How Many Calories Are Torched by Cycling?

Maybe you want to know how to estimate exactly how many calories you have torched during cycling. Someone says that cyclists who weigh 180 pounds and ride with moderate effort will torch about 650 calories every hour, on average. Of course, it’s a number estimated roughly. In fact, it depends on many elements. Here I will recommend 10 elements to help you estimate your calories expenditure.

calories burnt in cycling

Weight
Statistics shows that the more weight someone has, the more calories he will burn, provided that his anything else is similar to that of the others.

Effort
Obviously, the greater your effort is, the more calories you will torch. Thus it’s reasonable to know a 180 pounds man burns no more calories than a 150 pounds man in the same sport. It’s not just a matter of weight. However, with the same effort, the former will torch more for his moving more weight. Carbohydrate will be torched mostly while more fat you will torch than that with great effort on flat roads.

MPH
In other word, it’s the speed, a matter relevant to the effort. Different MPH is divided into different ranges of cycling. According to the authorities, 12 to 13.9 MPH is moderate cycling, less than 12 is light, and 14 to 15.9 is vigorous, while more than 15.9 is racing. You burn calories differently in different MPH. For example, in moderate cycling, about 53 calories are burned every mile for 190 pounds people, 43 calories or so for 155 pounds people and 36 or so for 130 pounds people.

Heart rate
To measure your effort more exactly, you can also rely on the heart rate. If you are fond of downward slopes, stop signs and coast, your heart rate will be lowered and calories’ burning is cut. You should keep on pedaling and get the coasting mini, then you will find amazingly that your calories have been torches much more than you can torch with much coasting. A true example is a cyclist who is 36 years old, weighs 70 KG and rides for 20 MPH with 140 BPM torches 777 calories per hour.

Muscle tissue
It’s said that men will burn more calories than women in general for their having more muscle tissue, which means men will torch more calories with the same effort. However, it also means that people will torch fewer calories when getting older and losing muscle mass. It’s a matter of age, but you can do exercises constantly to maintain the muscle mass, which can also keep your metabolic rate high to improve the burning rate of calories.calories burnt in cycling

Diet
Foods you eat are important to your efficiency and speed on turning them into motion. You will be more efficient to eat foods with good qualities and right types. If you ride for a short time after waking up without having breakfast, your body will burn more fat. You can have a cup of green or black tea ahead, which makes morning rides less frightening and help calories expenditure. Remember to have a good breakfast after your morning rides.

Aerodynamic
If your body is large and you ride upright with clothes not tight, you will expend more energy in the air than a cyclist who has smaller body and rides with tight clothes. How much your aerodynamic drag is depends on how large your area facing the front is. Thus it’s not just a matter of wind direction and speed.

The number of slopes
It’s possible to estimate the number wrong up to 20 percent in cycling. Runners have more accurate results because their movements are more common and easier to be estimated. On the contrary, cyclists face with more changeable factors, one of which is the route. If you are going through a route with many downward slopes, you will torch fewer calories. After all, you are moving with the wheels which cut the calories many.

Terrain
If you only cycle on flat roads, your fat is not so easy to be torched. Keeping on riding on the same roads with the same intensity doesn’t help if you want to lose weight. You’d better try another principle. For example, get some short but explosive bursts of energy in reasonable terrains when riding a mountain or cyclocross bike, which can act like interval training. Also, it’ll be a good idea if you have no too much time on cycling. An hour of cycling on the trails can torch 100 calories or so which is more than that of steady riding on flat roads because the intensity has risen up. You don’t need to choose long and hard roads always; once or twice a week or extra 15 minutes is enough.

Frequencycalories burnt in cycling
You should know that calories expenditure is a matter of accumulation. If you ride only once a week, things aren’t going to change. You won’t recognize the difference until the days turn into weeks. Thus it’s better to ride for an hour at four days of a week than to ride for four hours at a time of a week. You will torch more calories in this way. Therefore, be consistent. Otherwise, you can torch more calories by cycling to commute instead of choosing the other transportation. If available, change your routes to commute so that you can cycle on various distances and terrains to avoid repeating the same, steady, or too short routes.

That’s all of the elements I want to remind you. It’s not an easy work to torch many calories, but if you follow the above tips, you can torch more. Thank you for your reading and if you have any suggestion, welcome to make a statement. Wish you a good end on the way of torching calories!