The fitness trap: why you can't work off that sundae
whAT? Exercising isn't the key?
“Man, I just played an hour of pickleball. I worked hard for this sundae.”
We’ve all been there. We’ve grinded, and hence we should be rewarded, right?
Keep this in mind: You can’t outrun a bad diet.
Unless you’re exercising for long periods of time, calories burnt from exercise usually won’t amount to much.
And it definitely won’t tip the scales in your favor if you’re gaining it all back (or more) by devouring with vengeance.
This is part 2 of our “caloric deficit series” where we’ll explore just how efficient different exercises are in burning calories, and if they can actually burn off our cheat meals.
Exercises vs. most indulgent cheat meals
This is the battle of the best, where we put 5 exercises against the 5 most formidable cheat meals to see who comes out on top, calorie-wise.
Setting the stage
Most people opt to work out for 30-minute to 1-hour sessions. For the sake of this little study, let’s say that if the exercise can work off the calories within 1 hour, it’s a win.
In terms of cheat meals or cravings, I consulted various sources on Google, and found that chocolate, ice cream, chips, cakes, and fast food seemed to top most lists. Let’s pick a popular option from each category.
Fun fact: cultural differences also play a huge part in determining cravings, so you’re not weird if you crave rice; you could just be Asian.
For our chosen exercises, we’re looking for those with an efficient burn rate, but also lower in effort (hopefully).
When considering the most efficient calorie spenders, it’s easy to just pick the exercise with the highest intensity. However, it’s not realistic to operate at max for 60 minutes. We will die. So we also have to take into account perceived exertion and rest.
I referenced data collected from a study by Jeremy Ethier where he strapped a PNOE mask on to accurately measure calorie expenditure for various exercises. Here are some of the results:
Cravings of your choice
Let’s consult our great search engine for our representatives on this side of the battlefield.
Chocolate - According to Lottie Woodrow from Lovefood, Snickers bars are the world’s bestselling bars. They’ll be our representative for this round.
Ice Cream - Häagen-Dazs. There seems to be a lot of discourse surrounding the “best flavor”, so let’s go with Belgian chocolate for simplicity.
Chips - Lay’s Classic Potato Chips seems to be the world’s bestselling chip (y’all lack personality). We’ll go with about half of a standard 235g bag.
Cakes - Referencing Lovefood again, chocolate cakes seem to be the most popular. I’m going with my childhood favorite - Sara Lee Double Chocolate Cake.
Fast Food - The good ol’ Big Mac meal with medium fries and a coke from Mickey Ds.
Putting it all together:
(I grouped ice-cream, chips, and cake together as their calories per serving were similar.)
The outcome
The results are out, and they say:
“You can’t outrun a bad diet”. Even just a Snickers bar alone will cost us 15 minutes of sprinting or continuous boxing. Factoring in exertion and rest periods so we don’t just drop dead, we’re probably looking at a 30-45 minute workout session – of just intense boxing or sprinting.
Just for a Snickers Bar.
When we’re rewarding our efforts, it's usually with something much more substantial like an all-you-can-eat barbecue or hotpot – both of which have calorie counts that easily exceed 1000. After that, we might still top off with desserts - cakes and ice creams galore. Even Forrest Gump can’t outrun that.
Does that mean we can’t ever have anything “nice”? Of course we can, we just need a little planning to make sure it fits within our health goals. Read my previous story on planning around jigsaw pieces to learn how to run with our indulgent meals – not against them.
We have now established that we can’t simply “work off” what we eat. Then what can we do? We’ll address it in detail in the next part of the “caloric deficit series”, where we explore the power of non-exercise calorie burning activities.
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