What Has 7 Months Of Cycling Done To My Body?

After spending the last seven months increasing his time on the bike and refining his training routine, Dan is heading to the lab to see the physiological impact on his body. He undergoes a grueling VO2 Max test and a detailed DEXA scan to measure exactly how his body fat and muscle mass have shifted. The results reveal the honest truth about how cycling affects longevity, body composition, and overall fitness.

Chapters: ⏱️
00:00 – The 7-Month Experiment
01:15 – What Changed in My Training?
02:49 – The VO2 Max Test
04:39 – Analyzing the VO2 Max Results
06:49 – The DEXA Body Scan
08:12 – Body Fat & Visceral Fat Results
10:51 – Lean Muscle Mass Analysis
12:14 – The Verdict: Did I Lose Muscle?
13:40 – Diet, Lifestyle & Conclusions

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Dan managed to drop significant body fat, but his VO2 max numbers didn’t jump as high as he hoped. 📉 What is the primary metric you use to track your own fitness progress: weight, FTP, or just how you feel on the bike? Let us know in the comments below! 👇

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How much difference does 7 months of regular on the bike training make to the amount of fat and muscle in your body? Does it increase your V2 max? I’m about to find out. [Music] Really good. Keep pushing through. Really good. Really good. [Music] Keep going down. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Great work. Not doing that again for at least a year. 18 months ago, I set about trying to change my life around. Less drinking, less nicotine, more gym, more running, more movement in general. My aim was to form new habits with the hope that in doing so my markers of longevity such as V2 max and muscle mass and strength would reverse and head back in the right direction. And the results were good. In 7 months I gained 4 kilos of muscle, lost 2 kg of fat, and increased my absolute V2 max by 7%. And so I kept my new routine going through the winter and into spring of this year. What changed in spring? Well, I got back on my bike. We’ve all gone too hard for the first 22ks. So, going into the unknown for me now, cuz I haven’t done a ride longer than this in distance or time in a long, long time. This year I completed the longest ride I’ve ever done, a 350k charity event from Manchester down to London, three hill climb events, and three gravel races including the UCI World Championships. I even took a Straa K on a tour to France climb, albeit before the tour to France rolled through. So even though there are still two months remaining in 2025 as we record this, I’ve already done over twice the number of kilometers and twice the amount of time on the bike as I did in the whole of 2024. Uh that said, the cycling has not been entirely in addition to other activities. I’ve done about half the amount of running and about 2/3 of the strength work in the gym as I did last year. I’ve only got so much time outside of work commitments and family time, so something had to give. However, I have averaged about 2 hours of strength training per week in the gym this year. So, I’m intrigued to find out how much my body composition has changed, if at all. And how much has all this cycling increased my V2 max, if at all. You might remember from our series last year that V2 max is one of, if not the strongest indicator of health span. To find out, I’m going to need to do some tests. First up, V2 max. Have I increased my body’s ability to utilize the oxygen that I take into my lungs? Well, I’m just about to enter Bath University to meet up with Jonathan, who you might recognize. Been on plenty of videos on GN since our inception in 2013. He is going to put me through my paces. Then, after a fair amount of pain, we’ll find out the answer to that question. As a reminder, your V2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize when you’re at your physical limit. So, it’s a good proxy for performance with endurance athletes. But there’s also a very strong correlation between V2 max and health span. If you want to know how that works, I did a whole video on that topic last year, which we’ll link to in the description below. At my peak as a full-time athlete, my V2 max was 75. 18 months ago, it was down to 52, but I bumped it up to just under 55 by this time last year. I’m hoping that the riding I’ve been doing this year would have pushed it even higher than that. Great work. Great work. Great effort. Push through it if you can. Good. Good. Good. Keep your head up. Try and get loads of air in. Good. Good. Good. Great work. Great work. Great effort. Hang in there if you can. Stick with it if you can. That’s good. Good. Good. Keep pushing through. Keep going down. