What’s More Important: Exercise or Diet?

I’ve been coaching a good friend of mine Ali and helping her get in shape for a Venus Index photoshoot this week. We were at the gym and one of the regulars came up to her and mentioned how he really noticed her change over the past month.

What is more important...diet or exercise?

And then Ali said something totally profound without meaning to.

After the gym regular finished telling her that he noticed how much she had changed over the last month she said:

“It’s one thing to notice someone in the gym, it’s another thing to notice someone in the gym getting in shape”

I thought about it and realized how ironic that statement was. If you look around your gym you’ll notice that most regulars look the same day after day, month after month, and year after year.

It’s actually very rare to see someone making any sort of real change in the look and shape of their body…and when someone does it’s totally obvious.

The point is that going to the gym can only do so much for changing the look and shape of your body, but to really make a difference you have to make a change in your diet.

The type of exercise Ali has been doing over the past month hasn’t change much from previous months, the big difference is that she has made significant changes in her diet, and that is where the big difference her look came from.

If you really want to change the look of your body you gotta get your diet under control too, exercise alone will never be enough.

It’s a two part equation, exercise + diet.

Sadly most gym goers get the exercise part down and never figure out the diet part (probably because the diet half is much harder than showing up for a few workouts each week).

For a big time change in the look and shape of your body, the real heavy lifting isn’t done in the weight room but with your diet.

John

Posted by johnbarban in Exercise, food
Tags: diet for weight loss, exercise and diet, exercise for weight loss |11 Comments

11 Responses to “What’s More Important: Exercise or Diet?”

  1. VGregor Says:
    December 6th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    Yea, you are right, people think that they will change just by going to the gym, they don’t even think about getting a good workout plan. And if their goal is fat loss, they expect to get lean just by doing some stupid cardio.
    Greg

  2. jasetagle Says:
    December 7th, 2010 at 2:41 am

    It’s an amazing phenomenon.

    I train similar virtually all year, but once I start cutting down, I get questions such as what sport do you do? and what do you do for (x) body part?

    When I get much leaner, like abdominal-serratus-intercostal lean, I literally had a staff member in the locker room go, “Jeez, you must be on steroids…”

  3. usernametooshortnowitstoolon Says:
    December 7th, 2010 at 11:40 am

    If you are able to maintain the same level of caloric intake while ramping up your activity level, whether it be with exercise or a lifestyle change, you can obviously still lose a lot of fat since it’s just calories in vs. calories out. You just have to do the calculations to see. The real “danger” though is that relying on exercise is not only a grossly inefficient use of time, but you’d be surprised how much we underestimate our calories.

  4. Wood Says:
    December 8th, 2010 at 4:34 am

    I would like to see and read a new blog post about your new pics on the facebook. Very good work. :-)

  5. clementinho Says:
    December 10th, 2010 at 9:58 am

    Hey John, there’s been a research study done very recently that found that skipping meals or hbing irregular mealtimes increases the risk of contracting stomach ulcers, acid damage tithe intestinal lining, gastritis and stomach bacterial infection. It recently won the gold medal in the Singapore Allied Health Award category of the inaugural Singapore Health and Biomedical Congress last month. I have forgotten the exact title or link to the study. However, this might seriously go against your principles of fasting. What are your opinions on this with regards to gastritis and the other gastrointestinal problems that might arise from skipping meals?

  6. usernametooshortnowitstoolon Says:
    December 10th, 2010 at 12:12 pm

    Here’s the abstract for the study that clementinho referred to:

    http://www.shbc.com.sg/abstracts/02%20Singapore%20Allied%20Health%20Award.pdf?zoom_highlight=#search=%22%22

  7. clementinho Says:
    December 11th, 2010 at 7:40 am

    Just to add on, I haven’t experienced such adverse effects to fasting, except for being bloated at times when I break the fast. It’s basically a lot of gas in my stomach. I don’t know what this means, but I’ve been losing weight steadily. I just wanted to ask if there might be a certain group of people here who cannot cope with fasting and why that might be. I feel it’s quite important to know if such a phenomenon does exist.

  8. dan_morethangold Says:
    December 13th, 2010 at 1:03 am

    I’ve worked out for 15 years getting the same results…NOTHING. Just a big chunk of meat walking around thinking I was always going to be a “big guy”. Us “Big Guys” take pride in being big but we’re super insecure. It wasn’t until I actually got my diet in check that I lost 100lbs in under a year and half.

    I’ve experienced EXACTLY what you’re talking about and from what I can see, I’m the only one that has changed. It’s quiet strange. Like we’re all in this “pat each other on the back and give a high five for trying” club. Who freaking wants to “try?”

    Just get it done.

  9. debh Says:
    December 16th, 2010 at 5:26 pm

    I’ve found a similar thing. Over the last year I have really tightened up my diet as well as doing more resistance exercise – the difference in my body is AMAZING. I think fasting once a week, dropping out the HUGE amount of simple carbs I used to eat and loading in vegetables has made a massive difference. I’m working out more than I once did, but it’s the diet that has really helped shift some stubborn post-baby weight.

  10. Cardio Won’t Tone Your Body, You Need to Lift Heavy Says:
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    [...] of going to the gym. However, if you just keep loosing fat you will become anorectic and not fit. You need to build some muscle too.Just put your faith in weight lifting and start believing that what is build naturally must be [...]

  11. Be in the Best Shape of Your Life at 50 Says:
    January 30th, 2012 at 11:00 am

    [...] No diet will ever tone your body, you need to work out, in fact you need both – diet and exercise [...]

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