Does Riding A Bike Help Lose Belly Fat?

There’s that moment you hesitate to get into tight-fitting cycling gear, a bulging midriff bursting at the seams. You sneak out at dawn when everyone’s asleep and get onto your bike, your mind fixed on burning belly fat – a tone up that’s overdue. You wonder if riding a bike really helps lose belly fat.

Cycling burns belly fat with high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Interspersing fast and hard training with slower and low resistance pedaling and repeating the pattern can reduce belly fat. Training fast and slow in the same ride also results in an after-burn effect lasting 48 hours.

Are you in awe of cyclists’ buffed midsection? One thing is for sure, getting there means you must take cycling seriously. Shedding belly fat and being fit and healthy depends on training like HIIT. Cycling to burn midriff fat is about big punch exercising, which means a mix of high intensity and slower riding. How this works is worth looking at.

Can A Bike Help Lose Belly Fat?

Cycling is a hit with exercise fanatics. People choose cycling as a low-impact exercise. Riding a bike also has a track record for being good for cardio health. And any cyclist will quickly tell you that riding a bike is a turbo muscle-building machine. They’ll keenly show off their quads, abs, and a prized buttock. And draw your attention to their no-belly fat midriff.

Cyclists are serious about biking, irrespective of their age or gender. It’s hard to be with a group of cyclists and not pick up on their keenness to keep up this fitness regime. On open roads and in neighborhoods, the cheerful chattiness of group cycling is also a familiar sight.

One of the reasons cyclists take up biking is to get their bodies in shape – they eagerly say that the gym and indoor exercise bikes don’t do it for them. They want to be outdoors, feel the day’s freshness, and even listen out for birdsong.

There are the typical breakfast rides over weekends and brunches too. And, amongst a group of cyclists, you’ll learn that this low-impact exercise routine builds muscles and burns fat, even stubborn belly fat. Many will tell you that cycling doesn’t strain your joints. And you know that cycling ranks tops amongst leisure and fitness choices.

Cycling To Tackle Belly Fat

There are, of course, those times when exercise is more than just leisure. Cycling can tone your body. If you have looked at cyclists, you know the kind of envy one has of their physique. Have you ever wanted to shed those extra pounds and burn belly fat?

You know that belly fat is a marker of poor health. Belly fat is a stubborn type, and to burn belly fat takes discipline. And the battle with a belly bulge takes specific training. Ask cyclists, and they’ll say fast track riding tackles belly fat. Energetic cycling interspersed with slow riding is better than steady endurance riding.

The Belly Fat Drill

There’s not a single type of belly fat, but two. We are familiar with belly fat mid-center, a paunch, pot, spare tire, or middle-aged spread. There’s this surface belly fat and another layer around one’s organs.

The types are:

Subcutaneous belly fat or subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT)

Visceral belly fat or visceral adipose tissue (VAT)

These types of belly fat differ. SAT is soft fat around your midriff. You might even hear people say it’s wobbly or jiggly. This belly fat literally inflates one’s circumference like an inflated inner tube. We need fat to protect and insulate our organs, a layer deep inside our abdominal cavity. But too much belly fat harms our health.

The reality of chronic diseases keeps cyclists on their bikes, with the battle with belly fat at the foremost. Scientifically we know that we have a relatively small amount of fat in our abdomen. That’s why cyclists will tell you they exercise to keep their total body fat healthy and fight belly fat.

VAT, the visceral belly fat, lies around our internal organs – kidneys, liver, and pancreas. This belly fat is metabolically more active and interacts with our cells, blood vessels, and nerves. Visceral fat is linked to spikes in blood sugar levels, and this belly fat makes us prone to inflammation.

In men, visceral fat is characteristically an outward apple-shaped abdomen. It’s different for women, who show excess as a pear shape. The crux, however, is that belly fat harms our health and increases our risk of diseases. So, besides reducing carbohydrates in our diet, cycling tackles belly fat. Cycling has to be done as a daily routine.

HIIT And Stubborn Belly Fat

Trainers agree that to fight belly fat, you need to cycle rigorously, a burst of high energy, and then you need to alternate this with a distance of slow cycling. The hard and slow cycling needs to be kept up for the period of your cycling. So rather than a long continuous cycling routine, you need to bike with bursts of energy, go fast, and then slow down.

