Weight loss in 10 Miles/1hr rides advice pls

WILL 1 AM

Keeping things basic, I have roughly an 1hrs riding time and I am looking to lose a bit of weight, I am 16st and smoke a little however not a lot.
I don't have too much time on my hands but I wanna dedicated the hours to try loosing as much as possible.
I also don't have much tech such as Heart monitor, cadence thingy measure but if these will help, I will look into them.

What is the best way to burn calories in the hour I have spare?
Distance or hard sprints?
Just after some basic programmes as such

Thank you

Will

napoleond

Ride as hard as you can for the hour. That will burn the most calories. You could then mix that up with short intervals every few days.
But it really is a case of watching what you eat and drink. You can't outride a bad diet.

JayKosta

Exercise and riding can help with weight loss, but the key issue is reducing the amount that you eat.
With continuous hard exercise, the amount of extra calories burned is in the neighborhood of 600 per hour - so don't 'reward' yourself with excessive treats.

Best method is to develop the belief that 'being hungry' is GOOD, and hunger isn't a signal that you must eat.

Jay Kosta
Endwell NY USA

lesfirth

NapoleonD wrote:

Ride as hard as you can for the hour. That will burn the most calories. You could then mix that up with short intervals every few days.
But it really is a case of watching what you eat and drink. You can't outride a bad diet.

I agree totally with the above.

You need to change what you eat, not necessarily eat less. You do not have to be hungry on a good diet.

WILL 1 AM

My diet is changing For the better, and I roughly ride about 3-4 times a week, trying to build my fitness levels up
So as hard as poss without burning out in 10mins

Cool will give it a crack

cougie

It's really hard to work out calory burn on a bike.

Running is easier. I could burn about 800 calories running - but a bike would be about half of that.

It's all about the diet. Cut down on that as you'd need to do shed loads of exercise to burn off a lb of fat.

chadders81

I use about 650-700 an hour riding fairly hard on the bike - but I'm 87kg.

An hour might not be enough to lose loads of weight initially. All you will be doing is using up glycogen stores in your muscles. You will probably benefit from doing that hour 'fasted' ie on an empty stomach to try and encourage your body to start burning fat for energy.

meanredspider

Chadders81 wrote:

You will probably benefit from doing that hour 'fasted' ie on an empty stomach to try and encourage your body to start burning fat for energy.

I still don't understand this. Riding as hard as you can is going to burn mostly glycogen as fat burning can't sustain high intensity exercise. Riding in a fasted state won't help at all.

The key, as posted, is to eat less. Cycling will be a good addition but it's a small lever compared to diet.

apreading

I went down from nearly 18st to 13.5st riding a regular route of 11.5 miles in under an hour, several times a week.

One of the keys, I think, is that I worked out a route that has a long(ish) gentle uphill in it and 2 steep but short uphills. As well as the uphills pushing me harder and raising my heartrate, I could feel every pound in weight that I lost as the hills got easier an easier...

Changed eating dramatically as well but without a doubt the exercise was at least as big a part in the weight loss. I was losing 2lbs a week on good weeks.

Dont worry about sprints or intervals etc, just ride as hard as you can but make sure you do so at a pace that you can maintain your effort through the whole ride. If you push hard at the start but the last 5 miles are spent and limp through them then back off a bit and try and find a pace you can maintain. Once you have that pace, you can probably throw in longer rides as and when you have the time and at that pace should be able to push the whole way around them too.

Good luck!

kajjal

If you can get out 5 times each week and find a good hill to go up on your route or one that is just very hilly in general that will help you out a lot. Just be careful to give you body a bit of time to warn up at the start of the ride and then go for it. In an hour you should have few problems getting 15 miles done once you get your fitness up. I wouldn't focus on the diet too much to begin with except making sure you eat enough healthy food to give you body fuel.

Once you get fitter you will find you body will only want healthier foods anyway, expect for the odd curry and kebab

meanredspider

Kajjal wrote:

I wouldn't focus on the diet too much to begin with except making sure you eat enough healthy food to give you body fuel.

I've got to disagree. Eating right and reducing calorie intake is by far your best weapon. That's partly because you can do it every day (doesn't matter how much time you've got or the weather or whatever), it's partly because people tend to compensate for the exercise they've done, and it's partly to do with your insulin response.

The other problem is that you simply aren't going to be able to go hard 5 days a week either. As I've said before, going hard relies on glycogen. You can't restore that quick enough to go day after day - the best you can do is alternate fast and slow days (else you're going to need to fuel up with simple carbs like glucose to fuel your effort which is counterproductive.)

paul2718

meanredspider wrote:

Chadders81 wrote:

You will probably benefit from doing that hour 'fasted' ie on an empty stomach to try and encourage your body to start burning fat for energy.

