If you want to lose weight, you must maintain a negative energy balance. At the end of the day, you should have burned more calories than you consumed. This can be done by exercising a lot, but nutrition plays an even more important role. In this blog we tell you why balance and making conscious choices are the key to successful weight loss and a healthy lifestyle.
'You can't outtrain a bad diet'
Do you think you can eat anything you want as long as you exercise regularly? We have to disappoint you. A recent publication in British Journal of Sports Medicine
argued that while exercise is an important tool in reducing the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other health problems, it is not enough when it comes to weight loss or a healthy lifestyle. "You can't train out a bad diet," the authors write. "To truly live a healthy lifestyle requires both a balanced diet and exercise," writes Deborah Rohm Young, Ph.D., director of behavioral research at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. 'One cannot do without the other.'
Exercise and good nutrition are both important
According to Young, exercise and diet play different—important—roles in maintaining health. Exercise has many benefits, such as strengthening muscles, improving bone density, managing diabetes and improving mental health. A heart-healthy lifestyle with exercise and a healthy diet can help reducing risk factors for heart disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. But for those who want to lose weight, the effect of exercise is limited if no changes are made to a poor diet.
It's all about balance
Many people overestimate how many calories they expend during exercise. With an hour of easy cycling, you burn about three hundred calories. A piece of apple pie or a large pizza slice and the calories are back on. Although exercise is important and muscle mass plays a role mainly because of it afterburn effect, nutrition plays a vital role in achieving your weight loss goals. Of course, you don't have to ban all your favorite treats for the rest of your life. Enjoying a glass of wine or a bitterbal every now and then is fine, but if you do this daily, all your efforts to lose weight will go to waste. It's all about balance.
The Happy Bodies approach to successful weight loss and vitality
At Happy Bodies we teach you to find the right balance between exercise and nutrition, so that you can optimally benefit from your efforts. If you want to lose weight sustainably or want to maintain weight, it is necessary to make conscious choices. In addition to our training sessions, we also offer workshops and lectures on nutrition, health and self-care. We want you not only to lose weight, but also to regain vitality and a sense of well-being. Our coaches help you make the right choices, develop healthy eating habits and finding a balanced lifestyle that fits your needs and goals.
Knowing more?
Curious how you too will become fitter by training twice for 35 minutes every ten days, under the guidance of your own personal lifestyle coach? Even if you have physical complaints? Then do the membership test and sign up for a free personal introductory meeting and tour of the club. Want to bet that you are immediately sold?
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