Wife and her brother are having a disagreement. Generally, he thinks she’s an idiot and talks down to her about stuff that he thinks she should be doing, or he thinks she’s doing wrong. He actually has a tell when he kicks off on one of those, so we know it‘s coming. The current one is walking. Apparently, because he‘s lost some weight walking, he thinks that she should be doing that instead of cycling. He says that walking is better because you are propelling yourself, whereas with cycling the bike is doing some of the work. While I’m not directly involved with this spat, my counter argument would be that apart from cycling being better because of range and time, I thought that because you use more energy cycling (especially up hill or riding against the wind), you’ll be burning more calories anyway (noting that my watch records more calories burned for a 20 min bike ride than a 30 minute walk, and hear rate is faster when cycling too). It’s also non-impact (unless you hit something), which surely is better for joints.

I know I’ve lost weight since I started regular cycling about three years ago - I’m certainly two belt notches thinner than when I started.

I expect the answer is “any exercise is better than none - do what you feel happiest with”.

Weight loss is more closely associated with diet rather than exercise. I cannot recall precisely but the stats are something like 80:20 for diet:exercise for weight loss ie what you eat is more important.

Exercise is more to do with cardiovascular fitness and cycling has a bigger impact than walking - most of my patients who cycle have a resting pulse in the region of 50 - 60 bpm. Having said all that, we as humans burn fat when doing slow/easy work and glycogen when working harder. Hence you'll burn more fat from walking than cycling. But if you cycle hard enough to take out your glycogen stores, you'll burn fat too. More to the point, you'd burn more calories from cycling for an hour than walking for an hour.

But as I pointed out above, what you eat is more important.

I do a lot of walking and some riding. I go at least twice a day with the dog and I ride when the weather is good and use the cycle machine at the gym.

I agree with you, about low impact, as to the cycling itself, it depends on how you are riding. A lot of flat or downhill riding at lowish speed isn't going to use as many calories as walking, but continuous excertion, especially on hills and higher speed should see more calorie burn.

Also, are we talking about taking a stroll or power walking, Nordic walking etc.?

I would say, use what works best for you.

Edit: What he said!

I suspect in fact over any given distance unless you really push it you'll use more calories walking than cycling. Put simply, we invented bicycles because wheels transfer energy into motion better than feet do so travelling a mile by bicycle actually requires less energy than walking a mile, if you go at roughly the same speed. You'll probably be able to burn more calories overall cycling though if you're exercising for a given fixed time period, simply because you CAN push it more on a cycle whereas if you push it walking then you're running, which is a whole different thing.

I do know for a fact a given distance on a treadmill at fast walk (6KPH) uses a few more calories than the same distance on a cycling machine at 6KPH. But you can do 10KPH on a cycling machine even if you're not fit enough to run at 10KPH on a treadmill for any distance.

TLDR; you can exercise more intensely on a cycle than you can on foot, unless you're already a triathlete.

I agree with the doc. Diet is just as important as anything else. I wouldn't say cycling is better than walking or vice versa.

If you eat less and move more you will lose weight.

I've lost quite a bit of weight over the last year and that is purely down to eating less.

I would expect 30 min of cycling to consume more energy than 30 min of walking. Between 5 miles walking or cycling, ( aka 2 or 3 times longer walking) , I'm not sure.


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I prefer walking to cycling simply because there's less chance of a random dog or small child causing me to faceplant a tree when I'm walking.

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Swimming. Swimming is better!!

Yes swimming is excellent and aqua fit too

Aquavit is even more better

There is that danger. The worst is the pedestrian one side of the pavement, and a dog the other, with the near invisible line from the extending dog lead stretched across the path like some WWI piano wire trap used by the French Resistance. By the time you see the bloody bit of string, you are almost on top of it and have to break hard.

Anyway, back on track. How do you know when your glycogen is exhausted?

I have a friend who was crippled by such a line. He was riding his motorbike down a lane and a woman on the side of the road was talking to somebody in their garden, her dog had strolled off to the other side of the road...

As he came down the road, she realised that the dog was on the wrong side of the road.

What would you do? Throw the line of the ground? Throw the line over the road to the dog?

I know! Hold it at neck height, so that the unsuspecting motorbike rider can duck underneath it! Yes, that will work!

It hit him directly in the neck, wrenching him from the bike, he and the bike skidded down the road and his knee piled into the kerb... And the bike right behind it! He will never be able to walk without crutches again, let alone ride a bike!

Bloody hell.