Nutrition Myth #2 - Body weight is just calories in and calories out

It is often said “Weight loss is just Calories In vs Calories Out”. It is much simpler than that. It’s largely about the Calories In.

If you eat a Chocolate Hobnob, (91 calories) you would need to jog (200-400 cals per hour) for around 15 to 30 minutes to burn it off. Drink a bottle of red wine? You would need to jog for up to 3 and a half hours or run (300-700 calories per hour) for at least an hour to burn off those 650 calories.

Cutting down on Calories In is SO much more important than working on Calories Out in terms of weight loss.

For a typical 16st / 98kg man in their 40’s their metabolic rate will be around 2,700 calories a day – with the day-time being activity as no extra exercise, just getting up, going to work, doing the shopping, cooking dinner and house jobs. That’s 2,700 calories being burned just by living. Even at rest we burn around 75-100 calories per hour.

The extra effort required to burn extra calories is disproportionate - an hour and a half of sweating your bits off compared to just sitting motionless for 6 hours.

1kg of fat contains 7,700 calories. To jog that off, you would have to jog for up to 38 hours or run flat out for at least 11 hours: A typical marathon time is 4hrs 20mins globally with around 100 calories burned per mile, that’s about 2,600 calories. If you were to only burn fat (which you can't), running a marathon would lose you just 338g in weight.

Just cut down on your wine or swap out the biscuits for something else if you want to lose weight. Exercise is essential for developing speed, strength and stamina, all of which will improve your body shape and fitness ...but for burning fat, exercise sucks.

Eat better.