When we want to lose weight, many of us always return to the same basic question: Do we need diet or exercising more? The truth is that you need both to enjoy long-term weight loss, yet so few of us really understand that and work to make the requisite changes.
There are so many diet plans and fads out there that promote losing weight simply by changing what you eat. The problem with a lot of these, though, is that they focus solely on short-term results. If you want to take the weight off and keep it off moving forward, then you absolutely need to integrate both of these elements to get you to where you want to be. So let’s look at how to get there.
If you consider whether the most important element is diet or exercising, you want to think of where you are currently at in your life and health. If you are already eating well, then you need more exercise, and vice versa.
The true answer lies within a good combination of both, for you need diet and exercise working in combination to help you lose weight for the long term. The exercise will help you to transform your body, burn calories and fat, and of course add muscle mass. The diet that you follow will help you to eat the right foods for better health, to learn proper portion control, and to ensure that you are in control of eating in the right way. So, they truly do work together in harmony!
If you think about diet or exercising, you must consider what would happen if you didn’t have one of those elements. You may lose some weight by diet alone, but the excess fat doesn’t have anywhere to go. You may lose weight on the scale, but the fat will remain, and you will find that you are not transforming your body in the right way. If you are exercising alone, then you may not be eating the right foods, and that can literally wipe away any positive change that you may have had. So, you can see that one without the other simply doesn’t do the trick! You need them working together to get you long-term results.
When you evaluate between diet or exercising, recognize that you need both to get you where you want to be. One aspect of health alone simply can’t take you as far as you want to go. Be ready to make the change to healthy eating, but also ensure that exercise is at the forefront of what you do. When you can balance your health in this way and ensure that you are in control of making lifestyle changes, then it will all work well for you. Ignore the fads or trends that focus only on one element and get back to clean and healthy living. This will help you to lose weight, transform your body, and lead toward positive change that you can enjoy in the long term and beyond.
If you were wondering whether diet or exercise is more important if all factors were equal, then research does actually have an answer. According to a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders, diet plays a larger role in the results dieters see in their efforts to lose weight. This is not to say that exercise does not play a role, particularly in the long term as efforts shift to preventing lost weight from coming back. However, cutting calories does appear to be the most impactful factor when trying to burn away unwanted body fat.
For this reason, while it is very important to pay close attention to the diet changes you make on behalf of your weight loss goal, you should still ensure that you work on building exercise into your regular weekly schedule both for the purpose of your goal and your overall health.