How to lose 40 lbs

Cycle to work. For the next year if you would commit to cycling for:

• 1 day/week you would lose 7 lbs
• 2 day/week you would lose 15 lbs
• 3 day/week you would lose 22 lbs
• 4 day/week you would lose 30 lbs
• 5 day/week you would lose 37 lbs

How losing nearly 40 lbs by cycling was calculated

Let’s say you live 5 miles from work, so you have a 10 mile daily commute. Now, let’s say you cycle at a moderate 12-14 mi/hr pace. You are a male that weighs 200lbs and are in your thirties. Thus, your daily caloric use for the commute will be about 500 calories/day, 2,500 calories/week, 11,00 calories/month, and 130,000 calories/year. Since a pound of fat has 3,500 calories, that is .14 lbs/day, .7 lbs/week, 3.14 lbs/month, and 37 lbs/year.

The faster you ride, the more calories you burn. For example, upping to 14-16 MPH would have you burning 600 calories/day, or .17 lbs/day. That’s nearly 45 pounds/year of weight loss.

It is numbers like this that keep me motivated to keep up my cycling commute.