Cycling Is A Poor Form of Exercise :-(
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Quoted for emphasis. Hitting up the food truck for 2000 calories plus 500 in micro brew after the group ride doesn't help. You could have a net gain there instead of net loss in KJ's. One pastry on a cafe' stop could cost you 1000. Downing two gels an hour could cost you up to 200 per hour.
I didn't lose much weight, but I did get fitter.
I realized that I have to count calories, so I do. Plus I ride between 5 and 7 hours a week. I'd love to do more, but I have too many other demands on my time. I'm down to about 212 from a high of about 236 in February. The big test is coming up - the holidays, and the rainy season, and the short days.
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#52
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I often like to point out my experience with long rides and calorie consumption to help illustrate how nutrition can be done pretty minimally while accomplishing a lot. In 2 recent 100 mile rides, I burned about 3700 calories on those (as measured by my power meter, so more accurate than a HR monitor). I ate about 1100 calories during the ride, and also had a really minimal breakfast of basically coffee and maybe 100 calories of something. They key is that I rode at an endurance pace, so the body is going to use more fat than carbs at that intensity, and also the body carries about 2000 calories of glycogen in the muscles. So eating something like 2k calories during a ride is definitely overkill for a lot of people, especially since if they aren't regularly training, and thus they'll have a lower caloric utilization than someone riding on the faster end of things.
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That said, when I do one specific bike workout regularly I can fell my body getting stronger and more resilient. Hilly fix gear rides. (Plus they are a huge incentive to keep my weight down.) When I'm riding the fix gear in hills I can feel the continuous chains of muscle from my glutes and abs to my hands.
For me, the secret to eating to stay a decent weight is to practice enjoying feeling a little hungry. Trim down serving sizes. 1 1/2 sandwiches instead of two. Thin sliced bread. I recognize that I have to keep downsizing the rest of my life, that the metabolism I had even when I was 50 is long gone.
Skinny guys with pot bellies? If I let myself go and ate that much, I'd be one. I can not pile on the muscle on my legs and arms. Doesn't matter how much I ride or lift. Small gains, yes. But if I put on 30 pounds of gut, you'd never notice those gains.
I have to recognize that my reality is that I should weigh less every year. That I can do all in my power and I am still going to loose muscle mass. That with less muscle, it is my responsibility to this body to not add to the load those muscles need to support.
Ben
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I was trying to stay out of this troll’s latest party, but it’s good to remember that cycling actually is a profoundly good cardio opportunity because the high speed creates a lot of cooling and heat dissipation. This helps allow higher exertion compared to exercise without that cooling.
Swimming of course has significantly more cooling potential and is pretty much the maximum cardio option in terms of how hard you can sustainably work your cardio system.
Both cycling and swimming also have the advantage of being low impact.
Lastly, ride SS for a while and you will definitely get upper body and core workout.
Otto
Swimming of course has significantly more cooling potential and is pretty much the maximum cardio option in terms of how hard you can sustainably work your cardio system.
Both cycling and swimming also have the advantage of being low impact.
Lastly, ride SS for a while and you will definitely get upper body and core workout.
Otto
I think I get the same effects as SS by riding habitually in a 53 x 11 gear combo. I shift down a bit for hills, but I know I'm probably taking them with a combo more typical of a SS. It definitely works my upper body, but nowhere near as much as the elliptical on high resistance.
BTW, I think the best way to thwart a troll is to have a reasonable conversation start in the troll thread.
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It's great exercise as long as you maintain speeds that offer resistance and include hills and hard sprints. Doing singletrack will also help with upper body.
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A lady once asked on our Facebook cycling group what kind of bike she should use to push herself harder and get more exercise. We basically told her that whatever bike she has will work if she just starts pushing it harder and trying to ride faster.
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I vaguely remember seeing a physiological schedule for that. It came down to something like a granola bar in the first hour for the glycogen. Half a candy bar, something like that.
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What a sweeping, oversimplified statement. Within months of changing nothing in my routine except adding some bike commuting trips each week, I went from an already light BMI of a shade over 21, which I'd kept for over a decade, to under 20, and my waist slimmed down to narrower than my smallest belt size. My legs went from looking like sticks barely wider than my biceps to, well, normal sized.
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Reading that OP made me throw up a little in my mouth.
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I don't know if this thread rises to the level of "good", but people have been thinking, and the OP was polite.
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#69
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Definitely NOT a double bacon cheeseburger with large onion rings and a milkshake, followed by a big slice of cake with ice cream, then?
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Oh, I could tear in to some Indian food right now and if I ever get a naan or roti recipe down, I will be a fat, fat man.
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I've been riding fixed gear for the past 12 years and I am also a singlespeed mountain biker and they provide a better workout than a regular bicycle but still it's not even close to the workout stimulus that I get from lifting weights and doing kettlebell training. You just can't build an upper body strength, core strength and lower body strength with a bicycle, no matter how hard you ride, there are other much more effective ways of building strength than riding a bicycle.
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#74
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Because milkshakes are insufficiently decadent?
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