I cycle to work. In total that’s about an hour and a half of fairly strenuous cycling per day, including some hills, which from browsing around Google suggests I’m burning something like 900 extra calories a day.
Say (hypothetically of course), I eat a whole packet of chocolate biscuits through the course of the day at work. My total calorie intake from them is 900 calories, in addition to the normal meals I would have been eating if I hadn’t been cycling.
Let’s also assume that I’m getting enough protein, vitamins and other stuff not found in chocolate biscuits from the rest of my diet, and I’m also eating a healthy amount of fruit.
Is eating that amount of crap actually doing me any harm, or can I just treat it as excess energy that’s being burnt off?
I don’t believe it would do you any harm. Calories are calories. Carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, which is burned for energy, no matter if you get the carbs from chocolate biscuits or oranges or whatever.
Obviously you aren’t getting any nutrients from the biscuits that you would from healthier foods, but assuming your nutrition is adequate otherwise, I don’t see any difference.
Where people run into trouble (in terms of gaining weight) is to over-estimate the amount of calories they are burning during some given amount of exercise, so they overeat believing they will be okay and not gain fat.
It is much easier to overeat when you consume processed foods like biscuit vs. whole foods like vegetables or fruits. You would have to eat somewhere around 8 apples before you got to 900 calories. Since apples have fiber you tend to fill up much sooner.
Mostly correct. But some fats are far worse for your Cholesterol than others. The chocolate biscuits may be loaded with trans-fats, etc. Also, other junk calories. Oddly, it’s not the chocolate. Yes, Chocolate does have a lot of calories, but other than that, it’s good for you (in moderation). So, I’d say dump the cookies, eat the chocolate straight, and then yes, if you exercise those calories off you’re OK.
I have been following the “run lots of miles so I can can eat like crap” technique for many years, running about 25 miles a week and eating total garbage.
My doc pointed out high cholesterol and high triglycerides and said “That’s what your diet is doing” even though I run off the calories.
I’ll be watching this thread for better info from others: I’m curious as to what kind of trouble I’m getting myself into.
Unless you are literally racing or are a very large man your estimate of the calories you are burning in 1.5 hours of bike riding might be a little high
Doctor Gabe Mirkin, a 70+ YO cyclist, believes that sugary drinks, including fruit juices, are bad for you except while doing long exertions such as riding a bike or running more than 2 hours. Then you need some carbs to keep from bonking and things like sports drinks are an easy way to replenish carbs (and sodium). I guess the same could be said about items more on the junk food side of the scale.
The problem is that appetite increases with calorie burn, and unless you are extraordinarily careful, it’s pretty easy not to notice you are also upping your calorie consumption in other ways: serving yourself slightly larger portions, snacking more, etc. Your brain is surprisingly good at this: if you are 15% more hungry, a plate that is 15% more full will look “normal” and you really can’t tell. You were eating until you were full before, and you are eating until you are full now, so you think you are eating the same. So if you are unaware of all these added calories, and then you give yourself permission for other calories that you “earned”, you may well gain weight.
This can be avoided by calorie counting and weighing your food. However, again, exercise makes you hungry and junk food often doesn’t sate. If you are eating a pile of cookies for breakfast, and then every day in the late afternoon you “cheat”, the problem is the cookies earlier, not the lack of willpower later. If you’d had oatmeal instead of cookies for breakfast, then in the afternoon, you’d have been fuller and have had more calories available for a snack.
If he’s riding at a ‘strenuous’ pace, he’s probably close with his estimate. I’m a 158 lb. female and I ride to and from work, which is between 65 and 70 minutes total. My HR is between 155 and 175 the entire time, depending on if I’m on a hill or not. I use a Garmin with HR monitor and my calorie burn for my daily ride is around 750 - 800 calories.
Has there been any recent, ***reliable ***evidence that sugar itself does anything harmful other than cause tooth decay? Obviously it doesn’t contain enough nutrients to survive solely on, but it’s so drummed into people that sugar is evil and supposedly causes everything from diabetes to heart disease to cancer. Yet as far as I know rotting your teeth is the still the only proven ailment directly linked to it. It doesn’t even cause hyperactivity or so-called ‘sugar rush’ in kids or adults.
Of course, if you are giving yourself a sugar rush several times a day by gobbling several biscuits at a time - there are the Atkins-type diet school of thought that creating bumps of blood glucose and then insulin is bad for you.