I still don't understand this. Riding as hard as you can is going to burn mostly glycogen as fat burning can't sustain high intensity exercise. Riding in a fasted state won't help at all.

You ride fasted, then you eat. Result calorie deficit and you've eaten so you're not hungry. You eat, then ride, result is calorie deficit and an almost unbearable urge for the biscuit barrel.

Perhaps.

The key, as posted, is to eat less. Cycling will be a good addition but it's a small lever compared to diet.

But really, this.

If you're reasonably fit and can ride 20 miles in the hour, you might burn up to 900 calories (this is from experience with a power meter and an assumption about the relation ship between kJ and C.)

Paul

kajjal

meanredspider wrote:

Kajjal wrote:

I wouldn't focus on the diet too much to begin with except making sure you eat enough healthy food to give you body fuel.

I've got to disagree. Eating right and reducing calorie intake is by far your best weapon. That's partly because you can do it every day (doesn't matter how much time you've got or the weather or whatever), it's partly because people tend to compensate for the exercise they've done, and it's partly to do with your insulin response.

The other problem is that you simply aren't going to be able to go hard 5 days a week either. As I've said before, going hard relies on glycogen. You can't restore that quick enough to go day after day - the best you can do is alternate fast and slow days (else you're going to need to fuel up with simple carbs like glucose to fuel your effort which is counterproductive.)

My point was to make sure you warm up before putting any real power down to avoid injuries and other problems. Not to go flat out for five days a week which would not be a good idea

When it comes to diet some people reduce their food intake too fast while increasing the amount of exercise they do which makes it a lot harder to gain fitness and feel better. It is easier to make smaller dietry changes while your fitness improves rather than big changes which later on would work fine but initially not be so helpful. I was just suggesting dramatic changes are more difficult for some people and can have initially adverse effects.

meanredspider

paul2718 wrote:

You ride fasted, then you eat. Result calorie deficit and you've eaten so you're not hungry. You eat, then ride, result is calorie deficit and an almost unbearable urge for the biscuit barrel.

Perhaps.

Interesting. Though, as a long term bike commuter (until last year, 15+ miles each way at a good pace), it's not something that I recognise. I actually wonder if you'd over-compensate and eat more than you would. I guess it varies from individual to individual. Studies often show that people that exercise for weight loss often lose less weight than those people that make modest changes to their diets.

I think a novice cyclist will do well to burn 600kcals an hour - especially if you're only doing modest speeds.

paul2718

I think that if 'fasted riding' works, it works best for racing cyclists trying to reduce their body fat for a particular target and not as a generally recommended weight loss approach.

But I don't really know as such.

For the OP riding will do you good, but mostly diet will lose you weight.

Paul

bobmcstuff

I detest exercising fasted. I tried to do it for a while but didn't enjoy it. For me to keep up any exercise regime I have to enjoy it. If I'm going out for an hour I'll normally eat 2-300 calories 60 minutes beforehand, which feels much better and still gives a deficit.

I've lost 1st 10lbs this year through a combination of diet control and riding bikes. In particular, riding bikes up hills.

During the week I try to limit calories to 1500-2000 calories which, if you're sensible with it, is enough to not feel excessively hungry, but combined with riding two or three evenings a week is enough to build up a sizeable deficit. At the weekend I don't pay so much attention, but I do also try to do a 4-6hr ride.

Started mixing in some running too as a means to help me keep the exercise up for the darker months.

bobmcstuff

Also I doubt exercising fasted is really that good, if you look at the research there's a limit to how quickly your body can convert fat into energy, exercising fasted doesn't increase that (as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread).

Dippydog3

Exercising fasted, exercising full, exercising two hours after eating..........whatever.

All of these things are fine tuning. they are not the key issue.

It seems to me like you want to ride a bike to improve your health.

Theoretically that's easy.

1. stop smoking. completely.
2. eat less.
3. exercise more.
4. improve the quality of what you eat.

Sounds easy? Well, as we all know it isn't. I don't smoke so number one was easy. I am fortunate to have a great cook who weighs nothing as a partner so number four was easy. I like sport so number three was not too hard.
however, I am a pig, so number two was, and is, a big issue. I did the five/two and it worked for me. It might not work for you.

Have a real think about the four issue. Prioritise them for you, not anyone else. Find a way of solving the biggest problem for you. Not anyone else.

To me this is the best approach. For example, there is no point doing 300k weekly on a bike if you cannot control your eating. The exercise will just make you hungry and you will eat more than you burned off. Likewise there is no point just eating less. You will have less energy and therefore be less inclined to exercise which is important to convert body weight fat to muscle.

