6 Reasons Biking Boosts Weight Loss

By by the editors of Bicycling

You'll want to hop on your bike and hit the roads instantly after learning these six reasons cycling is so effective at helping you lose weight.

It Won't Wear Your Joints Out

Bicycling is a nonimpact 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 racer can pedal for miles (and burn loads of calories) hour after hour.

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.

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.

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.

It Increases Your Daily Calorie Burn

Cycling also increases your daily calorie burn. It burns calories—hundreds of them—while you’re out there turning the pedals. Even at a recreational pace of 13 to 15 miles per hour, you burn 500 to 600 calories in one hour. That's about 4,000 per week—enough to burn off more than a pound—if you ride just an hour every day. An hour of walking, on the other hand, burns just 150 to 250 calories while jogging only burns between 350 and 450 calories.

It Continues Burning Calories Long After You're Done

Finally, cycling coaxes your body to continue burning calories at a higher rate after you’ve racked your bike, because your body is still working to repair and replenish your muscles. Bicycling also builds lean muscle tissue and raises your basal metabolicrate (BMR), the calories 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.