Stationary Bike, Heart Rate and Calories

tomsawyerv

I've been riding my stationary bike as my cardio and I read somewhere that you should keep your heart rate ~130 if your goal is weight loss. I've been doing that, a steady 30 minutes with a '3' resistance on my bike, which keeps me going about 15-16 mph. I had been doing a staggered routine back and forth every three minutes between a '2' and '4' resistance, but on the 4, my heart rate shoots up to ~150. Is that bad? Good? Doesn't matter at all?

Also, the MFP calorie burn count is completely different from the one on my bike counter, but my bike counter does not ask for anything like age, weight, etc. that I believe has an effect. Should I always just put in the lower number to cover myself?

treehopper1987

I wear a HRM to check my HR while I'm working out. I have a resting HR of around 40 and my suggested goal is between 65-85. I am 25 yrs old. I think it depends on many factors. I typically burn close to what my stationary bike suggests and it does not include weight, age, etc either. That being said, I must be close to the avg person that would use my stationary bike.... if you are older or weigh more you could be burning a lot more..or less...there are a lot of factors...

tameko2

You don't need to worry about the fat burning range - and actually its better if you don't.

http://exercise.about.com/od/weightloss/a/The-Truth-About-The-Fat-Burning-Zone.htm

I couldn't find the post I Was thinking about but some googling brought up that which looks along the lines of what I wanted to say.

Basically if you burn 100 calories and 50% are fat, its still worse in terms of TOTAL calories burned than if you burn 200 calories and 35% are fat.

tomsawyerv

Wonderful, thank you to you both. I tried a bit of Googling, but it's so hard to decipher what is reasonable and what is crazy fad sometimes.