Cycling to Lose Weight

afham07

Hi Guys,

I have been cycling for about 2 and half month. The reason I cycling is to cut some kgs out of my body. I currently on 105kg with height 180cm.

What kind of training you guys did to reduce the weight? My method does not work much as I only reduce 3kg. My weight is stuck at 105 since 2-3 weeks although I cut my food by 30% or so.

wongataa

Most weight loss will come from changing what you eat & drink. You need to consume less energy than you expend to lose weight. The cycling will help a bit but only a bit. Weight loss will also take a while. Be patient.

kajjal

Exercise helps but cut out out all fast / heavily processed food and sugary drinks, for most this will result in noticeable weight loss as the weeks and months go by.

cougie

Cycling is incredibly efficient so you don't burn a huge amount unless you go very hard or very long. What distances are you doing ?

Pretty much everyone gets their portion sizes very wrong. We only need a small amount of food and it's very easy to eat far more than you can burn off through exercise.

So eat less. Exercise more. At least when you're exercising you're not snacking ?

MishMash95

From my personal experience (losing around 18kg progressively (82kg down to 64kg @ 174cm) whilst still being able to eat what I want over the last year).

1) As you get fitter, you will be able to push harder and burn more calories in less time, so with this said, rushing the process isn't necessarily going to work perfectly, but instead focusing on getting fitter and consistency.

2) For me, I found it hard to maintain a calorie defecit on longer rides (3 hours plus), despite often burning far more calories because you get to a point where you need to eat a good amount just to keep going, and you'll equally be even hungrier when you get back.

3) Fasted rides before breakfast/first meal of the day can work if you keep them pretty short (1 hour), otherwise you can end up making yourself feel so hungry that you eat the house when you get back.

4) The most optimal kind of ride for weight loss for me is a 2 hour ride, whether a decent hard tempo ride, or a ride with intermittent intervals. This is the type of ride I do the most, generally having a hard workout contained within an hour, and a reasonable length warmup/cooldown at endurance pace. I'll generally burn around 1500 calories during these rides.
-- Note, I tend to eat around 400-600 calories during these rides, including the 200 cal recovery shake the moment I get in. Whilst not eating can seem like a good idea, I tended to find that when I didn't eat, I was so hungry that i'd eat all of the defecit I had built up.

Eating a small amount during the ride makes you feel far less hungry when you get back, and often times, having a recovery shake on top of that destroys the rest of my appetite, whereas in the past, i'd have been ravenous!

For me, I tend to only eat two meals a day: Breakfast (500 cal) and then a bigger meal after a ride (1500-2000 cal), whilst burning 1500 cals on a ride, and eating around 600 cals mid ride. This gives me a net defecit of around 600-700 cals a day (where I estimate my daily intake requirement to be around 2100-2200, as the 2500 is an over-estimate as that includes some amount of physical activity, which I cover in the cycling cals).

I opt to only eat two meals a day because I have the schedule flexiblity to do so, so can spread them out well. I also enjoy having the flexiblity to eat bigger meals without worrying about it setting me back. (e.g. going out for dinner, or getting a take away from time to time).

If I were to eat the standard 3 meals a day, it would mean splitting the dinner meal into two, which is still 1000 cal a pop, but just depends if that suits the style of eating you like.

This is just an example of what I do, perhaps not an idea to copy, but the important take away is that you need to find something sustainable that works for you. For me, keeping a "big" meal in there was essential, simply because otherwise I would end up just losing days of progress because i'd eat something that was outside the calorie budget.

kajjal

All the above advice about not starving yourself is very important. You will lack energy and end up eating excessively.

joey54321

Yup, agree with most of the above but thought i would put down my 2p:

- Weight loss is done in the kitchen, not on the road.
- Fuel your cycling, lose weight the rest of the time (eat enough before, during and immediately after)
- trying to lose weight too quickly will not work, you'll feel terrible and likely end up putting the weight back on
- The 'Fat burning' zone is a bit of a myth, at any intensity, you are burning fat, so the most important sessions are the ones that you enjoy and the ones you keep coming back too.
- Losing weight is all about calorie deficit (though there are better and worse ways to manage this), if your weight loss has evened out it likely means your base calorie requirements have come down. In order to lose more weight, you need to burn more or eat less (good diets of healthy, balanced food just make the eating less easier).

