Many Americans start off each new year with resolutions to lose weight, and gym memberships typically rise in January. But by March, the resolutions often have been dropped. The pounds didn’t melt away as expected, and the gym shoes get kicked to the back of the closet.
While exercising may help people lose weight and maintain the weight loss, fitness experts say, people might overestimate how many calories they burn when they are working out, or they simply may not do enough to move the scale. That 30-minute cardio workout that left you sweaty and breathless may have felt like a grueling marathon, but it may have burned only 200 to 300 calories.
“That can be completely undone by consuming one donut in like, what, 60 seconds,” said Glenn Gaesser, a professor of exercise physiology at the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University in Phoenix. “So we can undo with eating in a matter of minutes what it took us to burn that many calories over the course of many, many minutes, sometimes hours.”