Can't give you any advice on smoking. Haven't ever done it, never will. Can't understand it, never will. Don't like it, never will. That's what living for twenty years with smoking parents does for you.

finally, be realistic. Target 2kg loss per month for the first six months and then 1kg per month for the next six. you may well beat the first fe months but loose on the last six. that's fine. by then you will know how to control it. Weigh yourself every day if you like. you will be astounded by the changes and fluctuations but it will make you understand the trends and the issues.

I am not an expert but this worked for me. After being very athletic for twenty years, and then a slob for twenty years I then finally got my act together and lost 20kg in a year. A year later and it's still gone, thanks to cycling.

Alex_Simmons/RST

Apart from some of the straightforward advice that results in a sustainable calorie deficit, one way to look at short rides is how doing them effects your appetite.

Some styles of riding act as an appetite suppressant, while others make you feel hungry and want to raid the fridge, so make note of what sort of rides have these effects on you. That will outweigh the relatively minor difference in calories metabolised between different types of ride, and you can perhaps use other strategies to help control appetite on the days you typically find you get hungry, e.g. having appropriate food prepared beforehand so you eat the right amount of the right appetite sating food.

It gets a little more involved when total ride time increases.

Fatamorgana

Cut out all bread.
It stands to reason you have also kicked biscuits, cake and high sugar foodstuffs into the long grass. Have lemon in your tea for example.
Cut out all bread. It was worth reiterating this point.
Cut out fruit juices, they benefit you not but add so many simple sugars (calories) to your body.

Weight loss comes about through considered diet & some exercise.

In an hour, drink a pint of water, then start normally, after 5 mins, increase the tempo, after, 10 mins a little more pace, at 15mins, you can up the pace such that you're breathing hard. Keep this going, pick a hilly route if possible, keep that pace, a little more if you can, but if not, don't fret for the moment. Give yourself a 5 min wind-down.

Dump the death sticks - obviously.

Don't reward yourself, your aim is weight loss and a new "you", a new lifestyle. Cycling offers this.
Alcohol should not be part of this process, but appreciate that at weekends, you may enjoy a glass or two. Again, do not go mad, quite the opposite, cut it back.

Eat a "simpler" meal in the evening with no carbs. No bread. No pasta, no rice, no potatoes - try this and tell me how things are working out in a month. No bread!

Diets will always fail (in the long haul) unless they become your new lifestyle.

dwanes

Do tortilla's count as bread?

homers_double

paul2718 wrote:

You ride fasted, then you eat. Result calorie deficit and you've eaten so you're not hungry. You eat, then ride, result is calorie deficit and an almost unbearable urge for the biscuit barrel.

Spot on... For specific weight loss rides, it worked for me throughout the summer riding about 35km before breakfast two or three times a week.

I hate the dark mornings now

meanredspider

homers double wrote:

paul2718 wrote:

You ride fasted, then you eat. Result calorie deficit and you've eaten so you're not hungry. You eat, then ride, result is calorie deficit and an almost unbearable urge for the biscuit barrel.

Spot on... For specific weight loss rides, it worked for me throughout the summer riding about 35km before breakfast two or three times a week.

I hate the dark mornings now

I still don't understand why you think this works. Is it only because you HAVE to eat after a ride?

keef66

meanredspider wrote:

homers double wrote:

paul2718 wrote:

You ride fasted, then you eat. Result calorie deficit and you've eaten so you're not hungry. You eat, then ride, result is calorie deficit and an almost unbearable urge for the biscuit barrel.

Spot on... For specific weight loss rides, it worked for me throughout the summer riding about 35km before breakfast two or three times a week.

I hate the dark mornings now

I still don't understand why you think this works. Is it only because you HAVE to eat after a ride?

I've always been a simple soul. I like the simplicity of calories consumed vs calories burned, and can't really understand why it would make a difference when you do the eating and the exercise relative to one another?

I did twice inadvertently do some excercise when fasted: once when I tried to shovel out a 1 tonne bag of hard-core before breakfast and collapsed on the front lawn, and years ago when very young and fit, missed breakfast then ended up helping to push a snow-bound car up a hill and came over quite peculiar. Do different people have different glycogen reserves? I can't imagine I'd get on very well doing hill repeats before breakfast.

And the more extreme the diet, the less likely you are to stick to it. I'd recommend spending a week or so doing a food diary, recording everything you eat and drink, being absolutely honest about the quantities and weighing / measuring things if unsure. That way you can see where you can most easily make small changes and reduce your daily calorie consumption. Or if that's too much faff, you could consider intermittent fasting like the 5:2 job; I managed it for a few weeks and did lose quite a bit of weight, but I did spend a lot of the fasting days thinking about food so I can't do it all the time.

