Balancing Exercise and Diet – Oftentimes when people are struggling to achieve their fitness goals, the most common reason is the balance between diet and exercise, or lack thereof. Although exercise is important, it can only do so much if your diet is lacking in either direction. You have to have a good, balanced diet as well as consistent exercise to be healthy, regardless of whether your goal is weight loss or muscle gain.
Lacking in Diet
You can exercise and be consistent with the gym, but if you’re eating too much, or too little, it impacts your ability to achieve your goals. If you’re eating at a caloric surplus or your diet lacks a good, healthy balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, then it may be the reason why you’re not seeing weight loss or muscle growth progress. Macronutrient ratio and caloric intake is incredibly important, and plays an equal part in achieving your fitness goals as exercise does.
Lacking in Exercise
You could also have a very healthy diet but not work out, and therefore you may see some progress, but it will be hard to sustain your results or progress further without incorporating more exercise.
If you’re eating too little calories or protein, you may notice that you’re not seeing as much progress in muscle mass growth, and the weights you’re lifting. This is likely because your body and your muscles require a source of energy to draw from (calories), and protein to properly repair and grow your muscles.
Although exercise is important, it can only do so much if your diet is lacking in either direction. You have to have a good, balanced diet as well as consistent exercise to be healthy, regardless of whether your goal is weight loss or muscle gain.
For Weight Loss
If your goal is weight loss, the core concept is that the calories burned must be more than the calories consumed. So this can be achieved by just increasing your active calories burned in a day through exercise, or consuming less calories, or a combination of both.
For Muscle Growth
If your goal is to gain muscle mass, you may want to eat at maintenance and have a higher protein ratio in your macronutrient intake, or even eat at a slight caloric surplus. This allows your body to have more fuel to draw from for your workouts, and utilize the protein to help your muscles recover and grow.
Being in tune with the energy sources and protein your body needs in order to function and fuel your workouts is incredibly important, and we talk more in depth about cutting versus lean bulking in our two articles. A good diet and consistent exercise have to be done in conjunction with each other, in order to see real, sustainable progress and to be healthy.
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