Exercise Bike Fitness The Most Efficient Way

Exercise bike fitness results from time on the machine and the effort you put into a workout. To lose weight and get fit with an exercise bike means more than just burning calories though. It is quite a bit more complex than that and in a way that makes for a better chance for long-term success. Here's the story...

Surprisingly enough, many sorts of exercise use up about the same number of calories. Whether you pedal a bike, jog, or perform aerobics, all burn about the same amount of calories. It depends largely on the effort level but the calories burned are much the same for many forms of workouts.

That level is about 8 - 10 calories a minute. Your body weight also affects the energy used, but it is always in that range of about 8 to 10 calories for each minute of exercise. Now, when you consider that a pound of fat contains about 3500 calories, you can see the challenge you face if you want to burn away fat with an exercise bike or any other exercise machine for that matter.

If it were only as easy as just getting the right machine all people could be trim and fit. Consider though that pedaling away on an exercise bike for 350 minutes is about the least you could expect to spend to burn off a pound of fat. That's about 6 hours on the bike to drop one pound of fat. Quite the sad tale...

But there's more and it's better news. See, losing weight and burning fat is much more complicated than just exercising to burn fat. It's more about changing the manner that your body deals with fat. See, it's possible over time to change the way your body burns fat and make it burn more and not less.

It's true that your body burns fat all the time, even at rest. That calorie burning rate is referred to as the basal metabolism. And that is where the secret to fat loss hides.

By exercising regularly with the right types of exercise, it's possible to begin to burn more fat and lose weight at a faster rate than the 8 to 10 calories per minute rate would lead you to expect.

It's more than just calories burned by exercise that matters. It's in addition the level of muscle you carry, since muscle helps burn fat too. That's why weight lifters tend to possess higher metabolism and weight training helps to burn fat. It's not that weight training is all that an efficient way to burn up calories. It's muscle building that encourages fat loss.

That's also why exercise bike use can burn fat out of proportion to what might be expected too. There is muscle building going on as well as just the direct calorie burning.

It's more than just calorie burning that goes with exercise bike fitness. There's quite a lot more. Fat loss is more complex than just exercising to burn calories. Increase the metabolism rate and the fat gets burned away and weight loss results that stays lost.

Check out another article about the Schwinn Airdyne bike, a proven design that is worth a look.


A favorite, and a deluxe choice, is a LifeCycle exercise bike.