Why eating right is just as important as exercise

10 July 2019

When you first notice a disconcerting amount of flab overhanging the belt of your jeans, your first instinct might be to hit the gym. After all, exercising is a well-known method of trimming waistlines - but it's far from the only method or even the best one. Besides, your aim should be not just to slim down but also to increase various aspects of your health - like your energy, mental acuity and resistance to diseases. So, how can you get there?

When you first notice a disconcerting amount of flab overhanging the belt of your jeans, your first instinct might be to hit the gym. After all, exercising is a well-known method of trimming waistlines - but it's far from the only method or even the best one.

Besides, your aim should be not just to slim down but also to increase various aspects of your health - like your energy, mental acuity and resistance to diseases. So, how can you get there?

You can work it out - and, indeed, should

We definitely don't want to strike an anti-exercise tone in this article. Physical activity on a regular basis can, after all, reap a range of meaningful benefits. The journal Circulation has published an eight-year study the findings of which especially bear this out.

According to these findings reported by Real Simple, women with the highest levels of physical fitness had the lowest likelihood of dying from any cause - such as cardiovascular disease, a leading killer. Fitness outranks weight or body mass index for keeping hearts healthy. 

Exercise bodes well for your mind, too. A study within the Annals of Internal Medicine's pages cited - for people of relatively good fitness in midlife - a 36% reduction in the risk of developing dementia. Exercise can prevent your brain's accumulation of abnormal protein deposits linked to Alzheimer's.

The matter of food - or less of it

You might recall particular mantras spread by personal trainers and fitness trainers. Here, we are thinking of the like of "abs are made in the kitchen" or "you can't out-work a bad diet" - and research suggests that you ought to heed these particular messages.

To your fridge door, you might have pinned pictures of yourself from when your dress size was smaller, perhaps out of hope that you could inspire yourself to be that slim again. Reassuringly, you could if you make diet your focus, according to the physician Tim Church, MD.

The director of preventive medicine research at Baton Rouge's Louisiana State University observes: "Most people who exercise to lose weight and don't restrict calories shed only 2-3% of their weight over 6 to 12 months," as not eating 500 calories is much easier than burning them through exercise.

Through maintaining a daily deficit of 500 calories in this way, it's possible to shift a pound each week. Nonetheless, Church says that exercise can still help you to keep off calories that you initially lose by adopting a restrictive diet. Hence, diet and exercise can equally help in regulating weight.

How we can assist you in banishing fat

Your appearance in Instagram photos shouldn't be your sole incentive to shift excess blubber. That's because visceral adipose tissue - or VAT - stored near your vital organs is an especially risky form of fat which can increase your susceptibility to heart disease and diabetes.

Exercising is better than diet for reducing VAT, says Fitness. You can exercise in pleasing outdoor surroundings with us at Prestige Boot Camp.