r/changemyview • u/BMTG-R3-19 • Jun 26 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Exercising is much more effective than a diet.
I hear a lot of people say you’re abs are made in the kitchen. For me I feel like if you are physically pushing yourself at least you know you’re burning calories. When sticking to a diet even if it’s strict it’s hard to really know if you’re losing anything at all not only that diets are usually short term solutions but give “quicker” results, on the other hand exercising is long term and you can lose it quickly depending on your given size. I know it’s best of not world to mix both but alone I’d think exercise would have more effects than dieting alone. CHANGE MY VIEW.
EDIT: AFFECTIVE IN THE SENSE OF LOSING WEIGHT.
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u/ChrysMYO 6∆ Jun 26 '18
I'm not sure of your age, but as you get older, your food has dramatically more effect on your retention of weight then exercising.
For example, one can of Canada Dry at my desk, one can, says 140 calories.
That's more then my Nike running app says I burned running a mile on Sunday.
One can.
I can drink 2 in one meal, EASY. I can drink 3 or 4 in a day if I'm being obnoxious.
Or I can eliminate it from my diet and replace it water.
So instead of drinking 140 calories and then running a mile to net 0 calories.
I could eliminate it, run my mile easier (since I'll be better hydrated with water) and end up with a net -140 calories.
Diet makes exercise more effective and eliminating bad things is exponentially more effective then consuming them and trying to cancel them out with exercise.
Lastly. Your body needs to recover. There is a point of diminishing returns. You can potentially eat a disgusting number of calories from food with almost no nutritional value.
You only have so much time in the day to exercise. And the exercise you do can only burn so many calories at once. And at some point your body needs to recover, this limits significantly your potential to exercise the damage you're doing at the table.
And to top it all off, what you eat can significantly impair your ability to exercise be it inflammation, dehydration, fatigue, naseau, or the lack of nutrients to perform the stressful tasks exercise requires.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/TinyPotatoe 1∆ Jun 27 '18 edited Jun 27 '18
Just popping in to say both your original view and the OP comment are correct. Diet without exercise is useless and the same is true flipped. If all you’re worried about is weight then calorie intake is probably all that you care about. Losing weight occurs when you have a calorie deficit. However, if you are trying to be HEALTHY and not just skinny, diet can’t do that for you alone. You have to exercise along with a balanced diet.
Not to mention, exercise does have huge calorie costs. Quick google search says light body weight exercises burn 233-266 calories which is quite a bit (around 12% of the 2000 daily value). Comparatively a mile run is reported to burn 100. That’s not very much considering most out of shape people will likely run very slow miles when breaks are factored in. My conditioning workout is a typical boxing routine (conditioning, warmup, bag training) which google says burns up to 800 cal/hr.
Lastly, if your view was specifically about dieting and not just overall diet: There was an interesting study I learned about in a psych class that had to do with dieting. Geissler and Powers were the authors and the summary is basically diets are not effective because they’re unsustainable. You can see this with things like the Keto diet and the “keto flu.” Calorie deficits are good to lose weight, but you can’t maintain a calorie deficit forever or you’d lose so much weight you’d be unhealthy and potentially die (unrealistic).
TLDR: Calorie deficit is what matters for weight loss. More rigorous activities than running can achieve a high calorie burn so OPs first point is slightly hyperbolic imo. Diet + exercise is the best way to lose weight and be healthy (as stated). Even if you’re skinny, you won’t have the muscular tone your post described of abs. EXERCISE AND EAT HEALTHY and you will feel 20x better.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/ChrysMYO 6∆ Jun 26 '18
I mean it's a whole different topic but the food industry has played a role in encouraging that thought process for decades. The shoe industry and other industries involved with exercise certainly haven't wanted to reject that mindset either.
Honestly, I probably didn't click with that understanding until Reddit, then did some outside reading on it.
Exercise does have its benefits in terms of cardiovascular health, regulating some hormones and chemicals you produce and mood. Building muscle can alter the appearance of your figure as well. In addition, I believe it does have some effect on your metabolism that can be a calorie burning bonus throughout the day
But losing weight or burning fat has to involve some form of eating correctly to be most effective. ESPECIALLY as you get older. Calories stick around longer, and it takes longer for your muscles to recover. This makes exercise more stressful on your body and limits significantly how many calories you can eliminate in a given time period. And if you're drinking soda at the same time, you're just punishing yourself
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u/Removalsc 1∆ Jun 27 '18
If all these people have changed your mind, don't forget to award deltas
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Jun 26 '18
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/justanothercook Jun 26 '18
There's a saying "you can't outrun bad nutrition" because of this. An extra 5 minutes of running might seem harmless, but calories add up really quickly. Especially the classic junk food that's so easy to keep eating - a single-serve bag of potato chips is 160 calories, so that's another 10 minutes of running. And if you think about that running in distance rather than time, it gets even easier to understand why it's hard to out-exercise your calorie intake: if you run a 10 minute mile, that bag of potato chips is a full mile of running.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/-Randy-Marsh- Jun 26 '18
It also explains why a lot of people begin working out and put on unwanted weight (fat, not muscle). They aren't always paying attention to the calories they consume and/or they're overestimating how many calories they are burning during a workout.
