Really dumb question but...

[Melonfish]

When cycling am i burning Calories or Kcal?
i mean 1 kcal is 1000 calories.

so my cycle computer gives me how many calories i burn when i cycle, so i eat a bowl of cereal in the morning that is 100kcal per bowl.
that means when i cycle in in the morning i'm using 470 calories and the same return so call it 1000 odd calories roughly.
that means though i'd have to cycle for ten days to get rid of that one bowl of cereal? that can't be right surely?

can i reasonably assume that i am in fact burning kcal when i cycle and not just basic calories because if it is just basic calories should i shoot myself now?
pete

 

[amaferanga]

People are just lazy and use calories and kcal to refer to the same thing.

If you're using a HRM to give you a kcal ('calories') burnt figure though you should take whatever it tells you with a large grain of salt (most overestimate, some overestimate wildly).

 

[ianrauk]

I thought Kcal and calories are the same thing. Kilocalorie (Kcal) is the correct term rather then calories. But someone may know better.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Taken from here

A calorie is a unit of energy. We tend to associate calories with food, but they apply to anything containing energy. For example, a gallon (about 4 liters) of gasoline contains about 31,000,000 calories.
Specifically, a calorie is the amount of energy, or heat, it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). One calorie is equal to 4.184 joules, a common unit of energy used in the physical sciences.
Most of us think of calories in relation to food, as in "This can of soda has 200 Calories." It turns out that the Calories on a food package are actually kilocalories (1000 calories = 1 kilocalorie). The word is sometimes capitalized to show the difference, but usually not. A food Calorie contains 4,840 joules. A can of soda containing 200 Calories contains 200,000 calories, or 200 kilocalories. A gallon of gasoline contains 31,000 Calories.
The same applies to exercise -- when a fitness chart says you burn about 100 Calories for every mile you jog, it means 100 kilocalories. For the rest of this article, when I say "calorie," I mean "kilocalorie."



What Calories Do 1 g Carbohydrates = 4 Calories
1 g Protein = 4 Calories
1 g Fat = 9 Calories

Human beings need energy to survive -- to breathe, move, pump blood -- and they acquire this energy from food.
The number of calories in a food is a measure of how much potential energy that food possesses. A gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, a gram of protein also has 4 calories, and a gram of fat has 9 calories. Foods are a compilation of these three building blocks. So if you know how many carbohydrates, fats and proteins are in any given food, you know how many calories, or how much energy, that food contains.
If we look at the nutritional label on the back of a packet of maple and brown sugar oatmeal, we find that it has 160 calories. This means that if we were to pour this oatmeal into a dish, set the oatmeal on fire and get it to burn completely, the reaction would produce 160 kilocalories (remember: food calories are kilocalories) -- enough energy to raise the temperature of 160 kilograms of water by 1 degree Celsius. If we look closer at the nutritional label, we see that our oatmeal has 2 grams of fat, 4 grams of protein and 32 grams of carbohydrates, producing a total of 162 calories (apparently, food manufacturers like to round down). Of these 162 calories, 18 come from fat (9 cal x 2 g), 16 come from protein (4 cal x 4 g) and 128 come from carbohydrates (4 cal x 32 g).
Our bodies "burn" the calories in the oatmeal through metabolic processes, by which enzymes break the carbohydrates into glucose and other sugars, the fats into glycerol and fatty acids and the proteins into amino acids. These molecules are then transported through the bloodstream to the cells, where they are either absorbed for immediate use or sent on to the final stage of metabolism in which they are reacted with oxygen to release their stored energy.

When cycling am i burning Calories or Kcal?
i mean 1 kcal is 1000 calories.

so my cycle computer gives me how many calories i burn when i cycle, so i eat a bowl of cereal in the morning that is 100kcal per bowl.
that means when i cycle in in the morning i'm using 470 calories and the same return so call it 1000 odd calories roughly.
that means though i'd have to cycle for ten days to get rid of that one bowl of cereal? that can't be right surely?

can i reasonably assume that i am in fact burning kcal when i cycle and not just basic calories because if it is just basic calories should i shoot myself now?
pete

 

[Melonfish]

Right i believe then yeah Calories is interchangeable, my little aldi cycle pooter says this morning i burned about 419 CAL so kcal in effect. which i reckon is probably a bit high for 8.1miles i'll generally take it with a pinch of salt but overall i was somewhat confused! heh
cheers

 

[Garz]

Most computers will overestimate the calories, I normally find deducting about 20% or thereabouts will give you a truer figure.