This is an interesting question I am asked almost every week and I am sure most of you would know that the answer is that you need to complete both in order to be healthy. Many would argue it is more to do with your diet and your nutrition habits, in particular with losing weight. I myself have often said that if you want to lose the belly fat and look good look you really need to look more at your diet. However, there are several problems with looking at health with this narrow mind set and ignoring the incredible health benefits of exercise that you simply cannot get from eating quality food. To achieve your optimal health level you must find the perfect balance between eating healthy and exercise and avoid the trap of thinking one can outweigh the other. Some of the long held beliefs relating to this question may be holding you back, and in this article I will challenge your current thinking to help you to find what could be the missing ingredient to your quest for great health and fitness.

First, exercise provides many health-related benefits and is one of the most important countermeasures you can rely on to prevent chronic disease and reduce overall risk of mortality. However, sometimes the effectiveness of exercise for weight loss is oversold, and people may overestimate how effective it will be toward their goal of losing weight. Therefore, it's important for people to understand how to incorporate exercise into their weight management plan in a way that doesn't lead to one step forward and two steps back.

On the other side of the equation people believe putting on weight is all to do with eating too much and that all you need to do is reduce your calorie intake. I myself have always blamed weight gain on our diet of poor quality food comprised of processed foods and excessive sugar. I have always thought weight gain was more to do with diet than a lack of exercise as I have seen so many people exercise all the time but never lose any weight or change in appearance at all as their diet was terrible. This is why I regularly say, you cannot out-exercise a bad diet.

However, I recognize my bias to this philosophy is based upon the fact that I am often talking to people who already exercise. In this case there missing ingredient is most likely to do with food but this does not mean it is always the right strategy. For example, if I meet a person who is already dieting and careful with their nutrition but cannot lose weight, their answer to their problems will more than likely be found with exercise. Sometimes it may not even be about losing weight as they might be suffering with a health related problem like osteoporosis or a heart condition that cannot be solved by eating better. Once again the answer to their underlying problem will be solved by exercising.

As you can see, the answer to the question - what is better for your health, exercise or nutrition is not that simple. It all depends on the person.

To dig into this deeper I think it is good to look at this in more detail.

Can you lose weight by dieting and not exercising?

The short answer is YES YOU CAN.

Does this mean you are healthy? No it does not guarantee you are healthy and it does not guarantee you will keep your weight off in the long term either.

It has been scientifically proven that when you lose weight, your metabolism slows. This is called metabolic adaptation, and it’s perfectly normal. Metabolic adaptation is a natural defence mechanism against starvation. When you’re dieting, at a certain point, your body will send out signals of:

• Starvation alert!
• There’s not enough food to go around!
• Hold onto the fat reserves!

At that point, your Resting Metabolic Rate slows down. Metabolic adaptation can make things more complicated (and frustrating) for dieters who hope to continue or maintain their weight loss.

Once these signals are released the calorie restriction no longer has the same effect it did at the beginning of their diet. Next thing you see is that, they need to cut more calories just to maintain the same weight. This is your body’s way attempt of maintaining homeostasis to keep the system running well. If they do not cut the calories further, weight begins to creep back on even though they are eating the same as they were when everything worked the first time.

The other thing to keep in mind is someone can be a healthy weight range but extremely unhealthy as their body is deprived of essential vitamins and nutrients needed for optimal function of vital organs and bodily functions. Sure, they may be skinny and trim but they are not healthy for their lack of calories means they have a lack of essential vitamins and minerals. This is one reason why calorie counting is not a good strategy to use for improving health.

We need our food to provide these essential vitamins and nutrients. We must look at our food as more than calories, or fuel to do exercise as it is so much more than that. Our bodies have genetically-based requirements for specific kinds of foods and balances of nutrients in order to produce optimal energy and function in a state of optimal health. If we meet these "design requirements," we can expect to be healthy, energetic, fit and trim.

For many years I have not paid much attention to regularly weighing people on the scales, or doing skin fold measurements like so many other trainers and dieticians. I have seen many people become obsessed with what the scales would say and use extreme measures to make the number lower, even if it was at the at the expense of their health. 

Instead of focusing on what the scales say or, what your skin-fold measurements are, I prefer to measure my client’s progress by how well they execute the PROCESS to lose weight. What exactly do I mean by the process?

