It’s actually very easy to lose weight for the average person.  All they need to do is burn more calories than they consume on a daily basis.

That is obviously easier said than done from the statistics the news and magazines show about the obese individuals that exist in the United States.

Let’s talk about how easy it is to gain weight for the average American with his/her busy life style.

After a busy morning at work, they go to their local Burger King for lunch and order a double Whopper with cheese, large fries and a large Coke.  Let’s assume they did this twice per week.  Well, after one week, they would have eaten more than one pound worth of calories.  3500 calories is equal to one pound of weight gain.

Below are the nutritional facts from Burger King’s website:

            Double Whopper with Cheese:         1010 calories

                Large French fries:                                500 calories

                Large Coke soda:                                 290 calories

                                                                                1800 calories

The above meal would take about 10 to 15 minutes to eat in one sitting.  On that note, after two meals (about 30 minutes) they would gain one pound unless they burned off those calories within those two days.

Now let’s think about how long it would take to burn off those calories.

We’ll use an average, healthy, 200 pound male for our example.  If he were to run a ten minute mile for one hour, he would burn about 960 calories.  He would have to run 6 miles just to burn those 960 calories.  To get rid of the 3600 calories he ate, he would need to run over 22 miles.  At the same rate of speed, it would take him almost four hours of running to lose those two meals that took him only 30 minutes to eat.

I don’t know about you, but I try to run about 15 miles per week.  It doesn’t always happen because life happens.  There’s always something that will consume our time over the things we want to do.  However, in order to run 22 miles and try to lose a pound of weight that was basically added unnecessarily, just isn’t worth it.
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Loukas
“No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.” – Abraham Lincoln

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