Why it's important to pair exercise and dieting to lose weight

Check out these helpful facts to understand how diet and exercise work together to make an effective weight loss plan.

To lose weight, many people undertake either a stricter diet or a new workout routine, but it's important to do both in tandem. Check out the helpful facts below to understand how diet and exercise work together to make the best weight loss plan.

Losing weight is simply a game of numbers, which means that you need to expend more calories than you're taking in. This means that changing the food you eat to a healthier, lower calorie diet with exercise can help optimize your weight loss. This will reduce the number of calories consumed while increasing the amount you burn. Experts say that doing one piece of the equation without the other often results in temporary — not permanent — weight loss.

Because exercise naturally increases your metabolism and your appetite, pairing it with a healthy, focused diet can help ensure that exercise doesn't inadvertently lead to weight gain. Working out can leave you feeling extra hungry, which can lead to a higher consumption of food. If you're not careful with your diet, you might end up negating all your hard work in the gym.

Eating better and exercising more can both be difficult challenges to someone who's never done them before. Experts recommend incorporating the changes together, rather than teaching people healthy diets and then encouraging them to work out.

According to a study from Stanford University, people who incorporated exercise and a new diet together were more likely to reach their weight loss goals than people who began a new diet and then incorporated exercise a few months later. Experts believe that this is because dieting can be a more convenient lifestyle change to make, and once they've already started the process, they have a hard time finding the incentive to incorporate the greater challenge of fitting exercise into a busy schedule.

Have you ever noticed that after a workout, you crave healthier food? It's not a trick. When people exercise, the natural boost in brain chemicals and adrenaline helps them immediately feel better about themselves. People who have better self-esteem and feel better about their bodies often have increased motivation to avoid bad, unhealthy foods. Taking advantage of this impulse will help you see better results from your exercising, thereby motivating you to keep going. It's a positive cycle!