Burning 1,000 calories on bike everyday now, eating help!!!

85 minutes on the bike at an average heart rate at 155-165 puts a lot of stress on your body. Honestly, when it comes to exercise, more isn't better. It's just more. I'm concerned you are setting yourself up for illness or burnout. My suggestion would be to cap the bike at maybe 45 minutes and include strength training in your exercise program. Honestly, I love cardio and my 40 minutes on the elliptical 4 to 5 times a week was a huge part of getting to my goal weight and size. But there are diminishing returns in doing too much exercise.

Getting a heart rate monitor is an excellent idea.

BTW, I'm a few years older than you and post-menopausal. Good for you for making your health a priority!

Best Wishes!

Ignore the people who don't believe about the 1,000 calories burned.

Every workout session I have, I burn at least 1,000 calories (Polar FT7 watch to track).

Keep doing what you are doing. You are sick of being fat and want to lose weight? You are def on the right track. You know, there are plenty of ways to lose weight safely. If you feel you are working hard and not getting the results you need, re-evaluate your meals.

Keep your calories in a deficit. Since you are burning 1,000 calories, I would suggest eating a little more before you may start to lose weight by losing muscle. You can burn as many or little calories as you want. Eat more than your BMR, less than your TDEE and you will be ok. :-)

85 minutes of "spinning" would burn that ... You do that amount of exercise and do eat back your exercise calories, you are just setting yourself up for an epic crash and fail/burnout ...

Gosh at least thank you for saying its possible. Everyone else doesn't think it is. I keep my heart rate at 155 - 165 for the entire 85 minutes.

Anyway.. what do you recommend??? that is why I am here. I want to know. Thanks!

I will be honest OP, when I first saw your opening post, I thought to myself "how the hell can she be burning that amount, she is heavily over-estimating!!!" However, seeing as to how high you are keeping your heartrate there for the whole session and how tough you have the level on that bike set at, I have changed my tune.

WTG on being able to maintain that, eat some of them back and see how the loss goes, ya doing bloody grand!!!!

If your main focus is health and weight loss then I strongly suggest you look through more reliable information than MFP forums, such as fitness books and health studies. I personally picked up reading my "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" by Tom Venuto (I swear this isn't an ad plug for the book) and I've been loving the content and it's def improved my weight loss efforts and given me far more energy throughout the day to sustain my workouts and even see some small gains in my lifts. It's written by a bodybuilder and honestly, when you think about it, who has the least amount of body fat percentage? What people can you look and see great muscle definition? The people who usually fit that category are bodybuilders and fitness models. Sure marathon runners can have just as little body fat % but do you really want to get in the habit of running those long distances? Shoooot I don't. But anyways, for the simple fact that bodybuilders know how to put on muscle and shave off body to a mere 4% (during competition season) while looking amazing (granted I'm not trying to say aim to look like Mr. Universe) proves to me that these guys know the best way of how to feed the body for optimal health and muscle gains while reducing total body fat. Plus this same book frequently sites several studies to back all the claims and is an easy and well informative read! Anyways, sorry to go a bit on a tanget. Back to your question.

I think that calorie burn is very realistic for the amount of effort your put into the cycling. I know you've already provided additional proof with the HRM but I wanted to chime in with my opinion. I use to bike about 15 miles every other day, through several hills averaging 17 mph, maintaining 25 mph+ on sprints, which would result in burning about 1400+ calories within 60 minutes according to my HRM/Bike computer. Granted I'm a much heavier and taller guy (around 245 lbs at the time and 6 ft).

However, I think you're eating far too little if you regularly burn 1000+ calories and eat around 1200-1400 calories. If you're losing about 2 lbs a week, it's very likely that a portion of that loss comes from muscle. If you're burning that much in a cycling session, you're body is constantly looking for energy so you definitely should eat a good amount of carbs prior to your cycling workout and have a easy-carb snack through the session and above all stay hydrated! Otherwise your body will look at the best expendable source of energy in your body, which is muscle because of it's high energy density (and several other reasons I can't remember at the time) as opposed to fat.

A good and safe guideline to follow for calorie consumption is usually at most 10-20% less of the calories required to maintain. This site is a really good source for estimating your calorie needs to maintain your weight and incorporates your level of activity in the equation. http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/
I put in the information you gave in this forum and came up with the result of 2700+ calories to maintain your current physique while also cycling daily. If you want to see what you should shoot for to lose weight than reduce that number by 10-20%, so your calorie goal should be about 2400-2100 calories. Your basal metabolic rate BMR (least amount of calories your body needs for daily functions e.g. organ function, digestion, etc.) is about 1600 calories so I think flirting far too close to your danger zone. I know 2100 calories seems excessive considering what you currently eat but you should slowly but gradually bring yourself up to this level or else your currently large deficit of calories will eventually exhaust you to injury and can ruin your weight loss efforts with food crash. Heck even 2000 calories would be great for you. I've made this change to my diet (jumping from 1970 to 2300-2500 calories within a few weeks) and I've been feeling fantastic and have been losing about 1+ lbs a week.

