Is Diet Or Exercise More Effective For Fat Loss And Muscle Tone?

by Rusty Moore

Obviously both diet and exercise are key when it comes to losing weight and getting a toned body. The question is this…are they equally important or is what you eat more important than what you burn? As a fitness site author I am a huge believer in exercise, but I would say the real key to muscle tone and a sexy body lies in what you eat each day.

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

Everyone knows that exercise along with a good diet is a great approach to losing weight. The challenge with exercising is that often times life gets busy. There isn’t always time to exercise, but you always have time for a proper diet. My suggestion is to keep your diet clean at all times, and exercise when time allows.

“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 Easier to Create a Large Calorie Deficit Through Dieting

The best way to lose weight is through creating a large daily calorie deficit. The goal is to for your body to use more calories each day than what it consumes. If you wanted to lose a pound of fat on your body, you have to create a 3,500 calorie deficit over time. If you wanted to lose 2 pounds per week that would be a deficit of 7,000 calories over a week…or a daily calorie deficit of 1,000. Do you know it takes close to 2 hours of moderate cardio to burn 1,000 calories. The best plan is not to eat those calories in the first place!

Fat Loss Is A Bit More Complicated

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 is MUCH More Important Than Most People Realize

If you are eating a bunch of calories, a large part of your time spent in the gym is a waste. What is crazy is that over 80% of all articles in fitness magazines focus on exercise, while diet is the key to getting a great looking body. I am a HUGE believer in regular exercise, I just think that diet is what is holding most people back from hitting their goals.

Want your Cardio to Be 3 Times More Effective? Then Eat Well!

If you eat junk food or just an excessive amount of calories each day, you are sabotaging your efforts in the gym. A hard cardio workout can be tough. It should drive you nuts to know that a bad diet will negate any positive benefits you could have had from cardio. If you did that same workout on a low calorie diet, you would actually reach your goals and not struggle so hard with weight loss.

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

Self-discipline sometimes just depends upon how you view certain things. It really isn’t that a certain person is just naturally more disciplined than other people, often times they just think a bit differently about a certain task. Here is the way I view cardio that almost forces me to follow a strict diet. I tell myself that if I do cardio while following a bad diet, that I am accomplishing nothing as far as getting lean is concerned. Since I do a pretty intense High Intensity Interval Training Routine, I would be mad if I didn’t see results! I follow a clean diet, because I can’t stand the thought of working out that hard for nothing. It works the other way as well. When I’m following a clean diet, I can’t stand the thought of not doing cardio because I know it will be that much more effective!

About the Author:

Want a slim and toned body like Jessica Biel or Brad Pitt? Learn the Diet and Exercise techniques of Hollywood’s Hottest Actors and Actresses. Click here for advanced, up-to-date, Fitness Tips!