Being overweight has generally been identified as the culprit for heart disease and other related illnesses. Heart disease has been dubbed as the number one killer on the face of the planet. Leaf through any mortality charts of any country, and always, the number one cause of death is heart disease. Because of this fact, ways on how to shed these excess fats inside the body has continually been being thought upon as the figures have not really improved or showed signs of significant changes. Unbelievably, there has been hundreds of ways man has thought of shedding the fat but one much underrated way of losing fat, especially the belly, is using a bicycle.
Burning the fats by pushing pedals is a far more superior aerobic exercise than jogging. Basically, the same thing is achieved when doing cycling or jogging except that cycling is lot more gentle on the knees and on the hip joints. Jogging or brisk walking with a heavy weight can truly mutilate the knees because the all the weight would be centered down on the knees and hip joints. Jogging can also be limiting in the sense that not all place are jogger friendly. Unless one live adjacent to a park or an oval track, it would be convenient to do jogging. Now, with a bicycle, all roads are free game.
One other advantage of getting a healthy heart and losing the belly with a bicycle is that it could be a mode of transport on the way to work. Going to work with a bicycle is not an unusual setup now and so there’s should no embarrassment factor in doing this as some CEOs and business executives go to work on a two-wheeled foot-powered vehicle. Aside from saving money on petrol and avoiding traffic almost anywhere, the environment also benefits greatly as one less belch-spewing car would be off the street for every biker commuter. Fitness gyms have stationary exercise bikes with counters and pulse rate meters if one doesn’t like the exhilaration of watching panoramic landscapes while pedaling away. If fitness gyms are hurting the pocket, make sure to buy a bicycle that can be put on stationary mode.
It has been found out that cycling at least 45 minutes a day for six days in a weeks is the amount of time recommended to be allotted for cycling. Doing less than that would still be okay as having a little exercise is better than no exercise at all. However, the rationale behind setting the minimum to 45 minutes for a period of 6 days/week is that it is the amount of time needed to spend energy to the tune of 2000 Kcal with a bicycle. A Kcal is by the way a measure of heat required to raise one gram of water by one degree centigrade/Celsius at one atmospheric pressure. The 2000 Kcal is indeed significant because it is the determined optimum level of energy needed to reduce the possibility of heart disease. To further appreciate cycling for 45 minutes, 20 hours of walking is needed to burn 2000 Kcal. Computed on a 6-day per week basis, 20 hours of walking would amount to 3.3 hours or 198 minutes. But as mentioned earlier, walking is said to punish the knees and so walking for 3.3 hours would be utter torture to the knees.
To sum it up, riding the bicycle makes the heart healthier, burn excess fats, make the environment cleaner and help save money. Not only that, the abdominal muscles would also get developed over time, giving one a finer physique. Of course, to truly maximize the benefits cycling can give to the heart and the body, a proper diet should also be observed.
