How many calories do you need to burn to eat ________?
None. You already have the right to eat it.
Based on a media frenzy about an article in The BMJ1 titled “Food should be labelled with the exercise needed to expend its calories,” you’d think that the idea of labeling food with how many minutes you’d have to exercise to burn it off is a new one. It’s not, and in fact, much of the media coverage pointed out the many problems with this idea:
- Food labeling is a complex science.
- It hasn’t been studied or proven to have any effect.
- Studies on calorie labeling on menus does not consistently lead consumers to order lower-calorie items, so why would this?
- Even the survey the Royal Society for Public Health conducted found that only 53% of respondents said that they would positively change their behaviour as a result of viewing activity equivalent calorie information. As intention and action are two completely different things, it is unlikely that even that many would.
- It encourages disordered eating and may promote eating disorders.
- As the author Shirley Cramer herself stated, “People can’t out-run a bad diet.” (For the record, I have issues with the phrase “bad diet.”
- Simplistic labels would be misleading since the number of calories burned during exercise is affected by many variables including an individual’s weight.
- It focuses on the calories in food, rather than nutrition.
Turning Eating into a Math Problem
Most current or past dieters can readily cite approximately how many calories are in most foods. They can also tell you approximately how many calories they would burn doing various exercises. The familiar concept that “If you eat a chocolate glazed doughnut worth 240 calories, you’d have to walk for about 60 minutes to burn it off” is part of the dieter’s eat-repent-repeat cycle.
In fact, we’ve seen this sort of information so often, we don’t stop to think about how absurd it is! To illustrate the absurdity of this kind of threatening approach to eating, just imagine if it were the other way around: “If you walked for 60 minutes, you’d have to eat a chocolate glazed doughnut.”
Ridiculous, huh? Then why would it make sense the other way around?
Subconsciously, the message people hear is, “If you eat _______ (fill in the blank with something you love), you have to do X minutes of _______ (fill in the blank with some dreaded exercise). No wonder so many people say they hate to exercise!
How to Turn Exercise into Punishment for Eating
Worse than being absurd, this kind of messaging often has the opposite effect. Instead of causing people to decide that the food isn’t worth it, they decide that the exercise isn’t worth it.
Exercise is for health and vitality, not for earning the right to eat.
What do you think?
1 BMJ 2016;353:i1856
This article has been updated from a previously published version.
Enjoyed this article? Here are three more to help you:
Change Your Thoughts about Exercise
Not getting enough exercise? Lower the Bar
Diet and Activity Trackers: The Next Generation of Misused Tools
6 thoughts on “How many calories do you need to burn to eat _______?”
Exactly right from someone who used to exercise compulsively when dieting no longer “worked”. Still trying to break the exercising too much when think I ate too much. Read an article many years ago saying one should exercise in the morning to earn the right to eat breakfast as if it was a moral failing not to.
Thanks for your comment Suzanna. Exercise is such a wonderful way to feel great – until it is turned into punishment for eating!
I enjoy reading about mindful eating and practice it most of the time. However; eating for health seem to be only one critical element to keep body and mind healthy. I am 70 and going to school full time to get my bachelor’s degree. recently I felt as if I was going through a mild depression. I am used to doing Tai Chi once or twice a week and I had to stop this semester because of classes. When I went back yesterday I noticed the difference, not in muscle aches etc, but in a life in my spirit.
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