Calories Burned Biking Calculator

This calories burned biking calculator may satisfy your curiosity about how many calories biking burns. Whether you are a recreational cyclist, a bike commuter, or a professional, you can calculate calories and kilograms lost while riding a bike. If you want to know how other sports and activities help in losing weight, check our calorie calculator.

A calorie is a unit of energy. It is the approximate amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at a pressure of one atmosphere. One calorie (cal) is a really small amount, so in everyday life, we use kilocalories (kcal), which is one thousand calories. In this article, we use the term "calories" to describe kilocalories, which is quite a common practice.

There are three main factors in calculations of burned calories and weight loss:

• Bodyweight – the more you weigh, the more you burn, as you use more energy to move a heavier body

• Exercise intensity and duration – more extended and more intense activities burn calories faster

• Choice of the exercise – it's intuitive: we know that recreational biking, mountain racing, and stationary cycling, each practiced for 30 minutes, will give different results

To calculate the calories burned, we need to know how to assess the intensity and evaluate the choice of exercise. The easiest and most objective way to assess this is by using your power output. If you don't have a power meter on your bike, we recommend you use our cycling wattage calculator to help you obtain this number.

In this case, the formula to obtain your calories consumed takes into account your average power (Power) and the time of the activity (T):

calories = ((Power × T) / 4.18 ) / 0.24

where 4.18 is the conversion factor from Joules (SI unit) to calories, and 0.24 is the efficiency (24%) of an average human body when cycling.

However, you might not have the time to do those calculations, or maybe you're looking for a simple estimation. Here is where the unit "MET" appears. METs (metabolic equivalent of task) express the energy cost of physical activities. Simply, they measure how many calories you burn per hour of activity and per one kilogram of body weight.

For example, MET for leisure biking is equal to 4, and the value for somebody taking part in a race and cycling over 20 mph can be as high as 16. Therefore, choosing only the type of activity is not enough - in other calculators, you can usually find that one MET value for biking equal to 8 or 8.5, which is an average value for all types of cycling.

The calories burned biking calculator uses the formula for calories burned:

calories = T × 60 × MET × 3.5 × W / 200

where T is the duration of activity in hours, W is your weight in kilograms (including bike and extra equipment), and MET is a metabolic equivalent of the chosen task.

To calculate weight loss, we need to know how much energy our fat tissue contains - there are approximately 7700 calories stored in every kilogram of body fat. It means that once you've found the number of burned calories, all you have to do is to divide by 7700 to obtain the weight loss in kilograms:

weight_loss = calories/7700

If you want to check what other advantages of cycling there are, have a look at biking life gain and car vs. bike calculators.

You want to lose some weight, but you still hesitate: which activity is better? Half-day trip biking for 5 hours at a leisurely pace or 1.5 hour of stationary biking? Thanks to our calculator, you can assess which form of biking activity may serve you best:

1. Choose the type of biking you are considering, e.g., bicycling 10-11.9 mph leisurely slow, with light effort.

2. Enter your weight into the calories burned biking calculator. Let's assume it's 80 kg.

3. Next, determine the duration of the activity. Let's say you went for a half-day trip and were biking for 5 hours.

4. Input all of these values into the calorie burn formula:

   calories = 5 × 60 × 6 × 3.5 × 80 / 200 = 2520 kcal

5. Finally, divide this value by 7700 to obtain your weight loss:

   2520/7700 = 0.33 kg

Repeat the steps for the second activity, changing only the form and duration - the results for 1.5 hour stationary biking are 630 kcal burned and 0.082 kg weight loss. Tadaaam! The calories burned biking calculator helped you figure out which form of biking is more profitable.

If you want to take care of your weight more systematically, visit our BMR (basal metabolic rate) calculator. It will tell you how many calories your body requires to maintain its basic existence. With this knowledge, it will be easier to create a healthy and efficient diet plan.