From Precision Nutrition, an excellent look at the research on diet vs. exercise in fat loss. Personally, I've always thought it was both, but if I had to choose one or the other, I'd go with exercise for men, diet for women (and this was before seeing the results of the study).
Research Review: Diet vs. Exercise For Weight Loss
As a PNer, you know that you need both diet and exercise to lose weight. But if you had to choose one, which do you think would yield the best results?
In the exercise corner
Kate Moss, who might consider adding some lean mass
I confess I’m rooting for exercise. I think our bodies were made to move. Until very recently, people moved constantly: they hunted, fished, farmed, walked or did some sort of manual labour for hours a day.
Meanwhile, I think dieting without exercise is usually disastrous! With a caloric deficit and no exercise, people lose muscle, which leads to their metabolism slowing down. To keep losing weight, they need to cut calories even more. They end up with minimal muscle and the dreaded “skinny-fat”.
Exhibit A (above): supermodel Kate Moss at 170 cm (5’7”) and 47.2 kg (104lb) with a BMI of 16.3. [My Note; this is anorexic BMI in a clinical setting.]
So I’m backing exercise.
In the diet corner
The pro-dieter camp may argue that diet is key and no reasonable amount of exercise can trump gallons of cola and pounds of cheese puffs. Indeed, it’s very difficult to get enough exercise to offset a ridiculously high calorie intake. Thus, a “good diet” with caloric restriction makes way more sense than exercise.
Hmmm…
Looking at both of these arguments it seems pretty clear: a lot of exercise in the face of bad nutrition is a losing battle, while strict dieting with no exercise looks just as bleak.
Researchers Stephen Ball and Anne Bolhfner also wanted to know whether diet or exercise alone would be best for weight loss. They compared weight loss between two groups of women:
- A diet-only group doing Weight Watchers
- An exercise-only group signed up at a fitness centre with an exercise program.
Here’s the link to to the full study:
Comparison of a Commercial Weight Loss Program to a Fitness Center. Journal of Exercise Physiology 11:3 (June 2008). (PDF)
Before we jump to the findings, let’s look at the study in more detail . . . .
Read the whole post to see what the answer is.
My guess is that men would have a different outcome than did the women.
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