Cycling is a safe and effective way to lose weight because it's extremely low-impact on your joints and makes for excellent cardiovascular exercise, particularly if you maintain a relatively fast pace. Losing 5 pounds through cycling is a fairly modest goal for most people because it can be done quickly. According to, it's best to lose around 1 to 2 pounds of weight per week if you're overweight. If your goal is to lose one pound per week through cycling, you'll need to burn roughly 500 calories per day.

Step 1

Step on a scale to measure your weight. Write it down for your records, and subtract 5 pounds to determine your target weight. This is the weight you'll need to achieve exactly five weeks from now if your goal is to lose 5 pounds in five weeks.

Step 2

Determine the amount of cycling you'll need to do per day, as well as the intensity at which you'll need to do it, using a calorie burn calculator.

Step 3

Enter your current weight into the calorie burn calculator, followed by the number of minutes you plan to spend cycling each day at the appropriate intensity. For example, if you weigh 180 pounds and you cycle for 42 minutes per day at a pace of 12 to 14 miles per hour, you will burn 498 calories per day. Maintaining this workout schedule for seven days in a row will have you burning roughly 3,500 calories, which is equivalent to 1 pound.

Step 4

Maintain this schedule for five weeks. After five weeks you'll have burned 17,500 calories, which is equivalent to 5 pounds.

Step 5

Maintain the same daily caloric intake throughout your five-week weight-loss schedule. If you consume more calories on a certain day, this will cancel out some of the calorie-burning achieved by your cycling routine.


  • Experiment with different paces and minutes of exercise in the calorie burn calculator. For example, if you cycle for 60 minutes per day at a pace of 14 to 16 miles per hour, you'll burn 864 calories per day and lose 1 pound in roughly four days instead of seven.
  • Engage in other forms of exercise, such as strength training, to improve overall fitness while losing weight. Building muscle will improve your metabolism, allowing you to burn more calories per day even at rest.
  • Maintain a calorie-conscious diet focused on protein, complex carbohydrates and unsaturated fats to accelerate weight loss even further.

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