The high-intensity regime includes intervals of low cycling and is known by the abbreviation HIIT. In total, it stands for high-intensity interval training. If you wonder how HIIT works, it is really intervals of hard and slow cycling or high-intensity and low-intensity cycling. HIIT works effectively to reduce body fat and even belly fat. So you might start fast and hard and then slow down on a level road.

Cycling To Effect After-Burn To Belly Fat

Biking is undoubtedly a good workout. HIIT adds a different note as this high-intensity training is interspersed with low training. This kind of training is also more than a fad as it has been found that not only do you burn calories with HIIT but fat too. HIIT has many forms and, like all exercise, burns fat through calories. The more intensive exercise is, the more fat is burnt.

The HIIT cycling routine is aimed at burning calories. And with HIIT, you can exercise and even burn calories after you’ve stopped working out. This is known as the after-burn effect. What happens is that you get your heart rate up – this is about 80percent or more of your maximum heart rate. This is when the after-burn effect sets in. And, then burning fat in this phase can last for up to 48 hours.

Cycling is healthy and good for keeping your belly fat under control. You can lose belly fat, but this takes time. And to get rid of that belly girth, cycle in a burst of energy combined with slow cycling. A quick circumference check also can show you how much you are in need to shed belly fat.

On average, a waistline of over 40 inches in men and 35 inches in women can cause heart disease. Take these measurements seriously for losing inches of belly fat. Keeping up with intense and energetic cycling that is broken up with stretches of slow cycling can beat stubborn belly fat.

Tips On Reducing Belly Fat

There’s no easy guide to reducing belly fat, but it takes steady cycling, and HIIT burns belly fat. You might be familiar with the 80/20 high-intensity intermittent exercise routine to burn fat and calories. The routine simply means that you cycle at a moderately intense pace for 80percent of the time and do moderate to intense cycling for 20 percent.

Not only will you build your fitness, but you will also burn calories and, for sure, cut belly fat. The loss of belly weight depends on how you ride and how often you bike. Other tried-and-tested ways have to do with not eating or fasting before cycling. What has been found is that you burn belly fat faster if you cycle on an empty stomach.

Breakfast rides are not only popular but actually, it’s been found that you burn more fat after at least 8-hour of being meal-free. So you can have that dinner the night before as long as you skip breakfast. Known as fasted cycling, the results are good, but it’s recommended that you don’t make this a daily routine. Fasted cycling is best for short rides and not more than two or three times weekly.

If you take a long ride, take high-energy food supplements and water. Best you start a long ride with low-intensity cycling. What happens with fasted cycling is that your body taps straight into your fat reserves as your glycogen levels are lower when fasting. You can cycle for about 2 hours on an empty stomach and refuel with protein and carbs as soon as you’ve done your ride.

You might even have heard cyclists speak of trading breakfast for bike fast!Though, don’t starve yourself after cycling. Being on a bike demands energy, and your body breaks down carbohydrates and fats. This breakdown is a vital function of high-intensity intermittent training (HIIT). This form of cycling reduces fat in overweight people and cuts belly fat.

Hit the road before breakfast in a fasted state. A quick guide to interval training might look like this: 10 to 15-minute warm-up and 30 – 60 seconds of hard training. This releases a human growth hormone that burns fat and maintains muscle. High-intensity exercise with slow intervals controls one’s appetite too.

You can burn fat better, and this includes belly fat. Don’t overdo your exercise – going hard all the time leaves one inflamed and stores fat. Aim to build your slow-twitch state, a stage in which you let your muscles contract slowly.

Yes, shut-eye and cycling can reduce body weight and belly fat.

As good as cycling is to torch belly fat, so is sleep. Not sleeping enough can make you put on weight. Think of cortisol’s impact on your body’s metabolism.

Conclusion

Your waistline can harm your health. Linked to high blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes, belly fat should be tackled rigorously. Burning belly fat is not rocket science in cycling circles. But there is no quick fix. Regular high-intensity training sessions with slower intervals work best.

Also, you need to keep your eyes on your diet. Biking belly fat away takes focus and training. And remember, fasted cycling burns more fat. Also, get enough sleep as too little makes you gain weight.

Does Riding A Bike Help Lose Belly Fat?