DavyKOTWF

Weight 210 lbs, 6' tall. I started biking for the first time as a complete beginner on my BSO. After 6 weeks, I'd gained a pound, working up to 24 miles per week. (may have been water gain, I don't know) Now, after almost 9 weeks, I've worked up to 35 miles per week and wondering, how many miles per week do you need to ride in order to lose a pound a week? Maybe 50 per week? (age 62, though I'm not sure what that has to do with it, as calories in vs calories burned should be equal at any age?)

(my nutrition is headed in a good direction, cutting out almost all red meat, eggs, cheese, milk and adding/eating a big salad a day, oatmeal, 4 fruits, 2 handfuls of beans a day, of course not store bought juice, no sodas, maybe 2 drinks a week with maybe one big fall off the wagon meal per week, and eating only good oils, coconut, avocado, maybe a little olive as well as handful of almonds, cashews and walnuts a day. Very little salt, precious little sugar. I feel like a monk - that's why the one day cheat. )

10 Wheels

Has nothing to do with your miles.

Rode from NY to LA when I was 67 y/o.
Gained one pound. 4200 miles






It is what you put in your mouth that counts.

Ride more...Eat less but Have Fun with it.

jsk

As far as "miles to ride to lose a pound", it depends somewhat on how fast you ride (due to air resistance, work done per mile ridden will go up the faster you ride), but generally speaking about 25-30 calories/mile would mean 120-140 miles to burn a pound's worth of calories. That assumes you keep your caloric intake the same, if you eat more to ride more, the equation changes of course.

Marcus_Ti

Or ride more, eat the same. Done with enough workout quality riding you get the same result, a caloric deficit.

Heathpack 

The answer to you question depends on your body size (bigger burns more calories), how hard you're working, how long it takes you.

I ride with a power meter on my bike, so I am able to measure work expended and can fairly reliably convert that to calories burned. Thirty five miles at an easy pace would be about 2.5 hours of riding which would burn around 1000 cal, or 3.7 cal/kg body weight.

Figuring it takes a 3500 cal deficit to lose one pound (which may not be exactly 100% correct), it would take 3-4 weeks to lose 1 pound from cycling. In theory.

wolfchild

I think your nutrition is heading in the wrong direction. Cutting out all the protein and nutrient dense foods such as meat, eggs, cheese and dairy is a big mistake. Maybe that's way you're gaining weight instead of loosing it.

DavyKOTWF

I average 14 mph; will report back in 1 month and see what happened.
How many miles per week has a lot to do with it as long as you're eating healthily.
Forgot to say that I drink a green drink and whey protein drink about twice a day each.
Canadian friend, Well, not according to that Banana girl, Freelee; she's as skinny as a twig.

Marcus_Ti

If you're riding at an athletic pace, for long enough, and regularly enough, you're going to up your metabolism.

Doesn't take a whole lot. A sharp commute ride to work and home 30 minute each way every day adds up and will start changing how your body does things.

DavyKOTWF

I'm thinking something like that is true too, Marcus...my metab may just be way out of whack for now. Maybe it'll take months to getting it cranking.

andr0id

Work is work, but at 15 mph, you're burning maybe 300 Cal / hr.

I'm about 190 and I use a PowerTap. At 18-20 mph, I'm burning 600 - 700 calories / hr. But that drops rapidly as you go to the mid teens and not linearly.

To ride at 20mph is around 200 watts. To ride at 12mph takes about 60 watts. 15mph is probaby around 100. (I don't ever go 15, I'm either going fast or with my wife at 12mph)

You need to ride 10-12 hours and replace none of the calories used. With all the fats/oils in your diet, that is not gonna happen. You need oil, but cut it to 2 tbsp a day.

DrIsotope

Should have included a YMMV on that one. I'm also about 190, but anything near 19mph puts me over 270W. This morning was only 17.7mph avg. and that took a 244W average. Even upper-Z2 for me burns over 50kcal/mile. I do, on the other hand, ride at 15mph... up hills. Then it's 80-100kcal/mile.

To the OP, you will want to first and foremost track your intake very carefully, and try not to put in more than you're burning on the bike, so you maintain the caloric deficit. 35 miles per week @ 14mph isn't going to put much of an impact on your calorie burn, really. You'd want to continue a diet that accounted for no cycling at all, until your mileage increases. I didn't shift my eating patterns until I went past 150 miles a week. At my current amount of miles, I eat 6-7 times a day, and it's more fuel than food.

prathmann

One pound of fat equates to about 3500 kcals. of fat. I find that a moderate century (100 mile) ride with some hills and about 15 mph pace uses about that many kcals. But that assumes that there won't be any other changes in metabolism and diet. Riding the 100 miles may well result in increased appetite and could also reduce the amount of other exercise you do. So keeping an eye on intake and overall activity level is necessary in addition to watching your weekly odometer.

DavyKOTWF

See, it's confusing...Wolf says I need more fat, via the more 'meat, eggs, cheese and dairy' and Android says what little fat I'm intaking, is 'too much!'.

Am going to get up to 50 miles a week and see what happens, keeping an eye on the quality food intake. (there will be some quality interval work via hills in there.)

gregf83 

You riding a road or mountain bike? Seems very high for a road bike with decent tires.