As far as I can tell the very low carb diets work because you tend to eat more protein, and that keeps you feeling full for longer, but also because you eat less overall cos it's harder (and possibly dearer) to overeat the things you are allowed.

And earlier this week I tried the norovirus diet; no food or drink in 36 hours thanks to the projectile vomiting and shitting, and now I'm recovered and rehydrated I find I've lost no weight at all!

diy

The first two posters had it.. though I would say build up over time. There are a couple of problems people have who are on the start of the journey. The main one being that any High intensity training risks dislodging fatty deposits that have built up in the cardio system over decades of abuse. Being a smoker massively increases your risk and the consequences can be catastrophic.

I think you know that you'll never get anywhere if you smoke, but for basic weight loss it is as others have said all about the diet. taking 3,000 kcal (just under 1lb of fat) out of your weekly diet is relatively easy through 2 fasting (25% of your normal RDA) days for example. you'd need anything up to 6 hours of extra exercise to cover that.

On the subject of training on empty (fasting before training) this is really for endurance cyclists who need to get their body used to exercise in a glycogen depleted state. It doesn't really make any difference to the calories you burn. In fact you will burn slightly less as your heart has a slightly easier time in the first hour running on empty than full, due to absence of effort extracting food from the stomach.

So.. quite smoking, go easy and find a diet that can take 2-3000 kcal a week out.

damocles10

Get a heart rate monitor?...science has probably moved on....I found cycling in 75% zones worked wonders for my weight. Downside is that I have to do 2 to 4 hours a day, I had to get up early (5am) to exercise and fit in work and other commitments too.

meanredspider

Yeah - if time and speed isn't an issue, long slow rides is as good as anything. You don't dip into tomorrow's glycogen so you can repeat frequently and, as someone pointed out, the calorie burn isn't massively different. It will also encourage fat burning adaptation which will do your endurance wonders. You just won't be that quick.

Fatamorgana

There is the option of course, of trying the "ride on an empty stomach" approach, since he's riding to work, so this could be trailed. Even then, I'd still have a piece of fruit, maybe a banana and some water an hour before you leave the house.

You then have to feed yourself at work post ride, and not a sandwich or similar "snack" but a decent meal, perhaps in a Tupperware box or porridge (?).

Then the return journey, I suspect is done two hours post any food intake, no sense in eating and then riding straight away.

Smoking is an appetite suppressant so this in itself suggests that your food intake is far too high in several departments, maybe the portion sizes and the times in the evenings when you eat should be looked at?

Processed food, sugar, juices, alcohol, snacks, they all have a detrimental count.

Do NOT go for a quick-fix. Adapt your lifestyle, do NOT go on a diet. You need to workout (with your other half) what is going in Room 101, what is going to be trailed, what you might like to try, what changes you'd like to see the two of you adopt together. Those who work together likely succeed so play to this strength, a lifestyle change, I'd offer up to you, is more likely to succeed if you are both working towards the same end point. Do NOT try and fix everything in one mad six week dash; stay the course and you will succeed. Those who "try" always fail.

One glaring aspect of the programmes that air on TV come across loud & clear is one overriding, achingly obvious point: those who say they want to loose weight and are trying and failing, well the TV reveals that they are NEVER honest with themselves nor their loved ones.

diy

Diet can be perminant - I've been on the 5:2 for 2 years and now on the 6:1 most weeks (sometimes go back to 5:2) for the last 6 months. I don't intend to stop, weight loss is really a side effect. I'm quite pleased with my increases in endurance ability, reduced cholestrol, lower resting HR, lower IGF1 etc. Will probably still have a heart attack one day - but thats down to family history.

However, that said a short term diet can be good to kickstart you particularly in cycling where weight loss can make a big difference to performance and therefore sense of aheivment.

WILL 1 AM

So far so good.
I have managed to get a 10 mile ride in 45minutes, of local country roads, intensity around 15-20 average mph and can feel benefits of the extra riding when I can.
Diet has been carefully managed, cutting out fatty breakfasts, tuna salads for lunches and avoiding bread, pasta and carbs.
Lots of advice from everyone, thanks for all the replies.
Since beginning of sept up til this point I've dropped a Stone to 15st and I am able to ride longer.
Got myself a heart rate monitor and working out in the 140-150 bpm zone for a 36 yrs old so going well.

Thanks you

imposter2.0

In isolation, that HR number is irrelevant, unless you have something to compare it to (ie an HR max, or LTHR).