This is where I will look at things like:

• Their exercise log
• The quality of their workouts
• Measure strength and fitness via specific tests
• How much sleep they get each night
• The quality of food they eat
• How often they eat
• How they cope with or react to stress

All of these things are processes required to obtain great health, and consequently lose weight and improve fitness. If each one of these factors improves to a level better than it was before then the chances of losing weight and keeping it off increases. It is impossible to change all of these things without the body making some positive changes. I do not want them to adopt an unrealistic or strict exercise and eating regime that compromises their sleep and stresses them out. For even if they do manage to lose weight they will certainly acquire a health problem later on.

Read the article - Why the scales are a poor measurement of health to see more on this.

The main thing to understand here is that you can certainly lose weight by dieting alone, but, this does not mean you have improved your health. And it does not mean you will keep your weight off.

So now that we have discussed nutrition and dieting, what about exercise?

How important is exercise to weight loss?

This is an interesting question and one that I have changed my mind about. As I said earlier I have always thought that weight gain was more to do with processed foods, sugar, and eating too much. While these are definitely still a massive problem and no doubt do contribute to the rapidly increasing obesity problem, the lack of movement in modern society is arguably more destructive!  

In the book “The Obesity Paradox” the author claims our obesity problems may have more to do with physical inactivity than excessive eating. A study by Dr Timothy Church from Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Baton Rouge showed in a 2011 paper that the dramatic drop in energy expenditure in work related activities over the past 50 years explains the increasing prevalence of obesity in the same time period.

Even people who work-out 3-4 times per week were not as active as they should be. As our occupations and lifestyle have become more and more sedentary our body no longer uses enough energy. As we just discussed in the last section relating to diet, if you cut back your food intake to lose weight you risk becoming vitamin deficient. The problem therefor is you need to increase your activity levels in order to eat the amount of food your body’s organs and system requires for optimal health.

Most recommendations are to do 30-45 minutes or physical activity per day which is a great start for preventing obesity. But, if that is all you do for the entire day you are still exposing your body to a host of problems.

If you worked out for 30 minutes per day and the rest of your day you sat down, your total activity percentage of available time to move might be only 4% at best! In this example, the 30 minute workout while it is great to do and has some amazingly positive aspects, is pretty much cancelled out by the negative impact on the metabolism by the 96% of sedentary activity the rest of the day.

While it is clear we must move more throughout the day the advantages of working out cannot be overstated.

One scientific review including over 400 people examined the weight loss effects of diet plus exercise and compared them to the effects of dietary changes alone.

The researchers found that the combination of dietary changes plus exercise led to 20% greater weight loss than dietary changes alone after a period of 10 weeks to one year.

Reference: Curioni CC, Lourenço PM. Long-term weight loss after diet and exercise: a systematic review. Int J Obes (Lond). 2005 Oct;29(10):1168-74. doi: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803015. PMID: 15925949.

What’s more, the programs that included diet plus exercise were also more effective than diet alone at maintaining the weight loss after another year.

The person who is lean but does not exercise could be controlling their weight using extreme dieting measures, therefor leaving their body at risk of malnutrition and vitamin deficiency. While their body fat might appear low, on the inside they can easily develop visceral fat putting them at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. But because they are skinny they see no need to change anything.

These people are often referred to as a “TOFI”, which stands for, “thin on the outside, but fat on the inside”.

This is where the person who is slightly overweight but is fit is actually a healthier person than the skinny person who does nothing! I know it sounds crazy but the research proves this to be the case.

Once again in the book “The Obesity Paradox” they looked at this phenomenon closely and one of the studies completed by UCLA researchers observed the impact muscle mass had on preventing diabetes in 13,600 adults. The study established that for every 10% increase in muscle mass to total body weight is associated with an 11% decrease in insulin resistance and 12% drop in the risk of developing diabetes.

As you will see shortly, the more muscle you have the better.

What Type of Exercise Is Best?

Most people believe that the key to losing fat and getting in shape is to spend lots of time doing long slow cardio sessions. If you don’t get a sweat then it is not a good workout!

There are several problems with this type of thinking.

Firstly the chance of suffering an injury with this approach is very high for the body is not ready for this type of demand and you also need to be certain you move well enough to handle this type of stress. When people look to get in shape they believe that moving well will just happen. All they have to do is get out there and get it done and the body will fix itself. Unfortunately it won’t. And movement problems will only get worse when compounded by frequency and volume of training. You can never sacrifice exercise technique to burn calories.

