Are you tired of continuously trying to shed weight? Do you want to know if the diet works like magic or Exercise? This article is the ultimate guide to help you analyze what’s effective for weight loss, and how to control weight in the long term.
Let’s be honest, we all are guilty of our poor food choices. It’s really hard to resist fast food, especially at the drive-thru. It has been observed that people who jog or walk for many years have poor food choices, and end up getting overweight. But why do physically active people get chubby? Is exercise a loser here? Not at all. But what does science say about all that? Let’s explore!
But First, Check Your BMI
Doctors, nutritionists, and dietitians classify people into four categories. People are either underweight, healthy weight, overweight, or obese. The best way to identify your category is through BMI (Body Mass Index) rate. BMI is the measurement of body fat according to weight and height. BMI can show if the person is overweight or not and how much need to be shed. There are many online tools available to measure BMI. The easy way is to just Google and put height measurements and weight to get the BMI or use the formula below.
BMI Formula = (Weight in kilograms) divided by (Height in meters squared)
If the rate falls between 18.5 and 24.9, then it indicates that the person is in the normal weight range according to his/her height.
Top Benefits of Regular Exercise
According to many researchers, there are multitudinous benefits of regular exercises and a few are shared below.
- Better Cholesterol Levels
- Better Mental Health
- Control in Blood Sugar
- Control in Blood Pressure
- Improves Memory
- Burns calories
- It makes you feel happier
- Helps skins
- Protects you from chronic diseases
- Improvement in sex drive
- Muscles and Bones Strength
- Better Sleep Quality
- Decrease Stress
- Decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety
Top Benefits of a Healthy Diet
Consuming healthy foods is a life changer as it has many health benefits. A dietitian can help make a proper customized meal plan for weight loss management as each person’s body type is different. Following are the top benefits of a healthy diet.
- Help you live long
- Boosts immunity
- Makes skin healthy
- Makes teeth and bones healthy
- Makes eyes healthy
- Improves the gut health
- Improves Memory
- Improves sleep and mood
- Helps lose weight
- Supports healthy breastfeeding
- Supports healthy pregnancies
- Lower risks of some cancers
- Lower risks of heart diseases
- Lower risks of type 2 diabetes
What Does Research Say About Diet vs Exercise?
Let’s analyze if exercises are effective and enough to lose weight if done in the right way despite less than stellar food choices. We cannot disagree that both fitness and food choices are extremely important for long-term weight control. According to a research study program by the scientists of the University of Colorado and Brown Medical School, 10,000 US Nationals lost weight and kept it off for years.
They analyzed that 10% did it with diet only, 1% did it with exercise only, and the rest 89% used both exercise and diet. Various other reaches suggest that food choices play a vital role to keep the weight from piling up and may be more effective than the amount of exercise we do daily.
According to Dr. Jay Kenney, Nutrition Research Specialist at the Pritikin Longevity Center, we shouldn’t make food and fitness either/or choice. Both healthy food and exercise, are essential, and good for health as well as help people stay slim.
Public Health Organization has revealed in their study that Americans are facing an obese pandemic and diet plays a major part in it. Most of the food labeled as the most classic American food is fast, cheap, and delicious. They are processed food, offered in larger portions, and easily available as drive-thru meals. People now spend more time at work and less time at home than their older generations and fast food has become the new normal.
Fast Food Consumption and Inactivity Is the New Normal
The obesity pandemic started way before the Covid19 pandemic. When covid19 started to spread, people started to stay more at home, work from home and eat at home. This means less exercise every day. Covid has affected the health and well-being of almost every human. According to some research studies, Covid19 has influenced people negatively.
People skipped breakfast, dairy and fast food intake reduced, physical activity significantly reduced, and screen-based activities including watching TV and computer/games usage increased. Other studies have indicated that less physical activity during safer-at-home measurements has put people at higher risk of non-communicable diseases.
Emphasize More on Diet
There is no doubt that daily exercise should not be ignored as they play a vital part in keeping people fit and helps fight against obesity. Also, exercises should be promoted so that people stay motivated and do not lose track as it has many health benefits. Let’s keep going with exercises, but we should do more focus on the food we consume. We need to change what we are eating and how we are eating so that we know how many calories we need to cut from our diet.
If we are just counting calories and eating our regular diet then it won’t work at all. The only way to cut calories is to cut food and eat it in chunks. We need to train our stomachs to eat healthy food in small chunks rather than full meals. To feel full, we can switch to fresh fruits, salads, veggies, cereals, brown rice, nonfat dairy, legumes, seafood, etc. Smart eating can help us feel full, and keep us fit, and active.
By Syeda Latif
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