Riding in the cold burns more calories...
Wednesday, November 23 UAR -- Its On
Randell's Island to the Bronx then 155th street back to Manhattan. Head north on Harlem River bike trail and around Inwood Hill Park, Ft. Tryon Park then down the West Side over to the parade floats then down Broadway to 34th street past Macy’s.
Djerdan (Baltic)
221 West 38th Street
Bureks may be the next pizza. This garment center café sells $4 slabs of phyllo dough filled with ground meat or with spinach and cheese. They're irresistible, but so are the veal goulash and Bosnian sausages served with rice and bright red pepper sauce.
Mandoo Bar and Dumpling Factory (Korean) - open till 11:30
2 West 32nd Street
Steamed or fried dumplings are the specialty of this stylish Koreatown café, where wrappers are color-coded to show if the fillings are pork and greens (white), cabbage and daikon (green), or seafood (pink).
"Given the remote chance that I would understand the answer -- would you care to quantify that?
[And would you please post the data in units of fahrenheit, centigrade and kelvin.]
Seriously, it's a particularly good thing to keep in mind from a ""bonking"" perspective.
"
The simple physiological answer is that your body burns calories to retain its core temperature. As the ambient temperature falls, your body must work harder to retain its core temperature, and burns more calories.
- Christian
How many more calories would one burn riding at 35º than at 70º?
Or, to follow the idea through, how many fewer calories at 90º?
The same could said of exercising in hot weather. Your body has to expend more energy, i.e. sweating, to keep itself cool.
That said, what you write is true, but not materially so with respect to muscular efficiency while exercising. The difference is almost immeasurable to the point of being inconsequential. Andy Coggan, Phd, sports science guru and accomplished cyclist has done research, as well as others in this discipline. http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/andy.html
You'll will though burn more calories exercising in the cold due to lugging around the heavier clothing and perhaps riding the less trick, heavier winter bike.
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/sportsnutrition/a/winternutrition_p.htm
There are some caveats to this. Cold temperatures will in fact cause a substantial increase in caloric requirements, depending upon the amount of clothing worn. OTOH, since exercising itself is thermogenic (it is why we shiver when cold, to force the body to exercise to produce heat), the net effect is not great.
Metabolic process involved in sweating is much more thermodynamically efficient than fuel metabolism therfore the amount of energy expended in sweating is minimal by comparison.
E
(just kidding)
If you are cold while exercising, to the point of shivering, then surely you will be burning fewer calories due to either: exercising at a less intense effort or for a shorter duration than normal because it's so freakin' cold outside.
The link I originally provided citing the American College of Sports Medicine, all other things equal, you do not burn more calories while exercising in the cold because it's cold. Additionally, it does provide a hint as to why aerobic performance decreases in colder weather.
This assumption is true as anything detracting bloodflow from working muscles reduces aerobic performance. Still; when I start I am cold, when I slow down I am cold and when my body is cold it is burning more calories, albeit not much compared to when I am producing power at my maximum capability.
What about sucking on ice cubes as a weight loss program? I remember thinking about this in high school and calculated that an ice cube would be fatal until I realized that there are 2 measurement standards, calories and kilocalories.
How much ice would it take to bring up to body temperature to burn off one pound of fat?
I do appreciate the clarification of my initial comment, which was intended to motivate on a cold evening. I 100% agree that steady-state riding in the cold will not require more calories; however, exposure before, after, and during stops (if long enough) will cause the body to burn more calories to support thermogulation, presuming one is moderately underdressed for non-exercising conditions.
I could not find data to substantially qualify the excess caloric requirement of non-exercising time in a cold environment (approx. 32 degrees C), but I am sure its more per minute than typing...
About 25+ miles last night. Straight runs along the East and Hudson River greenways, alley cat back streets in upper Manhattan, bike-lit-spooky-wooded hills in Ft. Tryon Park; a drive by of the TG parade floats; and a high speed blast through day-light-bright Times Square. Finished with a cool down to Macys to survey the holiday windows.
Not unusually fast or hilly, but the cold *kicked our collective butts*. Screw the expert studies, it was my most taxing ride of the year (including centuries and spin classes.)
Afterwards, we headed for an all-night-all-you-can-eat Indian buffet on Tenth Avenue. Averaged three helpings of curry plus beer, juice and dessert to compensate for the massive caloric depletion. (Food? ... Food? ... John, can we please go eat now?)
A bonus was the unrelenting sideshow of humanity at the eatery; cab drivers, hookers, neighborhood regulars plus spillover from surrounding clubs of bouncers, dapper dans and bridge-and-tunnel-crowd-outrageously-attired-underage-women.
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PS. If any of you care to start a new thread analyzing caloric-output-per-keystoke, etc., I'm all eyes.