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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As exercise becomes more habitual, you may come to really enjoy it. Perhaps you’ll want to train seriously, but still at an amateur level, for a race, or something like that. If so, your daily calorie burns from exercise will grow quite large, and the muscle mass you build will increase your basal metabolic rate. While the other posters are entirely correct that diet changes are more likely to lead to weight loss for the average person, exercise can lead to pretty dramatic burns once you build up your fitness.
I’m an amateur triathlete and today was a fairly light day: speed focused swim workout, followed by a recovery run. My calorie burn was 950. Long bike rides burn around 1500-2500 calories, depending on how long I go for.
Fortunately, you don’t have to go to that effort unless you want to. Your current workout plan sounds very sensible, and if you stay consistent and pair it with a healthy diet, you will lose weight, probably faster than you expect.
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