Weight reduction is the most popular fitness goal in today’s globe. Obesity is on the rise, bringing a bevy of health challenges with it, including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and weight-based prejudices.
Regardless of why you or anybody else wants to lose weight, finding the ideal technique is undoubtedly just as difficult as achieving it. The general consensus is that you should exercise regularly and eat well. But, if you have to choose between exercise and dieting, which one would help you lose the most weight?
Let’s start with the physiological side of weight loss.
When net energy expenditure exceeds net energy consumption, weight loss usually happens. Simply said, you’ll burn more calories if you exercise more.
Three elements are mostly responsible for energy expenditure.
- Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the one that uses the most energy. This takes into consideration all of your biological activities when you’re sleeping, such as your heartbeat and brain functioning.
- Thermic impact of food, or the energy expended during digestion, is the second component.
- Physical activity is the third component, which is determined by any sort of movement you undertake, such as cleaning, walking the dog, and, of course, exercising.
Physical exercise is the only one of the three elements that you can control in any meaningful way. You simply need to increase your physical activity. However, you have total control over your energy use. You are in charge of what you eat and how much you eat. Some may disagree, but evidence shows that reducing weight is largely a matter of eating less than you burn.
As a result, exercise burns more energy while dieting reduces the amount of energy consumed. Now, all we have to do is see who executes their job better. Dieting, on the other hand, appears to be the simpler option.
Let’s look at a hundred calories:
When it comes to dieting, this means only eating half of that chocolate bar or taking one mouthful less of that burger. Burning 100 calories with exercise entails jogging a mile or walking the dog for half an hour. Increase it to 250 calories, and you’ve saved yourself an hour of weightlifting by foregoing the full chocolate bar or a handful of fries.
Unless you’re a fitness freak, it’ll virtually always be simpler to eat less than to exercise more. Even more so if you concentrate on eating low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods that make you feel full rather than high-calorie junk food that makes you want to go for seconds.
Is that the end of the discussion? Is it enough to just eat right and not exercise at all? Well, not quite. The entire concentration on seeing the number on the scale go down should not be the objective of weight loss. Exercise, while not as successful as diets for weight loss in and of itself, provides a slew of additional health advantages that everyone should take advantage of. Simply decreasing weight is now a big health improvement for persons who are excessively overweight. If dieting is the only thing that works for them, that’s OK. Exercise should undoubtedly be included in the plan for those who are physically capable. The apparent benefit is that you will burn more calories, allowing you to finish that chocolate bar.
Exercise will also help you enhance your overall heart and lung health. Some people even get a therapeutic high from specific activities, as well as the fantastic benefit of burning more fat for energy if they eat enough protein. And if you’re merely dieting to lose weight, your body will gradually adjust to the alterations. Your BMR decreases as you diet longer, and your body becomes a clinging fat lover. Muscle protein is frequently broken down, stress hormones rise, and your hunger becomes unstable. Because less energy is used, you will need to consume even less to maintain your weight loss. Adding exercise, on the other hand, improves life significantly. BMR may still decrease, although it does so at a far slower rate with activity than without. It will also reduce muscle breakdown while increasing fat breakdown to supply energy to the muscles. It also means appearing leaner and stronger as you lose weight, which is very important for beginners. Simply dieting will result in you becoming a smaller version of your chubby self. Keep in mind, though, that losing weight still necessitates a calorie deficit overall.
“You can’t work your way out of a lousy diet,” as the phrase goes. When all the advantages of nutrition and exercise are taken into account, exercise may be the preferable option. Sure, you’ll lose weight more slowly, but you won’t have to starve yourself to get healthier, stronger, and more muscular, and, most importantly, happy. It’s generally better to do both at the same time.