• _NoName_@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    If you bike regularly, you actually don’t spend more calories. You only see calorie burn uptick when first taking on new exercise, which falls off over time back to your usual normal calorie cost. Because of this, that calorie cost for a biker is calorie intake they’d already consume even if they didn’t bike. It’s essentially free, in contrast to the gas of the car which is always a cost.

    Checkmate liberal. /s

      • jaycifer@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        There was a Kurzgesat video about this a couple weeks ago. Apparently if you don’t spend calories exercising/biking, your body will find other ways to burn it like increasing your immune system activity (which can have poor long-term effects). There’s an adjustment period when you do start exercising where energy is still spent on sedentary things and the actual exercise before the former is reduced to mostly match the latter.

        I have also read that regular exercise can lead to an increase of base metabolic rate by ~5% though, which is like an extra 100 calories per day.

        • Mac@mander.xyz
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          3 months ago

          You should always doublecheck Kurzgesagt videos, btw.
          They’re not a good sole source due to being heavily simplified (they know this and often provide further reading (you probably also know this (just commenting anyway for general visibility (this should be considered good practice tbh (to be honest)))))

          • jaycifer@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Yeah, I started taking Kurzgesagt videos with a grain of salt a while ago, hence the “apparently.” Their explanation just fit NoName’s assertion pretty well. Never bad to make the possibility of being wrong explicit though!