Is one more important than the other?
A meta-study conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Association sought to compare the effectiveness of 59 diets and found that there was no best diet. Instead, what was most effective was the dieters’ ability to stick to it. With practicality being the most important, a LifeHacker article explores whether diet or exercise is more important for weight loss.
Exercise Based Fat Loss is Relatively ineffective
- A study asked women to perform moderate to vigorous exercise 5 days a week for a year without changing diet, and found that they lost about 2 kg of fat (4.4 lbs). Considering that the reality of time spent exercising actually amounted to 155 hours a year, it took over 70 hours of exercise to lose 1 kg of fat. That is a lot of work to cut down two pounds.
- Most of the calories we burn are used to keep basic functions of the body running. Comparatively, exercise is a much smaller caloric expenditure than the resting metabolic rate.
- Spending 2-3 minutes logging your foods into a food diary is more effective than 30 minutes at the gym every day.
Read the full article with more advice on diet from weight loss experts here
