Does Riding A Bike Burn Belly Fat?
Everyone loves cycling.
Maybe not everyone, but almost everyone does. It’s fun and a healthy way to get around. You can burn calories, keep fit, breathe some fresh air and strengthen your muscles.
Apart from drawing you closer to the environment, it also benefits the environment as it produces no emissions. But one question people still ask intermittently is, does riding a bike burn belly fat?
Everyone agrees that belly fat has no benefits. It makes the body saggy and has obvious health risks. Belly fat is linked to infirmities such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and diabetes. People do whatever they can to get rid of belly fat.
However, most of the exercises that deal with the loss of accumulated fats in the body are pretty strenuous. Many people who want to lose belly fat hope for a fun way of doing it, like cycling.
Cycling is a favorite exercise for the young and old. If it has belly-fat burning properties, that would be a significant way of losing them.
Is Cycling Good for Fat Loss?
Does riding a bike burn belly fat?
The theory behind fat loss is straightforward. When your body engages in workouts, your muscles are stressed and need more energy. The body wastes no time using any stored energy it can find, which is stored most times as fat.
The fat is then used up, leading to a loss of calories. The only problem is that most people recoup all the calories they lose during exercises and more after their workouts through what they drink and eat.
That’s why many people experience a net gain of calories and fats after training.
So, all exercises, including cycling, uses up stored fat in the body. The only clarification is that some exercises burn up fat faster than others. How well does cycling burn fat, and can you rely on cycling as an effective way to lose fat?
In certain conditions, cycling can be great for fat loss. Let’s look at some of them.
Cycling is not considered a high-intensity exercise. The higher the intensity of the exercise, the more effective it is to burn up fat.
For perspective, consider sitting comfortably on your couch and watching Tiktok videos on your phone to be at one end of the spectrum of consuming energy and a 100-meter dash at the other end.
Cycling is somewhere in the middle. If an exercise is not that intense, you’ll need to perform it for longer to achieve noticeable results.
Some researchers have noted that you’ll need to cycle for as long as one and a half hours before you can be said to have burnt enough fats.
Cycling before eating is also one condition that improves the loss of fats in the body.
The body can easily use up energy stored in foods when cycling preventing actual loss of fats and calories. But when you cycle before breakfast, you stand a higher chance of shedding fats.
How Many Calories Does Cycling Burn?
Regardless of when you cycle, how you cycle and whether you’ve eaten or not before cycling, you lose calories when you cycle. Most people who go cycling do so to lose weight.
For every 30 minutes of cycling, about 250 calories are lost. However, because cycling can boost metabolism, you can lose more calories even while resting.
Two main factors that determine how many calories you burn are how long you ride and the intensity of your ride. As noted earlier, cycling is not often a very high-intensity exercise.
As such, many people who wish to burn calories tend to perform it at a high-intensity level for long periods so that riding a bike burns belly fat. That is a counterproductive approach.
When you train at high intensity for long periods, it may leave you inflamed and keep your body absorbing more fat eventually to make up. The best approach is to ride at low intensity for 80% of the time and only spend 20% riding at high intensity.
The Best Type of Bike for Weight Loss
Riding for weight loss is different from riding for fun. There needs to be more intensity and time to make it effective. To make it easier, some bikes are designed to help you if you aim to lose some belly fat while riding.
However, if you love to ride leisurely around town, you may keep your cruiser bike. But if you want to ride fats out of your belly, here are bikes to go for.
- Road bikes: If you need a bike that can help you burn belly fat while riding smoothly along city roads, the road bikes are your best choice. They are fast, lightweight, and can commute for long on the road. Riding the road bike for sixty minutes can help you shed as much as 200 calories. However, road bikes are only designed for smooth roads. If you want something more rugged, check out our next bike.
- Mountain bikes: Mountain bikes are heavier than road bikes and are designed for more challenging terrains and rugged adventures. Their conspicuous tires are thick because they are designed for mountains and rougher surfaces. If you want to take things more seriously, go for a mountain bike. You will lose more calories and burn more belly fat with mountain bikes.
- Hybrid bikes: If you think mountain bikes are too rugged or road bikes are too soft, then the hybrid bike was designed for you. Fast, lightweight, yet rugged, and great for rough terrains, go for hybrid bikes if you want to lose weight while riding in comfort.
Indoor vs. Outdoor
Indoor fitness bikes have many benefits over regular bikes. You can ride anytime, and of course, you can ride at home. However, indoor bikes seem to come short for several reasons when it comes to burning calories and losing belly fat.
First, indoor bikes have a pedaling system that provides resistance as you ride. Unfortunately, the resistance keeps the pedal moving even when you’re not actively pedaling. This means you do less work while riding indoors.
Also, you could be easily bored by the routine and repetitive cycle. A 30-minutes indoor session with an indoor bike seems like more work than a one-hour ride across the city.
That’s because you’re stationary and can be easily bored or even distracted. The sights and varieties mean you can ride for longer outdoors, thereby burning more calories and losing more belly fat.
However, for the sake of convenience, many people prefer indoor bikes. If you’re able to get over the boredom and set your heart to working out for as long as necessary, you’ll find indoor bikes very helpful in building your muscles, burning excess fat off your body.
So, our recommendation can only depend on what your preferences are. If you want to go hard, go for outdoor exploration.
With a solid mountain bike, belly fat stands little chance. If you’re going to be a bit slow but steady about it, then stay indoors and work it out at your own pace!
Conclusion
Riding to lose belly fat requires a lot of consistency and determination.
Depending on your desires, you may choose to ride indoors or outdoors, but the number of calories lost during riding depends on how long and how intense the ride is.
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