Lastly, as other members have suggested, I agree that you should incorporate different workouts in your regime,especially weight lifting! The best fat burner in existence are your muscles so increasing muscle mass WILL increase your metabolism i.e. your body's fat burn capabilities. Although a weight lifting session may not seem like much of a calorie burn when you input it into MFP, you need to keep in consideration that your body def burns more calories as it repairs the muscles you worked out, nearly doubling your total calorie burn. You should probably aim to alternate your weight lifting/strength training and cardio days, incorporating this into your workout regime will def give you a great workout and shave off the fat!
As always, diet is def the most important component of your weigh loss efforts, so make sure you're feeding your body the right amount of calories and you're getting those calories from great sources which should def be high in carbs (considering your current workouts) about 30% protein and around 20-30% fat!

Okay, enough of me running my mouth haha good luck!

recipe for a disaster. What you are doing is a bad idea. Don't use exercise as a method of "calorie gapping". You're going to overstress your body.

There's no reason for you to be biking for 85 minutes a day. This is setting yourself up for failure. It's not a realistic exercise regime. People who work out at high intensities like this, will eventually "poop out." And you'll end up with even more problems.

I am 195 and 5'3. I've gained 95 lbs in the past 3 years from anxiety medicines and am not struggling to lose the weight. So I was very skinny, like you mentioned you were before as well.

Instead of biking for 85 minutes a day… you should do 30 minutes a day. That will still give you a good burn of 300/400 calories depending on intensity. Next you should do strength training and resistance training. Buy yourself a set of weights… 3 lbs, 5 lbs, 7 lbs, 10 lbs… whatever you can manage.

I HIGHLY suggest purchasing Slim in 6… it's a workout program… 3 levels… I lost 10 inches in less than a month. It's low impact cardio and resistance training. It WILL tone you up and make you strong.

I do not recommend burning more than 500 calories every day through exercise. You simply don't need to burn anymore.

As for food… if you are burning 500 calories a day through exercise… you should be eating 1700/1800 calories a day. This will give you a NET CALORIE INTAKE of 1200/1300 which you will lose weight at. About 2 lbs a week which is healthy.

Your weight loss journey should be SLOW. People who lose weight fast, gain it back even faster. That's the way you're headed if you continue with the 85 minutes of biking and burning over 1000 calories a day.

There's no reason for you to be biking for 85 minutes a day. This is setting yourself up for failure. It's not a realistic exercise regime. People who work out at high intensities like this, will eventually "poop out." And you'll end up with even more problems.

Completely, utterly, unequivocally disagree. 90 minutes of daily exercise is only "a lot" because we have gotten so lazy. Real athletes do 3x that much, there is no reason at all why I normal person should burn out on 90 minutes a day.

In my 90 minutes this morning, I rode 40km.

It's really not that big a deal once you get in some kind of shape.

I felt the same way. Slim most my life and then the slow creep to obese. I'm using Bob Harper's The Skinny Rules. There is also a Jumpstart to Skinny that I recommend. I quit smoking cold turkey years ago and like to get a problem solved as quick as possible. You can lose 2-3 lbs. weekly safely and continue to build muscle and nourish your body. Eating a ratio of 40-20-40 protein to fat to carbs will help. Drink 80 ounces of water, get use to eating chicken, salmon and lots of vegetables...some fruit but watch the quantity. I've lost close to 30 lbs. and many inches on his program (started it less than 3 months ago) and now feel so much stronger and can even run abit! You must take electrolyte drink (i use powder) and fish oil and sleep a solid 6-9 hours so your body can repair. Good luck on your journey back to your younger days. I too am heading to have this weight thing done by my birthday. II'm currently a 12 & I'll be pleased to wear an 8 again...so different than the 18 of 2 months ago and the 22 of this Spring.

I am biking the entire 85 mintues at an average of 19 miles an hour keeping my heart rate at 155-165 on level 11, actual miles I rode 27. Why does everyone not think this is possible??? :frown: Its kinda discouraging.

I do 19 mph on the stationary bike at the gym for 30 min .. and that is pretty much full out. (I only do level 6 maybe that makes a difference) I don't believe that you can maintain that rate for 85 min, but if you can .. you are doing better than me. (I do about 95-107 rpm .. don't know what you do but I would be interested in finding out, just cause I may try your workout next time I go to the gym to see if I can do what you do)

Go for half! Eat at 1500 - 1700 cals a day for a couple weeks, and see where it takes you. Monitor your loss, and then adjust your deficit to suit. Just remember to pay attention to things like fatigue and sickness creeping in - push as agressively as you can without taking yourself out of the game! YOU CAN DO IT! Just remember to listen to your body!