Calories - more or less...........?

getprg

Various cycle gadgets count calories. Am I right in thinking that I should be adding these "extra" calories to my daily calories burned only after first subtracting the normal underlying calories burned without cycling?

My logic goes something like this (I weigh 72kgs height 6' 1"):

Average daily calories burned (without cycling) say 2,400 (depends on normal daily activity)

Deduct calories burned sleeping for 8 hours - say 300 (I've seen various estimates for this on the web)

Therefore normal calories burned whilst awake for 16 hours is 2,100 = 131 say 130 per hour.

Extra calories burned per hour cycling therefore 560 - 130 = 430 (see note below for the source of the 560 calories per hour figure)

Total calories burned in a day when cycling for 5 hours therefore = (5 x 430) + 2,400 = 4,550 for the whole day including sleep.

By the way I use both a Garmin (seems to hopelessly over estimate calories burned with my average of 700+) and I-phone cyclemeter app - a more realistic average per hour this year about 560.

Apologies - I know this reads a bit like one of those mental arithmetic questions from school!

njee20

Crikey, that's a complicated way of working it out!

Why not just exclude the 'normal' calories, as you are presumably roughly in equilibrium when not cycling? Ergo if you ride for 5 hours you need about 2000 additional calories, on the assumption you're not trying to lose weight.

What are you trying to achieve?

schweiz

That's how I do it.

But I just go for an average of 100 Cal/hr for the time sleeping, sat at my desk,watching TV. Then I knock 100 off for each hour I was doing excercise and add on the calories burnt per hour during excercise. The Garmin over calculates by about 50% for me. I have a PowerTap which is the most accurate way to calculate energy used and that correlates with Ascent which I use for logging my rides.

felix.london

Workshop & Tech?

getprg

Thanks Felix - I should have paid a bit more attention to where I was on Forum before posting the new topic.

Thanks schweiz and njee - seems like I'm on the right track with calorie counting and for confirming suspicions about the Garmin calorie count.

getprg

njee20 said

What are you trying to achieve?

Trying to balance calories taken on with calories burned in a week (seems like it would be feast and famine if I tried to balance them each day!)

njee20

You need to be slightly wary of that though, if you do do 5 hours riding, but only consume the same number of calories as a rest day you'll end up ruined, you need to recover what you have burned, it will likely be a case of feast and famine as you put it - you can't really 'stockpile' your requirement to another day, you won't recover.

cooldad

My logic is to stockpile blubber and use it when I ride.
The theory seems sound, but ...

getprg

Looks like I should have eaten three roast dinners after yesterday's ride then - rather than a half pint semi skimmed milk shake, one roast dinner and half a dozen digestive biscuits.

njee20

There's clearly a common sense issue here, but it stands to reason that if you're doing (for arguments sake), 5 hours, consuming 2500 calories one day and nothing the next that you'll want to take on more on the riding day, you may choose to split it 4500/3000 rather than 5000/2500 or whatever, but like I say, if you just average it out and take on 3750 every day you won't recover as well.

If nothing else, on a ride of that duration you'll almost certainly want some food during the ride, say 1000 calories, then something at the end to recover. You're not going to want to mimick that pattern if you're not riding.

getprg

Njee - what you say makes sense - it's just that I hadn't worked it out that way - I guess that's why we have forums - thanks.

Briggo

I think you need to throw a torque wrench at it and tighten to 6nm.

Additionally you could just throw it out and buy a new o... oh hang on this is about calories not something to do with your bike?

bushu

what is this calories? does my bike need them? how do they burn?
please speak english on here, I'm surprised you haven't felt the banstick with such gibberish..