Cycling Calories

nicholszoo

Hello:

MFP via Map my Ride calculated my recent ride of 15.5 miles in about 75 minutes (about 12.5 mph) at a calorie consumption of 1047. The ride was on a well groom trail, some road, mostly flat.

I'm 5'9, 182 lbs, BMI ~ 25 or so. I'm also 49.

Does that make sense? Is it really that much?

Thanks,

Scott.

sijomial

That's an enormous number!
Maybe 400 - 600 cals depending on terrain, elevation and type of bike? You would have to be super fit and pushing really hard to be capable of that rate of burn.

Whenever the Map My suite of products gets mentioned the calorie burns seem pure fantasy.
Maybe try Strava instead?

(PS - for comparison I'm 5'9, 170lbs and generally my brisk pace, about 17mph on road, is about 600/hour, moderate pace about 500/hour.)

IGbnat24

A more reasonable calorie burn would be ~300 calories/mile. Of course that could go up depending on your weight, fitness level, intensity of the ride.

sijomial

IGbnat24 wrote: »

A more reasonable calorie burn would be ~300 calories/mile. Of course that could go up depending on your weight, fitness level, intensity of the ride.

So a 17 mph ride for an hour would burn 5100 cals? :noway:
Perhaps you meant 30 cals a mile?

aokoye

IGbnat24 wrote: »

A more reasonable calorie burn would be ~300 calories/mile. Of course that could go up depending on your weight, fitness level, intensity of the ride.

If that were the case I would have met my goal weight a long time ago. I would also have a much harder time eating back even close to all of the calories I burn on a long bike ride than I do now.

Machka9

I go with 100 cal for every 5 km.

If I cycle 20 km/hour, that's 400 cal/hour.

That seemed to work well while I was losing weight. As I lost weight, I found I probably needed to lower that to about 90 cal for every 5 km, or not eat back quite as many calories.

IGbnat24

So a 17 mph ride for an hour would burn 5100 cals? :noway:
Perhaps you meant 30 cals a mile?[/quote]

Omg I meant 100cal per 3 miles! I don’t know where my head was when I typed that!

IGbnat24

If that were the case I would have met my goal weight a long time ago. I would also have a much harder time eating back even close to all of the calories I burn on a long bike ride than I do now.[/quote]

Big brain fart when I was typing. I meant ~100cal/3miles

Ed_Zilla

When I am cycling hard and fast on relatively flat trails in the 15 mph range, I can burn about 850 cal/hr. I have checked this with my HRM. Luckily for me, MFP calorie estimates for cycling seem to be close enough to accurate that I do not worry about the difference.

blobby10

When I cycle, I usually bank on burning about 30 cals per mile whatever the terrain. My HRM (Myzone) backs that up on flatter rides but on hilly stuff I obviously burn more. Unless you are horrendously overweight then your calorie burn does sound a bit on the high side!!

cpw2109

I always take note of Strava and Garmin Connect for my calorie expenditure when cycling - even they show a difference using the heart rate monitor. I rarely eat back all of my exercise calories, but if I was going to, I'd take the lower figure.

nicholszoo

Thanks for all the input. I changed the bicycle type from mountain bike to hybrid bike to see what that would do, but when i rode the next day....almost the same 15 mile loop, Map my ride calculated a calorie amount of 1008. Seems high. It seems changing the type of bike made no difference.

It's strange that the MFP algorithm is so high for this, but for doing things like walking, it seems reasonable. I know I'm not the first person to point this out. Why wouldn't they fix this?

tbright1965

This seems to be in the range of other articles and calculations I've seen:

https://www.livestrong.com/article/135430-calories-burned-biking-one-mile/

So for your pace and distance, given that you are less than the 190# 53 calorie/mile, I'd say you were in the 700-800 calorie range.

I have a love-hate relationship with MMR, as it missed the first 25 miles of a 40 mile ride I did on Saturday. So I've been using my GPS equipped FitBit as a backup.

