Of course, you need a healthy balance of both the right diet and adequate exercise to drop the pounds. But does one outweigh the other? Find out.
This has been an ongoing controversy for many years. For optimal fat loss, should you focus more on your diet or your exercise routine? All in all, you do need a balance of both. You must follow a diet and exercise in order to get the absolute best result. But when it comes down to which contributes more, you may be surprised as to what the answer is.
Simply put, exercise is the easy part...at least for most people. A majority of the population finds it much easier to get to the gym and break a sweat than to put down that piece of bread or stop themselves from another serving of dinner.
Exercise is always more favourable than dieting. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just exercise and eat whatever you want? Well, that's sure as heck not the case! Dieting contributes to about 90 per cent of fat loss, leaving only 10 per cent to exercise. This may come as a big surprise to you, but it is true. How come? Read more to find out why dieting has an advantage over exercise when it comes to weightloss.
You can't out-exercise a bad diet
This is such a popular phrase in the fitness world and it is probably one of the truest statements out there. Many people believe that if they work their butt off in the gym, that they can go home and eat what they want.
The main idea behind exercising is to burn calories. The unhealthy foods that you reward yourself with afterward are chockfull of unnecessary calories. Take this for example: You stop by the McDonald's drive-thru with some friends and splurge on a Big Mac. In the back of your head you're thinking 'I'll just go to the gym later'. Well, hold that thought and put the Big Mac down! In order to burn off a Big Mac, you would need to bust your butt in the gym for at least 90 minutes of full-on intense cardio, just to create a small calorie deficit.
This goes for all foods, not only Big Macs. In order to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. If you have bad dietary habits, chances are that's not happening and that's the reason why you aren't losing weight. All the exercise in the world can't help a bad diet.
Illustration: Uttam Ghosh
Read more from the original source:
Diet or exercise: Which is more important for weightloss?
