Which more important diet or exercise

When it comes to weight loss, what you eat matters. It's clear that you need to restrict calories in your diet to lose weight, but not all calories are created equal. Calories from sugar promote fat storage and hunger.

Ever try to satisfy your hunger with a candy bar, only to be hungry again a short time later and eat more? Calories from fat and protein help you feel full longer.

One way to approach healthy nutrition is to follow the Mediterranean diet, proven to promote good health. The Mediterranean diet emphasis food from plant sources fruits and vegetables , breads, whole gains, low- and non-fat dairy, fish and poultry, nuts, seeds and olive oil, while avoiding processed foods.

If you follow a diet similar to the Mediterranean diet you'll be eating more low-calorie-dense foods. Exercise and diet are both important for long-term weight loss and your overall health.

Find ways to include daily activity and healthier food choices in your life. Alternating aerobic and resistance exercises is important for keeping the entire body fit.

It is commonly said that health benefit ratio of diet to exercise is However, when sleep was factored in, Earnest said his ratio analysis of the health implications of the three would be , sleep, diet and exercise respectively. All three factors are very important to overall health, and Parr concluded that all three are equally important to the trifecta necessary for a healthy lifestyle.

However, he warned not to bite off more than you can chew when setting health goals. Given that sleep is the most neglected, a little extra shuteye and regular sleep-wake times may prove quite beneficial to your health and get you back on track with your health goals. So try this one goal: go to bed within the same hour every day this week; you just might start to feel better.

Media contact: Dee Dee Grays , You Asked: Which is more important—sleep, diet or exercise? Opinions vary about which is the most vital for good health, but experts agree that sleep is neglected the most. Exercise is necessary to increase your lean muscle mass, and improve your aerobic cardiovascular health, but it is a very inefficient way to burn calories. It is totally possible to consume that many calories in just one meal! It is far easier to simply reduce the number of calories you are consuming, then it is to burn them off.

With that said, using both diet and exercise together will supplement each other, which I will get into a little further down. Exercising alone may not counteract all the negative effects of excess body fat, and of eating a very poor low-quality diet. Improving your diet will help you maintain a healthy BMI and reduce your risk of all-cause mortality. Exercise can help build and maintain your lean muscle mass, improve your blood sugar regulation, energy production, mental concentration, and self-esteem.

Obviously, you are not limited to picking between diet or exercise. You can clearly do both. But is diet and exercise more effective than diet alone in weight loss and overall health? The answer is yes. When you begin to lose weight through a calorie deficit, your body will begin to burn both fat AND muscle. This is because your body goes into survival mode and starts to get rid of non-essential tissue. Ideally, you want to hold on to as much muscle mass as possible, as muscle tissue is metabolically active, and a good marker of overall health.

By exercising and maintaining a high protein diet, you can take advantage of a phenomenon known as calorie partitioning. When you do resistance training, you are sending signals to your body that it needs to preserve muscle tissue to keep up with the metabolic damage the exercise is causing. As a result, some of the calories you consume and some of the calories your body must get from its supply must be partitioned to repair your muscle tissue! This can result in increased fat loss, and maintenance of muscle tissue.

Resistance training is your secret weapon to help you are create a competition of where your caloric energy should go. If you are dieting and exercising but gaining weight, it is because you are inadvertently in a caloric surplus. Of course, there are other factors that could be involved that may be decreasing the number of calories your body is burning such as hypothyroidism or other hormonal imbalances. So there you have it. If you could only pick one, focus on your diet. It is a comprehensive system of 24 action easy and practical action steps to improve your diet and lifestyle.

Every action step is designed to be realistic and sustainable for even the busiest of professionals. Pitsavos, Christos, et al. Thomas, D. An energy balance analysis. However, this is not to say that exercise is not important. Exercise is important for building body strength, improving flexibility and muscle mass. Regular exercise is a very important part of a healthy lifestyle and plays an essential role in managing conditions like diabetes , heart disease and high blood pressure to name a few.

But, the study notes that diet is a much more important lifestyle factor as compared to exercise, when it comes to weight loss.

Diet is more important than exercise for weight loss, new study finds Photo Credit: iStock. Chia seeds. All these foods are nutritious and extremely healthy for weight loss. Eating them in the right proportions along with exercise is all you need to do to achieve quick weight loss. Keep in mind that you cannot compromise on your health while seeking weight loss.

Calorie-deficit diets may help you lose weight quickly, but that lost weight is quite likely to come back as soon as you get back to normal eating routine. Such diets are also likely to increase your cravings and even before you realise, you will be seeking comfort in junk food or even worse The key is to maintain a balance and include all food groups in your diet like carbs , fibre , protein and fats to keep you full and satiated.