Does the 80 percent nutrition 20 percent exercise theory work?

Does the 80 percent nutrition 20 percent exercise theory work?

We offer unlimited nutritional counseling as part of your membership here at IF.  We know the value and importance of BOTH fitness and nutrition and are here to educate, motivate, and hold you accountable to the actions necessary to get your results – guaranteed!  Here is some info from simplemost.com to explain the whole 80/20 diet to exercise ratio.

It’s becoming more and more well known that what you eat will help you further your weight loss goals more significantly than how often you work out. This is due to a number of reasons, including the fact that we burn far fewer calories than expected during a workout, and it’s incredibly easy to eat those calories (plus some!) right back after the gym.  So, does the adage, “80 percent diet, 20 percent exercise” really hold true?

Well, yes, in short. According to an article from Women’s Health Magazine, the key to successful weight loss is taking in fewer calories than you burn. To lose one pound, you need to achieve a 3,500-calorie deficit. If you’re following the 80/20 rule, this means you’d want to shoot for about 750 calories burned through exercise and the rest cut through dietary changes.  The point being that it takes a lot more work to burn 750 calories through exercise than it does to cut thousands from your everyday eating habits.

According to Holly Lofton, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and director of the weight management program at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, you would need to run seven to 10 miles a day to lose a pound a week. The average person can’t keep up this pace without suffering injury and significantly increasing their caloric intake in order to fuel them through workouts.

It all comes down to the fact that it’s much easier to cut out a few hundred calories from your diet than burn a few hundred calories through exercise.