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Great work. [Music] Not doing that again for at least a year. [Music] Go on then. Give me the good or the bad news. Yeah. So, I got 54.4. Oh, no. Which is similar, isn’t it? I think. Oh, dear. Uh, right. I’ve got changed. I’m not going to say I recovered because I haven’t. But 54.4. That’s the result. Talk us through it. Yeah. So, 54.4 is your kind of V2 max score, which is 54.4 for milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of your weight per minute. Um, and profile we’ve got on here is the blue dots are oxygen and you can see obviously increasing up as we go through and then kind of plateauing out and then as you really dug in at the end and we’re all curled up and trying, it’s actually dropping off a little bit. Um, which is fairly common in terms of results cuz once you’re working really really hard, you can’t sustain it forever. Uh, the red dots we’ve got on here are carbon dioxide production. So that’s kind of indicating how hard you’re working. And once the red starts to go above the blue, it means you’re working pretty anorobically and generating a lot of waste product, which is going to kind of slow you down. So where was that inversion? Can you see what the power was at the point where it meets or does it not show on that graph? Not on there, but I could work it out. So it’s kind of 9 minutes into the test. So we could we could work that out. Um, and that would be that kind of it’s pretty close to FTP. saying second lactate threshold but obviously done in a a slightly different way but the physiology all kind of marries up and shows you that well obviously not quite what I hoped for. I have had hope for it to go up obviously but it’s not really bad news is it down from 54.8 to 54.4. It’s only a slight drop. No, only a slight drop and you’ll get daily variation um and and things and obviously you may well have gone to a slightly higher power output than you did last time. So that’s obviously a kind of performance related game if you’re able to get to a higher power as well. Probably yesterday and tomorrow it would have been 60. I don’t know. Yeah, probably. Right. Thank you again so much for your help over the last 13 years. In fact, it’s okay. All right. I’d like to say I’ll see you again soon, but as I said, might be at least a year. With the V2 max test done, it’s time for the less painful bit, a body scan. For that, I’ve gone to Body View on the outskirts of Southampton to get tested with Kate. Just like last year, I’ll be doing a DEXA scan to see body composition, which assesses percentage of fat and muscle mass. First up, a weighin. I was 75 kilos this time last year and up to 76 in January, the heaviest I’d ever been, but that came down to 73 in the summer after months of riding. And I’m hoping that wasn’t cannibalizing of my hard-earned increase in muscle, but I’ll shortly find out. Dexer stands for dual energy X-ray absorber. It’s a medical imaging test that uses a small safe dose of two different energy X-ray beams to measure the density of your bones. It also measures muscle mass and fat mass, which can be expressed as a percentage of your overall weight. This time last year, my body fat percentage was 16.1, down almost 3% over 7 months. My lean body mass increased from 56.6 kilos to 60.6, an increase of 4 kg, all from additional muscle. [Music] It’s time for either the good news or the bad news, Kate. I’m hoping for the former. Let’s wait and see. Okay. have to wait and see. So, we’ll start with your BMI classification. It’s not as accurate as everyone makes out, okay? It’s been around for hundreds of years and it can’t really tell between fat and muscle. Okay? So, just take it with a pinch of salt. Although your BMI is 21.3, it’s normal. Body fat percentage. So, 11.7% is where you’re at today. Okay. So, that in terms of a body weight in K um kg, that’s 8.6. Yeah, I think I just had it in a percentage form last year, but that’s quite a significant reduction because I was at 16.3, I think, and I’d already lost some fat during the year. So, that’s quite substantial, isn’t it? That is a lot. Yeah. And in terms of a body fat classification, that now brings you into more of an athletic body type. So, anywhere between 6 to 14% body fat is considered athletic. Okay. So, very very good. I have managed reversing. I’m almost athletic again. That’s good news. Exactly. going back to the good old days. But if you look on this graph here, you’re this little X. So actually this blue line is the average line and you’re below average. Okay. So as always, and then this figure here, you got something called your fat mass index. Now this is a better figure to look at in terms of BMI as it’s only measuring your fat mass in relation to your height. Okay? So doesn’t take account to your muscle or anything like that and give you any false readings. Your fat mass index is 2.48 which is normal. Okay. For a male we suggest anywhere between 2 to 5. Right. Is it muscle mass next or we got a little way to go? No, you got a little way to go. You got a little bit more fat to talk about. So your visceral fat. Do you know what visceral fat is? It’s what’s around the organs that you can’t see from the outside, is it? Yes. Your invisible fat. So your measurement today is 53.6 cm squared. So, as you can see here, you are within the normal range. Okay. So, you’re snap bang here. Now, from a longevity standpoint, we recommend that people sit below 80. So, with your measurement of 53.6, it’s very good. Okay. Okay. So, in terms of how much visceral fat you have around the organs, a very minimal amount. And if you were then to compare your results against someone of the same age, um you