Crunching the calorie numbers to explain why that daily chocolate will kill your weight-loss goals
QI am addicted to chocolate and just can’t cut it out. What can I do to still lose fat and eat my daily
Crunchie?
A This question is the fitness equivalent of asking the metro cops if you may do 160km/h for a few minutes every Sunday because your licence is up to date and you’re good at stopping at red lights.
Remember the cliché, you can’t outrun a jam doughnut? Besides the outrageous imagery of a giant doughnut rolling down the road nipping at your heels every time you walk past the Krispy Kreme display, the saying provides a great visual cue to understand energy in vs energy out.
As you should know by now, and you don’t because of the question you asked, fat loss is about more than just calories in vs calories out. It is also related to our hormonal environment — linked, too, to the types of foods we eat — and our sense of satiety. If you’re hungry you won’t lose weight for long.
There’s no democracy in the land of love handles, and 500 calories in steak are not the same as 500 sugary processed calories in a doughnut.
If you don’t believe me, call Tim Noakes.
Don’t make a bad habit a lifestyle habit. That’s how lifestyle diseases develop. Yes, you can run off those calories, but you can’t run off the sustained long-term damage caused by the white poison, le sucre.
The pure caloric “damage” done by a small Crunchie bar will be about 42 minutes walking on the treadmill, or a 22-minute run at faster than 8km/h. Make it a large bar and double those numbers.
Some organisations have unpacked the exercise trapped inside popular treats. This means, to get back to zero, how much exercise I would need to do to burn off the hollow calories I just consumed.
One such organisation is the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK. Here are some of its recommendations.
A standard blueberry muffin comprising 265 calories will take 48 minutes walking or 25 minutes running to “burn off”. Two slices of a normal pizza (a quarter of a pizza), packed with 449 calories, will take an hour and 23 minutes walking or 43 minutes running to burn off.
Knowing that you are drinking your morning cappuccino reading this, a standard-size mocha coffee, at 290 calories, will cost you 53 minutes walking or 28 minutes running. An iced cinnamon roll, comprising 420 calories, will chew up an hour and 17 minutes walking or 40 minutes running. A standard 138-calorie sugary drink will apparently only set you back 26 minutes walking or 13 minutes running.
I’ve seen calculations far stricter than these. This is the standard-grade paper in terms of just how much damage to your goals you are causing by falling off the wagon.
Let’s imagine you left work early, had a mocha coffee before deciding to have half a pizza, a can of Coke and something similar to a cinnamon roll — perhaps a chocolate doughnut.
To simply make up for the damage that one hour would have caused, you would need to run an extra 167 minutes (almost three hours), over and above your regular training — and only if everything else was 100% on point. And it never is.
Let’s up the ante. A regular beer consists of 153 calories, and a light beer is 105. A shot of gin is 95 calories, while a whisky is about 97. Full glasses of various wines contain about 120 calories. A piña colada has 526 and a chocolate martini is packed with 4,188 calories! This, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of hollow calories. Every time Manchester United lose I incur the debt of a fourhour run. You can only imagine how much I’ve run this year.
Have a Crunchie now and then. But making it a habit will make your goals near-on impossible.
THE PURE CALORIC ‘DAMAGE’ DONE BY A SMALL CRUNCHIE BAR WILL BE ABOUT 42 MINUTES WALKING ON THE TREADMILL, OR A 22-MINUTE RUN