Originally Posted by philbob57

There are few absolutes in weight loss. One of them is that a calorie deficit - calories in - calories out = a negative number) will almost definitely result in weight loss. If you add biking to your life without cutting down any other activity and without adding to your calorie intake, you'll almost definitely lose weight. (If you ride with vigor, you'll probably trade fat for muscle, which is probably a good trade, especially if you bike consistently over time. This might slow down weight loss.)

The problem is that it's not easy to keep up eating fewer calories than one burns, and it's not east to exercise consistently, but saying, 'This makes cycling unreliable as a daily, sustainable and easily accessed method of calorie consumption' is overstating the case.

Yeah, losing 25 lbs requires a deficit of about 80,000 calories, but that requires averaging only a 220 kcal/day deficit for a year. Not easy, but doable.