episodic

I know there are lots of resources online, but I've got some special questions. If you notice my ticker, I know alot about calories now.

I'm currently about 205. I'm a fairly strong biker, able to keep 18 mph and above averages in rolling hills. I do that on a 30lb steel surly as well, so I'm not having it easy.

At 205 - in hills - with a heavy bike, are there any good resources to help me pinpoint a calories burn better?

Also, what effect does me getting good at cycling have on my calorie burns? I've read somewhere that as you become more efficient at an activity, you actually burn fewer calories? Would I reach that 'efficiency' still technically obese? I'm trying to make it to 180's or 170's - maybe even in the 160's someday weight wise.

Thanks for thoughts and any lessons or pointers anyone may provide about this topic.

abdon 

Body composition is a function of diet. Supported by exercise, but it is still a diet thing.

The ideal fat burning zone is to go balls to the wall. There is some moronic notion spoused by weak minded individuals that a low level cardio burns more fat. Yes, at low levels, you burn more fat _as_a_percent_of_calories_burned_. What's more; 60% of a personal pizza, or 40% of a large pizza?

Looigi

Correct...especially the part about "weak minded" and "moronic". :-) You gotta count calories religiously and stick to a properly defined limit. This is easier if you don't exercise a lot, but exercising is healthier than not. It's also much harder to train and make performance gains when you're in a chronic caloric deficit from dieting trying to lose 2lb/wk. Better to shoot for 1/wk and monitor/adjust plan over the long term.

You might considering going on a 2 lb/wk diet for 6-8 weeks with very light exercise then reduce the weight loss goal to 1 lb/wk and ramp up activity.

dolanp

If you really like playing with numbers, here you go:
https://www.cptips.com/formula.htm

Yes you will become more efficient and the more weight you lose the fewer calories you will burn as well. However, going from 205 to 175 I don't think you will hit a wall. You just might have to start riding a little longer to burn as many calories as you used to.

The good news is that muscle tissue burns extra calories just to exist so if you get nice strong legs from those hills they will increase your metabolism a bit too.

jischr

I went from 205 to 162 on WeightWatcher's, running and biking. I did hit a plateau around 180, which is where I'm back to. You will become more efficient. You will need to continually adjust your diet. If you get sick or injure you really need to watch what you eat if you stop excersizing (my error). I'm surprized no one said go faster. If your averaging 15 mph, target 17 for an average; if 19 target 22; if 22 hell start racing. The added wind resistance will increase your caloric expenditure. Keep up the good work

abdon 

Yup. I'm into longish distance, 80~120 miles for my long run of the week. I can lose 5~8 pounds of winter fat, but I have a hard time with anything beyond that. If the focus was to lose weight, I would stick to no more than an hour on the bike with my heart rate a notch below meeting my maker and a clean diet. That way I can hit 2 pounds a week.

You have to watch out for over training, which is easy to do when you are cutting calories. It is easy to spot; if it is getting harder and harder to push (your 45-min loop is turning into a 50-min loop regardless how hard you push yourself) you need to rest and eat more.

In all reality somebody could hit 2 pounds a week without the bike, but you get to eat a lot more and be in a better shape

Looigi

Yes, you get to eat more, but for me, I find I'm less hungry losing 2 lbs/wk without a lot of calorie burning exercise. If I exercise, I'm hungrier even after eating more to compensate for the calories burned. Granted it's healthier to exercise, but for me it just made it tougher to lose the weight.

I was able to gain a lot of weight going to the gym regularly and riding a lot. Exercise alone won't make you or keep you skinny without controlling the calories.

marchris

You can wear a heart rate monitor which will let you know actual exertion as opposed to perceived exertion. If you want to lose weight you need to do some speed intervals during the long ride which will spike your heart rate. Either try to go harder up a hill, or go even faster on a flat section, then ease up. Don't try to do the entire ride at a faster pace at first, just keep it in controlled sections, or time limits- 3 minutes of hard riding, 3 minutes of easy riding, etc...

