Fitness and weight loss
A balanced diet and a healthy fitness regime are two essential elements when it comes to having a healthy lifespan. They are both different elements of a good lifestyle. For example, someone could eat very well but have very limited fitness or one could be very physically fit without having a healthy diet.
There are people everywhere buying into the latest dieting fad and buying the recommended products to achieve this reduction in weight to no avail. The only winners here are those that produce and commercialize these products.
Making changes to one’s eating patterns is indeed enough to achieve weight loss. It may be difficult to do this but it is indeed possible. On the other hand, good physical fitness can co-occur with being somewhat overweight. It is in fact true to say that we are what we eat. Eating a diet which is high in fat means that you will not have the body fuel to burn this fat. At the same time, lifting weights will not produce muscle if we aren’t eating the right foods to make this happen.
To achieve optimum results, it is best to consider a regime including both fitness and diet rather than considering them separately. In simple terms, through your fitness regime you can burn excess calories and with a healthy diet you can sustain your body with the nutrition it needs to build muscle. Fat tissue is not as heavy as muscle tissue so a pound of fat on your body takes up a lot more space than a pound of muscle.
Although it is possible to lose weight from dieting alone, dieting does not produce muscle tissue. This is where a fitness program combined with a diet comes into play.
Achieving a body shape that you prefer means that you may not lose weight on the scales but you can lose inches. Again, this is because building muscle may cause some weight gain but you can be slimmer and trimmer at the same time. Measuring progress by weight loss alone is both discouraging and inaccurate. Many people become frustrated by this and it is much better to consider the fact that your clothes may be getting looser even though the weighing scales are not recording much or indeed any weight loss. It is best to rate your progress on how much fitter you feel after some exercise than being undermined by the reading on your scales.
Having an approach where your exercise program works in tandem with your diet means that your body gets a chance to burn those extra calories. In this way, you can cheat on your chosen diet now and again because you will be taking the necessary exercise to use up the calories you have consumed. It is best not to do this regularly but it does give one some flexibility in one’s eating patterns that would not be available without a fitness/exercise regime.
In summary, fitness and dieting for weight loss complement each other and are more effective when used together than either of them are when used alone. If used properly in tandem, it is possible to get excellent weight loss results and a more satisfying body shape. The only way they will work however is if you put the time and work into implementing them to reap the rewards of weight loss and improved fitness.
