Is Diet More Important Than Exercise?

One common question in health and fitness circles is whether diet is more important than exercise when aiming for a healthier lifestyle. This debate has persisted for years, with experts and fitness enthusiasts alike divided on the issue. 

The bottom line is that both diet and exercise offer great health benefits, whether implemented separately or together. In this blog, we’ll explore how you can improve your health through improving your diet or boosting your exercise—and, ultimately, all the good that can happen when you combine these two lifestyle changes—by covering: 

• The benefits of diet

• The benefits of exercise

• The benefits of diet and exercise together

Let’s dive in! 

The benefits of a good diet 

Even making small adjustments in your everyday diet can change your body composition and affect whether you hear words like “blood pressure,” “cholesterol,” or “heart disease” during a doctor's visit. By choosing healthier options, you can set yourself up for success. Consider the following benefits of improving your diet: 

1. Healthy weight

2. Enhanced bodily functions

3. Prevention of chronic diseases

1. Healthy weight

Diet plays a crucial role in maintaining a healthy weight and overall well-being. One of the primary advantages of a well-balanced diet is its ability to provide proper nutrition — the nutrients that your body needs to function at its best — in a way that appropriately meets your energy needs. 

If your goal is weight loss, a well-balanced diet can support your health while maintaining a calorie deficit, which is essential for weight loss. Consuming fewer calories than you burn leads to weight loss, and since 3,500 calories equals about one pound of fat, adjusting your diet can profoundly impact your body composition. 

Consider tracking what you eat with a food journal or calorie-counting app to understand better what you eat in a day before making adjustments. 

2. Enhanced bodily functions

A nutritious diet rich in vitamins, minerals, and essential nutrients can support various bodily functions, from enhancing your immune response to improving your cognitive function. 

Proper nutrition also can help you optimize your fitness performance and recovery. Foods high in protein contribute to muscle mass maintenance and growth, while carbohydrates provide the energy needed for intense workouts. 

Related blog: The 20 Best Foods to Eat Before and After Your Workouts

3. Prevention of chronic diseases

Additionally, a healthy diet can help to prevent chronic diseases. For instance, diets rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. 

The benefits of exercise

While there are many advantages to maintaining a healthy diet, regular exercise is also important for numerous reasons that can benefit the body, mind, and spirit. Consider how daily exercise may affect the following:

1. Better heart health

2. Improved mental health

3. Building muscle mass

Let’s find out why:

1. Better heart health

Low-impact exercise programs, like rowing, yoga, or swimming offer myriad benefits that extend beyond weight management. Regular physical activity helps improve cardiovascular health by strengthening the heart and increasing blood circulation. 

Developing a regular workout routine can lead to lower blood pressure, reduced cholesterol levels, and a decreased risk of heart disease. 

2. Improved mental health

Engaging in consistent exercise also promotes better mental health. Physical activity releases endorphins, chemicals in the brain that act as natural painkillers and mood elevators. Exercising every day or even a few times a week can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, improve sleep, and boost overall mood. 

Moreover, developing a good routine with enjoyable exercises, like a virtual destination Hydrow rowing workout, can be something to look forward to. 

Building muscle mass

Regular exercise is also critical for building and maintaining muscle mass, which is important for overall strength and metabolic health. As we age, muscle mass naturally decreases, leading to a slower metabolism and an increased risk of falls and injuries. 

Strength training classes can counteract this muscle loss and help maintain a healthy weight by burning more calories even at rest. 

The benefits of diet and exercise together

While choosing better foods for a more balanced diet and developing a stronger exercise routine each have their own added benefits for a healthier lifestyle, combining them also offers a host of advantages for your body, too, including:

1. Significant health improvements

2. Weight management

3. Improved body composition

4. Achieving fitness goals

Let’s take note of the following details:

1. Significant health improvements

Though both diet and exercise offer substantial benefits individually, combining the two can lead to even more significant health improvements. Diet and exercise together create a synergy that maximizes the effectiveness of both approaches. 

For instance, a balanced diet provides energy and nutrients needed to perform well during exercise, while regular physical activity can enhance the body’s ability to utilize these nutrients effectively. After a workout, your body puts food to use right away to repair and rebuild stronger than before. 

2. Weight management

Maintaining an energy balance is crucial for weight management. This balance involves consuming an appropriate number of calories to match your activity level, ensuring you’re not gaining or losing weight unintentionally.

A combination of healthy eating and regular exercise helps achieve and maintain this balance, making reaching and sustaining a healthy weight easier. If your goal is to lose fat mass or to gain muscle mass, the most effective strategy is to harness the synergy of diet and exercise.

3. Improved body composition

Moreover, engaging in diet and exercise can improve body composition over time. While diet alone can help you lose weight, combining it with exercise ensures that weight loss is primarily caused by fat rather than muscle. This is important because preserving muscle mass is key to maintaining a healthy metabolism and preventing the negative effects of aging. 

If you are in a calorie deficit, one dietary strategy to maintain muscle mass is to increase the amount of protein you eat as a percentage of your daily caloric intake. Combining this strategy with resistance training is the best way to ensure that your weight loss comes from fat rather than muscle.

4. Achieving fitness goals

A combined approach of improving your diet and exercise routine can help optimize your performance and health, helping you achieve your fitness goals more efficiently and maintain your overall health and well-being. 

So, is diet more important than exercising?

Achieving a healthier lifestyle is best accomplished through a combination of diet and exercise. Each element offers unique benefits contributing to overall health, from weight management and disease prevention to improved mental health and physical performance. 

If you are looking for a highly effective workout to add to your fitness routine, consider investing in a rowing machine like Hydrow. Indoor rowers offer an immersive and efficient total-body workout, targeting 86% of your muscle groups in each rowing stroke. And, because rowing is both a cardio and strength workout, all you need is just 20 minutes to torch calories and build strength. 

Hydrow rowing machines also come with an extensive library of workout content led by our team of world-class Athletes and filmed in gorgeous locations around the world. Our rowing, yoga, Pilates, and circuit training workouts will transport you to stunning global destinations and keep you motivated to come back again and again. 

Learn more about the benefits of rowing and a Hydrow rowing machine today!