Fitness vs Food: Which Gives Greater Weight Loss?

If you’re searching for the best way to lose weight, things can start to get very confusing, very quickly.

Should you focus on spending more time at the gym or on tightening up your diet? Which approach is more effective for kicking those unwanted kilos?

The answer is long, complex and involves many factors, but let’s keep things simple: what you put in your mouth is what matters most.

Making changes to the amount and type of food you eat will give you the best results for weight loss.

It makes sense that nutrition is more important for weight loss because it’s much easier to reduce your intake by, say, 500 calories each day (think one Big Mac burger, which can be eaten in a few minutes) than it is to burn an extra 500 calories (you’d need to do an hour of burpees!).

If you’re unsure of how many calories are in your fave meals, check out some of the recipes and info on our nutrition page.

Drastically increasing your exercise also has the tendency to increase your appetite, which can have you raiding the kitchen more often than usual.

Also read: Top 10 Cardio Myths Busted

You may have heard that “you can never out-train a bad diet”. It’s true! No matter how many workouts you do or how hard you train, if you’re taking in more energy (ie: calories), you’re not going to see the weight-loss results you’re working so hard for.

Of course, this is definitely not an excuse for you to cancel your gym membership and glue yourself to the couch. Exercise is still highly important for weight loss and is beneficial for so many other reasons – it will improve your overall health, boost your mood, increase your energy levels and help you have a good night’s sleep. So don’t skimp on getting fit!

As for the all-important food side of the equation, it can be tempting to jump on the latest fad diet that promises you’ll lose 20kg in three weeks, but slow and sustainable weight loss is really the best way to go. It may not seem very “sexy”, but consuming less, eating nutritious, minimally processed foods and moving more will have you feeling good AND losing weight.

Here are four things you can do to get started:

1. Reduce your portion sizes by just 10 per cent (your body and mind won’t even notice!)
2. Aim to fill half of your plate with non-starchy vegetables each night
3. Make water your drink of choice
4. Ditch alcohol during the week

Make one change at a time, be active and trust that small tweaks to your nutrition will get you closer to your weight-loss goals every day. If you’re after a bigger change – and quicker – check out our range of programs, from beginners to post-baby weight-loss and running.