Originally Posted by
andysummers
Say an out of shape fat dude gets on a bike (with a power meter) and rides for 30 min with an average power output of lets say 150 watts and an average heart rate of 160bpm. The same dude trains for a year, gets thin, gets on the bike again for 30 min/150watts average with an average heart rate of 140bpm.
Would the calories burned be approximately the same, since equal work was done, or would they be significantly different? How much different and why?
I would say insufficient data.
A couple of things that I would think would be likely, though, would be:
- He' going much faster since he's putting out the same wattage and weighs significantly less.
- He has increased his cardio/pulmonary capacity since he is doing the same wattage at a lower heart rate (though with the variability of HR, it could be for dozens of other reasons).
TF