would be in this below category. So this is essentially just saying that if you were in a room full of hundred men of the same age, only 18 of them would have less visceral fat than you. Work still to do then. Need to get to number one. And then onto your lean mass. Okay, so this would be your lean mass. So as a total your lean mass weight is 62.4 kilograms. Okay. And in terms of a body f body percentage, that’s 84.3%. Okay. Now, as I said earlier, you get two separate scores. You get a lean mass index, which is more of a generalized overview of your whole body from head to toe. Okay. So, things like your major organs, your soft tissue, connective tissue will all be playing a role in that measurement apart from fat or bone that will not be included. So, your measurement is 17.9 kg per meter squared. So, for this one, you are in the below category. So, you’re in the 12th percentile. that is low. Okay. So that’s suggesting that there could be some improvement for some more muscle mass. Right? Okay. If we were to look only at your muscle, so you got this figure here. This is called your appendicular lean mass. So a little bit more localized. It splits your arms and your legs. So appendicular is just a fancy word for your arms and legs. So for you, your measurement is 7.9 kg per meter squared. So again, you fall into that um below category. So the seventh percentile of that 100. You want this figure to improve. Thank you. It’s okay. Oh yeah. Amazing Kate. Thanks very much indeed. That’s no worries. Things seem to be working. I am really pleased in general. Even when you’re confident that you’re doing most of the right things for your health, the changes can be so small weekly, even monthly, that it’s hard to really know if things are going in the right direction. But to go from 16.3% body fat down to 11.7, a reduction of over 3.5 kg is massive. My actual body weight has gone down. And I was worried that that meant I’d lost some of the muscle mass I tried so hard to gain. But since I’ve only lost a kilogram and the fat loss far exceeds that, it means that my lean mass has increased, going from 60.6 kg to 62.4, a gain of 1 1/2 kilos. Most of that extra muscle mass is on my trunk, whilst the muscle on my legs has remained almost exactly the same. Uh that I think is down to skipping leg days whilst I was training on the bike because it made them feel so sore, but I’ll get back on that this coming winter. In terms of V2 max, I didn’t have the result that I hoped for. My specific on the bike fitness has definitely increased. I can see that through my power outputs, but my V2 max hasn’t. However, it also hasn’t really dropped that much. The difference between 54.8 and 54.4 is just 0.7%. So, in conclusion, cycling has really helped me to continue making improvements to some key health metrics. How much have I done exactly? Well, this year I’ve averaged 4 and 1/2 hours of cycling per week. And then on top of that, I’ve averaged 45 minutes per week of running and 2 hours 20 in the gym. So that’s an average of around 7 and 1/2 hours of exercise per week. On top of that, I’m famous or infamous for logging my dog walks. So I’ve averaged 3 hours 40 per week of brisk walking as well. Now in terms of diet and food, I haven’t changed much at all since last year. I’m still trying to keep my protein intake high and eat whole foods as much as possible, which is most of the time. I am still drinking alcohol, but I did do dry January and sober October and then probably average two nights per week in the other months and I still enjoy that. I don’t envision going completely sober anytime soon. I still haven’t kicked the nicotine pouch habit. I’m convinced they’re the most addictive things that you can buy legally. One for the to-do list next year, I think. A couple of other notable points before I finish. Since I started making all these changes 20 months ago, I haven’t been ill once. No flu, no cold, no cough, literally nothing. I mean, that might just be by chance, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this long without coming down with something. And I’ve got to say, it feels good to be well all the time. Now, recently I’ve started running more again. And initially, I found I was really quite slow. actually felt unfit despite doing an entire video this year on that very subject. For some reason, it came as a surprise to me that my increased fitness on the bike did not immediately transfer to running. I am feeling better now, but at the start it was a bit of a struggle. Just one more thing then before I finish this video. I realized that this whole thing is very self-centered on my part. I had some personal aims. I documented the process and then the results. However, I really hope that even though it’s a study of one, it shows that consistency really does result in some quite big changes if you give it enough time to see results. You don’t have to be 100% all of the time, just better than you were most of the time. Anyway, if any of you have been doing something similar, I would absolutely love to read all about it in the comments section below. And if you’re after some encouragement, just send me a message. Right, I better go now. I’ve got some V2 max intervals to do.