[Someone1234]

500 calories in one session? Or over a whole week? In one session it is definitely not "easy." In a whole week it is.

If you walked at 2.5 MpH and weighed 160 pounds, it would take you two and a half hours to burn your 500 calories. To me 2.5 hrs is not an "easy" workout. Somewhere between medium to hard (depending on fitness level).

A single Big Mac is almost 500 calories, two snickerdoodles are more than 500 calories on average.

> Of course it's not a substitute for a proper diet, but it can be a huge factor in weight loss.

That's just not true.

A single combo from McDonalds could set you back an entire weeks worth of exercise, literally. If you exercised for an hour a day every day, it only takes a single meal to undo most of that weight loss.

PS - Exercise is, of course, very important for overall health and a long life. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But for weight loss? Heck no. The maths simply doesn't work at all.

[sdml]

It depends on whether you consider intensity or duration to determine how "easy" a workout is. Sure, 2.5 hours is a lot of time to invest, but walking at 2.5 MpH hardly seems strenuous enough to qualify as exercise.

A 160 pound person could burn 500 calories in ~40 minutes jogging at a 10 minute per mile pace, and could easily offset a Big Mac in a single day's exercise (not saying that the person should use this to justify eating a Big Mac).

[danhodgins]

It is most definitely 'easy' to burn 500+ calories in one session.

One hour of squash burns 600+ calories. One hour of running burns 600 ish calories. One hour of cycling burns something like 400-500 calories.

No citations for these figures, just going off memory

Burning 500+ calories per session is definitely doable - if you are doing the right exercise in the right ways for the right duration.