[dugite-code]

From my read of the article the data is heavily biased towards running as the exercise of choice, probably because measuring CO2 is easy and non-intrusive to do on a treadmill. They do mention utilizing doubly labeled water but don't say if they only used that for sedentary participants or measured a wider range of exercises.

Given I have always heard/read how efficient humans are at running if they didn't account for the differing exercise methods the conclusion being offered in this article may be flawed.

[stjohnswarts]

That's a good point. Humans are natural runners and hikers and it stands to reason that it is very efficient compared to saw something like working in a warehouse all day moving around heaving inventory or back in the old days when people would burn thousands of extra calories a day with say being a lumberjack or coal miner.

[ehnto]

I can't line up my real world experience with this article, I have to suspect that he may be right for his specific study parameters but that may not actually be applicable to generalized advice as it's being interpreted here.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Running isn't efficient at high speeds. The same with cycling. It's funny to see people buy a bike for exercise and then roll along at a crawl, expending less energy than walking.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Cycling is roughly 5x more efficient than running/walking for similar effort. Thinking you will lose much weight by cycling is generally mistaken, unless you plan to cycle very long distances or are extremely obese already and do very little existing exercise (and this is discounting most of what TFA is saying too).

[bagacrap]

wouldn't efficiency correlate to effort? pretty sure the "effort" is the feeling of burning calories. If an elite athlete can run for an hour and burn 2000 calories in that time, they will beat a less elite athlete who can run for 1900 calories in an hour, all else equal. Put them on bicycles or a rower and they'll be able to burn the exact same number of calories (assuming sufficient training in the target exercise medium) because the limiting factor is their body's ability to process oxygen, not the exact form factor of the exercise.

[ehnto]

I'm not sure it makes sense to look at it that way either. What if it takes you 100 calories to move 100 meters but your competitor only takes 80 calories to move 100 meters?

[dpark]

Running isn’t much less efficient at higher speeds. It’s harder because the calorie burn per unit time is higher, but the calorie burn per unit distance doesn’t vary that much.

[octodog]

It's more exercise than driving a car though, which is why I think people do that.

[ehnto]

You're right, cycle commuting falls in a great niche. It's still fast enough to cover decent distances in a reasonable amount of time, you can still carry your grocery shopping, and it's healthier than driving while still achieving most of the same things.