DrIsotope

Road(ish.) Michelin Pro4 Endurance for tires. The high power output I chalk up to riding on roads so bad, I might as well be riding singletrack. "Suspension loss," I believe it's called. Watching 3S power, I've watched lower numbers at higher speeds on fresher roads, but those are few and far between in my locale.

Jseis 

LOL at 21 I rode Seattle to NY, 4000 miles in sixty days..lost 1 pound.

Jseis 

I tend to effectively burn calories and feel less ravenous at a high Z1/low Z2 pace. As it takes me 40 minutes to really warm up, rides of 2 hours with up to 600-800 feet of climbing done 3 times a week have me losing 1 pound a week. I eat lean protein, fresh fruits, vegetables (raw), yogurt, couple slices of bread, peanut butter, several cups of coffee and maybe a couple energy bars and juice water mix 50:50 when riding. Maybe one beer a week. I've learned to say no to sweets. If I start riding high Z-2 and above...my appetite goes completely insane bonkers.

I'm 61 & tend to be pretty rigid on diet. But I don't "diet" to lose weight.

12strings

A few things to consider:

1. A very fit runner running a marathon would burn about 3000 calories. That is one pound...and that 3000 calories could easily be mostly wiped out in one meal at a Pizza buffet.

2. I saw a documentary that took a bunch of couch potatos from sedentary to a marathon in 9 months. One of the ladies finished the marathon, but remained about the same 30-40lbs overweight that she was when she started. Steady, increased training up to a very high amount for almost a year did not cause weight loss, only fitness ability. She didn't eat for weight loss, so it didn't happen.

3. Frelee and durian rider probably ride 50+ miles A DAY, 5-6 TIMES A WEEK. That said, it's about the food. If you are taking in the same amount of high carbs on rest days as workout days.. there is no where for that energy to go, so it gets stored. They can eat tons of carbs cuz they work out tons. One thing to try would be high protein/healthy fats on rest days, higher carb leading up to a workout.

4. If you really feel that you are eating healthy, tier is one change you can make to your riding that will likely see immediate, positive results: INTERVALS. Scientific research, and my experience tells me this is true:

Over the winter, due to weather and busy-Ness, I didn't ride much, often I would ride in my indoor trainer for only 20 minutes, twice a week...but I would do an intense interval session of Max sprints followed by short recoveries...bu doing this and "generally trying to eat whole foods" ( no calorie counting for me). I lost fat, and became a faster, stronger rider...

deapee

Someone above hit the nail on the head -- I'll reiterate.

To lose 1 pound of body weight, you need to burn an excess of ~3500 calories that you are not taking in through food.

Whether that takes a day or a week will depend greatly on how 'starved' the body is, and how much of that lost weight is fat or muscle or whatever.

The best idea is to have a deficit of about 500 calories a day so that you're losing roughly a pound a week.

It's pretty easy for me to burn through 5,000 calories a day...but if I restricted my intake to 2,000 calories that day, I'd run out of energy very quickly.
You've got to eat for the activites you're doing.

Personally, I eat (healthy) when hungry...eat a big meal after cycling...and if I'm trying to lose weight, I will just forgo any type of ~500 calorie snack I usually have between dinner and bed time. That does it for me...I will always go to bed hungry, but I've found that's always that 500 calorie deficit I'd be looking to achieve (during any time I want to lose weight).

DavyKOTWF

Thanks 12strings, et al. Lots of good advice.
I always wondered how much riding Frelee and Durian did.

Tundra_Man 

I notice I start to lose weight when I break the 125-150 miles per week barrier.

But I think it's more to do with the fact that I'm on my bike so much that I'm spending less time in situations where I'd be snacking instead.

The bicycle mileage may help a little, but most weight loss can be found in the kitchen (or by staying out of it, anyway.)

treebound 

Great photo there, complete with a vodka shirt too.

As to others, manage weight by counting calories and managing food intake quality, manage strength and health by exercise and mileage.

I use MyFitnessPal on my phone when I want to do an occasional food intake check, and I use RunKeeper parallel to a Polar M400 watch to track mileage and workouts. There are other apps and devices that others use that work just as well.

I've heard/read about the 3500 calories per pound before, but for me I just use that as a general guide and work on my overall parameters instead of focusing on just one thing or just one pound. I've also read that 1-2 pounds a week is generally healthy and maintainable on average for weight loss.

Shotglass

I have a sneaky suspicion that your nutrition is not headed in as much of a good direction as you think.
What are your macros? (% of fat, carb, protein) Both daily totals and a weekly average.
Also, what's your real caloric intake and expenditure? Also by daily and weekly totals. (By real I mean estimated from weighed and measured food quantities, not guesstimates....and expenditure estimates from a realistic source, not some website that will tell you that you've burned 1100 calories by cycling for 90 minutes at under 15mph)

Please feel free to PM me if you'd rather not publicly post that info.


Probably not water gain

Shotglass

This used to be the standard, however the NIH released a study in 2011 showing that the 3500 cal formula is inaccurate in that it doesn't account for the metabolic changes that happen to a body during caloric restriction. It could take as much as 7000 calories burned to lose a pound of fat.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news...ercise-changes

Seattle Forrest

It really doesn't matter for the purposes of weight loss what you're eating, only how much. Make sure you get enough fat and protein and carbs to stay healthy, and eat fewer calories than you burn.

Calories from healthy food are still calories.