Nutrition and Exercise Poll

I disagree. I think it's 100% calorie deficit.

100% nutrition for weight loss, 100% exercise for fitness...


It depend what your goal question is. You can exercise all you want, but if you don't have a calorie deficit, weight loss won't occur.

I completely agree with this!

for weight loss/gain: calories in vs out
for general fitness: exercise
for strength: exercise
for endurance: exercise

Trying to pin it down to some specific % is pointless.

They should be used in combination to achieve your goals (whatever they may be).

I had two workouts today, so I could enjoy a 1400 calorie breakfast and a 1200 calorie dinner. Oh and a huge poppy seed muffin.

Calorie Deficit below TDEE = Weight Loss

I was only just overweight according to my BMI and terribly unfit. So for me I needed to address both. My diet was already healthy (various medical conditions take care of that), I just ate too much of it.

For me it has been about 80% diet and watching what I eat. The other 20% is fitness and walking at least twice a week and water aerobics once and generally move more throughout the day like parking further away and taking the stairs. Did I need to do that to lose weight? No, but a year ago I was 2 pounds lighter then I am now and my waist was 2 inches larger in diameter and my hips were 1.5 inches larger. I am happier this way :-)

For me it's exercise 80% and food 20%. Watching what I ate never made me want to exercise. Turning exercise to my focus made me want to make healthier choices. When my food choices start getting bad I can directly point at a decrease in my exercise.

I would say that to lose the weight, it is 100% calorie deficit. This is easier, though, with exercise (because you can eat more!) and eating properly nutritious meals. My husband gets upset at me when I tell people that I have lost weight by using MFP, and counting calories. Sure, I tell people that I exercise, too, but I really focus on the calorie counting more. He says, "But, you do Insanity, you do Zumba. That helped you lose weight, too". Yes, I did. But, that was a small part in my weight loss. If I had exercised and not counted calories, it would be all for naught.

For me, all I need to lose weight is exercise like I used to and watch my calories a bit, so I'd say 95% move more and 5% eat less.

But that's because my eating isn't different on maintenance most days of the week. OTOH, my exercise is very different when I'm aiming to stay fit. Staying fit drops the weight great for me, but it's slower than cutting calories more extremely from my normal diet.

All the eating I need to watch on maintenance is watching dessert, cheese and wine. To stay fit, I need to move a lot more days of the week. I'm sedentary because of a back problem (exercise gives flare-ups), so fitness is definitely the better focus for my life/health. And it does drop my weight, as you'd imagine, I think

Do either or both, depending on where you are lacking.

Calories are simply human constructs to share meaning about the amount of heat something creates when it burns. They're like time; they're just socially agreed upon units to try to convey a concept. Food is not made up of calories. It is made up of atoms, molecules, etc. There is no molecular structure to a calorie. A calorie is a unit of measurement, not a component of food.

For many years people survived with no concept of calories. Calorie counting has only been around for a little over a century.

How were people thinner than they are today? They ate less, moved more, and ate real food that came from nature. Period.

Now, how you use nutrition and fitness are up to you. I like to rely primarily on nutrition for weight loss and fitness is for my health and for fun. But even those who are stuck to their smart phones and MFP looking up calories incessantly have a point that it's up to you on how you eat less than your body needs to stay at its current weight and/or move more than it needs to maintain.