Trying to lose weight and putting it in numbers is demoralizing. I’ve started riding a stationary bike for 5 miles and then doing minor weight lifting after and I maaaaybe lose 200 or so calories. Is that not a good exercise? I’ve been doing this almost everyday starting 2 weeks ago. But it’s starting to feel useless if it’s such a minor amount of calories burnt. Is this a good trend to continue? What am I missing?
Edit: everyone here has been incredibly helpful, and surprisingly consistent with one another. I feel much more confident about what I’m doing and what I need to do. Seriously, thank you all.
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Humans are extremely efficient at walking and running. Bikes makes us even more efficient. If you want to really BURN energy, do something we are not efficient at such as: gymnastics, swimming; weights; just about any exercise that doesn’t involve being upright with two feet.
Ok so… You won’t lose much actually biking around – for the reason mentioned above – but what you do end up doing is increasing your passive energy consumption; since you will develop more muscle mass.
Muscles are incredibly energy hungry just by existing. Our body doesn’t like to keep anything too demanding around, so it removes them. How do you gain muscles then? Well funnily enough by damaging them; when you stress your body with physical exercise you damage your muscles, which then proceed to fix themselves by having the cells replicate and then you have more muscle. However there is a certain point of mitigating returns, if you get enough muscle mass you can’t keep it since you can’t stress is effectively, which is why professional body builders do very specific almost muscle exclusive exercises with high intensity. Since the type of body they have is not *natural* as in they are pushing it to the limits and beyond of what it can be by manipulating these natural mechanism with unnatural means. Which is where the art and sport of the sport lies, doing something extreme that our bodies normally shouldn’t do by manipulating how they work.
So you will lose weight as long as your diet stay stable. This is because just you staying alive consumes the most calories you could possibly consume. Only way to consume more by existing is to stay be somewhere where it is really cold, because this triggers metabolic changes in our bodies.
So you shouldn’t think you are taking a bike ride to burn energy, but you are taking a bike ride so your body starts to burn more energy. Because the thing is that you can lose weight by just laying in your bed all day. Many people who are bedridden do lose weight quickly and a lot, this is because they usually can’t get enough to or can’t eat enough. This is actually a quicker way to lose weight than adding exercise to your normal life assuming your diet is stable.
I don’t know what your goal really is, but if it is to lose weight then don’t actually focus on losing weight. Instead focus on not gaining more of it. Also don’t use a scale or count calories, use a measure of tactical spots (Belly, Waist, Hips), because your weight can go up and down +-5 kilos depending on stress, hydration, are you sick or healthy, what you been eating; but you tactical measurements do not. Always have a goal that you aren’t becoming bigger, and suddenly you’ll realise you are becoming smaller.
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