What's more important: Diet or Exercise?

People ask us all the time, what’s the best way to lose weight? Most people know that in order for weight loss to occur you need to pay attention to what you eat and you’ll need to do some exercise as well. But which one is more important?

Nutrition

Research has shown that if you’re only going to do one thing in your journey to weight loss, it should be following a nutrition plan. Your nutrition plan should not only look at reducing the number of calories you’re eating, but also where those calories are coming from. You’ll want to go with fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein sources, and lots of water. Once your diet is filled with these types of foods, the calories will look after themselves, and you will get healthy weight loss.

Exercise

Like diet, research has also shown that exercise is beneficial for weight loss. Exercise ensures that you are burning off energy and increasing your metabolic rate. But there are so many different types of exercise and some are more effective for weight loss than others. High Intensity Interval Training and weight training have proved the most effective. They help you to increase your metabolic rate and ensure the weight you drop is fat and not muscle. With more muscle, your body’s ability to shave off calories increases, making it easier to burn calories even when you’re doing nothing at all. Diet can’t do that!

So which is best?

I imagine some of you were hoping that exercise alone would help you lose weight because you don’t want to give up the foods you love. And some of you reading this would prefer to watch your diet because you were really hoping you didn’t have to exercise as you hate the thought of going to the gym. Well, the truth is if you’re not willing to do both, you will have very limited success in the long term. It might work initially, but you wont be able keep those results coming for very long.

But the good news is you’ll find that once you become serious about losing weight, you will be careful about what you eat because you don’t want to put all that exercise to waste. At the same time, you’ll push yourself harder in the gym because you realise tha hard work will get you closer to your weight loss goals.

If you’re ready to address both your diet and exercise with a structured programme and full support from expert personal trainers, get in touch with us today on info@efitbristol.co.uk or visit our Facebook page for more great advice https://www.facebook.com/efitbristol.