{"id":244803,"date":"2025-10-27T20:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T20:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/244803\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T20:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T20:08:10","slug":"are-you-overestimating-calories-burned-cycling-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/244803\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Overestimating Calories Burned Cycling?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated5 min read<\/p>\n

Cycling is one of the best workouts you can do for your health and cardiovascular fitness. It\u2019s a low-impact workout that gets you outside, and regularly riding also offers a plethora of benefits, including better heart and brain health, boosted mood, longer life, and lowered risk of chronic diseases. Cycling also burns calories. <\/p>\n

But exactly how many calories do you burn while cycling? Well, the answer to that question is nuanced\u2014and many people tend to overestimate the number.<\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n

For starters, relying on tools like calorie calculators that estimate energy expenditure using formulas based on METs (short for metabolic equivalent of task) and weight is partially to blame. Those numbers can be highly individual\u2014or woefully inaccurate. <\/p>\n

For example, cycling about 12 mph comes in at 8 METs, which means a 150-pound (68-kilogram) rider may burn more than 540 calories in an hour. That\u2019s a strong \u201cmay,\u201d though\u2014especially if that rider is also pretty fit. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the fitter you are, the more efficient you are, and the less energy\/fewer calories you use when you ride at a given pace. That figure also never takes into account the fact that you\u2019d be expending 1 MET and burning 68 calories that hour even if you were doing nothing more strenuous than watching TV. So you\u2019re not really burning an additional 540 calories in your day; the additional calories are less.<\/p>\n

What to Know About Calories Used While Cycling, as Told by Wearables <\/p>\n

Everything is better now that we have electronic wearables tracking every mile we ride, right? Not exactly. <\/p>\n

A Stanford study published in 2017<\/a> reported that not one of the seven devices they tested\u2014including the Apple Watch, Fitbit Surge, Mio Alpha 2, Basis Peak, Microsoft Band, PulseOn, and the Samsung Gear S2\u2014delivered an accurate number for calories burned. The most accurate one was off by 27 percent, and the least accurate one? Off by 93 percent. Yikes. <\/p>\n

As lead researcher Euan Ashley<\/a>, M.D., Ph.D., professor of cardiovascular medicine, genetics, and biomedical data science, told the Stanford Medical News Center, basing how much you eat on how many calories the device says you\u2019ve burned is not the best idea.<\/p>\n

Another study<\/a> published in the JMIR mHealth uHealth in 2018 also concludes that, \u201cmainstream devices are able to reliably measure heart rate<\/a>, number of steps, distance, and sleep<\/a> duration, which can be used as effective health evaluation indicators, but the measurement accuracy of energy consumption is still inadequate.\u201d <\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n

A review<\/a> from 2022 published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research that examined 65 studies on the accuracy of wearable trackers found similar results too. \u201cNone of the tested devices proved to be accurate in measuring energy expenditure,\u201d the review states. <\/p>\n

And just this year, a small study<\/a> of 11 young male adults, published in the Journal of Science in Medicine and Sport, compared data from the Apple Watch 6 and Polar A370 to a metabolism analysis system and found these devices were \u201cstill inadequate\u201d when it came to estimating calorie burn. According to the study, the Apple Watch tended to overestimate energy expenditure, while the Polar watch underestimated the numbers. <\/p>\n

Garmin Connect, Strava, and other training apps might be a bit better, but they\u2019re not perfect either, and the number they give you depends heavily on the information you give the app. The more detailed data you input about yourself, such as age, height, weight, gender, and max heart rate<\/a>, the more accurately their internal algorithms can calculate your calorie burn. Wearing a chest-based heart rate monitor<\/a> that is synced to your device also helps make your calorie count more accurate. <\/p>\n

Related StoryThe Best Devices for Measuring Calorie Expenditure While Cycling<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the best way to know how many calories you\u2019re burning as you rip down the road is by using a power meter<\/a>. Power meters measure the work you\u2019re performing and display it in kilojoules, which is a unit of work that takes into account that the human body isn\u2019t 100-percent efficient when turning energy from your fuel stores into physical work, like pedaling<\/a> a bike.
<\/p>\n

\u201cKilojoules and calories burned in cycling convert to a 1:1 ratio,\u201d says USA Cycling level 1 elite coach Daniel Matheny, head coach at Matheny Endurance<\/a> in Colorado Springs, Colordao. If your ride file says you performed 800 kJ of work, you can feel confident within a 5 percent margin of error that you burned about 800 calories.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s More to Cycling Than Calories
<\/p>\n

It\u2019s extremely important to remember that even if you get the most accurate calorie data possible, there\u2019s more to fitness and a healthy body composition than that number. High-intensity interval workouts<\/a>, for example, deliver a huge training effect by increasing your maximum oxygen consumption (VO2 max<\/a>), raising your lactate threshold<\/a>, and improving your economy, and this can translate to burning more fat at higher intensities. But HIIT workouts<\/a> don\u2019t ultimately burn an impressive number of calories while you\u2019re doing them, often because they\u2019re shorter in duration.<\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n

Even more importantly: If it\u2019s fat loss you\u2019re after, you\u2019re better off becoming more mindful<\/a> of the calories you consume\u2014looking closely at the quality while keeping an eye on the quantity\u2014than those calories burned.
<\/p>\n

Research has demonstrated that you can lose body fat relatively easily without exercising, but it\u2019s far harder to change your body composition without a healthy diet<\/a>. For guidance, a landmark review<\/a> of more than 135,000 people across five continents found that a diet that avoids excessive carbs (more than 60 percent of your daily intake) and includes about 35 percent of fat, as well as three to four servings of fruits<\/a>, veggies<\/a>, and legumes<\/a> a day is your best bet for good health.
<\/p>\n

The Bottom Line: Ride for Reasons Beyond Calories<\/p>\n

Try not to obsess over the numbers and focus on all of the reason you ride in the first place\u2014to be in the moment, to have fun, to experience the pure joy of cycling, to challenge yourself, to get a boost in mood, to enhance your overall health…the list goes on\u2014because ultimately those are the most important things to focus on while we\u2019re on the bike.<\/p>\n

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Selene Yeager is a top-selling professional health and fitness writer who lives what she writes as a NASM certified personal trainer, USA Cycling certified coach, Pn1 certified nutrition coach, pro licensed off road racer, and All-American Ironman triathlete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 min read Cycling is one of the best workouts you can do for your health and cardiovascular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,34323,34316,34315,34318,34322,784,34321,34317,18181,34319,34320,34324,21855,85,12728],"class_list":["post-244803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bike-rides","tag-calorie-burn","tag-calorie-expenditure","tag-calorie-overestimation","tag-calorie-tracking","tag-cycling","tag-cycling-apps","tag-cycling-calories","tag-cycling-tips","tag-cycling-weight-loss","tag-exercise-science","tag-fitness-myths","tag-fitness-trackers","tag-sports","tag-weight-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}