Is the Question Diet or Exercise to Lose Weight?

This last year as been very successful for me as I have had the support of many bloggers out there who have help to crystallize my thoughts and processes for MY weight (read FAT) loss! While most of the blogs have inspired, there have been a few that have resonated with me to rattle my bones. These blogs have used plain English to tweak my current views on diet and/or exercise (the topic of this post). Here is a partial list of my favorites:

• Mr Low Body Fat’s Blog
• Dr J from Calorie Lab
• Fat Loss Perls of Wisdom
• Fit to the Finish

I encourage you to find your own favorite blogs so you can “figure out” what works for you! Try these blogs out if you have not seen them before.

In this post I will examine this idea of diet and/or exercise to lose the weight. I mean are they mutually exclusive or is one or the other more important? I will talk about my meandering approach to this over the last couple of years and the answer I have found to work for me. I will also update the first month (of my two month) experiment of journaling my calories and the affect this has had on my weight loss (I’ve reached a new low!). Here is a video about how to create a calorie deficit.

I like this video as it points out that to lose weight – you need a calorie deficit. Now how you do it is the real question that I want to talk about in this post. I bet you are wondering why I used “or” when I framed the question, “Is the question diet or exercise to lose weight…”? Lets talk about that.

Back in the early 90′s when I wrote my book (free on this website) entitled, Slimmer Zimmer – I had bought into the low-fat and aerobic exercise mantra of weight loss. Now that approach worked for me and I was able to keep off the weight for several years but I never did figure out what that approached worked and more importantly why it eventually failed for me.

You see eating tastless foods (10% to 15% fat) did allow me to eat way more food and my power walking did increase the amount of calories my body needed to break even (maintain) weight. But in retrospect it was a fad diet. I mean I could not keep eating that way for life. As I got busy I lost sight of my calories and fat so the same amount of food allowed a weight gain.

A couple of years back (January 2007) I started back on the diet and exercise bandwagon but this time the internet was around. I was able to find blogs about people with similar goals and what they were doing to get healthy! I decided to start my own blog but for the wrong reasons initially.

I thought I had a plan that worked and I’d just start doing it again and make tons of money on a back-end sales system (selling stuff via annoying popups in a sequential sales email strategy). I came to my senses before I got a chance to implement that, so I just use passive ads from various sources. By the way I don’t endorse ads so use some common sense if one appeals to you.

Reading the other blog I soon realized that people did not need yet another diet plan to waste their money on (that collected dust on a book shelf) but they did need some positive reinforcement about what does work!

So the reason I use the “or” in the title is because I tried to keep eating the same basic way (just eyeballing foods for calories) and increasing my exercise to lose the weight!

I was 50 years old and had not kept my body in shape (other than round) as I was 260 pounds and got out of breath walking to the refrigerator (although that did not stop me).

I did try to jog often and kept injuring my knees. I did experience some weight loss when I journaled my calories on a spread sheet but as soon as I made some gains – I would go back to eyeballing my foods again. Eventually I got good enough at eyeballing that I was able to maintain my weight loss two years later but I was in a state of a constant plateau!

So Dr. J made the comment to one of my posts where I mentioned I had exercised 15 hours that week; he said that I should lose the weight via diet. What I thought? What difference did that make how I got the calorie deficit?

What I was doing by eyeballing my foods and massively working out was eating more because I was hungrier. So the calorie deficit did not really happen for me and I was in a 6 month plateau. One the positive side I did maintain my weight loss over the holidays last year but it was too much work… I don’t think I could maintain that forever!

So the question is not really diet or exercise but I thought it was. I tried exercise over and over and kept failing. It is a harder way to go to try just exercising (at least for me).

My approach that is consistently working is keeping a food journal (I use excel) that tracks my calorie deficit (2000 calories = 1 pound lost per week and 1500 calories = 2 pounds lost per week).

I have tracked fat only to make sure I eat enough. I shoot for at least 30% fat but often times I have to struggle to eat that much because I don’t eat fast food.

So by keeping up the fat percentage, I ensure the food will taste good enough and I can keep eating this way for life.

I also try now to get five hours of any kind of exercise a week and that seems pretty easy to do. Every kind of exercise counts from walking the dogs, hiking up the local mountains, kicking the bag, lifting weights and jiu-jitsu practice.

My results are astounding after one month of journaling. I have lost 9 pounds. I actually have lost a bit more as my doctor took me off of the diuretic pill. I was at 225 pounds when that happened and the next couple of days my weight climbed to 227. It took a week to overcome the water weight gain – back to 225 and this morning I am down to 223 pounds!

I have two to three pounds to go until I transition from obese (bmi > 30) to overweight (bmi <30)! I am at BMI 30.2 this morning at 223 pound for a 6 foot man.

So I would like to leave you with this thought – it is not so important how you get a calorie deficit as the video states but rather that you find foods you can eat, foods you can journal, and exercise you can do to reach your goal!