30-40 mins of stationary bike every day

rewritingmystory
rewritingmystory Posts: 10 Member
edited May 2022 in Fitness and Exercise
I have recently begun adding 30 minutes of exercising on the stationary bike daily. How much can this help me gain weight if I am consuming around 1600 calories a day? Previously all I did was walk about 20 mins a day. I'm still doing this, just have added the 30 min on the stationary bike. Can go to 50 or 60 mins if needed. I'm really enjoying this exercise.

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Replies

  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
    edited May 2022
    To gain weight? Very little.

    The 1600 cals per day may or may not help you gain weight, but the stationary bike riding won't do much.
  • gpanda103
    gpanda103 Posts: 189 Member
    Probably won’t make you gain lol. You might retain water due to your legs repairing themselves but that’s alll
  • DancingMoosie
    DancingMoosie Posts: 8,613 Member
    Sounds more like a way to lose weight...
  • rewritingmystory
    rewritingmystory Posts: 10 Member
    Sorry, meant to say lose.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    How much it helps with weight loss depends how much energy you put into the bike. It's possible to measure that precisely (bikes are a special case that allow for this) but it's expensive and probably makes more sense to let the scale answer.

    If you're enjoying it, keep doing it! It's definitely helping with weight, it's also doing other things for you like improving your fitness, strengthening your legs, improving heart and lung function, hopefully giving you more confidence in your body, and making you a cyclist, the rest of us accept you as one of us now.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    The range of calorie burns possible is absolutely enormous and depends on your power output.
    Don't suppose your bike displays watts?
    (Average watts can be used to get very accurate net calorie burns.)

    But exercise really isn't for weightloss - it's for fitness. Nice to hear you are enjoying it and hopefully it's a stepping stone to the really good stuff, cycling outdoors.
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,673 Member
    It depends on how fast you are cycling and what the resistance is set at. For me, 30 minutes on the bike supposedly burns about 150 calories if I do 11-12 miles. When my husband does 30 minutes on the bike he only goes about 5 miles so burns a lot fewer calories.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,484 Member
    spiriteagle99 wrote: »
    It depends on how fast you are cycling and what the resistance is set at. For me, 30 minutes on the bike supposedly burns about 150 calories if I do 11-12 miles. When my husband does 30 minutes on the bike he only goes about 5 miles so burns a lot fewer calories.
    Those numbers seem off.

    Google searches (and my own stationary bike) put 30 minutes of moderate pace at 260+ calories, and vigorous pace at 390 calories. Probably higher than that if you're heavier.

    Also, if your machine says you're doing 24mph for 30 minutes that seems a bit high to me, unless you're a very strong cyclist. Either way, that's a lot more than 150 calories.

    https://www.dailycaloriescalculator.com/stationary-bike-calories-burned-calculator
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    Retroguy2000 wrote: »
    spiriteagle99 wrote: »
    It depends on how fast you are cycling and what the resistance is set at. For me, 30 minutes on the bike supposedly burns about 150 calories if I do 11-12 miles. When my husband does 30 minutes on the bike he only goes about 5 miles so burns a lot fewer calories.
    Those numbers seem off.

    Google searches (and my own stationary bike) put 30 minutes of moderate pace at 260+ calories, and vigorous pace at 390 calories. Probably higher than that if you're heavier.

    Also, if your machine says you're doing 24mph for 30 minutes that seems a bit high to me, unless you're a very strong cyclist. Either way, that's a lot more than 150 calories.

    https://www.dailycaloriescalculator.com/stationary-bike-calories-burned-calculator

    Your weight for a non-weight bearing exercise is only relevant for gross calorie burns.
    Net calories (which you want for calorie estimates on here) are all about the power you put into the pedals and not a person's weight.

    150 calories is entirely possibe for someone either not a strong cyclist or not trying hard (about 85watts).

    And no-one is doing any speed or distance on a stationary bike as they don't move, the mph number is purely a construct that bears little relation to real speed outdoors and a highly variable one across different machines that shouldn't be used for comparisons.

    Moderate and vigorous effort levels are personal and not universal. My vigorous is a pro cyclist's easy, my maximal effort for an hour would be multi hour cruising pace for a pro.
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
    Supposing you burn between 125-300 calories, and you’re not increasing calories, then it would shift an extra 1lb in between 12-28 days. Roughly roughly roughly

    You can see how your effort level in those 30mins, therefore your calorie burn, makes a big difference.
  • I2k4
    I2k4 Posts: 179 Member
    edited May 2022
    I use the MFP app to add saved/calculated workouts on days I do them and it automatically recalibrates the daily calorie and macro targets. There's a fair amount of individual human variation, but as a general principle over time (e.g. some months) endurance cardio adapts the body to lean out both body fat and muscle mass ("weight", a term I hate) and efficiently slow down the calorie burning resting metabolic rate, while high intensity / resistance workouts build muscle and increase the resting metabolic rate accordingly - ironically cardio may have the effect of requiring more and more of it over time, to achieve the same results. Personally 10lbs of muscle feels good on me where 10lbs of fat does not, and so try to steer that course of action. Bikes can be very versatile for both modalities and many calculate the calories themselves: 40 minutes of light cruising is not the same as hard hill workouts for either long term metabolic adaptation or daily fat burn.
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,673 Member
    Retroguy2000 wrote: »
    spiriteagle99 wrote: »
    It depends on how fast you are cycling and what the resistance is set at. For me, 30 minutes on the bike supposedly burns about 150 calories if I do 11-12 miles. When my husband does 30 minutes on the bike he only goes about 5 miles so burns a lot fewer calories.
    Those numbers seem off.

