this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Well, not necessarily. A bike that's got a full carbon frame also absorbs shock and vibration from the road better. This means you can ride longer distances without getting fatigued in places like your wrists or ass. Longer rides = more exercise.
But once you have a carbon frame, chasing grams on other components gets to be a bit silly.
So using fewer calories.
I've yet to ride a carbon frame for any amount of real distance, so idk how good they actually are.
But having a less harsh ride can also be archived by not using the thinnest pizza cutter tires at 10 bar. Especially if we care about time ridden and not avg. speed.
And it's going to be slightly harder to get the same speed out of comfy tires, so that's also more exercise.
It was really funny about a decade back watching the entire bike industry all at once acknowledge friction coefficients, and suddenly the tires all went from 24mm/90psi to 38mm/40psi. All because the roadies started riding on gravel.
You could argue that TPI tubes / tubeless made larger road tires practical. But we all secretly know it was because people at the time just thought thin tires looked cooler and "more aero".
Steel is real. The road feel difference between carbon and steel is negligible, steel is usually way cheaper, survives a whole lot longer, is more often built to widely compatible standards, is fully recyclable, and in my humble opinion just straight up feels better under you on a ride. As for weight, unless one is a pro race cyclist there is never any reason to chase gram shavings, you will almost always lose more weight and go faster by working out your own body. But FWIW my default steel rig is 19 pounds and competes on weight with most carbon builds.
You could also just walk whenever possible, burns more kcals/distance
That's less efficient time-wise though, since it takes significantly longer to walk the same distance compared to riding.
Ie, riding 2 hours burns FAR more calories than walking for 2 hours.