Being healthy is simple, right?

“Eat less, move more.”

Diet, or exercise?

Yes, we should all eat healthier.

Yes, we should exercise every day.

by looking at the results of 59 individual studies.

These studies included various nutritional recommendations, such as low-fat, low-carb, and so on.

Which of these recommendations reigned king?

In other words,practicalityreigned king.

With practicality in mind, we decided to take a look at the evidence.

Because of this,it’s important to understand the basics of calories.

Put simply: we lose weight when we eat less calories than we expend.

Conversely, we gain weight when we eat more calories than we expend.

While controlling both carbohydrates and insulin may be important for some individuals,this hypothesis has been thoroughly debunked.

Let’s say that a 200 pound man wants to lose one pound in a week.

Theoretically, the two should achieve the same results.

Instead, we’re left about our own devices in everyday life.

Both groups (the additional exercise and the control group) were instructed not to change their diets.

But now I’d also like to focus on what these women had to do to achieve this loss.

Total exercise time averaged 178.5 mins per week.

Doing this, we get a total of just under 155 hours.

That’s about 77 hours of exercise for each kg of fat lost.

Most people would balk at the idea of exercising for 77 hours to lose 1 kg of fat.

(Or equivalently 35 hours to lose 1 pound, for us American folk.)

But what about simultaneously exercisingandaccounting for dietary intake?

On paper, there was an overall caloric deficit created by the subjects.

However, when researchers examined empirical changes, no weight was actually lost.

As it turns out, subjects were simultaneously underestimating caloric intake and overestimating caloric expenditure.

(Pro tip: Don’t try this at home.)

There’s a simple explanation behind it, which we’ll break up into two parts

Reason 1.

Calorie expenditure through exercise is relatively small in the grand scheme of things.

We spend most of our calories every day just “staying alive.”

This is known as our “resting metabolic rate.”

You expend 1,743 calories per day just staying alive.

This is the amount of calories wasted through things such as fidgeting.

Unfortunately, this can vary greatly from individual to individual.

This means that without so much as getting out of bed, our subject has already expended 2,100 calories.

You wouldn’t take up a paper route to supplement a 100k/year salary, would you?

People are horrible estimators of calories in vs. calories out.

Subjects were asked to consume the amount of food that they believed they burned in calories.

(Sidenote: Where can I sign up for one of these?)

The subjects ended up eating 2-3 times the amount of calories that they burned.

Yoni explains:

Most people I see struggle far more with their kitchens than with their gyms.

He then goes on to elaborate.

Most folks want to lose weight and to improve health and so both gyms and kitchens are required.

Given that Yoni has worked with a tremendous amount of successful patients, I asked for their commonalities.

The people who are most successful are those who embrace both consistency and imperfection.

Think of starting out a weight management or healthy living program like you would a martial art.

You’d never expect yourself to have a black belt from the get go.

And then slowly but surely you’d get better and better at it.

So, too, with healthy living.

He also shares some more great tips.

Never eat lunch out unless someone else is buying.

Here are the steps that you should take to best ensure your success.

Determine how many calories you expend every single day.

you’ve got the option to use ExRx’s calculatorhere.

For best accuracy, calculate this by body fat percentage.

Reduce your calorie intake by 20% of your maintenance calories.

)How much protein should you be eating on a caloric deficit?

Nutritionist Alan Aragon recommends figuring out your target body weight and getting that amount in grams.

Once you are comfortable with counting calories, consider switching to counting macronutrients instead.

it’s possible for you to learn all about the basics of how to count macroshere.

You’ll notice that the weight loss recommendation above makes no mention of exercise.

“Sure, weight is lost in the kitchen,” says Dr. Freedhoff.

“But health is gained in the gyms.”

Images byZygotehaasnobrain(Shutterstock),emdot,duskyyouth,Alan Foster,vook, andKeoni Cabral.