Although eating a lot of cake is not healthy, it can be eaten as part of a balanced diet once you have your weight under control. Being slim and athletic does not mean that you have to deprive yourself of all the treats that life has to offer.
To help get an idea of how you can have your cake and still manage your weight, here are a list of activities that will burn the same number of calories as found in an average sized slice of cake.
Calories in Victoria Sponge Cake
An average sized piece of Victoria sponge cake with jam and icing will have about 350 Calories. To ensure that you do not feel guilty about eating cake, just do one of these exercises, which will burn about 350 calories (all figures are approximate and vary depending on your weight, metabolism and effort put in).
How to Burn 350 Calories:
- Vacuum the house, cut the grass and then weed the garden in one hour
- 30 minute kickboxing / martial arts class
- 30 minutes of swimming
- 45 minutes of hillwalking / stair walking
- 1 hour bicycle ride
- Rearrange your furniture in a few rooms for 45 minutes
- 45 minutes of roller skating, ice skating or inline skating
- 1 1/2 walk across parkland / fields
- 20 minutes rowing followed by 20 minutes weight lifting
- 1 hour of yoga
- 30 minutes of skipping
- 30 minutes on a climbing wall
- 1 hour of badminton or tennis
- Run for half an hour
- 1 hour of aerobics
What this really emphasises is how much extra work is required to burn the calories of just one piece of cake.
Although on its own any one of these activities is not much, if you are already doing some exercise everyday to help lose weight, then having a piece of cake will mean having to repeat the exercise again if you want to keep the weight off. So, if you are trying to lose weight, it is better not to have your cake. But if you are already at your ideal weight, then you can quickly burn off the calories from a little treat.