Diet vs. Exercise
- Lance McCullough
- Feb 20, 2017
- 4 min read
I hear a lot of experts say achieving health and fitness is 70-80% diet and 20-30% workout. This statement makes me wonder their concept of health and fitness. Exercise is just as important as diet. Sadly, these "experts" are basing their idea of health and fitness on a misused measure – BMI (body mass index).
I wrote about BMI in my blog post BMI Contributes to Obesity. In the post, I provide an explanation of why BMI is not an appropriate measure of health and fitness, and why some experts misinform people about the importance of diet while downplaying the importance of exercise. I recommend you read that post as an accompaniment to this one, in which I will provide my recommendations on what roles diet and exercise play how each is important to your health, fitness and body aesthetics.
I’ll begin by sharing statistics from the USDA about food and nutrition. According to the USDA, in 2015, 87.3% of US households were food secure throughout the year. (The term food security means access by all people in the household at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life style.)
Each year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publish the results of the National Health Interview Survey of adults over 18 years old. Based on the 2014 survey, the CDC found:
50% of adults met cardiovascular guidelines
24.6% met muscle-strengthening guidelines
36.5% of US adults are obese. This is expected to rise to one half of all adults (115 million people) by 2030!
Currently, 29 million Americans are living with diabetes. Without major change, this could rise to one in three adults by 2050.
Lets evaluated these statistics...
87.3% of US households experience food security
24.6% of adults meet muscle-strengthening guidelines.
This confuses me. If nutrition accounts for 70-80% of health and fitness and almost 90% of the population has food security, then it seems to me we are getting enough food for an active, healthy life.
So why is it that Americans have food-related health issues? – one in three are now obese and one in two could be obese by 2030.
When less than 25% of adults meet muscle-strengthening guidelines, common sense tells me that if we could get more people to work out and thereby improved muscle strengthening percentages to almost 90% (like food security) obesity and diabetes numbers would be smaller. Similarly, if 90% of people met cardiovascular guidelines (instead of 50%) we would be a healthy and fit population. Health care costs would go down to the point where we’d have affordable health care!
Most Americans understand how to eat well...
Food and muscle-strengthening are important topics that are complex and can be confusing to understand. With food, you must determine the best type of diet for you, then overcome budget and time constraints to stick to it. This doesn’t consider the influence of social pressure, stress, and other factors. That said, most people have enough understanding of food to do a decent job of making good choices (though they may not always follow their plans).
Lack of exercise is the problem...
Muscle-strengthening is a little more complex. It's difficult to find information to help people understand how to strengthen muscles safely, effectively and efficiently. Of the almost 25% of people who meet muscle-strengthening guidelines, I bet that only 7-8% exercise with enough intensity and duration to positively impact their health. Very few people can answer questions like what program, what weight, how many reps, sets and rest.
That’s why i designed the Fitness Results Training System. The 30 Minute Body and the Fitness Results Training Book provide the answers and help you determine and understand how to have a successful diet and muscle-strengthening program.
As I explain in my books, controlling your weight means controlling your caloric intake/diet. Two currently popular ways to do that are clean eating (eating only certain foods that you view as the healthiest choice and never straying from this path) and meal prep or meal preparation (saving time by making lots of meals with the proper nutritional profile and calories all at once, then storing as individual portions). These buzzwords aside, we really don’t know what the best diet is for each individual because every person has different goals and needs.
Both clean eating and meal prep take a lot of planning, time and effort.
This, coupled with the misuse of BMI as a measure of fat and fitness, has caused people to overemphasize the role of diet in health and fitness. Weight loss for the sake of health and fitness is a good thing, but continued weight loss to meet an inappropriate measure like BMI is about body aesthetics, not fitness.
Muscle-strengthening is the best choice for improving health.
Exercise in the form of resistance weight training is the best choice for improving your health and fitness. It will help control and maintain weight loss, tone your muscles and produce an aesthetically-pleasing body. If your only goal is to lose weight without regard for overall health and fitness, then you can use the “70-80% diet and 20-30% exercise” rule of thumb. If the exercise is 100% high intensity cardiovascular, you will reduce your caloric intake and lose weight. You WILL be at increased risk of developing health problems. Instead, give up the practice of endless hours on a stationery cardio machine and substitute being active doing things you enjoy. It’s a much more pleasant way to improve your cardiovascular health.
If you want a healthy and fit body, use the 50/50 rule:
at least 50% weight training and 50% diet. And be sure to get enough sleep to allow your body to recover and repair itself.
Source:
https://www.fitness.gov/resource-center/facts-and-statistics/
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx
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