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I am 38 year old male 173cm height and weighing 80kgs and yes my bmi is little above normal. I have been on and off working out in gym through my 20s but never serious could bench max 80kg.

I recent started cycling about a month ago initially doing 6km in 16 minutes. I have a hybrid with single speed. Now I am able to to do 10km in close to 25mins but these surely leaves me lil drowsy post lunch hours but I feel happy.

Early this year I had started running but due to my own mistake ended with left knee inflammed and hence can't run though the knee is lot better now.

To make it more interesting I brought some weights and started doing alternate days cycling and other days upper body exercise like curls,planks, push ups,shoulder press. My plan is to do 5 days of this mix and 2 rest days.

My question is whether this approach is OK for for fitness and weight loss. I want my bmi to get lower.

Thanks

justvishu
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1 Answers1

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Your plan is OK for fitness and weight loss, however there are a few points you need to consider.

  1. BMI is somewhat flawed, since it is unable to take body composition into account - if you build upper body muscle, your BMI may not drop even though you are in much better shape. A better indication of your weight loss progress is a combination of body weight and waist circumference.
  2. Weight loss is produced by creating a calorie deficit, unless you also control your diet, you may not lose weight.
  3. Your cycles are quite short - ideally you need to slowly build up to doing at least an hour in order to increase the number of calories burned
Andy P
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  • In general maximum efficiency and results are achieved through HIIT/etc rather than longer workouts. Read up on much of the research over the last few years. – Dave Newton Jan 14 '16 at 16:12
  • Yes, i'm well aware of HIIT, but it is not well suited to a beginner cyclist on a single speed hybrid – Andy P Jan 14 '16 at 16:14
  • OP is asking if their selected activities are OK, not that it's the only activities they'd consider. Cycling for fitness on a fixie is questionable to begin with; seems like they'd be much better off going a different route altogether. All that said, advocating long bouts of steady-state cardio still seems questionable. – Dave Newton Jan 14 '16 at 16:27
  • I forgot to mention that the initial 6km Cycling was preceded by close to 100-120 pusups done in sets consisting of 25 reps each. For diet i am trying to eat 70-80% of what fills me up and not stay hungry for long. – justvishu Jan 19 '16 at 09:23
  • I am currently doing alternate days cycling /weight training and rest day after every 3 days of workout. i Cycle close to 17km in 40 minutes with average speed of 23 -25 km/h. How do i plan for a HIIT cycling sessions ? – justvishu Mar 08 '16 at 05:36
  • HIIT is best done on an indoor bike, as done correctly you are unlikely to be in a fit state to control your bike by the end of the session. A typical 'beginners' HIIT session might be a 10 minute easy warmup, 5x 30second max sprint effort with 1 min recoveries, 5 minute cooldown. As you advance you would look to make the total work time up to 5 mins, and bring the recoveries down to a 1:1 ratio. – Andy P Mar 08 '16 at 09:04