Dieting

It's both, in order to lose weight you must eat less calories than you use but yes, eating 1500 calories of cake is far different from eating 1500 calories of fruits, veggies, proteins, and carbs in that you can get the vitamins and minerals you need to survive with one and not the other. There's also a difference between eating less than your maintenance calories and eating less than your BMR, eating les than maintenance is fine, but your BMR is the amount of calories you need to function, which is why my nutritionist doesn't (and other nutritionists/dieticians don't) recommend going below BMR.

sunpatchjewelry wrote: »

So I know that dieting isn't really good for you! If you think about, you're eating less, and not getting enough nutrients into your body. The more you excercise, you could be losing too many of your important nutrients. I think that changing WHAT you eat and WHAT you do when you work out will help instead of the plan B, eating less and working out more. But that's my opinion. What do you think??

I don't know about you, but I eat more vegetables now than I ever did. I also drink ten times the amount of water. I'm stronger due to strength training and my cardiovascular system is healthy.

Weight loss isn't unhealthy, what's unhealthy is carrying all that excess weight.

Eating in a deficit does not mean getting insufficient nutrients. Nutrient-wise, my focus is on getting a base amount of protein and fat each day. Everything I eat up beyond that can come from carbs or more protein or more dietary fat (eating more fat) or from my body's fat stores.

Outside of the above, many (possibly a majority) of people who are trying to lose weight do change what they eat, or at least the proportions of what they eat (i.e., less "junk" food and more "healthy" food.) It's also extremely common to start being more active.

It's not really a matter of choosing one particular way to go about losing weight. Successful weight loss can depend on a multitude of factors, many of which change over time and throughout the process as well as during maintenance.

There's no need to deprive yourself of nutrients while in a calorie deficit, eating the 'right' foods wont do anything to help you lose fat if you aren't in a calorie deficit.