Myth Buster : A short fitness session will compensate for Hollidays extravagances

Supposedly a 45 minutes of "Intense" exercising will compensate for the craziness of food over-consumption  during Holidays feast, or maybe less ?

Average : 4500 Calories

"A quarter of those surveyed thought they could burn off the calories by working out for two hours…when it would actually take a 130-pound woman more than seven and a half hours of running or more than 15 and a half hours of brisk walking to torch 4,500 calories. Also, 60 percent of respondents said they planned to go for a walk. Other people said they'd shop or get busy in the bedroom later to blast away fat. Hmm, not gonna cut it."

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/eating-thanksgiving/story?id=21021483

"seven and a half hours of running".
Not even true, if you consider cardio zones, the different "calories" types or body storage (carbs, fat) as well as the basics of timing of the training itself. It would be accurate if you were running DURING the feast and we considering pure calories output/input without internal storage considerations. Which is only true in the case of some ultra-runners.

 (http://runeatrepeat.com/2013/11/19/eating-pizza-while-runninginterview-with-dean-karnazes/)

Let's do some math:

If the dinner itself is around 4500 Calories, it is likely your food intake for the day will be around 5500, including breakfast and a light lunch or snack. which is likely 4000 too much overall for a day.
Then, How do you burn 4000 calories, i,e. more than 1 pound (0.5 Kg of fat) ?

Using as a reference my 10K race, and I was not fooling around, in 50 minutes, averaging 8 min/mile, I burned 600 Calories with an average HRM of 155 bpm.

http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/fat-versus-carbohydrate-utilization-during-exercise-calculator.aspx

Unfortunately in this training Zone, I am burning 90% of Carbs and 10% of fat, Carbs that I will have to re-compensate by the daily intake at -at least- 80%, lets assume 200 Calories of burned/race.

In short, I will have to race a 10K every day for 40 days to lose the weight excess of one meal.

Now, using a long run, Lets say, 20 miles, 1500 Calories at 125 Bpm, I am around 50/50, i.e. 750 Calories of fat per long run.

In this case, I will have to execute "only 5 times" a 20 miles/4h run  to compensate.

Piece of cake. Specially, when we are talking of people who would have hard time running 30 minutes on their own. Sorry, jogging. Even, walking.


Morality: 
It is way easier to lose weight by controlling the food intake than to burn it through exercise. It helps, of course, but except if you are training for a marathon, you are not gonna cut it. 


The only way to compensate for Holiday excess is a strict diet for at least one to two weeks after or before. Exercising "intensively" BEFORE the diner will help to empty your carbohydrates storage and the food intake will directly compensate partially.

The other way is to eat less, drink less and go vegan.
But that's not for everybody, I guess ;)
Not just yet.