30-40 mins of stationary bike every day

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.

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

@Retroguy2000

But the heavier person isn't moving all that mass! They are weight bearing through their backside.
The only part moving is their legs, is there a teeny, tiny difference between spinning heavier legs (and circular motions are very efficient) and spinning lighter legs? Yes, but that's focussing on the 1% and not the 99%.

Could you make a case that in a particular demographic (same gender, age, fitness level...) that heavier people may tend to have higher fitness capabilities (e.g. their "moderate effort" might be producing more power than their lighter same demographic)? Sure, to a very variable degree.
Extend that across populations including fat and unfit people and that correlation is stretched well beyond breaking point.

There exist very good ways to get calorie counts cycling (indoors and out) but there also exist extremely generalised methods which have massive ranges of inaccuracy.

Beware Harvard publish all sorts of stuff on their site - that doesn't make it their study or have merit. More content = more clicks = more revenue.
Three sources have been cobbled together into one article and I'm not going to drill down to find which bit is the cycling bit or their methodology.

Just like the METS tables used by MyFitnessPal are a very generalised average from a sample and often hidiously inaccurate on a personal level.

Sorry you have been misled by a pretty useless article (or more accurately useless in parts).

sijomial wrote: »

Beware Harvard publish all sorts of stuff on their site - that doesn't make it their study or have merit. More content = more clicks = more revenue.
Three sources have been cobbled together into one article and I'm not going to drill down to find which bit is the cycling bit or their methodology.

Sorry you have been misled by a pretty useless article (or more accurately useless in parts).

I see. So the data at both articles I posted is wrong, because you say it is, including the parts you mention above which you haven't double checked, but you know it's wrong anyway, and your source is... yourself saying so. Forgive me, I need a bit more than that.

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

Beware Harvard publish all sorts of stuff on their site - that doesn't make it their study or have merit. More content = more clicks = more revenue.
Three sources have been cobbled together into one article and I'm not going to drill down to find which bit is the cycling bit or their methodology.

Sorry you have been misled by a pretty useless article (or more accurately useless in parts).

I see. So the data at both articles I posted is wrong, because you say it is, including the parts you mention above which you haven't double checked, but you know it's wrong anyway, and your source is... yourself saying so. Forgive me, I need a bit more than that.

Both articles are wrong because it's dumb to base the ability to produce power on a person's weight during a non-weight bearing activity.
You have no answers to the multiple examples I've given which disprove whatever unstated theory is behind those websites. Want another personal example from this 40,000 mile cyclist?
Since winter I've dropped 8lbs and due to fitness improvements seen a tested over 5% increase in sustained power output and resulting calorie burns. That is very normal for a huge range of cyclists from recreational to professional transitioning from the off season back to peak fitness and best weight.

Cycling is unusual in that there is widely available technology to actually measure the person's power output and hopefully you can realise the link between power and energy.
The resulting data is freely available - this took me seconds to find on https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/blog/2018/06/how-does-your-cycling-power-output-compare



Think of the x5 spread of calorie burns from people at the same weight from a lowly 1w per kg through to an exceptional 5w per kg. That's not exactly useful for estimating based on bodyweight is it?