6 Office Snacks That Take Forever to Burn Off

With office work, a lack of physical activity is often coupled with extra calories from mindless snacking. Office snacks are great for your appetite, but bad for your waistline. These extra calories require extra physical activity to burn off. If you understand how much exercise a little snack will ask of you, then you might think twice about eating it.

Using a metabolic chart, you can know precisely how much exercise it takes to burn off these snacking calories. It takes a 180-pound man 1 hour of moderately fast cycling (14-16 mph) to burn 750 calories, and 1 hour of fairly fast running (8 mph) in order to burn 1,000 calories. Based on this information, we can know exactly how much cycling and jogging it will take to cancel the calories from these 6 popular office snack foods.

Pretzels
Even a seemingly light snack like a handful of 10 pretzels will add up to 227 calories.

• 18 minutes of cycling.
• 14 minutes of jogging.

Microwave Popcorn
Sure, popping a bag will make the office smell great and give you something buttery to snack on, but at a cost of 210 calories.

• 17 minutes of cycling.
• 13 minutes of jogging.

Dry-Roasted Peanuts
Peanuts, the healthy alternative to junk food, right? Nope, just half a cup of nuts adds up to 427 calories.

• 34 minutes of cycling.
• 26 minutes of jogging.

Cookies
For once we are not talking about the cookies downloaded from websites. A single chocolate chip cookie will set you back 196 calories, and we know that you cannot eat just one.

• 16 minutes of cycling.
• 12 minutes of jogging.

Energy Drinks
A popular solution for an afternoon pick-me-up, energy drinks are loaded with sugar which translates into big calories. For example, a single can of Rockstar Energy Drink contains 280 calories.

• 22 minutes of cycling.
• 17 minutes of jogging.

Doughnuts
It is difficult to turn down a doughnut when a kind coworker brings in box, but knowing that one chocolate glazed doughnut is packed full of 260 delicious calories may give you enough strength to resist.

• 21 minutes of cycling.
• 16 minutes of jogging.

While none of these snacks will break your belt in and of themselves, the problem comes from our habits of grazing and eating multiple snacks throughout the work day, while having no intention of exercising for the 1 hour+ that it takes to burn off these extra calories. If eating like this without exercising is part of your daily routine, then all of these small snacks may be the reason you can't fit into the outfit you wore to the job interview.

What are your favorite snacks to munch on around the office, and how much exercise does it take to burn off all of these calories? Share with us your office eating habits in the comments, and then go outside and take a couple of laps.