How difficult is it to burn off a big mac? And is it possible to out-exercise a bad diet full of junk food? To find out, my friends and I are eating our favorite meals from McDonald’s. Then we’ll attempt to burn calories off the meals and see who’s the fastest at burning calories.
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Nicole: "I am very shocked that my 2 small burgers and my root beer is 900 calories. I'm going to do a leg day. That is my usual go-to, so I'm confident I can burn calories."
Cam: "1,063 calories for some nuggets. Dude, I felt like I was eating a kids' meal! My approach to burning calories? I really like playing basketball, so I'm hoping that this takes some of the pain out of just mindlessly doing cardio."
While Nicole and Cam are almost certain I’m gonna win, I have over 800 more calories to burn than they do, so a day before the challenge, I spoke with Dr. Eric Helms, who introduced me to the Compendium of Physical Activities.
I combed through the list and chose the most energy-demanding exercises to guarantee my success. I kept what I learned to myself, which was unfortunate for Nicole since Eric said:
"You really don't see great energy expenditure from resistance training. You wanna burn the most calories possible, cardio wins hands down."
The first exercise of my master plan is vigorous uphill biking. After the first 20 minutes, I was gassed. And Eric had warned me of this:
"It really does just come down to finding a way to not red line it to the point where your intensity goes down and you can maintain it."
But I’m competitive. So I kept pushing through and after an hour of giving everything I had, I'd actually burned 1,002 calories!
At the 60-minute mark, Cam had burned 595 calories, and Nicole 313.
Now, this doesn’t mean lifting weights is pointless if you want to burn calories:
"The resistance training tells your body to hold onto muscle mass. The cardio helps your energy expenditure to create the deficit to make sure that deficit comes from fat mass. A combination of energy deficit cardio and resistance training is probably the best way to go."
I still had almost 1,000 calories left to burn, so I switched to axe chopping. But just 10 minutes in, my hands were blistering. But I couldn’t let this stop me from the win. I pushed harder and faster for the next 30 minutes. After, I still had 340 calories left to burn.
Nicole: “After that first check-in, I brought Tahnee in. So it was almost like a boot camp.”
Unfortunately, Nicole once again did exactly what Eric warned me not to do when trying to burn calories:
"The average person doesn’t necessarily have the cardiovascular conditioning to make high-intensity training really effective. You're most of the time going to see higher energy expenditure just doing moderate-intensity training."
Cam: “I figured I could do a little bit of jump rope."
I still had 340 calories left to burn. I went with the basics, the stairmaster. I added 25 lbs to a backpack to speed things up. But the extra weight made it a lot harder than I expected. Out of pure exhaustion, I went against Eric’s advice and leaned my body onto the handles:
"So you commonly see people on the StairMaster, they're just like fully on top of it, and they're basically only moving maybe 60% of their body mass. And, of course, that's gonna drop calories."
So I lifted myself up and gave it my all for the final push. In the meantime ...
Nicole: I went for a walk. Then I came back and found out I had another 180 calories to burn, so I jumped on the treadmill and tried to do some sprints there."
Cam: "After the jump rope, I realized I was having a much better time playing basketball. So I opted to go back out into the heat and did some shooting and some dribbling drills."
Before you get the wrong idea, and think that you should always burn off your Mcdonalds calories or can never eat fast food again, know this. The average male already burns around 2,000 calories doing absolutely nothing all day. But nowadays, it’s easier than ever to gain weight by eating more calories than your body needs, and while it is possible, it’s very difficult to reverse it through exercise alone.
Don’t get me wrong. Exercise is amazing for you, and everyone needs it, but if you want to lose weight and get in shape, you’d be a fool not to prioritize your diet.
So, who won in the end? Cam did. Watch the video for more deets.