Exercise Vs. Diet: The Truth About Weight Loss
Which is most important when it comes to shedding those extra pounds, exercise or diet? This is a question that has left us confused, perplexed, and feeling defeated for decades. Are we supposed to start exercising as often and as much as we can? Should we focus solely on what we’re putting in our mouths? Maybe we should try to juggle both exercise and diet at the same time?
Losing weight is simple, right? “Eat less, move more.” It sounds good on paper, but “life” and the many obstacles it brings (such as time, energy, self-discipline, and money) seem to always get in the way.
The Low Down on Calories
At a physiological level, weight loss and weight gain revolve around caloric consumption and expenditure. Put simply, we lose weight when we eat fewer calories than we expend. Conversely, we gain weight when we eat more calories than we expend. In order to lose one pound of fat, we must create a 3,500 calorie deficit, which can be achieved either through exercise or diet.
Let’s say that a 200 pound woman wants to lose one pound in a week. Through exercise alone, she needs to run about 3.5 miles per day, assuming her diet stays the same. Through dieting alone, she needs to cut back 500 calories a day, given her exercise regime stays the same. Theoretically, the two should achieve the same results.
In the “real world” most of us don’t live in a house with a gym, our own personal chef, a nutritionist, and a personal trainer. Instead, we’re left about our own devices in everyday life.
What about simultaneously exercising & accounting for dietary intake?
One study, published in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders, took trained subjects and had them track dietary intake along with energy expenditure. On paper, there was an overall caloric deficit created by the subjects. However, when researchers examined empirical changes, no weight was actually lost. As it turns out, subjects were simultaneously underestimating caloric intake and overestimating caloric expenditure.
Why Exercise-Focused Regimens are Relatively Ineffective for Weight Loss
Calorie expenditure through exercise is relatively small in the grand scheme of things. This is primarily because people are horrible estimators of calories in vs. calories out.
How to Effectively Incorporate Diet and Exercise
Both fitness and food choices are vital for long-term weight control. The National Weight Control Registry, established in 1994 by scientists at the University of Colorado and Brown Medical School, is following more than 10,000 Americans who have lost weight and kept it off for years. Just 1% kept the pounds off with exercise alone, 10% did it with diet alone, and 89% used both.
Most people I see struggle far more with their kitchen than with their gym. They’ll willingly find thirty minutes or more a day to hit the gym, go for walks, or simply up their daily activity, but when it comes to packing a lunch, prepping ingredients, cooking dinner, or keeping a food journal it’s like pulling teeth.
If weight’s a primary concern, ditching the kitchen to find time for the gym is a bad idea! Instead take the total amount of time you think you’re willing to spend in the gym, and dedicate at least a third of that to the kitchen.
A Few Simple Rules
Doing less exercise consistently is better than doing more intermittently. Spending two to three minutes a day with a food diary is likely to have a bigger impact on your weight than thirty minutes a day in the gym. It’s also important to change what you eat, and not just count calories.
Eating More, Weighing Less
It’s not about setting for less. You can fill your plate with an abundance of food and still lose weight! You just need to make food choices that give you the most satiety per calorie, foods such as:
- Fresh fruits
- Fresh vegetables
- Water-rich whole grains like hot cereals and brown rice
- Starchy vegetables like potatoes, corn, and yams
- Legumes like black beans and pinto beans
- Low-fat dairy
- Lean animal foods like seafood, egg whites, bison, and white poultry
While going to the gym will help you burn more calories, most people unfortunately tend to put the calories right back on. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to eat five hundred calories than it is to burn it off. I’m not saying that exercise isn’t important. I’m saying that if you absolutely have to choose between the two, the evidence is clear that diet plays a much bigger role in weight loss.
The only sure way to lose weight and keep it off is to burn more calories than you take in, which is nearly impossible to do unless you change your eating habits. So are you better off eating a salad than hitting the gym? I’m thinking maybe so.
In Conclusion:
The people who are most successful at making a “lifestyle change” are those who embrace both consistency and imperfection. Sure you might have a mind’s eye idea of what your healthy lifestyle should look like when you’re done, but getting there will take a lot of hard work and have its fair share of setbacks.
If you’ve started a fitness routine but haven’t seen the weight-loss success you’d hoped for, you may be missing an important piece of the puzzle.
While a good diet and regular exercise are both important for long-term weight loss, the food choices you make may be more important that the amount of exercise you’re doing. Remember: “You can’t out-train a bad diet!”
Let’s keep exercising, but even more importantly, let’s place more emphasis on encouraging people to make better food choices.
In the end, losing weight is about small victories. Everything you do adds up to create huge accomplishments and meaningful change. It’s not an easy road, but the payoff is huge. Good luck to you!
I have been a personal trainer for over seventeen years and I honestly feel that I have one of the best jobs out there! The most rewarding part of my profession is helping one of my clients succeed at reaching their personal fitness goals. Making a difference in someone’s life makes it all worthwhile. I am currently certified by the National Sports Conditioning Association, Apex Fitness Group and the International Sports Science Association.
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