If you’re feeling the effects of overindulging, you’ll want to hop on your bike instantly after learning these six reasons cycling is so effective at helping you lose weight. By Selene Yeager
It Strengthens Your Body’s Biggest Muscles
Cycling uses all the biggest muscles in your body; your quads, hamstrings, hip muscles, and glutes. As you ride you also build lean muscle tissue in your lower body, especially in your legs and glutes. That’s all essential for increasing your fat-burning ability.
You’ll want to hop on your bike instantly after learning these six reasons cycling is so effective at helping you lose weight.
It Won’t Wear Your Joints Out
Cycling is a non-impact exercise, which means there’s no jarring on your joints, so even the heaviest rider can climb aboard a bike and pedal. With today’s fully geared bicycles, anyone from the most out-of-shape beginner to the recreational rider can pedal for miles (and burn loads of calories) hour after hour.
You’ll want to hop on your bike instantly after learning these six reasons cycling is so effective at helping you lose weight.
It Trains Your Muscles to Burn More Fat
Cycling, especially long, steady rides, builds hundreds of thousands of capillaries in your legs, which means you can deliver more oxygen-rich blood to your working muscles. Your mitochondria (the fat-burning furnaces in your muscle cells) also get bigger, so they can use the increased influx of oxygen to burn more fat and produce more energy.
You’ll want to hop on your bike instantly after learning these six reasons cycling is so effective at helping you lose weight.
It Produces More Ways to Burn Fat
The endurance training you do on a bicycle elevates your levels of fatty-acid-binding proteins and fat-carrying enzymes so your body is more efficient at shuttling fatty acids from storage into your working muscles. Simply put, the fitter you get, the more oxygen you can use, and the more fat you can burn.
You’ll want to hop on your bike instantly after learning these six reasons cycling is so effective at helping you lose weight.
It Increases Your Daily Kilojoule Burn
Cycling also increases your daily kilojoule burn. It burns kilojoules (hundreds of them) while you’re out there turning the pedals. Even at a recreational pace of 20 to 25 km per hour, you burn 2,100 to 2,500 kilojoules in one hour. That’s about 16,800 per week —enough to burn off more than half a kg— if you ride just an hour every day.
You’ll want to hop on your bike instantly after learning these six reasons cycling is so effective at helping you lose weight.
It Continues Burning Kilojoules Long After You’re Done
Finally, cycling coaxes your body to continue burning kilojoules at a higher rate after you’ve racked your bike, because your body is still working to repair and replenish your muscles. Cycling also builds lean muscle tissue and raises your basal metabolicrate (BMR), the kilojoules you burn while you’re just hanging around, not exercising. Studies show that just 30 to 45 minutes of exercise most days a week can boost your BMR and keep it raised all day.