also thinking of getting a solar powered bicycle for a change. Any suggestions on that?

KraneXL

No exercise or amount of it can compensate for a poor diet. However, cycling can increase your metabolism and anyone serious about exercising will likely also have or make a better attempt at having a more healthy diet. In general, how you look is 80% diet.

bikingbill

I dropped about 150lbs in 1996 with both diet and a 33mi RT bike commute (which included two difficult climbs). 5000 miles that year, 8000+ miles 1997-1999.

Bike commuting helps keep the weight off, but I still need to restrict what I eat.

linberl

Or, alternately, you can bike more so you can eat more, lol. In all seriousness, that is what I do. I have my regular rides (typically 20 miles a day) but if I decide to indulge
in something special - I have a serious fondness for french pastry - then I just plan on riding more for a few days. I've found totally depriving myself doesn't work
but allowing a reasonable amount of goodies is okay as long as I amp up the miles to compensate. I'll also eat more lean meat/veggies and cut back on other carbs if I am
indulging in sweet ones.