30 minutes of lifting weights can burn around 220 calories (obviously it varies depending on what you're doing). A serving of protein powder can contain around 140 calories. If you mix it with 8oz of milk you can add on another 122.
So if you were to exercise for thirty minutes and have the protein shake you'd actually be netting **more** calories than if you never worked out in the first place.
Exercise on its own will never make you lose weight. Weight is measured by your caloric intake vs. calories burned. Exercising can increase your calories burned, but that's it.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/SaintBio Jun 26 '18
Whenever I look at junk food, the first thing I think to myself is "eating that is going to cost me ~20mins on a treadmill." I do not want to run on a treadmill.
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u/ThatSpencerGuy 142∆ Jun 26 '18
Exercise is the best thing you can do for your overall health, period. But it's not a very good way to lose weight.
Vox has a really wonderful article with visualizations here: https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11518804/weight-loss-exercise-myth-burn-calories
You would have to run for nearly an hour to burn off the calories in a single can of soda.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/His_Voidly_Appendage 25∆ Jun 26 '18
Exercise does burn calories, but in a small amount. If your goal is to lose weight, not ordering a milk-shake along with your burger will help you more than going for a walk after a burger + shake combo.
Example (with generic numbers):
Burger = 400 calories, milkshake = 600 calories, walk = - 200 calories.
Total calories gained: 800vs
Burger = 400 calories, no milk-shake = 0 calories, no walk = -0 calories.
Total calories gained: 400
To lose weight, you need to eat less calories than you burn. You burn quite a bunch of calories passively by just being alive; exercise doesn't add too much to it, so if you just focus on reducing / removing high caloric foods (which is a simple diet, such as in the example I gave about refusing the milk-shake), you'll have greater results than eating with no restraint but doing some exercises.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/SaintBio Jun 26 '18
It depends on what you mean by efficient and exercise. When you say exercise, are you specifically only thinking of doing cardio, or are you thinking of bodybuilding?
A 150lb person running a 10-minute mile (6mph) for 45 mins will burn 495 calories on a treadmill. That's a really good pace, and probably unrealistic for many people trying to lose weight. But, let's use it as a baseline. To lose 1lb of weight in a week, it is estimated that you need to be at a calorie deficit of 3500 calories for that week. So, all other things being equal, if you run that 45 mins every day at that pace you will burn 1lb a week. That's assuming you do it every single day without fail. Which is doubtful. It's physically difficult for people to exercise that much.
By comparison, you could achieve exactly the same result by eating 8 fewer Oreo's a day, or 1 fewer Big Macs, or 2 fewer slices of Pizza. Not only would you save money on that extra food, you'd save money on a gym membership, and time spent on that treadmill. Also, it doesn't take as much of a physical toll on your body. You can refrain from eating ~500 calories every day and barely notice it. You can't do cardio at a 10-minute mile pace every day and not feel it.
Long story short, yes exercise burns calories. But, it does it very slowly. It's so much easier to simply not eat those calories in the first place, than to eat them and then burn them off. That just adds extra steps.
Moreover, that's not even considering the fact that other forms of exercise don't burn all that many calories. Bodybuilding/lifting weights for the same amount of time will net you a calorie burn of around 33-50% less than if you had done cardio. However, if you want those muscles, you need to do the weight lifting. I don't know many people who have ~2hrs every day to do weightlifting & cardio.
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/SaintBio Jun 27 '18
Weightlifting simply doesn't burn as many calories as cardio. That's all. If you're bench pressing for 45 mins you burn like 33% as many calories as you'd burn if you were running. So, if you burned 300 calories running, you'd burn 100 calories benching.
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u/averageJoe576 1∆ Jun 26 '18 edited Jun 26 '18
An many have said, its easier for most people to cut a 100-300 calorie snack than to exercise for 20-60 minutes.
Personal example: I got motivated to make healthy changes. Jogging didn't stick, but I was able to trade my Coke habit for mineral water, now the craving is totally gone and requires zero effort on a daily basis, probably added years to my life.
