Diet or exercise which is the most important component of healthy living? To start let me just say they both are important and both should be a part of your daily practices. But, if you diligently went to the gym and exercised consistently would that overcome or compensate for a bad diet? Probably not. Diet better controls weight, the risk of disease and longevity. What and how much you eat has more direct input into how well and how long you will live than exercise alone. If you ate really well and didn’t exercise you would be in better overall health than if you exercised regularly and ate poorly. Exercise can’t overcome a poor diet, even though people often make that mistake and believe they can cheat eat and get away with it if they just spend a little more time exercising. You know, those people who want to reward themselves with a candy bar or doughnut after a strenuous workout. “Those people”, I’m including myself in that group and you may as well. Don’t fall into that trap. You cannot exercise your way out of a poor diet. You can’t eat what you want and expect to exercise the negative health consequences away. While being sedentary is clearly not good for you the explosion of diabetes and obesity is more a result of sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption than not moving.
If you want to lose weight the amount and types of food are a bigger predictor of success than any amount of time on the treadmill. Numerous studies exist that link diet improvements with weight loss and lower rates of morbidity and disease regardless of the amount of exercise the participants performed. That’s not to say that exercise doesn’t have it’s place in a healthy lifestyle because it is a big component but what you choose to eat just plays a bigger role. So you have to make healthy eating a lifestyle choice and to kick it up a notch add some regular exercise including resistance training to optimize your health.
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