Lose weight: exercise or diet – what is more important?
Diet vs Exercise for Weight Loss: Sport or a calorie-reduced diet – what is more important? This subject always sparks intense debates among people who desire to drop a few pounds. One side advocates a diet, while the other promotes training as the most effective technique. Which method is more effective? Yes, both at once!
Coaches often emphasize the role of sport as the most important part of success for an athletic and trained body and describe nutrition as one of many other factors in addition to genetics, external environment, age, gender, habits, supplements, or even doping, motivation and form on the day.
On the other hand, many nutritionists swear by the importance of macro and micronutrients, amount of energy, etc.
I have been dealing with the topic of nutrition for 15 years, I am trained and have completed numerous further training courses that give me a comprehensive and comprehensive picture. I have theoretical and practical knowledge of nutritional and training science content. As a coach, I "promise" my team success through intensive physical training. This is only possible if you know how to achieve sporting goals and are familiar with your body.
In my everyday work as a nutritionist, I support and accompany people, often non-athletes, on their way to their (physical) goals. And because I work as a trainer and nutritionist, I don't fully commit to the training or nutrition side.
The core
The matter is quite simple: For the body to break down fat, a person has to expend more calories than they consume.
That sounds uninteresting. In reality, it appears that most people are unaware of this. However, it is not that straightforward.
It may work that way at first if you are a little overweight, but there are so many different conditions and early scenarios that you cannot avoid conducting an individual situation analysis if losing weight is not as simple as mentioned above. And this is frequently the case.
For example,
if you want to lose a pound in a week, you need to burn about 3500 more calories than you take in. That's 500 calories a day.
Did you know that with a 10 km run, you only lose 500 - 800 kcal, depending on your height and weight (700 kcal is really above average)? So this goal is really difficult to achieve with sport alone.
With a conscious diet, it is easier. For example, with two slices of wholemeal spelled bread with 60g Philadelphia and 50g chicken salami, you only consume around 500kcal and are full. A frozen pizza has about 700 calories and you are not full - you see, the "optimization potential" is very high here.
The problem often lies in the wrong view
Many people believe that they (only) have to exercise to lose weight. In addition, however, they consciously eat little and thus supply the body with less energy.
What happens: The body gets used to this reduced calorie intake very quickly and only works on the back burner. As a result, many feel very unbalanced and listless after a few days or weeks. The interplay between exercise, eating, and losing weight is out of balance.
If you now stop eating less, so to speak the diet, and eat normally again, the body has already gotten used to the reduced energy balance and is currently building up the lost fat again very quickly. Silly. The famous yo-yo effect. And the growing opinion: “Sport. Diet. Everything doesn't work for me."
Diet vs Exercise for Weight Loss: The goal is crucial
muscle building
It is quite clear that the muscles must be used regularly over a certain period to build muscle and maintain it. The sporting demands should be intense, otherwise, it won't work. Without regular and intensive training, the attempt to gain weight as fat-free as possible will fail. So it makes no sense to attribute 70 to 80% of the success to nutrition. No matter how perfectly you can track your diet and count calories, not much will happen in terms of performance and muscle development.
weight reduction
However, it is completely different when it comes to weight reduction or the definition phase. Amazing results can be achieved simply by changing your diet and changing the calories you eat. Here the training acts as an important amplifier for losing weight. Physically active people use more energy than non-active people. The body's energy balance is not put on the back burner through sport, and the yo-yo effect can thus be successfully avoided.
In addition, muscles are built during exercise. Muscle consumes energy, which means more muscle, more energy expenditure - and you look better and feel better.
Sport is overrated
Whether you want to lose weight or build muscle, the impact of exercise is overestimated in both cases. Without the right diet, the pounds won't go off, just like the muscles won't grow.
More on Diet vs Exercise for Weight Loss, however, it is not optimal to do without sport entirely, since exercise is important for our cardiovascular system and our mood. Just don't fall into the misconception that after a sweaty jog, you can tuck into a pizza followed by a piece of cake without regret because "You've been working out."
And something that people who are active in sports should also consider: Sport stimulates the metabolism, but also the feeling of hunger. So it can quickly happen that going to the studio becomes a zero-sum game.
70/30 when losing weight
If you want to shed a few unwanted pounds but are not very enthusiastic about sport, you will be happy to know that a good ratio of diet to sport when losing weight is 70 to 30. In plain language, this means: that 70% of success is due to a healthy, balanced, and carbohydrate-reduced diet, and 30% is due to moderate physical activity.
A diet without exercise can thus be successful, but a daily jog greatly speeds up the process. People frequently mention 10,000 steps every day.
Important: Research has revealed that jogging is more than just jogging. It makes a difference whether I run the 10 km in 45 minutes, 60 minutes, or even 75 minutes in terms of fat burning.
Even if you want to maintain your weight, you don't need to work up a sweat: if you eat well, include more activity into your daily routine, and occasionally take the stairs rather than the elevator, you can avoid an extensive sports program. It is sufficient if you devote two to three hours every week to your chosen sport. This not only helps to firm up your shape but also enhances your mood and reduces stress.
Conclusion
The 70:30, or sometimes 80:20 formula is a good guideline, but it's much more important to achieve a negative calorie count in the totality of diet and exercise.
If you want to lose weight successfully and permanently, you shouldn't just start starving yourself or do an excessive amount of sport overnight. This damages the body and the immune system more than it promises success.
And if the individual situation has not yet allowed you to achieve positive success, a more detailed and trained look makes sense. I'm happy to do that.
One tip at the end: Don't be unsettled if the scales don't show less weight after the first few weeks or in between. Your body fat percentage will decrease if you stick to the plan. Muscle just weighs more than fat. And now and then the body also collects water. No reason to be discouraged.
Also Check: Military Diet
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