Secondly, this type of exercise may burn calories at the time but it is not the calories that is important. It is more about balancing hormones, especially for the person who has been overweight all their life. The person who has had weight problems all their life there will be considerable amounts of inflammation in their body that need to be balanced and restored to their "normal" level. By ignoring these signals and just trying to sweat yourself into shape is doomed. These, long, slow and boring cardio sessions will actually train your body to store fat. When you spend 30, 40 or even 50 minutes grinding out cardio sessions, you send your body a powerful signal to start storing fat instead of burning it.

Why? Your Hormones are out of balance.

According to a study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, People who performed intense cardio suffered from decreased T3 hormone production. (Eur J Appl Physiol. 2003 Jan; 88(4-5):480-4.) T3 is the hormone produced by your thyroid to burn fat.

When you do cardio, your body reacts to the stress by suppressing this fat burning hormone. This means your body starts gaining fat straight away for the body needs the fat in order to function. And on top of all this this excessive cardio also puts massive amounts of stress on your body by increasing the stress hormone cortisol. Excess cortisol is associated with illnesses like adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, depression and even more deadly diseases like heart disease, cancer and visceral belly fat.

This does not mean all cardio exercise is bad. It definitely has some great advantages and benefits, but your main focus should be with strength training and adding muscle.

Strength training is the best choice of exercise for people of all ages as it stimulates the growth hormones and increases muscle mass. The muscles of people who regularly lift weights absorb blood sugar in response to insulin much more effectively helping the pancreas to secrete lower amounts of this hormone. There is so much more to muscle than looking good in a mirror.

Here is a just a short list of the various benefits of using a strength training program to add muscle.

1. Muscle is the biggest influence on your metabolic rate. The more you have the faster your metabolism and the easier it is to lose weight
2. Muscle regulates hormones and prevents disease like cancer which is often caused from insulin resistance
3. Muscle improves bone density and prevents bone fractures, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, and can even reverse osteoarthritis.
4. Muscle prevents injury and improves stability across all joints
5. Muscle improves sporting performance by increasing speed and power.

Now before you rush out and start crushing the weights make sure you learn to move well first and earn the right to train hard. If you ignore this you risk developing an injury which is the last thing you want. You will find all the exercises and techniques you need to know featured in the free report below that you can download instantly.

You will find a stack of great information relating to this in the articles below.

• Cardio or weights – Which is better?
• Why strength training is the best anti-aging exercise
• Functional movement is everything and this is why
• Can you get fit lifting weights?

Why I Believe Fitness & Muscle Mass Is More Important Than Being Lean

Now before you take this the wrong way and think I am saying it is okay to be fat, I am not saying that at all. It is clear that being a healthy weight range and having great fitness and muscle mass is what we should all be striving for.

The point I want to make is that it is better to aim for strength and fitness before being obsessed with shredding your body-fat levels and taking extreme measures to reach a weight target. The health benefits of being fit and strong will heavily out-weigh the benefits of reaching a lighter weight that compromises your health.

Don’t believe me? Consider this.

A study observed 64,000 patients who had suffered various heart problems over a 3 year period to see how much influence body-weight mass with a risk of dying. What they found was that the patients who were underweight had the greatest risk of dying, double that of normal weight patients! Slightly overweight people had the lowest chance of death.

Reference: Swedish Coronary Angiography and Angioplasty Registry. “Evidence for obesity paradox in patients with acute coronary syndromes. European Heart Journal 34

Another deadly disease that is linked to physical inactivity is cancer. Cancer thrives on our lack of activity. For without the activity from exercise the body is unable to complete many of the functions needed to sustain optimal health with our essential organs. When we exercise the effect on the heart creates a series of changes to the system that increase oxygen absorption and energy production, lower blood pressure and improve cholesterol levels, resulting in less inflammation and significant efficiency of the body as a whole.

Physical activity also improves circulation, driving more oxygen into your tissues, and circulating immune cells in your blood. By improving blood flow to your liver, it also helps your body detoxify potentially harmful substances, including excess estrogen that may spur estrogen-sensitive cancers.

One of the most important effects of exercise is to reduce chronic inflammation inside the body depriving immature cancer cells a chance to mature. The other massive factor and where we see the massive influence of strength training is the effect that muscles of active people have on the hormone insulin.

Great articles to check out with additional information on chronic disease and exercise are provided in the links below.

• When it comes to type 2 diabetes prevention is better than a cure
• Exercise for heart health
• Why cancer prevention using exercise is more important than ever

Many other studies show that muscle strength can be a factor in how long a person takes to recover from serious illness or injury. The less muscle you have before the injury or illness the longer it takes and some people with significant muscle weakness will never recover.

