Last summer I started doing Weight Watchers because I wanted to lose weight. At the time, I was exercising and watching what I ate – thinking that I was eating really well – and completely befuddled as to why I wasn’t losing weight. A friend of mine was doing WW and suggested I give it a try.
WOW WAS IT EVER EYE OPENING!!!
I used to think that if I ran 3 miles, I could then eat whatever I wanted. I mean, I just ran three miles! So after my run I would duck into Giant and grab a huge cinnamon chip muffin. YUM! I deserved this muffin.
What I learned from WW is that the calories burned in a three mile run is equal to just ONE slice of bread! To compensate for my cinnamon chip muffin, I’d need to run 10 miles!
A few other eye openers:
- My scrambled eggs with mushrooms and spinach + 2 pieces of toast with a tad of butter equals 12 miles of running.
- A 2 mile walk equals just ONE small banana!
- Thirty minutes on the elliptical machine equals 1/2 cup of marinara sauce (and that’s not including the pasta!).
- To work off ONE tablespoon of peanut butter, you’d need to run 2 miles.
- Ate a slice of carrot cake? That’s SIXTEEN miles of running for you!
So maybe this info will help if you are trying to lose weight and can’t figure out why it’s not peeling off. In general if you want to lose weight you need to exercise more than you think, and you need to eat less than you think. It’s not that you can’t eat things like muffins and carrot cake, but just know how eating those kinds of foods will impact your efforts. Writing down what you are eating and how much you are exercising or joining a program like WW can really help you build awareness around your habits.
(By the way, I have to confess that as I wrote this I ate several handfuls of peanut butter m&ms. Guess I’ll be running 10 miles tomorrow! 
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Wow! Thank you for posting this info. It really is eye opening. I am trying to drop those last few stubborn pounds and I go through exactly this. I will wlk or run and think it’s ok to splurge and eat the extra handful of chips or chocolate because I ran or walked in the morning. Then I get frustrated when my weight doesn’t budge!! I will be forgoing the extra’s now! Thank you
One thing that helped me was to think of it like a bank statement..nobody wants to be at an even zero balance (running just enough to cover the food you’ve eaten), and you certainly don’t want to be in the red (eating more than you’re burning), whereas everyone wants to be in the green (burning more than you’re eating). I would exercise and decided to put those burned calories in my ‘exercise bank’ and treat myself by NOT wasting all that effort I just put in. I can cash in once a week for a really good and decadent dessert once I had built up enough metabolic cash (though not to say overindulge, but get the body working for you instead of the other way around). Knowing that I’ll treat myself to a slice of vegan chocolate cake with raspberry chocolate ganache helps me resist the everyday things like cookies and muffins.
I like your philosophy Sara! I find that if I can just hold off the sweets and let the moment go by, I’m never saying later “oh I really wish I would have eaten that cookie.”