Power Meters & Calories at Xmas

Your Power Meter directly measures the energy through the bike, and can be transferred into Kilojoules KJ, these can be converted to Calories directly as the ratio is 1:1. However the body is not efficient; using only 25% of your calories, the rest is lost as heat leaving the body. Therefore it is considered that the Calories burned are within 5% accuracy from your Power Meter. So 300KJ’s of workout equates to 300 Calories.

Within this, bear in mind that if you are working in Zone 5 (VO2 Max) and above, with short recovery intervals, like sprints, that you won’t end up with a high KJ expenditure. The most obvious solution to lose weight is best achieved in Zone 2, which is associated with endurance work. 

For a sedentary Man the calories needed a day are about 1800, for a sedentary woman it’s roughly  1400 calories. The average calories for a male cyclist is 2400-2700, for a female cyclist it’s 2000-2400. So it is healthy to eat to fuel the exercise you’re doing or you’ll burn out, and also fuel the recovery or you’ll get ill – mince pies are go!