The‘ exercise causes weight loss’ myth 90 hours of walking13 that we would have to do, not four days a week, but every day of the week if we were to burn this excess intake off! This vastly exceeds most recommendations. No wonder that two-thirds of the population is now overweight or obese! As we have seen, a simple guide is that with brisk walking we burn off an extra 200 calories per hour. We will eat 500 calories in a stick of garlic bread. For my money it’ s easier to skip the garlic bread and spend the couple of hours reading a good book reclining on the lounge! A slice of apple pie or one and a half doughnuts equates to over an hour of brisk walking to burn them off. If you start thinking of foods you eat in terms of the exercise required to burn them off, you come up with a rather different perspective on eating and exercising. It’ s worth thinking about foods in terms of how much exercise we need to burn them off. Below I list foods that would equate to an hour’ s exercise in the form of walking. Think about whether these foods are worth an hour’ s walking to burn each one off:
• 375 ml chocolate milk drink
• large muffin
• 60 g chocolate bar
• 65 g packet of potato crisps
• medium serve of French fries
• three party pies
• ¾ of a Big Mac
• McDonald ' s medium shake Being naturally lazy, as I started to realize just what I had to do to burn off these foods, I started to find them much less appealing! 13 For these calculations I use walking at 3.5mph or 5.5kph and correct for RMR burn – which is why these durations might appear higher than expected.