Drew Eckhardt 

A 15 pound bike would reduce energy lost climbing the steepest hills by 6% at the same speed and do essentially nothing for you on flat ground.

1) A power meter. With used first generation Powertaps available for as little as $200 on the used market built into a wheel with head unit they're cheap enough to be an impulse purchase for a lot of people. Given cycling metabolic efficiency of 20-25% 1 kilojoule is .95 - 1.25 Calories and you can just use a 1:1 ratio as an approximation with the resulting error being fewer calories calculated than you actually burned.

2) Web sits like Analytic Cycling

.760 as Cd when riding on the brake hoods and .4 m^2 may be reasonable starting points for aerodynamics (from Gibertini and Grassi's paper) with the later beinga bit low for big people.

There are web sites which do the calculations for entire routes but they all seem to output ludicrous estimations. My old Polar computer yielded about 50% more than my Powertap and current Garmin Edge 500 can still be off by 10-20% in either direction.

With training you increase your power production and endurance so you can burn more calories in less time and sustain high intensities for longer.

A 25 Watt increase in power will net another 90 calories per hour.

Riding at high intensities can increase your resting metabolic rate so you burn a few hundred more calories a day while not exercising.

Drew Eckhardt 

That's 35% harder on flat ground with no wind or stopping and about 80% more training stress for the same duration.

44% harder and about 107% more training stress for the same duration.

That big a jump isn't going to work well. The right thing to do here is read up on training for cyclists, get a plan, keep a log, monitor your training stress with a recording bike computer/heart rate monitor/Golden Cheetah, and adjust things so that you have a ramp rate which is sustainable for you and not being influenced by things like how fresh your legs feel, how fast the wind is blowing, and how many stop lights are red.

PatW

I would caution you to not characterize people who may disagree with you as "weak minded".

You are right that if one is time limited a short very intense ride will burn more calories than a short moderately paced ride. However, one can not sustain a "balls to the wall" pace for that long, at least what I take to mean that rather imprecise term. A long moderately paced ride like a century will burn far more calories than a very intense 12 mile ride. Quantity has a quality all its own.

As far as calorie burning goes, it is virtually impossible to measure in the field. One can try to estimate it but all the estimates have large error bars attached to them. I have measured calorie burn in the laboratory and there it was with subjects whose ability to effectively protest was limited.

I have seen figures for a 190 lb male to be about 30-50 calories burned per mile. At 3500 calories per lb, it takes 70 miles (at 50 calories per mile) to burn a pound of fat. That figure assumes that the rider does not eat a single extra calorie over their daily consumption as a consequence to riding 70 miles. I doubt very much that anyone is ever likely to ride 70 miles without boosting their calorie consumption.

The problem that many people have is that they gain weight as a consequence of exercising. It is the "gee, I rode a whole 12 miles so I can eat a sundae the size of a small island and still lose weight!". It does not work like that. For exercise to help one lose weight, one has to be very careful to make a minimal increase in calorie consumption.

Brontide

HRM is better than web pages and next up would be a power tap.

Either way you need to bring your diet in line or up the time in the saddle if you are not losing weight.

You may also want to check body composition as well, make sure you're not slowing down because you already have a low BF%; maybe losing another 20 pounds isn't realistic?

BlazingPedals

At the risk of being branded a "moron," this is exactly why lower-intensity workouts are better for weight loss. You burn fat no matter what intensity your workout, but energy supplied is but a trickle. Exercising in the upper heart rate zones will deplete your blood sugar, which triggers the hunger response. A diet that requires massive willpower in the face of gnawing hunger is doomed to fail. So, while the number-crunchers will tell you burning calories faster will let you burn more calories, what they don't tell you is that slow and steady still wins the race.

DataJunkie

It the risk of also being called names I would agree with everyone that disagreed with abdon.
I have witnessed this with running as well.
I simply cannot run for hours. Sure it burns calories significantly quicker than cycling but the mere fact that I can ride all day long but can only run for an hour means I burn more cycling. The same goes for comparing LSD efforts with intervals.