Healthy weight loss with the bicycleRiding a bicycle is a sport for which even passionate sports fans can no longer think of an excuse.
Because the intensity can be very well dosed individually, it is namely suitable even for completely untrained people. In addition, cycling can be very effective in helping you lose weight. Like? We explain.
Mountain biking in nature © Scott-Sports
The bicycle – more than just a means of transport
The bicycle is one of the best vehicles ever invented. And the most humane way for our body. Our environment to move.
Statistics show that a distance of up to four kilometers in the city can be covered significantly faster than by bus, train or car. Who gets on the bike instead of in the car, does the environment and itself, above all its health good. The heart beats faster, breathing becomes more effective, the resting pulse rate decreases, and the body's maximum oxygen uptake increases. In addition, regular cycling can help lower elevated blood lipid levels. Cycling reduces stress, relaxes and puts you in a good mood.
That's not all. The muscles are supplied with more blood, the coordination of the muscles improves, new blood vessels are formed and body fat melts away.
Boost fat metabolism and lose weight
The most effective method for burning fat and losing weight is endurance training in combination with a diet adapted to your individual metabolism.
Riding a bicycle is a training method that can perfectly perform aerobic, intensive as well as interval training. Therefore, cycling leads to a rapid improvement in physical performance.
Cycling and fat burning
How well or poorly your fat burning works depends largely on the supply of oxygen to your body.
The human organism needs large amounts of oxygen for fat oxidation. By increasing your body's oxygen uptake capacity through endurance exercise, you train your fat metabolism.
In order to obtain the required energy from fat burning during training, the load intensity should not exceed 70 percent of the maximum power.
However, sports scientists also agree that for fat burning it is important to find a reasonable compromise between the duration and the riding speed.
Hobby cyclists who want to boost their fat metabolism should prefer long distances with lower intensities. Experienced bikers who are interested in improving performance in addition to losing weight are advised to do interval training.
Interval training means that after a certain amount of time of relaxed cycling (e.g. B. after 10 min) take a short intermediate sprint (for example 2 min).
Cycling computer Polar CS500plus with pulse measurement and the sports watch M400 with pulse measurement and GPS.
How much can you lose weight by cycling?
It depends on your starting situation. Are you overweight and completely untrained or do you just suffer from some flab on your hips and belly but are otherwise quite fit??
Depending on this and your related training pulse, your body burns more oxygen between 250 and 750 kilocalories per hour cycled.
In one kilogram of body fat there are about 7700 kilocalories. This means that you need to cycle for at least 10 hours, and a maximum of 30 hours, to lose one kilo, while maintaining the same diet and lifestyle.
Healthy diet promotes weight loss
Perhaps you have already experienced that starvation only helps in the short term, but in the longer term it has the opposite effect via the yo-yo effect.
However, as soon as you supply your body with the right nutrients in the right amounts, you boost your metabolism and thus fat burning.
While competitive athletes need carbohydrates during competition to achieve peak performance, people who want to lose weight should eat less pasta, rice, bread & Co. eat.
Tip: Every consumption of carbohydrates directly blocks the fat metabolism due to the insulin release by the pancreas and thus the fat burning, which is running at full speed through your endurance training.
If you want to lose weight, you should make sure that your fat burning is not disturbed by avoiding carbohydrates for about two hours before your workout. Since the fat metabolism continues to run after training, you should only eat protein-rich food for the first two hours after training.
This prolongs the fat burning process and the protein is available to the body for regeneration and muscle building.
It is also important to eat only three meals a day, and to avoid any snacks between meals.
If one reduces then still the coal hydrates from noodles, rice, potatoes, bread and sugar-containing food and eats instead much vegetable, salads a little fruit and supplements that with high-quality protein-rich food one takes automatically off.
Protein-rich foods keep blood sugar levels constant and keep you full for a long time.
Prepare your own food as often as possible from high quality, natural ingredients.
Pay attention to a balanced, healthy diet not only on your training days.
In addition, it is important to drink enough, because as soon as the body suffers from a lack of fluids, it slows down all metabolic processes, including fat burning.
Experts recommend 2.0 to 2.5 liters per day in the form of mineral water and unsweetened green, herbal or fruit teas.
Attention! High fat burning alone does not guarantee weight loss!
Each kilogram of fat you carry around contains about 7000 kilocalories.
The bottom line is that you can only lose weight if you consume fewer calories in total than your body uses over a longer period of time.
If you eat twice the calories you burned after your workout, you immediately cancel out the fat-burning effect.
In addition, drinking enough is important, because as soon as the body suffers from a lack of fluids, it slows down all metabolic processes, including the burning of fat. Nutrition experts recommend 2.0 to 2.5 liters per day in the form of mineral water and unsweetened tea.
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Manuel 17. January 2020 at 10:51
Incredible to hear how many health benefits cycling has. I especially like the tip that stress and fat are reduced. I guess I will have to get a city bike.
Melanie 27. August 2019 at 21:48
I have a question …. When I ride a bike I don't feel like it's strenuous do I still burn calories?? I have been trying to lose weight for so long but just can't seem to do it ?
Armin 28. August 2019 at 08:34
basically, calories are burned in any kind of exercise. How many depends on the intensity, the duration of the workout and your own metabolism. To determine how hard you are cycling, a simple heart rate monitor is sufficient. Especially beginners are recommended to use a heart rate monitor to get a feel for the load. If you feel you're not getting enough mileage out of cycling, you can increase speed or increase exercise duration. Since fat burning in endurance sports such as cycling starts only after 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the training condition, it is better to train longer. As I explained in the text above, while maintaining a steady diet and low training intensity, I need to keep ca. Exercise for 30 hours to lose 1 kilo. This is a long and tedious way, so to train you should also change your diet. What works best varies from person to person, and depends on your metabolism. Some lose weight by reducing carbohydrates, others replace part of their diet with protein shakes, and still others support weight loss through interval fasting.
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