    Google searches (and my own stationary bike) put 30 minutes of moderate pace at 260+ calories, and vigorous pace at 390 calories. Probably higher than that if you're heavier.

    Also, if your machine says you're doing 24mph for 30 minutes that seems a bit high to me, unless you're a very strong cyclist. Either way, that's a lot more than 150 calories.

    https://www.dailycaloriescalculator.com/stationary-bike-calories-burned-calculator

    That's what the machine says. it's a NordicTrack. MFP gives me slightly more (i.e. 160-170) but I go by the machine numbers since I know both do gross calories, not net.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,484 Member
    @sijomial Surely it takes more calories for a heavier person to cycle at the same speed as a lighter person? It takes more energy to move more mass at the same speed.

    At the site I linked before, it says a 200lb person doing 30 minutes at moderate watts is 324 calories, and a 140 pound person is 227 calories. A difference in BMR between the lighter and heavier person does not account for that difference. That BMR difference would only be about 10 calories?

    @spiriteagle99 MFP tells me 359 calories for 30 mins (male, over 200 pounds). My bike says about 325, for what I assume is a moderate pace. The site I linked suggests I'd be close to 300, guessing at my watts, I'm sure I'm not at the lowest end on their table. The first Google links for the question of 30 mins stationary bike calories says 260. I'm just offering more data here for other readers, who could otherwise leave here thinking it's not a good option for burning calories.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    edited May 2022
    Retroguy2000 wrote: »
    @sijomial Surely it takes more calories for a heavier person to cycle at the same speed as a lighter person? It takes more energy to move more mass at the same speed.
    @Retroguy2000
    Cycling outdoors - yes a heavier person has to work harder (i.e. make more power) to overcome gravity on hills and accelerate their mass. (Steady state, flat ground - mass doesn't really matter.)
    Also a bigger person will have to overcome more aerodynamic drag compared to a smaller person.
    Neither factor applies to stationary cycling.

    Yes a heavier person will have a higher GROSS calorie burn than a lighter person working at the same rate (power) on a stationary bike - but people should be using net calorie burns to avoid double counting that time period's BMR x activity setting which is already accounted for.

    Any calculator that goes by weight and perceived exertion for indoor cycling has two very major flaws.
    Making fitness assumptions based on weight doesn't actually work - especially for people trying to lose weight. Cycling performance outside of sprinting is all about CV fitness.
    Think of a 150lb pro cyclist burning 400 watts per hour (1,440 net cals) going hard (for them) compared to a refugee from "my 600lb life" with appalling fitness levels going as hard as they can for two extremes to illustrate the point.

    A more "normal" example is that now I'm 30+ pounds lighter and thanks to years of cycling my fitness level is far higher and I can burn 30% more calories (producing and sustaining 30% more power) for the same time period compared to heavier but less fit me.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,484 Member
    edited May 2022
    @sijomial The table at the site linked earlier is for a stationary bike, not road bike. You're correct that on the road, gravity and air resistance would be huge factors for energy use, but indoors the basic truth still applies that moving more mass to work the pedals requires more energy.

    Here's an article from Harvard Medical School, showing an 84 calories difference in 30 mins of stationary bike in people up to 60 pounds apart. That 84 calories is not from the BMR difference. The BMR difference between a 125 and 185 pound person sitting idle for 30 minutes would be about 10 calories.

    Isn't the net calories the difference between BMR at rest for 30 minutes vs gross calories for the 30 mins of exercise? In this Harvard study then, about 10 of the 84 calories difference would be from BMR, the rest would be from the exercise itself.

    https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-minutes-for-people-of-three-different-weights
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    Retroguy2000 wrote: »
    @sijomial The table at the site linked earlier is for a stationary bike, not road bike. You're correct that on the road, gravity and air resistance would be huge factors for energy use, but indoors the basic truth still applies that moving more mass to work the pedals requires more energy.

    The pedals weigh the same thing no matter what the rider weighs. They call it a stationary bike because it doesn't move. You're literally sitting down, the bike is bearing your weight for you.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,484 Member
    edited May 2022
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    The pedals weigh the same thing no matter what the rider weighs. They call it a stationary bike because it doesn't move. You're literally sitting down, the bike is bearing your weight for you.
    What is the point of your post?

    a) Everybody's legs do not weigh the same. That's the mass being moved.
    b) Are the links I provided completely wrong?
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    Retroguy2000 wrote: »
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    The pedals weigh the same thing no matter what the rider weighs. They call it a stationary bike because it doesn't move. You're literally sitting down, the bike is bearing your weight for you.
    What is the point of your post?

    a) Everybody's legs do not weigh the same. That's the mass being moved.
    b) Are the links I provided completely wrong?

    If you want to learn about energy use on a bike, rent or borrow a power meter for a week or two. It's amazing how eye opening it is. Words like "moderate" and "intense" stop being useful because they're so vague as to mean anything.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,484 Member
    edited May 2022
    From the Harvard link:

    Reading/sitting 30 mins: 34 calories (125 pounds), 47 calories (185 pounds)

    Stationary bike 30 mins: 210 calories (125 pounds), 294 calories (185 pounds)
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    Wow, every 125 pounds person does the same intensity for 30 minutes - and that makes sense to you?

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