You would’ve heard several times that diet and exercise are the keys to a healthy weight. It has become evident in the argument between diet and exercise in concluding which is superior in producing weight loss. 

If you’re aspiring to lose weight, your best bet is to focus on food.

Despite the regular idea to burn fat and calories away at the gym, people who modify their diets lose more weight than those who only increase physical activity.

The proof is shown in many systematic reviews and it is clear that over three years, people who got 30 minutes or more of physical activity a day had higher rates of weight gain than those who exercised less. 

So now, you may wonder why isn’t gym time the miracle weight-loss machine we’ve believed in all these years.

It’s way easier to avoid calories in the first place than to try to burn them off. Working off a 100-calorie cookie is one thing, but it would take hours at the gym to negate 1,200 calories from a burger and fries. The terrible eating you do on the weekends cannot be compensated with intense physical activity. 

Committing to a 30-minute workout program is easier than committing to a change over for a more consistent eating plan. If you are not conscious and mindful about portion sizes, you might tend to eat more when you start a new exercise program. Not only will your hunger grow naturally from the energy burn, but you might also relax on healthy food choices. 

People naturally tend to treat themselves with food if they get the satisfaction that they are working out hard and they need not bother about the food choices and quantity as they believe that all the calories are expended at the gym. Half an hour on the treadmill might shoot away 300 calories, but just one slice of cake could neutralize that hard work. You might have heard that muscle weighs more than fat. That’s true, but it doesn’t mean you should claim that the bigger number on the scale is all muscle. “It’s not an excuse for the weight gain.” If you’ve been exercising without results, your diet is probably to blame.

At this point, do not conclude that you should cancel your gym membership. When you couple diet with exercise, it results in more successful weight loss than just the diet alone. Exercise doesn’t just burn calories and build muscles, it has various other benefits too. While adding exercise to a healthier diet doesn’t lead to additional weight loss in the first six months of a program, those who both diet and exercise have better long-term results over a year.