Almost all our essential tissues and organs require ongoing maintenance of their protein content relying on a steady supply of amino acids found in protein. When something goes wrong and you are not able to eat the desired amount the body will turn to muscle protein to replace the amino acids used by other tissues. The body needs a constant supply of amino acids to create the proteins needed to support the liver’s glucose-creating engine that provides you with energy to live your life.

Your muscle mass is your emergency reserve that the body will call upon in times of illness and injury. The more you have the better. People who are over-weight will have significantly greater levels of muscle mass and fat to sustain long periods of this cannibalisation process and in turn recover much faster than a person who is underweight and lacking significant muscle mass and fitness. The ultimate cause of death when people are subjected to starvation is from muscle mass depletion.

This type of paradox is seen regularly in elderly patients and many scientists in this field are placing more emphasis on increasing physical activity and muscle gain than simply trying to lose weight. The risk factors of falls, osteoporosis, hip fractures, diabetes, and heart disease from lack of physical activity and muscle mass is of more importance than how much they weigh. If they are obese then this is obviously a risk factor, but if they are slightly overweight but have good fitness then they are in good shape and less likely to suffer with a serious illness or injury. And if they did suffer, their chances of bouncing back to good shape are very high. As opposed to the frail and underweight person with little fitness and muscle mass.

Does this relate to people of younger ages too? Of course it does.

Many young people who are in the healthy weight range and do not exercise become very ignorant to health problems that await them due to their inactivity. They have this belief that because they are not fat, they are immune to health problems. There are many lean people all over the world who suffer with serious diseases like diabetes and cancer created from poor lifestyle choices that ruined their health. Physical inactivity is a massive problem and eating small amounts of food that deprive of important nutrients to keep your weight low is counter productive.

The earlier you try to increase your muscle mass the better. If you are female it is of even greater importance for females have significantly less muscle than males and lose muscle at a much faster rate.

See the article – 7 health facts every woman should know

Additional Resources to Help You with Exercise & Nutrition

I know there is a ton of information I have not included in this article with regards to how to lose weight or prevent obesity. If you follow the links throughout the article they will take you to detailed articles relating to these questions. I also suggest to get a copy of our detailed report below that features everything you need to know about improving the immune system, heart health, and lung capacity. I created this report in September 2020 to include ALL of the relevant information relating to exercise and nutrition for improving our health. This is not about fitness but about improving your overall health vitality. Click here to download your instant PDF copy.

Summary

It is no surprise that almost every health organization around the world suggests that the best results with health and fitness requires changing both your diet and exercise. You cannot exercise your way to great health, as you still need to pay attention to your nutrition habits to ensure your body receives the optimal amount of vitamins and minerals.

While many people know that a healthy diet is critical for weight loss, it is not the only thing that matters. Cutting your calories back too far puts your body at risk of becoming vitamin deficient and while you may be trim, you are not healthy.

If you are a person who loves to exercise but finds it hard to lose weight look more carefully at your food and recovery. There is most likely something not right in these areas that need your attention.

If however, you have your nutrition habits under control and you also suffer with a weight problem or another health problem you need to look close at your exercise program, in particular strength training. Often the lack of muscle mass is the biggest problem for the pro-dieting camp.

The message is clear that if your goal is to lose weight healthily the best program requires the best of both methods. Having said that I believe more people would greatly benefit from moving more.

Lastly, I will leave you with this little note to keep in mind. If you have put on a few kilos as you age, but have remained fit and strong, your health is very likely to be in great condition. Trying to shed kilos with excessive exercise or restrictive eating could be counter-productive and actually end up ruining your health. This is where fit and fat beats skinny and unfit. I told you I would challenge your thinking.

For more ideas and information on specific topics I may not have covered in detail be sure to check out our INDEX PAGE on the website that has over 300 of our best articles. These are all sorted into categories for quick reference so you can find what you are after more easily. You can also subscribe to our FREE fortnightly newsletter by clicking here.

If you live in Melbourne and feel you need specific help with your exercise program please feel free to reach out to me for help and we can set you up with your individualised program. 

About The Author

Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 16 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.

Additional References:

• Obesity Paradox - By Carl J. Lavie M.D.
• Movement - By Gray Cook
• Corrective Exercise Solutions for the Hip & Shoulder - by Evan Osar
• Back Pain Mechanic - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Bending the Aging Curve -  Joseph Signorile
• Athletic Body in Balance - by Gray Cook
• How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek
• Heart foundation
• CSIRO
• Precision Nutrition 
• Nutrition & Physical Degeneration - By Weston A Price
• Big Fat Lies - By David Gillespie