How many times have heard someone say, "I eat whatever I want. I just make sure to exercise it off." Sounds like a great plan, doesn't it? The problem is that it's easy to underestimate how hard you really have to work for those few moments of dietary bliss, so most of us never quite pay back that caloric debt. For example, a McDonald's regular hamburger, medium fries and medium Coke are a combined 780 calories. How hard would you have to exercise to burn off that meal? Let's use a 150-pound man as an example and call him Gus. Gus would have to run on a treadmill at a speed of 5.2 miles per hour for
NINE miles to burn off 780 calories. If you weigh more than Gus, you'd burn a few more calories, but if you weigh less you'd have to work even harder to "pay for" that nutritional faux pas.
Let's say Gus had two slices of cheese pizza and a medium soda for lunch. Assuming the pizza slices are medium to large, that's 610 calories. To burn that off Gus would have to ride an elliptical trainer at a vigorous pace for one full hour.
Chips are almost always rated number one in the top five snack foods. If Gus downed two servings of Cool Ranch Doritos one afternoon (about 24 chips), he'd be facing 280 calories that have to go somewhere. Unloading those calories would mean he'd have to ride a recumbent bike at a pace of 12 miles per hour for 45 minutes.
Or how about one plain Hershey's chocolate bar-how bad could that be? Well, it's 230 calories so Gus and his partner would have to dance a waltz non-stop for 60 minutes to work it off. Can you say sore feet and blisters?!
The choice is yours, but bad food decisions come with a high price tag. You might want to rethink the "I can eat whatever I want and just exercise it off" mantra, and make a healthier choice in the first place.
Book Dan Polimino to speak at your next meeting or event today. For program information contact us at info@BookDan.com, visit www.BookDan.com or call 303-683-4795.