Is Diet The Key to Burning Body Fat or Is Exercise the Answer?

So is diet or exercise more important when it comes to losing body fat? I am the author of a fitness site so obviously I am a big believer in exercise, but to be honest, you can get pretty dramatic results from diet alone. In fact, I would say that 90% of the people who are having a tough time losing weight are simply messing up when it comes to diet.

The Ideal Weight Loss Plan is a Combination of Diet and Exercise

For best results, exercise with diet is your best route to a lean body. The problem is this, things don't always go as planned and life gets busy. There are times when you simply can't exercise, but you always have time to diet. No matter how busy life gets, simply follow your diet and you will make forward progress. Exercise whenever time allows, but no matter what stick to your diet (whatever diet plan you end up following).

"You Can't Out-Exercise a Big Mac"

A Big Mac has 540 calories. Do you realize how much exercising it takes to burn those calories? Well about an hour on the elliptical trainer at a moderate pace would do the trick! So after an hour of boring cardio, you are back to square one. You probably won't lose weight at all especially if you added the fries and soft drink. Large fries would be an extra 570 calories and a large non-diet soft drink would be an extra 310 calories. So how much exercise would you have to do to burn 1,400+ calories? Let's not even go there!

It Is Much Easier to Create A Large Calorie Deficit With a Clean Diet

A simple approach to losing weight is to create a daily calorie deficit. Basically, the idea is for your body to use more calories each day than what you consume in food calories. So, there are two ways to create this deficit; either consume less calories or burn more through exercising. Each pound of fat on your body is 3,500 calories. So to lose 2 pounds per week, you need to create a weekly calorie deficit of 7,000or a daily calorie deficit of 1,000. In my opinion it is much easier to create this calorie deficit by not eating those calories in the first place. You would have to spend two hours at a moderate pace on a stationary bike EVERY day to accomplish this!

This is Simplifying Fat Loss a Bit

The body is actually much more complex than simply responding precisely to a calorie deficit. There are WAY more variables that come into play when it comes to fat loss; the type of food you eat, the timing of your meals, the metabolic effect of exercise, the muscle sparing effect of resistance training, etc. There are a lot of things that come into the fat loss picture that I'm not addressing here.

Diet Play a Bigger Role in Fat Loss Than Most People Realize

I would bet that over 80% of the articles in fitness magazines are about exercise. It does make a lot of sense, because exercising is a much more interesting topic. The funny thing is that diet is equally, if not more important to an attractive physique. Don't get me wrong. I am a HUGE believer in regular exercise, I just think people are "spinning their wheels" when it comes to getting fit by not paying enough attention to diet. If your diet is bad, a lot of your effort in the gym goes to waste.

Diet is What Makes Your Cardio Much More Effective

Show me an overweight person who works outs hard 5 times a week and I will show you a person who doesn't eat well! The mistake people often make in gyms is that they copy the workout routine of a person who is in great shape. The real reason that person is in great shape is because of their clean diet. True weight loss happens "behind the scenes". Working out speeds along the process, but the foundation of a great body is in a clean diet.

Bonus: Here is a Way to Increase Your Self-Discipline

Want to make sure you eat well as well as exercise? Plan to exercise later in the day and make yourself eat well to "prepare your body" to get the most out of your cardio workout. When you eat lower calories leading up to your workout, your body will burn fat for energy. If you eat strictly all day that workout will do wonders for you. So what happens if you don't "feel like" exercising once the evening rolls around? Well, you just spent all day preparing your body to get the most out of exercising. It would be foolish to miss this great window of opportunity when it comes to burning off unwanted body fat. You will find that you will naturally find the self-discipline to exercise more, the stricter you are with your diet. This is how to truly transform your body!

Article Source: http://www.health-fitness-for-all.com

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