Originally Posted by DannoXYZ
Yeah, you should ride more and be careful about the diet. I went from 245-lbs to 180 in the past 23-months and rode around 8200 miles last year. A 30-minute ride is just a warm-up. It's really the 2-3 hour rides that burn up the most fat and on those rides, it's really the 2nd-3rd hours that do all the work. So a 2-hour ride is worth like 3x the value of a 1-hr ride and 3-hours is around 5x in terms of calories burnt.
I find this very difficult to believe...it's my understanding that calories are burned at a fairly constant rate (assuming the same level of effort). Do you have a source you could cite for this claim (specifically, "it's really the 2nd-3rd hours that do all the work")?
I also note that many of us train with the "If you can't go long, go hard" approach, which means that my shorter 1 hour rides tend to be at higher intensity levels that my longer rides. Thus, I generally burn more calories per hour on my shorter rides.