What’s more Important – Dieting or Exercising?
People ask me all the time which is more important, diet or exercise. My answer is always…both nutrition AND physical activity are 100% important to your health.
Good Nutrition can help you:
- Shrink inches off your body – in particular, your waistline
- Increase your energy levels
- Balance your hormones
- Improve your mood
- Build and feed your hard earned muscles
- Achieve your body composition and health goals
- Reduce your stress
- Help you sleep better
- Renew your confidence, self-esteem and motivation
In isolation, you can drop the pounds on your scale quite effectively by focusing only on what you eat, and without exercising. But there are so many other important benefits that working out provides you with, beyond dropping the pounds on your scale.
Exercise can help you:
- Reduce body fat; increase your strength and muscle tone
- Increase cardiovascular health and endurance
- Strengthen your bones and joints
- Improve your energy levels
- Balance your hormones
- Improve your mood
- Reduce your stress
- Help you sleep better
- Renew your confidence, self-esteem and motivation
As you can see from the two lists above, there’s a lot of overlap in benefits. Improving both your eating and fitness habits will increase the effectiveness of the benefits above. Not only that, but when you combine healthy eating + exercise, you’re increasing the bang for your buck. To better understand this, think about a hard training session. You’re able to exert a lot more energy in an workout session if you’ve had a good pre-workout snack or meal. Another example of seeing this power combination in action is when you think about your physique. Nutrition alone may shrink your waistline, but it won’t do much to tone and tighten your arms, back or legs. You need exercise to drive the toning and tightening.
In summary, I’m sticking to my view that both nutrition AND physical activity are 100% important to your health. Together, they are the perfect power combination to improving your overall health!