Cycling and Weight Loss. Will you lose weight if you use your bike for commuting? If you are serious about losing weight, while cycling to work, here is how to do it. First, don't under estimate the efficiency of cycling and second, don't fool yourself about your calorie intake. Cycling is the most efficient form of transportation there is. (yes, more than walking) As for weight loss, strictly speaking, if you use more calories than you take in, you'll lose weight. Keeping an accurate account of intake is a lot easier than determining how much energy you burn. How the body uses calories differs from one person to the other and how your body uses calories changes with your fitness level. Your fitness level is your bodies ability to use food and oxygen efficiently. Like strength, you can increase your fitness level with training. Tune into your body, and how it works, and you'll soon be on the road to higher fitness. There are tools you can use to help you determine your relative fitness. Bike computers and heart rate monitors are inexpensive and easy to use. However using these devices is no substitute for knowing and understanding your body. If you just rode 20 minutes to work and you are not hot, thirsty or sweating you probably didn't take full advantage of your time to burn calories, increase your fitness level and muscle strength.

Tune in! To increase your fitness level you have to push the threshold where your metabolism is swinging from aerobic to anaerobic. Its not an on/off switch. When you are pushing your threshold you begin to go into oxygen debt. Increase your cycling effort to the point where you are unable to whistle a tune or talk without gasping. Slack off a bit until you get your breath is back, then up the effort incrementally while maintaining regular breathing and conversation. Your body adapts well to this treatment and pretty soon you'll be using a very efficient form of transportation to increase your fitness and lose weight. In your mind, you've determined its time to lose weight. Remember that your body has certain requirements as well. You need water, you need healthy food, you need to sweat to cool the body but not chill. You also need advice from your doctor if you have a preexisting medical condition or if you are new to this fitness thing. Here are some tools that can help you assess your fitness level. A watch. If, given the same conditions, you are getting to work sooner, you are getting better. If, at some given point, you cannot get to work any faster, and you still want to get fitter, you need a longer route. Your body will soon get used to that too. Bike computers have to useful indicators on them. Speed and Cadence. The fitter you become, the faster you get (up to a point). I like cadence indicators as a tool to improve fitness. I found that maintaining 80-90 rpm, no matter the weather or terrain, was the best method to push my fitness level up. This method is better for increasing aerobic ability than it is for strength. Since my legs aren't small anyway, strength wasn't an issue. Heart rate monitors are the current craze and for good reason. No matter how fast you got to work, or what your current speed or cadence is, a heart rate monitor can tell you how you are doing and what you should be doing next. If you need a better indication of your fitness, seek out a sports lab which help you determine your V02 max. and a bunch of other fancy statistics.