Exercise vs diet: which one is more effective at losing weight?

Various studies and nutritionists have been busy debating in recent years to find the best way to control weight and obesity. Both exercise and dieting can lead to weight loss, and they both have the same challenges to live with, namely regulating food metabolism and fighting the urge to eat more. But both have different mechanisms and effects on the body.

How exercise can you lose weight?

Being overweight is defined as excess fat storage in the body and is not in accordance with the proportion of height, as a result the body looks fat or what is known as obesity. However, it should be noted that body weight and body shape are also determined by the proportion of fat and muscle in the body. Both exercise and diet are known to affect the proportion of fat and muscle in the body.

By exercising, the body will burn fat and stimulate muscle growth, so that the body will have a greater proportion of muscle. However, the numbers on your weight scale will not be much different from before because fat has less mass than muscle. The result, with exercise, there will be a decrease in fat mass, but followed by an increase in muscle mass. The effect will still be seen in a thinner body shape, because muscle takes up less space than fat.

How can a diet lose weight?

With diet, aka regulating eating patterns, the main thing is to reduce daily calorie intake. If done consistently, the body will adjust the calorie needs with the energy generated from metabolism. As a result, by consuming fewer calories, the body will store food reserves in less fat tissue, making it easier to lose weight.

Why exercise can still fail to lose weight

The body has its own mechanism to regulate energy requirements by forming a layer of fat. Both exercise and diet will affect calorie metabolism and reduce fat tissue formation, but weight loss still takes time. In addition, there are other mechanisms that make exercise and diet ineffective.

Exercising to lose weight is very time consuming and its effect on weight loss is very easy to lose. This is because by exercising regularly, the body will burn more calories and the body will store calories lower. With the habit of exercising, we tend to consume calories that are in excess of the body's needs, and this will very quickly cause the body to have excess calories which will be stored in the form of fat. As a result, weight regained without experiencing a steady loss. This shows that dietary restriction is also an important thing in addition to exercise, to lose weight.

Why diets can still fail to lose weight

If you only choose to go on a diet to lose weight, you need to keep your calorie intake level stable, and this is done until you experience a steady weight loss. An even greater challenge is an increase in hunger hormone (grehlin) during your diet, and a decrease in the hormone that sends signals to eat less (leptin). Decreasing the hormone leptin will also inhibit calorie burning, making weight loss more difficult and even takes a long time.

So, which one is more effective? Exercise or diet?

Compared to exercising, adjusting your diet, aka diet is a faster way. This is because it is easier to reduce the body's calorie count by limiting daily calories, rather than burning calories by exercising. However, for some people, simply cutting back on their diet may take a long time, so adjusting their diet and consuming exercise will be a more appropriate way.

Nutrition biochemist Shawn M. Talbott, PhD, as reported by the Huffington Post, states that losing weight requires 75% of regulating diet (diet) and 25% of exercising. He also argues that excessive exercise but a poor diet will not result in significant weight loss.