Will I Lose Weight Cycling 5 Miles A Day

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Bruce takes on a 30-day riding challenge to get on his bike every day for at least an hour. Will he lose weight and thrive, or crumble under the fatigue?

Have you ever looked at a recent photo or video of yourself and cringed? This happened after Spencer dragged me on a ride he called “Tour de Freds.” It was a 108-mile epic through the mountains with nearly 12, 000 feet of climbing. You can watch the video to see how it went, but I’ll summarize: I completely fell apart.

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Worst of all, I couldn’t help but notice the pudgy belly poking out from under my jersey. This video was the clearest evidence I’d ever seen that I had let myself go. Some mean-spirited commenters even mocked how “fat” I was. Don’t worry, I’ve got thick skin. But it got me thinking.

To give you some context and am 5’8” and, at the time of filming “Tour de Freds, ” I weighed 195 lbs. That gives me a BMI of 29.6, the upper edge of overweight. When I was still training and racing regularly I weighed a more athletic 165 lbs. But then I got married, bought a fixer-upper home, and had a kid (I know, excuses). I rode my bike less but still ate like I was putting in 100 miles a week. The pounds piled on and the dad bod emerged.

Now I have nothing against dad bods, but cycling is my passion, and more than anything, I want to be fit enough to enjoy 108-mile adventures. I want to squeeze into my race-fit cycling kits and keep up with my fast co-workers. Tour de Freds was my wake-up call. It was time to do something. So I embarked on Ride30, a 30-day riding and weight loss challenge.

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Spencer and I during Tour de Freds. We are the same height, but I weigh 40 lbs more than him. You can see from our body language how much of a difference that makes on the climbs.

When I griped about my weight gain, my wife suggested I try the “Whole30” diet. It’s a 30-day health challenge that emphasizes eating whole foods and eliminating sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, soy, and dairy. That sounded impossible to me, so I decided to try my own version of a 30-day health challenge.

I called my challenge “Ride30.” Of course, it involves riding a bike. I’m an overweight cyclist whose biggest problem is not riding enough. So if I just ride a lot, I’ll lose weight and become a better cyclist, right?

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The goal of Ride30 was to ride my bike every day, for 30 days. Simple enough. But I decided to add an extra stipulation to make it a bit harder. I had to average at least one hour per day of riding. I can’t just play around on my backyard pump track and count it as a ride. These had to be “real” rides. Of course, I expected to struggle and come up short from time to time, so I use the word “average” to give me leeway to make up for short rides with longer rides.

I’d never done anything like this, and I didn’t know if I'd make it to the end. I tracked my time on the bike, my mileage, and journaled about the ups and downs so you can follow along and see how it worked out. Maybe you’ll be inspired to try a riding challenge of your own!

I am not a doctor, physiologist, coach, or nutritionist. I am definitely not an expert on weight loss. I’m just some guy who likes riding bikes. So, I reached out to Fast Talk Labs to find some real experts who could speak to the benefits and, more importantly, the potential issues with my Ride30 challenge.

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Coach Trevor Connor is an expert in exercise physiology and nutrition. He's the Co-founder of Fast Talk Labs and co-host of the Fast Talk Podcast. 

Fast Talk Labs is home to the Fast Talk cycling podcast, and I’ve gone to them for help before. They’ve given me expert climbing tips and they helped Spencer and me when we did our “Four-week PR Challenge” over the summer. If I have questions about fitness, training, performance, or nutrition, they’re my go-to resource. I asked them a few questions about Ride30 and here’s what they thought:

Ryan Kohler, Head Coach of Fast Talk Labs: Sure, regular exercise is healthy. I think limiting this to 30 days is one positive aspect of a challenge like this. I had a few family members who did something like this with running. They aimed to run every day, a minimum of 1 mile, for one year. I happily called that an “unhealthy” lifestyle choice from the start. Obviously, we’re dealing with two separate activities here — weight-bearing exercise (running) and non-weight-bearing exercise (cycling) — so I think the overuse injury risk profile is drastically different. However, when we ride a bike … we are still completing a highly repetitive move many times over with what I would consider no recovery if this is 30 consecutive days. There are much less healthy alternatives you could select for 30 days, but I do think this challenge has its risks.

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RK: It depends on your expected outcome. For a beginner cyclist, this is not something I would recommend. For an experienced cyclist, I would probably not recommend this either as it lacks recovery, both mental and physical. I would have a hard time seeing the expected outcome be anything less than fatigue. Ultimately, I have concerns about long-term progress vs. short-term gains.

BL: What strategies do riders need to employ to ride for 30 consecutive days? Should every day be easy? Should I throw in a few hard days?

RK: I would think about this as a period where the rider would experience a heavy overload depending on the volume or amount of training he/she accumulates per day/week. To just complete something like this, I would do primarily easy days, and do some hard days only when I feel good. I would actually focus any structure for something like this around the recovery, not the intervals or hard days. Those harder sessions should just be for fun.

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RK: Yes. Overall, there will be a consistent jump in energy output, so having an idea of what you need to replace as a baseline intake to achieve at least one hour a day on the bike would be a good way to start. There is the risk of operating in a deficit during this time, which would impact your ability to perform each day. So understanding your needs can help to minimize deficits along the way and keep energy availability at an appropriate level.

I would have a hard time seeing the expected outcome be anything less than fatigue. Ultimately, I have concerns about long-term progress vs. short-term gains. — Ryan Kohler

RK: I deal with this kind of stuff weekly working with people on their nutrition progress. There are so many diets and challenges out there that, in my experience, I’ve found them to be mostly stressful endeavors that rarely allowed people to maintain the habits they were forced into during the time period. They ultimately end up coming to me to figure out that happy medium so they can integrate the positive outcomes from the challenge and eliminate the negative outcomes that are inevitable due to the restrictive nature of the methodology for any given diet/challenge.

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Trevor Connor, Co-founder of Fast Talk Labs: The only thing I have to add is that I think the body is incredibly adaptable and it’s amazing what it can get through. I went to a lecture given by a man who ran 100 miles per day for over 30 days to cross the United States. He got through it. Really the important question is one you already raised — what are you trying to accomplish? If it’s just to ride 30 days in a row, sure, you can do that. If it’s to improve your fitness, then I think Ryan covered it perfectly. You run a risk of plateauing — never really going hard or resting. Just always riding “in between.”

So Ryan and Trevor from Fast Talk Labs think I can accomplish my 30-day riding goal, but worry that I will dig myself into a fatigue hole. With exercise, it’s all too easy to assume that you need to constantly go hard to see results. But this leads to burnout