Food Treats - Are They Worth It?

We all know if we want to lose weight we should modify our diet and exercise.

But in order to persist with a diet, many of us include food treats to keep ourselves from getting bored. The problem with this is, once we’ve consumed a treat we have to burn it off.

In this article we tell you how much exercise it takes to burn off common food treats so you can decide whether they are worth it or not.

Is adding food treats to a diet such a bad thing?

Dietitians and nutritionists have been telling us for decades that a healthy diet includes the widest possible range of foods, but that some foods should be eaten in moderation very infrequently.

Sometimes adding food treats to a diet can help us to lose weight, but for most people, most of the time, it can be a big mistake because they don’t chose the best treat and they eat to much of the treats too often.

If you can’t live without chocolate for example, it’s OK to include a couple of squares of dark chocolate in your diet, but try to make sure that you account for it within your total intake or ensure that you’re doing some extra exercise in your day so that you burn off the extra calories it adds.

How much extra exercise do you need to burn off common food treats like chocolate, biscuits, cakes, ice cream, chips, pizza, soft drink, lollies and take away foods?

We’re glad you asked.

How much exercise it takes to burn off common food treats

The amount of exercise it takes to burn off food treats depends upon a couple of variables, namely the calories or kilojoules contained in the food, what exercise is undertaken and at what intensity, and finally what our body weight is (heavier bodies burn more calories).

To make it easier for you to work out how much exercise you need to do to burn off the calories or kilojoules of the most common food treats, we’ve constructed the tables below which list some of the most common treats and some of the most popular forms of exercise and show how much exercise is required to burn off the treat.

The first table shows approximately how many minutes of exercise someone weighing around 50 kilograms (110Ibs) would need to do, the second table shows approximately how many minutes of exercise someone weighing around 75 kilograms (170Ibs) would need to do, the third table shows approximately how many minutes of exercise a person weighing 100 kilograms (220Ibs) would need to do and finally, the fourth table shows approximately how many minutes of exercise someone weighing 125 kilograms (280Ibs) would need to do to burn off the common treats listed.

For example, as shown in table 1, it would take a person weighing 50kgs to walk at 5 kilometres per hour for 34 minutes just to burn off the extra calories provided by one chocolate biscuit and nearly 2 hours to burn off a slice of mud cake (119 minutes).

Table 1 – Person weighing 50 kilograms (110Ibs)

Table 2 – Person weighing 75 kilograms (170Ibs)

Table 3 – Person weighing 100 kilograms (220Ibs)

Table 4 – Person weighing 125 kilograms (280Ibs)

How to enjoy treats without adding too much more exercise

As you can see, some food retreats require quite a bit of strenuous exercise to burn off which should make us all consider whether or not they are worth putting in our mouths before we eat them.

But there is a way in which we can have a treat every now and then without having to work our socks off in the gym; look for lighter versions of your favourite treat foods.

Lighter versions of common treat foods include low fat ice cream, dark instead of milk or white chocolate, baked chips instead of deep fried chips, low kilojoule cola, vegetarian pizzas, light pies, lower fat potato crisps, light yoghurts, light cream cheese, etc.

More and more companies are starting to produce lighter or lower fat / lower sugar versions of their most popular foods and you can find some of these in our weight loss products section or on supermarket shelves near you.

Conclusion

We all know that if we have a weight loss goal we should modify our diet and exercise more.

But in order to persist with a diet, many of us include regular food treats to reward ourselves for positive behaviour and to keep us from getting bored. The problem with this is, once we’ve consumed a treat we have to burn it off with exercise, which many people aren’t crazy about to start with.

In this article we told you how much exercise it takes to burn off some common food treats so that you can decide whether they are worth it or not before you eat them.

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