Quote Originally Posted by jayjay View Post
Who can relate?
I really like commuting by bike because it lets me get 40 minutes of exercise every single day for an expenditure of 10 minutes. Ten minutes is how much longer it takes me to ride than it would to drive, park and walk (round trip). Since I started bike commuting 2 1/2 years ago, I've made other more subtle lifestyle changes: I take the stairs out of habit. It no longer even occurs to me to use the elevator. I walk instead of ride whenever possible. I look for pretty routes instead of short cuts. I run errands around the building and campus as they come up, instead of saving them up to take care of all at once.

Does it take more time to run 3 errands when I could have done it in 1? Sure, but it takes less time than making some special effort to exercise.

I also added in nightly situps and pushups. I started with 1 (as soon as I was able after a hysterectomy) and worked my way up to 100 by adding about 5 a week. It took a few months. I don't do 100 every night, it varies around 40-60 depending on how regularly I've been doing them. (I can bike through stress, illness, and busy but I can't stick to nightly situps through any of those.)

Anyway, your real question was about weight loss, and I did lose a fair bit of weight, from 160 pounds to 135 now, most of it during the first year, who knows what that is in body fat because I know I gained a lot of muscle. I did not diet on purpose. I hate counting calories so I don't know if my intake was the same or less--I guess less because if I'm busy biking I don't have so much time to crave brownies and ice cream. (In fact today I did NOT have a bike ride, and we drove to Andy's for the buy-one-get-one-free...)

My guess is that regular daily riding increases muscle and metabolism and could allow you to lose weight without reducing calories, if you aren't too impatient and are willing to let it take months or years.