Cycling to Lose Weight
One of the great ways of losing weight is through an enjoyable activity that preferably gets you out of the house and into the fresh air and sunshine.
There are several ways of getting such exercise and one of the more enjoyable ways is cycling.
Cycling is a sport as well as a leisure activity but however you do it riding a bike requires that you put some effort into pedalling to push the bike along and that efforts converts into an exercise form that helps your body to burn more calories.
Here is a symbiotic relationship between person and machine where all effort expended is for the purpose of propelling you forward in the direction of wherever it is you want to go.
It is a highly efficient way of converting muscle power into forward motion at a much higher speed than running could produce.
Burning Calories
The burning of calories is a hugely important part of not only keeping yourself fit and healthy but also in maintaining a healthy body shape or figure and to lose weight for men and women alike.
It also means that depending upon what you eat and drink, cycling can be a very powerful part of any simple weight loss strategy. So how does this work?
Well, when you ride a bike, the action of pedalling forces the muscles in your legs to work hard. That hard work can only be continued as long as the muscles are being nourished with the fuel they need. This means they are demanding that the body must provide a constant supply of fuel to convert to energy to enable them to keep working
That fuel comes from your body's supply of glucose which is present in your bloodstream. It gets there via your metabolism processes whereby your digestive system processes the food you eat and extracts the sugars that it can use as fuel.
Unused Excess Sugars
This provides your muscles with fuel on demand. Any sugars that are processed and not used, which happens when your bloodstream becomes saturated with glucose, your body's insulin response is triggered and the excess is carried away to be processed into storable fat.
But as you continue to make them work the glucose becomes depleted and must be replaced. At this point, the body takes the fuel from your stored supply of fat and processes it into glucose for use by your working muscles.
Of course the longer you cycle for, the more sugars you will burn and the more that will need to be replaced. This is linked to making sure you are always eating a healthy, effective diet to maintain the body's strength and stamina.
The great thing about cycling is that it can be sustained for a surprisingly long time at a moderate pace, with the advantage that should you need to cover a lot of distance, this is probably one of the best ways of doing so without resorting to mechanically powered alternatives. So what starts off as a purely leisure activity has now been shown to be a powerful means of maintaining fitness levels while helping to also maintain a healthy weight, or to lose it if that is what you need to do.