More Important - Diet or Exercise?

More Important - Diet or Exercise? - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. What is more important for weigh loss? Diet or excercise? Well folks, really both are pretty equally important. In my practice I get many people who are excercising a lot and they come in and they are frustrated because they are not loosing weight. Because they have not looked at the diet piece. In fact, that exercise may be making them hungrier, so they are eating more, Or that excercise machine might be telling them they are burning x-amount of calories and often those calories on machines are over-estimated what you really burned and they eat back all those calories. So you have to look at the diet side too. The diet is important because you have to control calories in versus calories out to loose weight. It is as simple as that. But if you are just watching your calories and not exercising, you also may lower your metabolic rate. And many times I see, especially women, who come into my office, who have lowered their calories to maybe 1200 calories a day. They are not exercising. They loose weight initially and then they plateau, because they end up lowering their metabolic rate or the rate at which they burn calories. So, what I prefer is to give them a higher calorie level, say 1600, 1800, but get them to exercise. The higher calories along with the exercise revs up their metabolism and they loose weight more efficiently. Also, they are more fit. They are of course getting the cardio-vascular benefits, they are building their bone density, they are building their muscle and they are getting a better look that they want from their weight loss. So, in my book, diet and exercise are equally important. And everyone that comes into my office gets a prescription for both. As a dietitian, I refer out to an exercise specialist for detailed exercise programs, but I will always recommend at least three or four days a week of some kind of cardio-vascular exercise, even walking briskly, along with a nutrition prescription that I am going to give them. I know as a sports nutritionist, we say for fitness: Fitness is kind of a three-legged stool. There is diet, there is exercise and there is rest. And we know, for weight control, sleep now has become very important. People who do not get enough sleep end up having a hard time loosing weight and they even gain weight, because the body makes a stress hormone called cortisol. So, if you want to be fit, diet, exercise and get enough rest.