Want to Get Rich? Open a Gas Station in China 37

” . . .exercise improves your metabolism which helps burn energy more efficiently . . .”

Emphasis added in order that what you said can be understood more easily. Do you know what “efficient” means? What you have not said is what “exercise” means, what “fit” means, or the mechanism through which the one leads to the other.

Hint: it is mostly through neuromuscular adaptation. i.e., learning how to perform the motion properly. Not a metabolic affect.

How did we go from urban utility cycling to 25 mile time trialing? The minimum energy need for moving a mass from one place to another is determined by the mass and distance. Time does not appear as a factor. Raising the energy need above the minimum is through inefficiency. Indeed, in a frictionless system you will move an infinite distance without any energy use at all.

The basic energy need of a cyclist is .015 Calories per gram per kilometer. If you reduce the mass, you reduce the energy need. Think about that.

How did we go from using a motor in the process of moving about the urban environment to never leaving a couch? How is the person on the couch prevented from exercising? What forces the person on the bicycle to exercise. How do accomplish the force feeding the couch potato and/or starving of the cyclist?

You are controlling diet, not exercise, just as bicycle racers must do in order to control their weight.

You need to think about these issues more; and more deeply.

And pay more attention to my premise, which in your closing statement you appear to have utterly abandoned.

“moderate exercise from urban cycling improves boost one’s metabolism”

There is no “metabolic boost” from moderate, aerobic exercise. Metabolic boost is an effect of significantly depleting one’s glycogen stores which need to be replenished after the exercise is over, which only happens with more intense exercise. A racing effort. At low to moderate intensities you can ride until you fall asleep without inducing any metabolic boost if you maintain your normal diet.

To compound the issue, since one of the things that makes a bicycle efficient is that it is non weight bearing exercise, you will atrophy muscle in the process, reducing your energy needs at rest.

Muscle atrophy is how Mark Cavendish reduced his weight for racing this season. By staying out of the weight room and doing lots of moderate intensity miles.

I maintain, and even build a bit, of muscle by climbing mountains on a fixed gear at speeds that blow running backs off my wheel, but a few minutes of squats are far more productive; and produce a metabolic boost.

People with triple cranks neither can nor are they interested in such efforts. The middle aged man on a century ride bulging out of his lycra is a stereotype. You can certainly Google plenty of images of them, despite their 10k miles per year.

” . . . burn more calories with less energy . . .”

If you understood what a calorie is you could not have said this. It is an absurdity. Up your game in this supportive environment, lest you get smacked upside your ignorance outside of it.

“The benefits of moderate exercise . . .”

. . . are something I have not even sought to address in this thread, as they are not relevant to the inquiry.

I’m not really sure what you’re getting at. Obesity, we care about because it produces bad health and early death. The Danish study demonstrated that utility cycling reduced mortality (a lot) and extended lifespans. My experience (which has a before-after component to it) demonstrates that a moderate amount of utility cycling cuts weight and improves blood chemistry (and is also good for arthritis and mood). It has a much smaller N (1, versus 30,000+) but it does have a nice before/after component.

I did not make any effective effort to control my diet; one of the reasons I (re)started serious cycling was that I was having piss-poor luck through the diet-only route.

This is the Danish study: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/160/11/1621 . Lots of people, quite a few years, adjusting for other risk factors. You pointing out a few fat Danes on bikes would not be interesting information, compared to a study of this size and scope.

It-is-possible that this is all a miraculous coincidence, that in fact exercise has no particular effect on health at all. I wouldn’t bet on that, though.

I looked at your other reply. You’re trolling, and all your theorizing is bullshit. If you use a bike for utility cycling, chances are good it will make you healthier. There is some chance that you will lose weight. Despite cycling’s well-known efficiency, I did not eat enough extra food to cover the additional miles until I had moved my set-point about 20 pounds lower.

And no, I am not time-trialing. I am in a hurry when I ride, but who isn’t?

Obesity is not that interesting, if it does not have an effect on health. The Danish study shows a big correlation. Cause is suggested by the large pattern across many studies all showing health benefits from exercise (including mouse studies, which help to rule out selection effects, i.e., healthy people choosing to get more exercise).

Your fixation on the efficiency of cycling, as transportation, does not negate the fact that it is also exercise. Compared to driving, many things are efficient. Because cycling in an urban environment is nearly as fast as driving (unlike walking), you can use it as a substitute without spending a lot of additional time on transit. It is also not *that* efficient — one rule of thumb is 50 kCal/mile, and 30 miles cycling per week means 1500 kCal per week.

As far as diet goes, for a few years around when I ramped up cycling, I did nothing particularly effective to change my diet, but I lost weight shortly after I started regularly riding my bike to work (15-20lbs). I did change my diet a few years later, and saw a modest weight loss (4lbs). The fact that I was able to make a change post-cycling that I was not able to make pre-cycling is perhaps interesting in itself, though obviously anecdotal.

By-the-way, you state “has no effect on patterns of obesity” with great confidence, almost as if you had read a paper describing this effect. Perhaps you could supply a reference? I did some searching, and found nothing that supports your claim of no-effect. I did find studies reporting that time spent in a car was correlated with obesity.

I did find: “For example, increasing physical activity levels by walking briskly for 1 to 1.5 miles a day (e.g., a 15- or 20-minute mile) could offset the estimated net daily caloric imbalance of 100 to 150 calories” (http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/sr/sr282.pdf)

Other articles discuss the effectiveness of small amounts of exercise (e.g., 30 minutes brisk walking, 5 times per week), if maintained over time. 5 miles per day is easily 150 calories, perhaps as much as 250. The lowest estimate I’ve seen for calories per mile is 30 — 10-12mph cycling by a 130lb person.

And yes, 150 calories is just one beer, or one can of soda, or two small bananas.

So what the heck is your point? Utility cycling looks exactly like what is recommended by experts as exercise for weight loss (along or combined with dieting), and it has the advantage that it “takes no time” in an urban environment, since you can substitute it for driving. And further, whopping large studies indicate that it really is good for you.

ha, ha, you got no references, else you would provide them. Contrived trollish rules for blog comment debate do not change the fact that urban utility cycling provides enough exercise for weight loss. AND, irrelevant bonus, it is good for you.

You’re just bullshitting.

I think we need a citation on that 5 miles per banana. That’s well outside all the estimates I see both for bicycle propulsion (least is 30 kCal/mi) and banana calories (most was 135 in an “extra large banana”). Because you know, if you’re going to be all pedantic, I really think you should do it right. I’d hate to think you were just pulling numbers out of your hat.