Does cycling burn belly fat?

If you are not able to get to the gym, or if you want to make the most of the spring and summer weather, you might be thinking about exploring a new form of exercise, where you can spend more time outdoors. Cycling is hugely popular and can take you from road to track and trail, so in this blog we look at the question: does cycling burn belly fat? And we look at more health benefits of cycling as exercise.
 

Cycling to lose belly fat

Burning belly fat by training your core is not easy. It improves building muscle and strenght your core but it does not help removing fat in that particular area. The best way to lose belly fat is by doing cardio workouts, such as running and cycling. The reason for this is that you need to burn calories to lose belly fat instead of training your muscles. Lower-intensity and high duration training burns more fat than shorter high intensity workouts. You will burn between 400 and 1000 calories per hour when cycling, depending on your weight and how hard you are working

Cycling is therefore a good option to lose weight. But that's not only because of the calories you burn, it also affects your basal metabolic rate and muscle mass. As you push down or pull up on the pedals you are meeting resistance so you will be building muscle. Building muscle then increases the rate at which you burn calories, so it makes it easier to maintain a healthy weight.

Other benefits of cycling

Besides burning belly fat, cycling has a lot of other benefits for your health. The physical and methal health benefits of cycling are as followed:

• Reduce risk of chronic diseases
• Reduse risk of cardiovascular diseases
• Improves balance and coordination
• Reducing stress
• Better sleep
• Improves Subjective Mood
• It's a Low impact training
• Way to build your muscles
• Way to control weight

Physical Health benefits of cycling

Cycling is a great way to get your heart pumping and to work those mighty thigh muscles. Getting at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, like going for a cycle, each week will help to reduce your risk of chronic illness such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It also reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases like stroke and high blood pressure. Besides these medical diseases, cycling also improves balance and coordination which is beneficial in the prevention of falls and fractures.

For many people, cycling is also a great alternative to running because it's a low impact training. If you have found running causes problems with joint pain or recurring injury, a non-weight bearing form of exercise like cycling, might be the answer for you.

Getting started to lose belly fat

If you want to take advantage of all these health benefits of cyclin - including reducing belly fat- how do you get started?

Firstly, check your equipment, because safe and suitable equipment is vital: get your bike serviced, or if you are buying a new one, think about having it professionally fitted. Make sure your helmet conforms to British Standard BS EN 1078:1997 and always check your lights are fully charged before setting out.

Next, what training plan should you use? This will depend your starting point and what you want to achieve but assuming you can already do an easy, 30 minute ride you should consider the following:

Finally, let us know how you are getting on! We love hearing about how people are improving their health and fitness so let us know how cycling is going for you on @tanita.uk