Moderation is good, even when it comes to exercise
Q Would increasing my exercise over the December holidays offset the extra treats I intend enjoying?
A
Humans are sneaky creatures — always looking for ways to play the system. This is a real-life example of having your cake and eating it.
You can play the system if you like. But then allow me to plant a little seed that may germinate into common sense. A recent study has suggested that too much exercise won’t make you live longer but could make you age quicker.
A Finnish study is getting the tabloid press into a giddy state of “told you so”. The study spanned 45 years and was conducted with 11,000 pairs of twins. The findings? Taking lifestyle factors into account, the least active were biologically the oldest, but so too were the most active. Their biological age was 1.8 years older, on average, than active people.
The study has won a prize in Finland, though it has not yet been peer reviewed, so we will see if it withstands the rigour. However, it does seem plausible. People who obsessively exercise are surely harming themselves in the long run.
Most of us have met someone like that before. If you haven’t, don’t. They’re a pain. But there’s also the chance that they have an unhealthy obsession with the relationship between what they eat and what they “burn off”. I once had an acquaintance who obsessively “paid for” any meal or drink by running and going to the gym. She burnt out and doesn’t exercise any more.
ROUGH ESTIMATES
Before we get to burning off your Christmas pie, please demonstrate the intelligence you clearly have, evidenced by your reading of Business Day, and appreciate that we are entering the realm of rough estimates. Don’t pull out a calculator and your secondyear nutrition textbook — the below estimates are for illustrative purposes only, to show you the silliness of your plan.
According to Mayo Clinic’s calorie calculation resource, an imaginary 40-year-old, 70kg active man, who has no underlying problems, would need about 2,300 calories a day to maintain his weight.
A woman of the same weight and similar health would need about 2,100. A sedentary person would need fewer calories, but then again a sedentary person would not ask a question about exercising more to offset eating junk.
One estimate is that a full pepperoni pizza packs 2,240 calories. To be fair, it would be impossible to accurately know the calorie content of a run-ofthe-mill takeout pizza ordered in this country.
A 200g chicken breast with half a cup of cooked rice and a cup of broccoli (the furthest thing from appetising, we know) would be about 320 calories in total. The chicken would contain more than 50g of protein, some say as much as 62g. The pizza may have anywhere up to 60g-80g of protein but it is also packed with muffin-top making madness. That chicken meal can be eaten many times throughout the day by our imaginary pair whereas the pizza can be eaten only once. What you eat matters.
ROWING
Let’s assume our 70kg person had access to a rowing machine — a great full-body exercise. It would take about 30-35 minutes of rowing at a moderate intensity to burn off one slice of the pepperoni pizza, about 280 calories. If he or she ate the entire pizza, multiply that by eight. That’s four and a half hours of rowing.
It would take a further 25-30 minutes to burn off a Magnum Classic 90ml based on the 240 calorie declaration on the Magnum website. Mars bar? Another 25 minutes. Be prepared to row 20 minutes for a pint of lager and another seven to 10 minutes to burn off the 70 calories in a shot of whiskey.
If you lived your life like this, you would quite literally go mad and send your spouse to therapy. It is futile. Exercise regularly, and when you have a treat, do so in moderation. Calories add up quickly and not all food is equal: you can eat far more of a good thing without spilling over into a prolonged caloric surplus. You need to go slowly with the junk.