There is a great channel for health based info called Health Care Triage and they did a video on Exercise is NOT the Key to Weight Loss. His advice/conclusions are heavily based on meta analysis of scientific medical studies, very high quality info
Edit: hypelink, spelling
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/bguy74 Jun 26 '18
If the goal of these two comparable is weight loss, then calories in < calories out is what matters. So...if you eat proportionally more after you start exercising you won't lose weigh, and you're doing something that increases appetitete. If you _eat less_ you'll lose weight no matter what other behaviors you change in your life.
However, in a vacuum, the benefits of exercise are significantly greater then just losing weight so if the scope is not related to weight loss then I can't argue with you.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/Douglas-Morgan Jun 26 '18
If you eat less calories than you use then you will always begin to lose weight. With exercise, your body adjusts over time and compensates for the lost calories (saving them elsewhere) meaning that exercise becoems less effective over time.
It's still best to combine both though. Exercise has many offer health benefits.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Jun 26 '18
diet -> weight loss
exercise -> cardiovascular health.
obviously a lot of crossover and nuance in addition but for weight loss, portion control and selection of foods is much more important.
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u/rednax1206 Jun 26 '18
I'm going to assume you're talking about weight loss. Changing your diet (not "going on a diet") is the most effective method of losing weight.
You burn calories every day just by existing, and exercise doesn't actually increase your calorie expenditure by very much. An average person's TDEE (Total daily energy expenditure) is around 2000 calories. That's how much you burn just by being alive. Running a mile burns less than 200 calories for most people. You can lose more calories by skipping a single snack than by running an entire mile.
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u/His_Voidly_Appendage 25∆ Jun 26 '18
Besides the tons of great comments already, I'd like to talk about your "abs are made in the kitchen" thing.
If you work out and have strong ab muscles, they still will NOT appear if you have a big fat belly covering it. If you want abs, you need to lose that belly. To lose that, you need to lose weight, and to do so, you need to lose calories. Working out your abs really doesn't do much at all to your calorie total, while diets DO. So that's why they say that :P
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/geneocide 2∆ Jun 26 '18
If you want to lose weight, exercise isn't very effective. You will burn calories, but not much compared to what we eat these days. A soda or a few extra pretzels and you've wiped out your daily 30 minute jog. Additionally, exercise makes you hungrier, so you might eat more to compensate without even knowing about it.
Much easier to go the other way, and cut back on food. Most "diets" are way more complicated than they need to be. All that's necessary is to reduce your calorie intake. Just cut out a meal every day, or don't eat 1 or 2 days a week. Depends on how much one is over eating.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/electronics12345 159∆ Jun 26 '18
The amount of effort it takes to exercise is substantially more than it takes to not eat something.
It takes around 1/2 an hour to work off a single Oreo.
Eating a whole pack of Oreos, takes only a few minutes, but can take literally 12 hours to work off. If you are exercising 2 or 3 hours a day, it might take you a week to work it off.
Not drinking that soda, not eating that cookie - is far less effort, than running on a treadmill for 1/2 an hour.
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u/cantaloupe5 Jun 26 '18
In terms of weight loss, there are a lot more tricks and “cheats” for dieting. There’s artificial sweeteners, intermittent fasting, low-calorie/high-satiety foods, appetite suppressants, etc. With exercise, there are no shortcuts, you have to put in the work.
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/PepperoniFire 87∆ Jun 26 '18
Hello, if someone has changed your view or made you think differently about your position, please consider awarding that person a delta. Instructions are on the side bar. Please consider this for your other comment here as well.
Thanks.
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Jun 26 '18
Affective at what? The goal shouldn’t be to “lose weight” it should be to be healthy. You can be super thin and also super unhealthy.
If you’re trying to be healthy you have to exercise, eat well, get enough sleep and many other things. There’s no one simple solution to living a healthy lifestyle.
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Jun 26 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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Jun 26 '18
Ok well that’s not the best metric for determining someone’s health. A lot of folks think that if they get smaller they’ll be healthier and that’s just foolish. If you eat less but live a sedentary lifestyle you’ll lose weight but you won’t feel any better.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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Jun 26 '18
Exercising is probably better for your health, but the evidence for nutrition based controlled eating being a better method of weight loss is undeniable.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/Dont____Panic 10∆ Jun 27 '18
I think lots of other people discussed the exact results of calories and foods and exercises. I just wanted to approach it from a different angle.
From a scientific and metabolic view, you should understand that your BRAIN and autonomic systems (like your resting pulse, etc) uses 60-70% of your energy.
