In a recent report it was revealed that Tiffany Holtz faced some hard facts as she approached age 30. A self-proclaimed “workaholic” real-estate agent, the 5-foot 2-inch Greenville woman had grabbed far too many meals on the go between clients and her weight ballooned 240 pounds.
“That [lifestyle] was really what led me to this point,” Holtz said. “I just let life spiral out of control on me.”
She seized control again in January 2009 when she set out to accomplish something many women only dream of. In the next nine months, Holtz shed 110 pounds, dropping from a size 20 to a size 4.
It wasn’t easy.
“We had a sign up in our office when I was in the weight-loss part of my program that said, ‘Do not feed the bear,’” she said.
Still, she persevered in making major lifestyle changes with exercise and nutrition guidance from the staff at Ellipse Fitness in Appleton.
Ellipse owner Lisa Welko describes the fitness franchise’s formula simply. “It’s all about calories,” she said.
In other words, when you eat 3,500 more calories than you burn, you gain a pound. When you burn 3,500 more calories than you eat, you lose a pound. Thus, to reduce your weight, you must create what Welko calls a “calorie differential.”
“The balance is to burn calories through exercise and create a differential through proper eating,” Welko said.
But which matters more in that balance, exercise or eating? For the answer, we turned to local fitness experts and dietitians to learn what exercise can do for you when you’re trying to lose weight — and what it can’t.
Exercise can boost your metabolism.
David Brown, owner of Underground Functional Fitness in Menasha, said that 70 percent of his clientele wants to lose weight. For those folks, he said, “Absolutely, exercise does matter.”
One reason: Working out builds muscle, which tips the calorie balance further in your favor. “You’re looking for the lean muscle tissue to actually burn calories for you while you rest,” Brown said.
Welko agrees. “Exercise is a huge component of [weight loss]. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism,” she said.
Individuals who don’t exercise while trying to lose weight miss out on that metabolic effect.
“Their weight loss is slower or nonexistent, or when they lose weight, they only lose muscle,” Welko said.
Lori Knapp, a registered dietitian at Theda Clark Medical Center, confirms that among the patients she sees before and after bariatric surgery, those who work out lose the “right” weight.
“The ones that exercise and follow the diet do awesome,” Knapp said. “The ones that don’t exercise lose much more lean muscle mass.”
And with it, they lose the potential to burn calories while sitting still.
Exercise can help you lose weight faster.
Anything that affects your calorie balance has an impact on weight. That’s why Holtz believes so strongly in the one-two punch of exercise and good nutrition.
“It’s definitely a combination,” Holtz said. “Proper nutrition along with exercise is really what’s rocketed me past that point of standstill.”
Holtz committed to 45 minutes of exercise five days a week — three sessions of cardio and two sessions of strength training. She also adhered to Ellipse’s program of what she calls “real eating” — buying regular, healthful food at the grocery store rather than specially prepared meals.
“As long as I followed that plan, the pounds just came off,” she said, noting that she lost about two pounds per week.
That’s just the right pace, according to Brown. “In order to keep (weight) off, you want to lose anywhere between one-quarter and two pounds a week,” he said.
Exercise can increase body awareness.
Like Brown and Welko, Affinity Health System registered dietitian and certified eating disorder specialist Lori Deering advocates for both proper nutrition and exercise when helping clients manage weight.
“You really can’t say one is better than the other, in a sense,” she said. However, physical activity of any kind “really helps people [develop] a body connection and body awareness,” she said, which, in turn, can help them manage their weight.
Regularity with both exercise and eating is key, she added.
“We encourage people to first establish a regular pattern of fueling,” she said. “They start to get clearer messages about when they’re actually hungry and when they’re actually full. We encourage them to be attentive to those signals and respond to them.”
That’s easier to do when you’re in tune with your body and exercise can help take you there.
Exercise can’t counteract careless eating.
For all its weight-loss benefits, exercise alone probably isn’t enough to shift your calorie balance toward a pound-shedding negative differential. As Brown put it, “You cannot out-exercise a bad diet. You just cannot, no matter how hard you try.”
Dietitians have a name for that phenomenon.
“We call that compensatory exercise,” Deering said. “Certainly that mindset isn’t a permanent lifestyle change.”
“It’s posted all over our gym: What are you doing the other 23 hours a day?” Welko said. “We tell people it’s 80 percent what you eat and 20 percent exercise.”
The gist of it is, you can do your calorie balance good with an hour’s exercise, but you can blow it in a big hurry by rewarding yourself with high-calorie foods afterward. To lose weight, Holtz said, “you have to wrap your head around the fact that you are going to eat differently.”
“Exercise will help you lose weight. There’s no doubt about it,” Welko said.
But in the big picture, losing weight is a short-term effort.
Exercise’s enduring value is in improving your general health, no matter what you weigh. Said Welko, “If you’re someone who doesn’t need to lose weight, for heaven’s sake, don’t stop exercising.”
To read more about exercise’s role in weight loss, visit http://www.time.com/time/health/article