By Agbai Sharonjoyce
Many people begin their fitness journey with determination—signing up for gym memberships and picturing fat melting away with every treadmill session. However, the common belief that sweat alone conquers obesity is one of the biggest misconceptions about weight loss.
While exercise is a vital part of health, relying on that only to shed considerable pounds is an uphill battle. The game changer lies in what—and how—you eat.
Extensive analyses of multiple trials show how diet and exercise affect people who are overweight or obese. These findings confirm that while exercise is beneficial, dietary control is the primary driver of weight loss.
When scientists compared different weight loss methods for adults carrying excess weight, the results were striking. Dietary changes alone were significantly more effective at reducing body weight than exercise alone.
One major study showed that people who only focused on controlling their calories or food intake lost about 2.57 kg more weight than those who focused strictly on exercise.
This pattern holds true even for specific populations, like peri- and postmenopausal women, where dietary changes proved more effective for reducing body weight than exercise by itself.
Why exercise alone isn’t enough
This difference helps explain why many people feel frustrated when they work out hard but fail to see results on the scale.
Trying to outrun a bad diet is fiendishly difficult because exercise, particularly aerobic training, only leads to modest reductions in body mass when used independently.
For instance, if you are an adult with overweight or obesity, simply adding 30 minutes of aerobic training like jogging or brisk walking to your routine each week is associated with a small, yet measurable, weight reduction of about 0.52 kg.
While every half-kilogram counts, the initial weight loss achieved through diet control is far greater.
Should you quit the gym then?
If diet is the main driver for weight loss, does that mean you should cancel your gym membership? Absolutely not. Based on research, while diet provides the initial and largest reduction in weight, exercise is essential for achieving superior, long-term and high-quality results.
The greatest success comes from the partnership of diet and activity. Combined with dietary changes, exercise can be more effective for overall weight loss.
The most crucial reason to keep exercising while dieting involves protecting the body composition, which is what the body is made of.
When people lose weight quickly through dieting alone, they often lose valuable muscle mass along with fat, muscle is important because it helps keep metabolism high and contributes to overall strength.
Aerobic exercise also offers specific benefits regarding body measurements and fat stores. For adults who are overweight or obese, engaging in aerobic training exceeding 150 minutes per week (about two and a half hours) at a moderate or vigorous intensity is linked to clinically important reductions in waist circumference and body fat.
Specifically, long-term programmes that last more than 12 weeks and involve both calorie reduction and exercise are successful at reducing Visceral Fat Area, the deep, dangerous fat stored around your internal organs.
The bottom line
Food intake is the most effective single tool for initial and overall body weight reduction. To achieve optimal results—such as greater long-term weight loss, protection of muscle mass and improved body composition—exercise must be added to your dietary changes.
Summary not available at this time.
