The ratio of obesity among people of the United States has doubled in the last two decades. There are reports that one-third of adults are obese which increases their BMI to greater than 30. Alarming ah!
If we exclude figures of the adults from it, then 16-18% of the children & adolescents are estimated overweight which is double than the previous records.
Being Overweight & obesity are leading to serious public health concerns among Americans & around the world because it leads to premature death, type-2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, and a few other cancers.
So, what’s the solution to revolutionize this serious problem? The answer is simple. You need to control your body weight with the help of certain physical activities. If you have a recumbent bike (which I’m hoping) then Eating fewer calories while increasing your physical activity on your recumbent bike is the key to losing weight.
- Before Going to Our Today Topic You Can Read Recumbent Bike Before and After Results How Did She Lose 27 lbs?
But is it possible to lose weight with just a recumbent bike? Let’s deep dive into it.
Why is Losing Weight so Important in the 21st Century?
The main reason why a person gains weight is that he/she misses two things in their daily lives. The lack of any physical activity and improper way of calorie consumption.
First, How losing weight is related to the lack of any physical activity? Let’s look into it with the real facts.
It’s a common fact that Americans are becoming inactive each passing year. The survey was been made in 2002, the report said that 25% of Adult Americans didn’t participate in any form of physical activity, whether it is sports or normal walking in the Park.
Next year, another survey about students in high schools reported that the students are watching television for 3 to 5 hours daily. We see from these surveys that people are completely unaware of the importance of physical activity.
To fill this gap, it is necessary to realize that regular physical activity or any fitness can make a substantial contribution to one’s health and well-being.
I hope you have seen the importance of physical activity and the disadvantages of adopting a sedentary lifestyle. But the question is.
Is Recumbent Bike Good for Weight Loss?
A research paper was published in the National Library of Medicine. The core objective of the research was to find out the effectiveness of using a recumbent bike and ordinary bicycle for body composition, physical fitness, and losing weight among the students of Yeoksam Seoul Middle School.
There were 24 students and half of the students were trained for the recumbent bike and half for the ordinary bicycle. They were told to use it 3 times a week and one hour a day.
In the final round of the study, they were fascinated to see the positive changes in body composition, and physical health, and also shredded a substantial amount of weight in the group who were using recumbent bikes compared to the second group who were using ordinary bicycles.
Therefore, it is recommended that to maintain optimum body weight, you should burn 400-450 calories a day while engaging in 30-60 minutes of moderate-intensity pedaling on your recumbent exercise bike.
You won’t get my point until I show you the comparison of calorie expansion in various activities with respect to the recumbent bike.
I am supposing your average weight would be around 150-170 lbs. What activities would help you to burn calories if you did them for an hour? To understand it better, let’s look at the chart below which was taken from the official CDC website.
| Moderate Physical Activity | Calories/Hr for a 155-160 lbs person |
| Hiking | 370 |
| Dancing | 330 |
| Walking (3.5 mph) | 280 |
| Cycling (<10 mph) | 350-400 |
| Vigorous Physical Activity | Calories/Hr for 155-160 lbs person |
| Running/Jogging (5 mph) | 590 |
| Cycling (>10 mph) | 590 |
| Swimming | 510 |
| Weight Lifting | 440 |
As we can see from the above chart, engaging in cycling activity, whether it is on an upright or recumbent bike, can show promising results in your body.
How to Lose Weight With a Recumbent Bike?
We’ve studied the reason for adopting physical activity in one’s life with facts and figures.
Now come to our main goal of losing weight with the help of a recumbent bike. As a matter of fact, recumbent bikes help you do good cardiovascular exercise, which increases stamina and whole body composition. Shredding the weight from your body is a complete journey that requires a complete strategic step-by-step plan.
Based on my current assumption, the average weight of the readers of this blog is 150-200 pounds. In the following steps, I will walk them through the process.
1. CC – Commitment and Consistency:
Unless you set a final goal, no matter how hard you work, you will never achieve anything. The distractions, laziness, and procrastination won’t help you to move towards your goal.
