How do calories work? I bike 5 miles, I lose ~120-150 calories. But a small snack can be more than that?

Question

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.

In: 209

Answer 1

Most people don’t realize how energy dense a chocolate bar is….

A snickers bar has more energy in them than a stick of same sized dynamite…. Snickers just used up more slowly.

Snack are really really energy dense, chaloric bombs (badumts)

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Nobody would ever need to eat snacks, if you want to lose weight, lose the snacks… Keep up your increased chaloric output and lover your input… both just a little, so you don’t shock your body.

That 200 cal extra is about 10% increase from the baseline, which is good. Lose the snacks or do what i do, if you get a chockolate or a packet… Halve it, put the other half away for tomorrow

Losing weight without change in excercise or diet is impossible, you need to give up something, or excercise more or both

Eating less is the best way, but you need months for your body to adjust, but a diet is never over, if you don’t change your daily excercise output, you are gonna get the weight back if you “stop” the diet

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I’m a programmer and since I started to work from home 4 years ago, i picked up about 40 kg of weight, just because I ate the same, but i don’t need to commute, stand on the bus or walk long distances to work…. It matters(I’m a big dude, about 190cm so it levels out but with that 130 kg, i have a belly now)

Now that i Have reintroduced 30-60 minutes of excercise each day walk or cycle, or just by going to the store everyday and I use a smaller bowl for eating things… i lost 10 kg in 3 months
(It took about 2 months to the constant hunger to stop, that was hard)