Skip to main content

Can You Lose Weight Through Diet Alone?

There are people who believe that exercise alone can help you lose weight as long as you don’t ‘overeat’. This view is evident by the sheer number of people who purchase gym memberships specifically for weight loss. Whilst physical activity is beneficial, there are a myriad of risks involved when people follow the advice of gurus who aren’t educated about the anatomy and physiology of the human body.


At the other end of the spectrum, there are believers in nutrition who could swear by its effectiveness in weight loss. It’s easy to blame a particular macro, be it fats or carbohydrates. It’s much harder to back that claim with evidence.

Does that mean we leave everything to chance and do whatever we feel is right? Absolutely not.

Looking at the basics of nutrition content, a low carbohydrate diet has been shown to help with maintaining a low energy uptake, which in turn will reduce your weight (As carbohydrates and sugars are well known to be empty calories). Although fat was given a bad rap, it has been proven to be quite essential for certain physiological processes like hormonal balance. With that being said I myself don’t promote any rigid diet, but I certainly advise everyone to be more aware of their daily energy intake and the sources of all those calories.

When you reduce your energy consumption, you also reduce the thermogenic (heat-producing) effect of food. This thermogenesis is an energy-consuming process and is seen in some people as profuse sweating after a heavy meal.

When you start losing weight, you also reduce your resting energy usage.

These two things can easily be covered by physical activity. While the recommendations for exercise vary from region to region and are constantly undergoing revision. It’s always good to intentionally increase your activity. There are endless ways to do so and can be determined by one’s capability and the situation.

As I mentioned earlier, the energy expenditure rate reduces with the weight. This is counteracted by an increase in muscle mass. Unlike fat tissue, muscles are an active structure and require energy to just maintain function. Thus an increase in muscle mass is going to increase the overall energy spent during rest.

If you’re thinking that you could get away with either diet or exercise, you’re mistaken. Studies have proven time and again that a combination of diet and physical activity produces greater weight loss over a long period, with fewer relapses. Also, the longer a plan is, the better the overall results are.

I have written numerous articles on the multiple factors of weight loss while taking into account the science. Some things seem obvious only once it is pointed out, and I wish that my readers are led along the right path. So head on to those posts to know more and grow.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What Causes Muscle Cramps and How to Deal With Them?

Almost everyone involved in physical exercise has experienced muscle cramps at some point in time. It can be explained as a painful and involuntary muscle contraction that locks the joint in place. They occur mostly in longer muscles that span two or more joints. Once experienced, athletes may continue to cramp unless adequate rest is provided. There are many theories as to how muscle cramps occur and what can be the possible solutions to relieving them. They are sometimes inaccurately termed as heat cramps. Exercise-associated muscle cramps do not have a relation with body temperature and do not recover with an external cooling modality, like an ice pack. If the theories of muscle cramps do not interest you, skip to the last part where you can learn how to deal with muscle cramps. One of the oldest theories is based on dehydration and electrolyte imbalance that occurs during exercise. It states that sweating alters the chemical balance of the fluids present in the body, which affects...

Are Lifting Shoes a Necessity?

Powerlifting and weightlifting shoes have been around for quite some time and are used by elite athletes and recreational lifters. Stability and greater force production are something that is always talked about as an effect of using these shoes. Specialised weightlifting gear is often expensive, and shoes are no different. In this case, many lifters also use flat-bottom sneakers or a small weight plate under the heel. The reasons for the two alternatives are very different from each other. The flat bottom shoes are mostly used for stability, whereas the plate is used to elevate the heel. In this article, we will be discussing the effects of using weightlifting shoes or a plate under the heel while performing barbell back squats. We need to understand the reason behind using any form of heel elevation while performing squats. The most probable culprit is poor ankle mobility, because of which the athlete is not able to effectively move the knees ahead and then compensates by leaning for...