Weight: 227.4 (-3.8)
Fat: 34.9% (-4.4%)
Meals: Not available
Exercise: Light Cardio (Treadmill 30:00 WL2 - 214 calories, 1.52 miles)
Pictures: Front/Side/Back

In yesterday's post I mentioned there are two ways to lose weight:

  • Eat Less
  • Move more

In other words, diet and exercise. But which is more effective? Should we focus on one or put equal effort into both? If we had to choose one, which would be more effective.

Before I answer that question I thought I'd share an observation or two. As a proud citizen of the United States of America I challenge the stereotype of the fat, lazy american. Fat, yes; that's the whole point of this website after all! But lazy? Hell no! Americans have always been among the hardest working people in the world. We work more hours, take less vacation and spend more of our free time working off the clock than most of our global neighbors.

Conversely, I believe that industriousness also causes one of our biggest problems: our tendency to overindulge. We don't work 70 hour work weeks to cram ourselves into a SMARTCar. We don't go through years of study, building our careers, sacrificing time with our families to live in tiny condos jammed together tight. And when we've had an exhausting day, busting our asses to get the job done, how many folks want to sit down to a modest meal of vegetables, cottage cheese and a grilled chicken breast?

Knowing that we're hard-workers with a tendency to overindulge, in one of if not the most obese nations in the world, which do you think has a great effect on our ability to control our weight?

That's right, diet has far more impact on your ability to lose (or gain) weight than exercise does. We spend hours upon hours in the gym, in aerobics classes, jogging around our neighborhoods. We push ourselves to get fit, we go to classes, we work out. Exercise gives us the feeling like we're doing something positive. We're working hard to reshape our bodies.

And yet, with all of that hard work, the weight comes off so slowly. We plateau easily. Some folks maintain or even gain weight, while working harder and harder to see results. The simple fact is it's easier to take in extra calories than it is to burn them off.

My 30 minutes workouts have been just over 200 calories. That's one serving or a third of the movie size box of Reese's Pieces we bought to go to the theater. It's 140 calories per serving of Sun Chips; that doesn't seem so bad until you realize that little bag I could finish in one sitting has 11 servings in it. Unless you're an athlete, chances are you're not going to have a single workout that burns more than 1,000 calories. But an appetizer for dinner, a mightnight snack, a few too many slices of pizza... those all have the potential to add that many calories to your diet.

And really bad choices: a Wendy's Baconator Triple (1330), Biggie Fries (540) and an Oreo Twisted Frosty (470) add up to 2340 calories for a single meal. Two of those meals adds up to 4680 calories. Three meals like that are over 7,000 calories. The number of entrees at family style restaurants that are in the 1200-1500 calorie range is pretty astonishing, especially when you consider that they also push appetizers and desserts. And god forbid you get a salad thinking it's a healthy choice - T.G.I. Fridays Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad is a whopping 1,360 calories.

My workouts for an entire week will probably be in the 1200 calorie range. If I increased the intensity and duration of the workout (assuming I could keep that up), I might be able to burn 500 calories per workout. Running a 26.2 mile marathon will burn 2,878 calories for a 140 pound person, or 3,573 calories for a 180 pound person. Of course a marathon runner will take in extra calories as he or she races, which will offset a potentially substantial part of that deficit. It's pretty obvious that polishing off 2.5 Triple Baconators is easier than running a 26.2 mile marathon.

But even small amounts add up quickly. Three 12oz cans of Coke add up to roughly 500 calories. Three sodas a day for a week will be approximately 3,500 calories. That number is significant because it's the equivalent of a pound of fat. Just three sodas a day and you can pack on another pound. Run for an hour at my current pace and you still haven't burned off the calories from those sodas.

As bad as the difference between diet vs exercise is, there's another matter that exacerbates the disparity. You see, working out increases your appetite. You're burning more calories, so your body craves more to make up the deficit. Without being aware of this change in appetite, it's easy for more food to be eaten, offsetting any weight losses that might have come from exercising alone. Add to that the tendency to consume more thanks to an attitude of "Well, I did work out today, I earned a little treat" and you may end up with more calories eaten than you've burned.

Given the ease in which calories are consumed, the amount of work required in exercise to burn even a moderate amount of calories, and the tendency to consume more calories when exercising, we can conclude that diet is the primary means by which we will lose fat, and a primary area of concern. If we focus on exercise to the exclusion of diet we may end up expending a lot of effort with little or slow results. Exercise is still helpful and useful and in my opinion necessary, but without paying proper attention to diet, ultimately fruitless.