Which is MOST important in weight loss: diet or exercise?

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  • ingraha
    ingraha Posts: 99 Member
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    Why would you choose only one? Life is a holistic venture. All things are affected by factors surrounding them. If there is no exercise, the muscles waste away. If there is no food, the muscles waste away.
    Food builds muscle and excercise builds muscle. Both are necessary for healthy life and the trick is to burn more than you eat. Kind of like a bank account only you want to lose the calories not save them.
  • wildcatnyc
    wildcatnyc Posts: 2,410 Member
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    Diet
  • JustYandy
    JustYandy Posts: 221 Member
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    80% of weight loss is diet
  • ILoveGingerNut
    ILoveGingerNut Posts: 367 Member
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    Diet. It's mathematic. To lose weight you have to burn more calories than you introduce. The amount you burn through exercise is not that much. It's the diet that makes a difference. Just do the maths to find out. Exercise is good for you for a million of other reasons, so try to both if you can (eating less doesn't take any time ;) )
  • Transformer711
    Transformer711 Posts: 55
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    I'd say diet, hands down. It's possible to lose weight without much exercise, but even if you went to the gym 8 times a week, if you still eat like crap the scales won't budge. I think pen-ultimately you can lose weight through exercise alone, but it will be a TINY amount over a very long period of time. You'll get results much faster if you dieted alone than if you exercise alone.

    However, like some people have said, exercise is good for overall health. There's a danger too that little exercise could result in the 'skinny fat' appearance.
  • mrsgrimsdale
    mrsgrimsdale Posts: 60
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    I'm going to say exercise, because active and overweight is healthier than lean and sedentary. I like to be different, but really it's true lean and sedentary has higher risk of heart disease than overweight and active.

    Exercise, I was averaging 1000 cals daily and not losing in fact every time I ate over 1200 I started slowly to creep up. I have found since logging on MFP that the only time weight starts to come off me is when I exercise, even when my calorie intake rises to take the exercise into account.
  • MaryMBacon
    MaryMBacon Posts: 94 Member
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    I'm going to say exercise, because active and overweight is healthier than lean and sedentary. I like to be different, but really it's true lean and sedentary has higher risk of heart disease than overweight and active.

    Exercise, I was averaging 1000 cals daily and not losing in fact every time I ate over 1200 I started slowly to creep up. I have found since logging on MFP that the only time weight starts to come off me is when I exercise, even when my calorie intake rises to take the exercise into account.

    If you don't do both you don't lose weight, but dieting and not losing weight sucks, exercising and not losing weight, I still feel pretty good because exercise is so good for you. Even when not tracking and not dieting, I eat healthy foods I just eat too much and too much in addition to the healthy stuff. When not exercising I get depressed and my joints and muscles feel stiff. I can't imagine eating less and not exercising.
  • mrsgrimsdale
    mrsgrimsdale Posts: 60
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    Technically - probably diet, if you're primarily looking to lose weight. BUT...

    I started, this time, with exercise and I feel like people who told me all those years that I could lose weight with diet alone, or who said to start with diet and add exercise later, were doing me a huge disservice.

    --Exercising allows me to eat enough to not be desperately hungry and still lose weight.
    --Exercising increases my store of will power, making it easier to watch what I eat.
    --Exercising makes me healthier, even if I don't lose weight.
    --Exercising will increase your muscle mass, so that even if you don't lose weight, you'll lose fat.

    Fab post!
  • bobbijodmb
    bobbijodmb Posts: 463 Member
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    Diet helps you lose the weight, exercise helps you keep it off =)
  • krokador
    krokador Posts: 1,794 Member
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    Some people will say 70% diet, 30% exercises.

    But I believe it's 100% DEDICATION to BOTH your diet and exercise. What you put in is what you get out of it :)

    (I kinda stole that off of a facebook motivation meme, but shh)

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