How Much Energy You Need To Burn Off 8 Junk Foods
Donut Day. Pi (Pie!) Day. Girl Scout Cookie Day. There’s a whole calendar of days to help us further indulge our already out of control urge for junk food.
We all may start out with good intentions, a healthy diet, avoid sweets and sugary drinks, but there are times when we need and require comfort food
We crave it!
It may be after a long night at the pub, or it may be we are out and about and cannot be bothered with going home and cooking. We’ll just grab a quick bite at the local chippy or fast food restaurant.
And eating like this in moderation is fine, we all need to feed our “junk food souls” once in a while.
However, we also must try to stay fit and healthy. Here’s what it takes to burn off those yummies.
The NHS says that a healthy man needs around 2,500k calories a day, and that women need around 2,000k calories a day.
Naturally some of these calories are going to be made up of fats, some of which are good and some of which are bad.
We need to watch out for the saturated fats, as they can cause us to have high cholesterol, and this can lead to heart disease and heart attacks. All of which we want to avoid.
So watching our diets is important, and so is exercise. We need to pick ourselves up off the sofa and get out there and walk, ride a bike, work out at the gym, we need to get moving.
And when you bring together our love for junk foods, and how we are going to have them from time-to-time, and exercise, just how much energy and exercise do we need to do to burn off the odd burger or pizza??
No one is saying give up fast food, you just need to know how much exercise you will need to do to in order to burn it off.
Here is an 8 step workout to help you to stay fit and healthy while indulging in a few tasty treats.
McDonald’s Big Mac
“Two all beef patties, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, special sauce, on a sesame seed bun.”
One of the granddaddies of the burger world, the Big Mac.
The Mac stands alone at 490 calories and has 24g of fat. For a normal man, this represents almost a 5th of their daily calories, and quarter of their daily allowed fat intake.
A man would need to do 42 minutes of a cardio workout to burn this off, and women would need a cardio workout of 51 minutes.
If you just want to lift weights, a man would require 57 minutes of weightlifting and women would need just over an hour at 68 minutes.
Cardio: Men – 42 minutes Women – 51 minutes
Weightlifting: Men – 57 minutes Women – 68 minutes
McDonald’s French Fries – Large
If you are going to have a Big Mac, what goes better with it then Micky D’s fries.
What do they do to make them so tasty?!
People even try to make them at home.
However, they have 460 calories, and 22g of fat. This is almost a 5th of a man’s calories for the day, and over a quarter of their allowed fat.
If you couple a large fry with a Big Mac, you are nearing half the daily calories allowed for a man, you are very close to half the daily calories allowed for a woman, and at half the daily allowed fat.
This all in one meal.
So how can you burn the fries off:
Cardio: Men – 40 minutes Women – 48 minutes
Weightlifting: Men – 53 minutes women – 64 minutes
Soft Drink: 330ml Coca Cola
While you are having that Big Mac and fries, you need something to wash it all down with, so why not an ice cold coke.
While the soft drink has no fat, which is good, it does have with it 139 calories.
To burn this off:
Cardio: Men – 12 minutes Women – 14 minutes.
Weightlifting: Men – 16 minutes Women – 19 minutes
To put this in perspective for you, should you drink three (3) fizzy type drinks a day, you would need to take these times and multiply by three.
So Men would need 36 minutes of cardio or 48 minutes of weightlifting, and women would need 42 minutes of cardio or 57 minutes of weightlifting. All for 3 sodas.
To also put this in perspective, if you opt for an “extra value” meal consisting of a Big Mac, fries and a drink, men would need to do cardio for 94 minutes, women for 113 minutes, or almost an hour an a half
You can do the math on weightlifting, it is even more.
Pizza: Pizza Express Margherita
One of my favourite indulgences, pizza. And you can find this one in your local supermarkets as well.
However, this indulgence does not come without a price, in calories.
The pie has 682 calories, and 22g of fat.
Again, this is over a 5th of the allowed daily calories for a man, and well over a quarter of the daily calories allowed for a woman.
To burn this pizza off:
Cardio: Men – 59 minutes Women – 71 minutes of working out
Weightlifting: Men – 79 minutes Women – 94 minutes that’s over an hour and half for women
Fried Chicken: KFC 3 Pieces
Another one of my culinary delights, fried chicken.
When I was a teenager I actually cooked KFC chicken for a few years, and I never got tired of eating it. That secret recipe is one well guarded recipe.
Of course, these tasty morals of fowl are not low in calories.
They have 726 calories in them, and 42g of fat.
While that may only be a third of the daily calories allowed for a man, it still represents over half your allowed fat for a day.
So tasty, but high in fat.
To burn this bird off:
Cardio: Men – 63 minutes Women – 75 minutes
Weightlifting:
Men – 84 minutes Women – 101 minutes
Chocolate: Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Bar 45g
Calling all chocoholics!
And you know who you are.
Indulging in your favourite chocolate bar will cost you 237 calories and 14g of fat.
That doesn’t sound too bad to me.
To melt that chocolate waist you need to:
Cardio: Men – 21 minutes Women – 25 minutes
Weightlifting: Men – 28 minutes Women – 33 minutes
Beer: A Pint of Stella Artois
OK, here’s where a lot of the fellas are going to start to feel the need for working out.
If you go down to your local and toss a few pints back, it can add up.
A pint of this fine lager, whilst having no fat, has 245 calories per pint.
To flush these calories away you need to:
Cardio: Men – 21 minutes Women – 25 minutes
Weightlifting: Men – 28 minutes Women – 34 minutes
So in the time it may take you to drink that pint, you need just as much time to burn it off.
To put this into perspective:
If you drank six (6) pints out on one evening, you would need to cardio 126 minutes, or over two hours for a man.
Cake: Tesco Chocolate Fudge Cake 450g
Some of us “love the cake”, that is our sweet treasure.
This treasure comes with a caloric price tag of 1710 calories, and 90g of fat. A pretty hefty price tag at that.
To get rid of this:
Cardio: Men – 149 minutes Women – 178 minutes
Weightlifting: Men – 199 minutes Woman – 237 minutes
You have got to really love the cake for that kind of workouts.
If you have followed our little workout plan as you read along, you would have burned up 880 calories. Enough for a pint and a Big Mac, and some other goodies.
As with everything in life, moderation is the key.
