Burning Fat: Is exercise really necessary or is diet sufficient alone?
- Jul 20, 2016
- 3 min read
Some of you may be wondering, to achieve fat loss, is exercise really necessary? "Perhaps I could just reduce my calories, eat less food?" This is also a trend particularly common among women nowadays. To put it simply, eating less food alone will probably help you lose weight but there are reasons why it's not encouraged. So here's 3 reasons why so:
1. Eating less will lose its effectiveness on fat lost over time.
Assuming you maintain a sedentary lifestyle, eating less food over time will cause your metabolism to drop as your body notices that you're in a constant caloric deficit and will act to preserve your body's energy for survival. In conjunction, a portion of your metabolism arising from Thermic Effect of Food (TEF), A.K.A the energy uptake to digest and break down your food, will decrease due to lower food consumption. As you reach critically low levels of caloric intake, your body might also end up breaking muscle tissue for energy, resulting in weight loss coming from muscle not fat. The sedentary lifestyle will also signal the body to break down muscle to conserve energy since higher muscle mass results in a higher base metabolic rate. The result? A slowing outcome of weight lost where your weight loss might eventually arise from muscle breakdown rather than fat. 2. A sedentary lifestyle corrodes muscle and strength and results in lethargy.
As mentioned above, a caloric deficit coupled with a sedentary lifestyle may lead to muscle breakdown (atrophy). The drop in muscle mass, combined with the lack of use of nerve stimulation which is activated during workouts, results in a drop in strength from both neuromuscular means. This drop in strength, coupled with a caloric deficit diet will mean that everyday tasks seem more difficult to carry out while attention levels may constantly be low. A lethargic lifestyle may lead to hormonal imbalances and irritation. Exercising on the other hand can help counter this but keeping strength up while releasing endorphin during workouts to boost your mood.
3. Using diet alone to lose weight can be a downward spiral to eating disorders.
As the drop in weight plateaus over time, one can be tempted to reduce calories further to start the weight lost again. This is how many people start on the path of anorexia. Metabolism will always slow down as long as only diet is used, and to counter this, less and less food is consumed by the individual. The individual doesn't realise this, but he or she is actually building up a habit of excessively restrictive eating. As the habits grow, eventually the individual lands into the state of anorexia without even realising it, constantly cutting calories because its not enough. The insufficient nutrients from a lack of food can also stunt growth or weaken the immune system. This is when its no longer a joke, trying to skip off that gym time and believing hyped up magazine articles about the power of just dieting alone can land you in a mental state that's life-threatening and hard to break out. Never use diet alone to lose weight.
There's of course many other reasons why exercise is necessary in a healthy fat burn program, but for now I hope these 3 are sufficient to prove the point. Of course, the opposite is the same, you can't just use exercise alone and hope to achieve an effective fat burn. (: In other news, for those who didn't know, I've actually been on a CKD (Cyclic Ketogenic Diet) for the past few months. Will be publishing a post soon to give my thoughts on the diet so far.
Train strong, train smart peeps, PM me for personal training/online coaching issues. (: - Jonas Ng, Fitness Trainer
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