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Have you ever asked yourself: Diet or training, which is more important for weight loss? That is the topic of today’s article! We are here to break the myth that training cannot fix bad diet. We will also see how effective the combination of diet and training is.
It is easier to (not) eat calories than to burn them
By now, we have probably all learned that weight loss comes down to energy balance. In numerous articles here on the portal, I explain that the whole “secret” of weight loss is a caloric deficit, so we will not dwell on that.
What I think not everyone is aware of is the fact that it is much easier to achieve a caloric deficit through diet than through training. Consuming 500 excess calories is not a problem at all; we can literally do it in a few minutes. However, to burn those 500 excess calories, we need much more time, will, and effort. It would be much easier not to consume those calories at all by making better food choices and controlling portions.
Compensating for excessive calorie intake with physical activity for the purpose of weight loss is very difficult. Due to the amount of physical activity this requires, as a rule, only professional athletes can do it, and in many cases, they do not even need to lose weight. On the other hand, obese people, as the population that needs to lose the most weight, simply cannot do as much activity as would be necessary.
Lest it remain only my word, let’s look at the studies.
What Does Science Say?
This topic was very interesting to researchers, so we have dozens of studies, with a total of several thousand subjects. Instead of looking at each study separately, we will focus on three systematic literature reviews with meta-analyses.
As a reminder, a meta-analysis is a statistical analysis in which the results from different scientific studies are analyzed together. This allows us to look at the overall state of the literature and draw stronger conclusions.
The first systematic review we will look at was conducted by Thorogood et al. (2011). The work examined how effective aerobic training (cardio) is without dietary intervention. The meta-analysis included 14 studies with a total of 1847 subjects. After 6 months and after one year, the total weight loss was only about 1.5 kilograms on average. The authors concluded that the overall effect is very modest and that isolated aerobic activity (without diet correction) is not an effective therapy for weight loss.
The next meta-analysis was conducted by Wu and colleagues (2009). They compared the effectiveness of interventions that focus only on diet compared to those that use diet and training together. The analysis included 18 studies with a total of 1636 subjects. The combination of diet and training yielded better results than diet alone.
Finally, we will look at the review by Johns et al. (2011). The authors compared all 3 cases: diet only, training only, and diet plus training. This study design is particularly attractive to us as it covers all possibilities. The analysis included 8 studies with a total of 1022 subjects. As in the previous study, the combination of diet and training proved to be slightly better than diet alone.
The average difference between these two interventions after one year was about 1.7 kilograms. The difference between the combination of diet and training and training alone, however, was drastic! Subjects who had a combination of diet and training lost an average of 6.3 kilograms more than those who only had training.
Conclusion
As would be expected, the combination of diet and training is the most effective. Not far behind is diet correction only, without training. Conclusively in last place as a highly ineffective method is training only, without diet correction.
If your goal is weight loss or body weight control, be sure to pay attention to your diet first. After that, add physical activity that you enjoy to make everything go a little better and easier.
