The fight between diet and exercise

Are you dieting to lose weight or exercising to lose weight?

The harsh reality of losing weight is that one should focus on proper nutrition and healthy eating and worst, one can never outrun, out-exercise a BAD DIET. With all the promos of bottomless iced tea, unlimited rice and cheap buffet, you are often, if not, always tempted to binge to get even with the restaurant you are going.

If losing weight is your priority, then it is as simple as consuming less calories than what you are burning. One can simply multiply your body weight with 12 to get the maximum calorie you can consume during the day. For example if one is 300 lbs., multiply it by 12 then you are limited to 3600 calories for the day just to maintain your weight. Eating less than this required calories will result in weight loss. The lesser calories you consume, the faster you lose weight. But your body is a supremely smart machine. As you consume less calories, your body instinctively will be in survival mode. You may lose a lot in the first or 2 to 3 weeks but once it is in survival mode, your weight will plato, meaning it does not drop no matter how less calories you eat unless you are in starvation or fasting, which is already a   different story.

If you exercise to lose weight, the first 2 or 3 weeks will have remarkable result as your body will be in shock. After 2 weeks of exercising, you may also get hungry easily. This is the effect of gaining muscle. As you know, muscles burn more calories than fat. So your metabolism increases as you gain muscles. Then this is where the balancing act begins. Some has the wrong notion that just because they are working out or running it gives them the right to binge after. Most of us eat more as a REWARD. 

One should be smarter about weight loss. Weight loss is a balancing act of 20-30 percent exercise and 70-80 percent diet or eating healthy. Nutrition is vital as you have to make the choice to pick the healthier option for your food and how it was cooked. I suggest you have your meat grilled, steamed or pan fried not DEEP FRIED. Load up with lots of filler like vegetables. For example, if one loves to eat rice then you can stir fry your rice with lots of chopped carrots, onions, and string beans. By doing this, your fried rice will look like one big serving but in reality it only contains half rice and half veggy. Drinking 1 to  2 glass of water before meal can help reduce hunger and make you automatically eat fewer calories or servings.

Avoid sugary drinks and desserts. These include soft drinks, powdered juice, canned juices, chocolate milk (although studies show chocolate milk is one of the best in recovery drink but high in calorie) and other drinks that have sugar in them. Cakes, brownies are usually cut in small pieces but are fully loaded with Calories. Also consuming these sugary drinks over a long period of time put you in high risk of  type 2 diabetes.

Once you lose weight, the challenging part is maintaining the weight. It is a lifetime commitment with lots of sacrifice, hard work and motivation. Now that Christmas is just less than a month away, one should be cautious because one party or get together will lead to the next, to the next, and to the next and the next thing you know, you are back from where you have started.

So for this battle, winner for the weight loss challenge could be dieting. That if you would like to look sick and like a drug addict. What good if you lose all those weight and not have to the strength and energy to have fun and enjoy life. So for me, a balance of both exercise and dieting is the best way to attack weight loss.

 For further details, you may visit my website at www.alanchoachuy.com or www.facebook.com/metafitcebu. For comments, you can reach me at [email protected].

SIDELINE: Congratulations to Zusette Co and Romulo Rosel for their podium finish in the recent 8080 San Remigio triathlon as well as to Metafit Teen Edition Kenji, John & Carlisle for finishing 4th place in the 4040 Relay Category. The same goes to first time finisher Christian Marc Demoral and Golda Cutanda and to the rest of Metafit Tri team Fritz Co, Lem Co, Pimco Pimentel, Eric Limatog, Mae Canedo and Maui Recla. Get well soon Jinggoy Bascug, who is nursing from the injuries he sustained from a minor accident during the race.