Cycling Calorie Calculator
Calorie Burn & Cycling
Introduction
Whether your goal is weight loss, weight gain, or improved performance and recovery, it can be extremely useful to understand your calorie requirements for cycling at a range of different speeds.
Weight Loss
Keeping track of calorie intake and output is very popular with those seeking to lose weight by biking. Being aware of the energy requirements for cycling different distances at different speeds can help achieve goal calorie deficits and ultimately weight loss.
Overcompensating and undercompensating for exercise is quite common, so it's really useful to have an idea of how to balance your nutrition and diet appropriately.
If your goal is weight loss then it's best to aim for small calorie deficits in order to avoid a drop in performance or adverse effects on your health. Note also that fast weight loss can result in an undesirable drop in muscle mass.
Weight Gain
If you're seeking to gain weight while cycling a lot then it's crucial that you ensure you're well fuelled and that you compensate appropriately before, during, and after a biking session. On longer bike rides calorie burn can be significant, so being able to plan ahead and accurately calculate calories burned is really important..
Weight Maintenance
Those who wish to maintain their body weight need to consider how increased or decreased activity affects their daily calorie needs, and adjust their diet in line with this.
Refuelling
In order to recover optimally it's necessary to refuel both during and after biking sessions. Doing so will optimise performance and recovery time. Since cyclists tend to spend a long time on the bike, and because taking on fuel while cycling is relatively straightforward, more planning is required for calorie intake during exercise than it tends to be with other sports. Having an accurate calculation to hand to understand how many calories are likely to be burned can greatly assist this planning.
Pre-fuelling
How much you need to pre-fuel before cycling will depend on the duration and intensity of your session. For times up to a couple of hours at moderate speeds no particular energy loading is necessary (although it's worth experimenting to see how it affects performance). For longer and more-intense rides increasing your food and calorie intake both the day before and on the day of your training is much more important.
Cycling Calorie Burn Calculation
METs
This calculator is based on the concept of METs. MET stands for Metabolic Equivalent of Task. METs are used to calculate how much energy is expended for a particular task, taking a person's weight and the duration of the activity into account. A single MET is roughly the amount of energy required to sit down and do nothing. METs for other activities are determined with reference to this baseline. For example, cycling at 15 mph/ 24 kph requires approximately 10 times more energy than sitting still and doing nothing. So, this cycling speed is equivalent to 10 METs.
METs and Calories (kcals)
Conversion from METs to Calories (kcals) is achieved with the following formula:
Calories/kcals = activity (METs) x weight (kilograms) x duration (hours)
So, the number of Calories/kcals required for a 7 MET activity performed for 2 hour 30 minutes by a person weighing 65 kilograms is:
7 x 65 x 2 = 910 calories
Cycling METs
To calculate the METs for cycling at various speeds, we use values provided by the 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities Reference List for Cycling
Where these values offer a range of speeds for a single MET value, we take the midpoint of that speed range and assign it to that MET value.
Where METs are not available or suitable for a specific speed, we use linear interpolation to derive a suitable MET value.