MishMash95

joey54321 wrote:

- The 'Fat burning' zone is a bit of a myth, at any intensity, you are burning fat, so the most important sessions are the ones that you enjoy and the ones you keep coming back too.
- Losing weight is all about calorie deficit (though there are better and worse ways to manage this), if your weight loss has evened out it likely means your base calorie requirements have come down. In order to lose more weight, you need to burn more or eat less (good diets of healthy, balanced food just make the eating less easier).

Just wanted to add on here that whilst its true that you will burn fat at any zone, I believe there is a sweetspot where you can burn the most fat whilst not building up too much fatigue. For me, this is generally the low tempo zone, or super high zone 2 (75% FTP). A pace which is very manageable to ride for a few hours over several days. I love doing these sorts of sessions when the weather is good as its intense enough to keep me feeling satisfied, and was also super repeatable so I could get out in the evening and have a nice 2 hour ride in the sun before dinner !

I also used to experiment with mixing in very low intensity ~50% FTP riding on days where I wasn't training, but found that it was often less productive for total calories burned vs just walking and being a bit generally active. (Given it also generally took me longer to actually get kitted up, I replaced doing this with just making more of an effort to mix in walking).

Now I tend to alternate between having weeks focused on weight loss and weeks focused on building. As you said, dieting too much leaves you feeling terrible. Equally, it reduces your ability to recover from hard workouts. I used to have this horrendous cycle of constantly trying to run a defecit, but training hard at the same time. I'd always crack and ended up plateauing because I wasn't fuelling my training, and wasn't achieving my weight loss goals either.

So it is really important that if you also have the intention to train and get better that you fuel well on the weeks for hard training and don't try to both run a defecit and train to improve at the same time. This matters less at the start, but will really bite you once training gets hard. It basically capped my FTP for months, whereas now, even though im doing pretty much the same training, i've started to recover so much faster. If you run high intensity but then don't refuel, you can mash up your muscles and then have them not actually recover.

pblakeney

Commuting every day had the biggest effect on me, even taking it easy.
Those two rides every day seem to get the metabolism going. No science to back it up though.

haydenm

joey54321 wrote:

- The 'Fat burning' zone is a bit of a myth, at any intensity, you are burning fat, so the most important sessions are the ones that you enjoy and the ones you keep coming back too.

I was going to say this, you see it all the time in articles. While you burn a higher proportion of fat at certain levels, at higher intensity you burn more calories overall and therefore lose most weight. As MishMash says though, fatigue is a big factor. If you could replaced a 1 hour high intensity session with 5 at tempo then you might be able to keep going and burn more calories but I would imagine it's quite individual. If you can deal with it, I have found a bi weekly 20 minute run really helps to get you used to dealing with a high heart rate which makes everything more pleasant, that said, running is the devil's work and a lot of people really don't get on with it.

Also try riding with others at the same/higher level than you, a bit of pace and friendly competition might push you to keep going harder when you might otherwise ease off or go home

joey54321

The problem with just comparing the calories of say, 1 hour intense/interval ride with 5 hours of tempo is the effect on appetite. I can do a 1 hour intense session and not really be hungry afterward. Every 5 hour ride I've been on I come home and raid the cupboards all day and if you are disciplined and planning ahead it can be hard (for me at least) to strike the right balance of eating enough good healthy food in order to recover but not eating too much that I've eaten more than I burned.

There is also a relatively higher boost to your metabolism by doing high-intensity work, which something like a Garmin mount tells you. Oh, and on that point, unless you have a powermeter the calorie reading on your Garmin is likely wrong (if you were using it).

haydenm

joey54321 wrote:

The problem with just comparing the calories of say, 1 hour intense/interval ride with 5 hours of tempo is the effect on appetite. I can do a 1 hour intense session and not really be hungry afterward. Every 5 hour ride I've been on I come home and raid the cupboards all day and if you are disciplined and planning ahead it can be hard (for me at least) to strike the right balance of eating enough good healthy food in order to recover but not eating too much that I've eaten more than I burned.

There is also a relatively higher boost to your metabolism by doing high-intensity work, which something like a Garmin mount tells you. Oh, and on that point, unless you have a powermeter the calorie reading on your Garmin is likely wrong (if you were using it).