I try to NOT eat my exercise calories back, so it's really just to tell me how hard I worked.

I averaged 14.5 MPH for the last 15 miles and 15.9 MPH for the first 25. I guess that 1/2 a waffle and two cups of coffee were heavy in my belly

Oh, and the sun was in my eyes, and the wind, yeah, that's it, the wind ....

Enjoy your rides.

I weigh 227# and my fitbit claimed 1381 for the 15 mile leg and 1578 for the 25 mile leg. Go figure.

In my case, I'd say the 25 mile leg was reasonably accurate at 63 calories/mile and a pretty good clip. The 15 mile leg, I believe the calculation was influenced by MMR.

My MyZone also decided to call in sick and didn't capture heart rate data, so no 3rd source with which I can compare.

Djproulx

sijomial wrote: »

(PS - for comparison I'm 5'9, 170lbs and generally my brisk pace, about 17mph on road, is about 600/hour, moderate pace about 500/hour.)

My cycling calorie expenditure is measured by power meter & HRM data and displayed in Garmin Connect.
My numbers are usually very similar to the bolded above.

As a reference point, Saturday's ride showed 2360 calories burned in 4hours, 17 minutes. That equated to 550.9 calories per hour during a hilly training ride. Ave pace was 17.0 mph.

kschwab0203

I brought something like this up last week.... MFP and the stationary bike both calculate about 270 calories burned for about 25 minutes. My fit bit showed 60. Then the next day, MFP and bike showed 330 for 30 min and fitbit showed about 180. Seems like a pretty big gap. It confuses me because MFP and the bike are almost always exactly the same in terms of calories burned so I don't know which to believe.

jjpptt2

Admittedly, I hate these conversations... but I'm going to try to keep this civilized.

Unless you have a power meter, there's no way to know. Even with a power meter, there is still a margin of error (albeit a much smaller one). So all you can do is make a reasonable guess. For most, that's going to be between 5 and 10 calories per minute depending on various factors.

But take a step back... why do you care how many calories you burn? If it's for energy balance/weight management, then all that matters is how well your estimate works with how you estimate calories eaten, TDEE, etc. All we do is estimate, so why debate endlessly about 1 aspect of it? Pick a reasonable estimate, be consistent, and monitor your results/progress. Adjust if needed.

Machka9

jjpptt2 wrote: »

Admittedly, I hate these conversations... but I'm going to try to keep this civilized.

Unless you have a power meter, there's no way to know. Even with a power meter, there is still a margin of error (albeit a much smaller one). So all you can do is make a reasonable guess. For most, that's going to be between 5 and 10 calories per minute depending on various factors.

But take a step back... why do you care how many calories you burn? If it's for energy balance/weight management, then all that matters is how well your estimate works with how you estimate calories eaten, TDEE, etc. All we do is estimate, so why debate endlessly about 1 aspect of it? Pick a reasonable estimate, be consistent, and monitor your results/progress. Adjust if needed.

Yep.

I've been cycling a long time, and am a long distance cyclist. For me, I care how many calories I burn to give me an idea of how many calories to consume for fuel without going too crazy ... your energy balance/weight management thing.

It is all just a general estimate, and over the years and a lot of kilometres, I've found that approximately 100 cal/5 km seems to work for me. It works for weight loss when I happen to need that, and it works to give me an idea of how much to eat so that I can continue to cycle for hours to come.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

You have many choices for getting estimates, of which I've tried three:

1) Tracking-based: I like the one from RideWithGPS. It knows your weight, speed, and how many feet you climbed, so the good apps are pretty accurate.

2) HR-based: The HR formulas are crude. My HR tends to run a bit high while exercising, so it gives me numbers that seem high.

3) MFP-based (essentially, time and weight based): This is a simple solution. Just type your time into the appropriate MFP speed category. If you did a lot of climbing it calorie estimate could be low, but otherwise this works for me.