How much does riding effect fitness???

Please don't double post in another section. It's annoying!

You do whatever sport that keeps you interested. Without interest, you won't continue and there would be no positive effect.

I jogged for quite a while before returning to cycling, but never made a dent in my weight with all that treadmill job. But after a few long Sunday endurance rides (80km range), my weight took a dive for the better. My conclusion is, if you want to loose weight, then go for endurance. 30 mins hard push isn't as effective as a sustained effort for 2 hours. And in terms of sport, there's no way I can continue to run for 2 hours, while it's quite doable on a bike with less stress on the joints.

As per sogood, the fact that you did it is the most important thing.

If you are going to limit the exercise to a short period and have no injury issues, then runnig is probably the best pick. It can be very convient, just put your shoes on and go out the front door.

Another consideration is intensity. If you seem to do one particular more intensly over another, then that exercise has an advantage.

For most people, the duration of the exercise is much shorter in Swimming and Running and this is where cycling has a distinct advantage, it is quite fesible to burn 4000 calories on a long intense ride.

Kentacula said:

Just curious if riding greatly effects fitness or would it be more effective to do something like swimming or running that effects the whole body. Does anyone have any personal examples of losing a great deal of weight from riding? ...

Well cycling certainly is the best choice for building cycling fitness. Running is a better bet for running fitness and I strongly suspect swimmers get the best bang for their training buck by swimming. I suspect you're just after the weight component of fitness not all the muscle and skill specificity stuff.

I feel very strongly that cycling is the best bet for large weight loss goals. Here's some of the reasons:

• If you need to lose a lot of weight, then you're carrying a lot of excess weight that could be problematic with running or other weight bearing sports. Swimming might be a good choice but I'd take running real slow until the weight dropped enough to reduce the chance of joint injuries. And unlike swimming, cycling doesn't require a dedicated facility that's only open and available during certain hours.
  
• Most folks can cycle for a lot longer than they can run. An hour running is a fairly long run for most folks. Four to seven hour bike rides are common for weekend warriors out doing social century rides and two to three hour rides are very common. You burn calories across all those hours which really adds up. Sure you could do some marathon runs and be out for four or more hours but you'd probably be trashed for several days afterwards. It's common to do three to four hour rides on both weekend days and feel pretty good on Monday morning.
  
• A three hour bike ride can be fun and social and really take you somewhere whereas a half hour to hour of running usually means going around the same route near your house again and again. The change in scenery with cycling is a great plus in terms of staying motivated
  
• It's just plain more fun to blast down hills at 40 mph, to corner on a bike, and to ride with a fast group of other folks. It's like flying when you're really cruising and that's a feeling I never get running or swimming.

I'm sure there's more tangible exercise physiology based comparisons such as Calories per hour or somesuch but to me it's a no brainer. If I want to drop weight and feel good I get on my bike.

FWIW I dropped 40 pounds since last August by riding four to five days a week. Yeah I'm riding a lot of that fairly hard and with a structured training plan geared towards race fitness where losing weight was important but secondary to developing power.

Good luck,
Dave