Same here.

I sometimes use Myfitnesspal to count calories, with that I set my goal at 1500kcal and then use the strava/garmin calories expended to top it up. While the calorie estimates are probably wrong, if it aims to balance out at 1500kcal then I still keep a good deficit regardless and lose weight, just something I found works

keef66

Diet for weight loss, exercise for fitness. You can of course, and probably should, do both at the same time.

I first tried losing weight by cycling. Quite a lot of it too. I undoubtedly became fitter, but my weight hardly changed at all.
Then I tried reducing what I was eating by calorie counting and weighing /measuring everything. It was quite an eye opener in terms of how many calories I was actually consuming, but doing it 24/7 proved to be a great way to suck all the pleasure out of mealtimes. And because I have the impulse control of a young labrador, sooner or later I'd get bored / tempted by something calorific and tasty. Again, net result - scarcely any weight loss.

And then I saw Michael Mosely's documentary about trying to live longer. One of the many things he looked at was fasting, and he noticed in addition to improvement in insulin sensitivity, blood lipids and other biochemical markers, significant weight loss. That then led to the 5:2 diet.

So I gave that a go. 5 days a week I eat what I like, Mondays and Thursdays I eat nothing till the evening, and then it's only 600 calories. I can make it through a fasting day because I'm busy at work, and I know the next day I can eat.

Boom! The weight I'd spent 15 years accumulating started to drop off. 8kg over the next 3 months, and it never felt particularly difficult. More importantly to me, my blood lipids, and triglyceride levels in particular, improved to the point my GP no longer wanted to prescribe medication.

So now I eat like that all the time. Weight's stable at 63kg, and I can still wear the suit I got married in 31 years ago 8)

bobmcstuff

I found cycling helped me to lose weight, not necessarily because of the extra calories burnt (although that certainly helped) but because it gave me motivation to do it - as it makes you faster.

I tried several different types of exercise (gym, running) but cycling is the only one I have stuck with because I really enjoy it.

I tend to combine calorie counting with doing as much cycling as possible. The calorie counting is not just about the numbers, but also about discipline. One thing I would caution is if you do a hard workout and don't eat properly afterwards, you can end up feeling pretty bad the next day. So I tend to try and avoid mental calorie deficits especially if I am doing hard rides (accepting there's quite a bit of uncertainty in the calculations).

smethley

I sometimes use Myfitnesspal to count calories, with that I set my goal at 1500kcal and then use the strava/garmin calories expended to top it up. While the calorie estimates are probably wrong, if it aims to balance out at 1500kcal then I still keep a good deficit regardless and lose weight, just something I found works

+1
MFP really works well for me. Have lost 20+kg in under 6 months, with 1500 cals per day net of exercise.

emanresu

Kimashik wrote:

If you need faster and easier way, you can try vaping (I don't recommend smoking due to strong addiction to it). It often helps to lose some kilos.

Quite possible the worse piece of advice I've ever seen on any forum. Get a nicotine addiction to loose weight FFS

Loosing weight is a long game but quite simple really if you have determination. The diet part is best summed up with Michael Pollen's famous quote "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" coupled with exercise and the weight will come off.

DeVlaeminck

My experience is you can lose weight through either exercise or through adjusting your diet - or of course both. Going from say 9-10 hours a week on the bike to 2-3 almost always leads to me putting on weight over a period of time.

For me the idea that exercise is an ineffective way of losing weight comes from people who just do too little. Yes I dare say doing 3 * 30 minute walks on a treadmill wont be effective but up that to 10 hours and the results will be different. I suppose for most people it's easier to diet than to do 10 hours exercise so fair enough - personally I'd rather do the 10 hours.

aberdeen_lune

I agree with the last two responses about volume of training. I do try to eat healthy but there’s nothing like 12 hours a week on the bike for keeping you slim. Do 25 hours a week and eat healthy you will definitely lose weight.

If you want to maximise fat loss and get efficient at burning fat then there is a fat max wattage you should train at. I think my fat max is 190watts if I recall correctly, This is not about an average zone for a ride it’s about sticking in the zone throughout, around +-15watts. If you go harder up hills your body switches to use predominantly carbs again and you won’t optimise that efficient lean burn of fat. I think most people would prefer to lose fat than muscle so it is a useful method to employ.