Planning Your Diet and Exercise Program for the Future

Dealing with fitness and weight loss is a never-ending road. We try many different things to achieve the goal of perfect weight, but the path is very confusing. We can try exercising, dieting, dieting and exercising, fasting, prepackaged meals, and so forth.

The most common form of fitness and weight loss success is diet and exercise. This is probably the most approached by just about everybody now. We understand the need to stay physically active to burn calories with the bonus of increased metabolism. We already understand dieting, which is limiting yourself to some foods and eliminating calories, yes of curse there are many forms of dieting, but overall the premise is the same-decrease calories.

I find the approach of diet and exercise to be a funny thing since I think everybody should be exercising no matter what, and always eating well.

Exercise is a fairly recent adjunct to dieting. It has now being drilled into our heads that we need to exercise to almost a point of exaggeration. We have seen the “Biggest Loser” and the huge amount of exercising they were “forced” to do. Most people almost consider torturous amounts of exercise as a needed process to weight loss and fitness.

I have to disagree. I love the whole idea of exercising a lot as long as that’s what you enjoy doing but not so much as your main avenue to weight control.

Importance of diet and exercise in our present world      

There is a very interesting process that has been going on for a long time, and I know it is not going to stop.

Developers of goods that are to be sold to us are developing products that will make our lives as sedate as possible. They bring the outdoors indoors and our gardens and forest not just through a drive through but delivered to us.

We are being taught to be as sedentary as possible so they can sell us everything related to absolute comfort and we just become a big wallet to the comfort merchants.

We now need to move even more and eat better than before and protect ourselves from a sedentary lifestyle.

Foods are also being manufactured so perfectly to suit our palate with the perfect crunch that it is almost impossible not to eat them; however, they are damaging our bodies and lives.

Some other obvious positive reasons :

• Reduction of triglycerides in the blood reduces the risk of Type 2 diabetes
• Reduction of heart attack and stroke
• Reduction of blood pressure
• Prevention of Dementia and Alzheimer’s (?)  Some studies have determined that exercise and diet help us lower the risk of developing cognitive impairments from Dementia and Alzheimer’s.
• Energizes you
• Exercise lubricates the joints and feeds the entire system with blood.
• Exercise burns calories and increases your metabolism.
• Exercise is one of the best ways of shaping your body, and we see quicker result due to exercising. I do not mean weight loss but muscle mass and improved curves.

Diet and exercise percentages, trying to keep things in Perspective

Understanding the need for diet and exercise for health and wellbeing besides just weight loss.

Diet, we know, helps to decrease body weight when done properly but does exercising help the same or more to burn calories compared to dieting? The question of exercise as a good weight reducer has been brought up quite a few times.

Exercising, from a caloric perspective is not an efficient fat burner. To burn off 1 pound of fat, it would require running a marathon plus ten more miles. This is not a good alternative for weight loss. Fat has 3500 calories, the act of running or walking 1 mile burns approximately 100 calories, 3500/100= 35 miles roughly.

So how important is exercise for the weight loss process?

Let’s look at what the data say about the ratio of dieting to exercising?

According to the most recent research and analysis of 700 weight loss studies found that the ratio should be in the 75 percent diet and 25 percent exercise.

Some other professionals, that are using their experience primarily, state that an 80% diet, 20% exercise like the 80/20 rule.

I rely on research, which is the best professional information around and my own experience. What I like to do once I find a subject I want to research (fitness/sport conditioning/biomechanical), I run it through my memory banks (my brain). I know that it does not sound very scientific but remember that experience can be very valuable. Once I correlate a new finding with a pattern I have seen I will experiment with the new process for at least three months. I have done this with foods, exercise routines, supplements and so forth.

I will analyze the findings personally then I will start an experiment with my clients (I no longer take on clients) or patients. I will then see if it matches my previous observations and how correct it is. I am not afraid to name some of my experiments as failures.

I am a very results-oriented person especially as I have gotten older. I have not done much of this research in the last few years since the new trends are pretty much the same trends just dressed differently and the outcomes are pretty much the same. Which means they will almost all fail!

I think eating correctly (diet) has slightly greater importance than previously mentioned but in a slightly different way.

I believe the percentages are more 50% behavior (learned habits), 45% diet and 5% exercise. This model is primarily a weight loss model and not a health and wellness model. The 50/45/5 model show you how much we need to change (habits) to improve. Weight loss is such an imperative process that it can trump some of the other behavior like exercise for health at least at this stage. For health and wellbeing, I think a 60% diet and 40% exercise correlates more.

As we get older, we not just need to eat better we need to exercise a great deal more to fight off the aging process that is a never-ending process. Around age 40 I think we all need to at least exercise 1 hour a day every day, in our 50’s 1.5 hours a day every day and 60’s and so forth 2 hours a day. Our bodies never stop deteriorating. As we get older, our body breaks down faster and faster we need to sue science to help us. We are lucky to have great information on exercising, nutrition, biomechanics, ergonomics to keep our bodies from breaking down too much or too quickly. Exercising builds muscle mass and bone density, exercise also improves blood flow, improve hormonal levels, it a rejuvenator in an exercise room.