All the running I’m doing and the various forms of exercise that Jenny is doing at the gym got me thinking about calories. Despite the hundreds of different (and often contradictory) diets out there, I still haven’t found any reason to doubt the basic calorie equation: Calories Eaten – Calories Burned = Change in Weight. Burn more than you eat to lose weight. Eat more than you burn to gain weight. Not easy, but at least it’s simple.
MayoClinic.com provides a nice calorie calculator that can tell you roughly how many calories you burn per day based on your gender, age, weight, and activity level.
I burn 2600 calories per day on average. I don’t count calories, but I try to eat fairly healthy meals most of the time. Jenny and I have both cut back on our sugar, largely in the form of sugary soda and dessert. We mainly accomplish this by keeping them out of the house. If I see them, I will consume them. (Jenny horrified me this week by bringing home not one, but two bags of delicious Oreos for Brenden’s party. I told her to hide them from me. I wasn’t kidding.) With less sugar and more running, I’ve lost about five pounds over the last few months. Although I’m not focusing on weight loss, losing a bit of belly fat is a nice side benefit.
RunnersWorld.com says that going one mile burns about 100 calories, whether walking or running. That fact makes it easy to convert foods and drinks into miles. For example, consider the following common foods and drinks that I enjoy (or would, if I tried them):
Drinks
- 12oz Coke: 140 calories = 1.4 miles
- 1 cup whole milk: 175 calories = 1.8 miles
- 12oz Sam Adams Boston Lager: 180 calories = 1.8 miles
- 5oz glass of white wine: 125 calories = 1.3 miles
Foods
- Large bagel: 283 calories = 2.8 miles
- Large banana: 121 calories = 1.2 miles
- 8oz steak: 406 calories = 4.1 miles
- Large Oreo Cheesequake Dairy Queen Blizzard: 1140 calories = 11.4 miles
- Chipotle burrito, my style: 920 calories = 9.2 miles
- Lasagna at Romano’s Macaroni Grill: 760 calories = 7.6 miles
Obviously, I don’t run 9 miles after returning from Chipotle full of a tasty burrito. Two reasons: 1) I would puke, which is extremely wasteful, and 2) I can’t run that far yet. My point is to illustrate the difficulty of burning off extra calories when you eat more than you burn, as most Americans do. Let’s say I’m currently maintaining a steady weight. If I decide to start drinking a Coke every day but don’t want it to affect my weight, I need to walk or run an extra 1.4 miles to offset it.
Jenny’s trainer at Life Time Fitness gave her a very important tip, one that I didn’t expect to hear from a gym employee who presumably wants her members to think the gym is indispensable:
If you want to lose weight, exercise alone isn’t enough.
If you do the math, it’s easy to see why. A pound of fat contains about 3500 calories. To lose a pound a week, you must create a daily deficit of 500 calories per day. Unless you plan to burn 500 calories in the gym seven days a week (five miles on a treadmill, an hour-long cardio class, etc.), you won’t notice much weight loss, if any. If seven hours a week in the gym isn’t practical (it’s not for me), cutting out a habit of drinking three Cokes a day (or just one Sonic Route-44 Coke) is like running over four miles in terms of calories. Obviously, if you can both eat better and exercise more, that’s ideal, but if you must choose, improving your diet is easier and more effective.