Healthy Diet and Exercise Best for Losing Weight

Chairman of the Heart Foundation of Jamaica, Dr. Andrene Chung says that the best outcome for persons who are trying to lose weight, will be achieved through a combination of both diet and exercise.

Speaking at the launch of Heart Month at the Terra Nova All Suite Hotel in Kingston on January 28, Dr. Chung pointed out that there are healthy benefits to both dietary restriction and increased exercise.

“Dietary change is motivated by a desire to lose weight,” Dr. Chung said, adding that persons tend to reduce the intake of simple carbohydrates and saturated fats, which are foods associated with adverse health benefits.

She noted that exercise is associated with many positive cardiovascular, mental health and musculoskeletal benefits, however with regard to weight loss, the effectiveness of the two strategies, may not be equivalent.

Dr. Chung cited current data which suggests that dietary restrictions have significant advantages over exercise, as a weight loss tool.

She also argued that although there is a popular narrative that the obesity epidemic has to do with a sedentary lifestyle, the added weight can easily be explained by an increase in daily caloric consumption.

“We are just eating more and more, and so once you start to exercise more or you start to restrict your diet, what tends to happen is that the body’s basal metabolic rate tends to go down, but when you base your weight loss on exercise primarily, your basal metabolic rate goes down far more than when you are restricting your calories,” Dr. Chung contended.

She said this means that for someone who is basing their weight loss on exercise mostly, they are going to have a much harder time in achieving it, than those who are restricting diet “and of course your best-case scenario is to do both”.

In this regard, the HFJ Chair stated that two well-worn phrases, still hold true – “you are what you eat” and “you can’t outrun a bad diet”.