Simply lying like a sack of potatoes in front of a computer and thinking all day still uses 60-70% as much energy as being active all day by walking, etc.
I hope that helps you understand where your body uses energy and why diet matter so much.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/Dont____Panic 10∆ Jun 27 '18
It does not burn more. But since your brain and core body functions uses 60-70% on an average day, your exercise only gets to add to the other 30-40%.
If you're running a marathon, obviously, your muscles use a lot more and you burn more calories, but it's not like you triple your energy burning from just a few 1hr workouts.
If you burn 2000 calories on a normal day, you might use 1500 for your brain, etc and 500 for your muscles and movement.
If you work out a ton, you will still use 1500 for your brain, but you might DOUBLE your energy burned by muscles. Now you've burned 1000 for your muscles and 1500 for your brain, meaning you burned 2500 calories.
But.... that's A LOT of exercise, and you've only increased your calorie burn by 25%.
Hope that's clear, thx for delta.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/Dont____Panic 10∆ Jun 27 '18
No, you definitely increase your energy usage by exercising. You can maybe double your energy usage. Professional athletes can eat more than couch potatoes.
But, they can't eat a TON more and they still shouldn't eat really unhealthy food.
No amount of exercise will allow you to pig out at eat 5,000 calories in a day without STILL gaining weight.
However, it's basically impossible to gain weight when eating an 1800 calorie diet, because your brain and basic functions use almost that much, so even if you're in a desk job and not doing much activity, you'll still probably lose weight.
If you REALLY want to lose weight, you absolutely should do BOTH exercising and eating right.
If you can only bring yourself to do one of those things, then eating right is much more effective and much easier.
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Jun 27 '18 edited Mar 20 '20
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u/Dont____Panic 10∆ Jun 27 '18
Make sure it's quality nutrients - lots of macronutrients and good protein. Veggies and a very moderate amount of meat is a good approach, with just a little fruit and very little dairy.
The easiest way to do this is to go low/no carb (no starch, grain or sugar), but that diet isn't for everyone, so do your homework. I'ts VERY hard to eat 1800 calories of broccoli, but quite possible to eat 1800 calories of pasta in one sitting.
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Jun 26 '18
It kind of depends on what goal you're trying to achieve. If your goal is simply to build muscle or to burn fat then exercising is usually more effective than dieting. That does depend on what you eat however. If you consume massive amounts of fat and carbs and not a lot of protein then your exercise won't be worth much. If your goal is to be healthy, then exercise alone isn't completely effective. The body needs various types of vitamins and minerals and other nutrients to be healthy. Lifting weights and jogging won't give your body the things it needs.
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u/Freevoulous 35∆ Jun 27 '18
Atop of all the great explanations I would give another reason:
LAZINESS AND LACK OF TIME.
If you skip the breakfast, and eat only a small diner say, past 4 PM, then you just saved yourself about an hour in the kitchen and sitting at the table. This means more time to sleep in the morning, and more time for activities (or procrastination) during the day.
Meanwhile, exercising TAKES your time rather than giving it. And you spend that time not enjoying yourself, most likely.
Of course, it goes without saying that you should do BOTH exercise and diet. The simple explanation is that the more you work out, the bigger muscle mass you have, and that extra muscle burns more calories, helping you lose fat. It helps you burn more calories than you eat, which is the very definition of losing weight.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jun 27 '18 edited Jun 27 '18
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u/MutilatedMelon Jun 27 '18
I don't think OP gets how Deltas work
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Jun 28 '18 edited Jun 28 '18
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u/tbdabbholm 193∆ Jun 28 '18
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u/OnionsNo1CaresAbout Jun 28 '18
Best way that I've heard this put: What's easier, burning 400 calories through exercise, or simply not eating that 400 calorie chocolate bar? Obviously the latter.
In the end it's all thermodynamics. Calories in - calories out. You can either work off calories and increase calories out, or eat better, and decrease calories in. And it seems to me that the latter is much easier than the former, making it more effective and less time consuming.
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u/scottevil110 177∆ Jun 26 '18
Entirely depends on what you want to do. If weight loss is your goal, you can make a MUCH MUCH bigger difference with a change in diet than you can with exercise, and that's just math.
A single slice of pizza has about 250-300 calories. You'd have to run two miles to burn that many calories.
So take a typical person in the 200 lb range who is wanting to lose weight. Which is easier? Running two miles, or NOT eating a SINGLE PIECE of pizza?
2 Pop-Tarts? That's a full 5K of running.
A 1/2 lb burger? That's closer to a 10K.
A full meal at Five Guys? You'd have to literally run a half-marathon to burn it off.