Thus, losing weight should be the aim of your life like a religious ritual that you have to perform each day. Take small steps, such as changing outfits, riding a bike for 5 minutes with a 5-minute break, rewarding yourself, and improving 1% every day.
By making these types of commitments to see a dramatic change in your body coupled with consistency, you will change completely.
2. Hydrate Yourself
Before hopping into your Recumbent bike, make sure that you get a bottle of water with yourself. Hydrating your body during the workout is very important for any physical activity.. Pedaling on a recumbent bike will completely drain out water from your muscles.
Therefore, it is crucial for you to keep your body hydrated so that your muscles don’t feel strained.
3. Pedaling on your Recumbent Bike
Set a schedule for 60 minutes from your day and make sure you’ll be consistent in it. It’s time to position yourself on your recumbent bike. When you feel that you are properly adjusted on the bike, start pushing the pedals.
There are certain key features of your machine that you can use. The first and foremost is the Resistance. Few bikes have resistance up to 8 and few have up to 24. Bend your knee slightly, hold tightly to the handles, set your resistance from the 3, and start pedaling. You will need to gradually increase the resistance level.
Resistance exercise increases your muscle strength and helps you to maintain your muscle mass. It also helps you to burn more calories if you push harder. In simple terms, It’s all about challenging yourself.
Another great feature of using a recumbent bike is shifting your normal pedaling to the high-intensity interval method. This method is recommended by many professional trainers which states that you will start your first quarter slowly, then shift to the moderate speed then to vigorous, and again to a lower resistance level. And you’ll repeat this cycle again and again until your timer of 60 minutes ends.
Generally, pedaling on the recumbent bike helps your lower body like hips, glutes, thighs, and legs. How will you engage your upper body?
4. Upper Body
Make sure that your back is supported with the bike backrest and your legs are properly adjusted to the pedals. While you are pedaling, you can engage your upper body by lifting dumbbells with both hands, or moving your hand up and down. These movements will help you to captivate the upper body region which ultimately helps in calorie combustion.
It’s very important to note here that the combustion process doesn’t affect only one area of your body. When you combust calories and extract energy from one part of your body, the whole body benefits. The recumbent bike mainly affects the legs and belly area of your body, but as you pedal, your whole body participates in the process. It is for this reason that losing weight requires a collective effort.
5. Calories Intake
Do you remember the punch line above that eating fewer calories while increasing physical activity is the key to losing weight.
It’s the calories you intake which decides your body weight control, not the proportions of fats, carbs and protein in your diet. To your surprise, there is a standarised parameter of Acceptable Macronutirent Distribution Range (AMDR) for losing weight of any individual, which is for 20-35% of total calories of fats, 45-65% of total calories of carbs and 10-35% of total calories of protein.
There are two parameters to measure the body weight of any person, one is Caloric Intake and another is caloric expenditure.
If someone wants to maintain his/her body weight or composition then caloric expenditure must exceed caloric intake to achieve optimum body weight or losing weight. Consequently, the solution to obesity is eating food that is lower in fewer calories, being active all day, and having a healthy food choice.
So the question is how much caloric expenditure can be for losing weight?
For a normal adult person, if he/she reduces the 60-100 calories per day then it prevents slow weight gain. But for a person who is on the mission of losing weight vigorously, then the reduction of 500 calories a day with 60 minutes of physical activity is recommended.
Some Final Words
The crucial step for losing weight is to change your lifestyle with a healthy diet and adopt physical activity in your daily routine life.
There are thousands of various tools that you can use to supplement your weight loss journey and the recumbent bike is one of them. It is an effective apparatus if you use it in a proper manner with the above-mentioned guidelines.
One of the major reasons people love to buy a recumbent bike is its resistance levels. This feature helps you to reduce the chance of osteoporosis, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases and of course helps you to shed weight by increasing your bone mass growth and muscle potential.
It wouldn’t be difficult for you if you are committed to setting aside 60 minutes of time for the workout on your recumbent bike to burn 500 calories a day. Hopefully, you will see a change in your body within the next couple of months.
Let me know in the comments, how much weight you have lost by using your recumbent bike. Which model do you use? And what’s your exciting weight loss journey? We are very much excited to hear!
GOOD LUCK!
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