Exercise or Diet?

The last few posts have all been titled with a question. Well, there are a lot of questions when it comes to fitness and here at Everything Fit we try to give you some of the answers. And when there are no straight answers, we at least try to give you the facts so you can make an informed decision yourself.

This post's question is whether it is better to lose weight through dieting or through exercise, but let's break down why.

Dieting helps you create a caloric deficit. If you eat less calories than your body needs to stay alive (your BMR), then you will lose weight. Great, right? Well, not so fast. Very low calorie diets will actually slow down your metabolism so while you're eating less, your body learns to survive on less. And when you eventually start eating normally again you will actually gain weight because your body is used to surviving on less calories.

Exercise alone is a great way to lose weight, but there are drawbacks to this too. A lot of people assume because they're exercising that they can eat more than normal. It takes a lot of exercise to burn a pound of fat. That trail mix I gave up eating in my last post would take over an hour of jogging to burn off. What a waste of an hour.

Also, if you do too much cardio, you run the risk of burning muscle as well as fat, which will also slow your metabolism down.

So if you can exercise by doing cardio and weights and create a small caloric deficit that way every day (say around 500 calories per day) and you lower your food intake by about 500 calories a day, you would lose 1 pound a week without harming your metabolism in the process.