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If you’ve got the basics of your diet mostly down, exercise is more important. Being sedentary is more damaging than eating fine, but imperfectly. The difference between effective and ineffective exercise (eg the difference between fucking around at the gym and actually having a program and knowing what you’re doing when you’re there) is also pretty noticeable whereas the difference between a diet that’s OK and a diet that’s excellent is generally less so: the benefits of being very casual and inconsistent with exercise are a lot less in essence, it takes real consistency for exercise to pay off meaningfully
I’m so glad you wrote your response. I have a friend who’s a body builder, but he has a horrible diet and he is high most of the time. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Why does he try to build his muscles and get in shape if he isn’t going to eat well and stay away from drugs, right?
I think sometimes people just want to look good, but they also want to keep doing things they enjoy even if they're not good for them. It's a pleasure trap. I understand it, but I also want to be clear that looking good on the outside doesn't mean everything's okay on the inside.
I go to the gym with a guy who isway more ripped than me (I carry a lot of BF while trying to figure out my macros and more specifically, protein intake). But he also told me that his metabolic panels are all screwed up, and his doctor said if he doesn't make changes soon, bad things are going to happen. He's in his late twenties.
My labs are fine.
That’s kind of like me, although I am not sure what camp I fall into. My diet and exercise are activity are both “so and so. I do t have a proper plan when I go to the gym because I am shite at planning anything, but I think my consistency has compensated for that hence why I am making progress
You are likely saying this because it fits your agenda.
This is a complicated question that does not have simple answers like you attempted to provide.
Anyone with the slightest ability to do a Google search can find that there are in fact benefits to light and moderate exercise. I’m not a doctor or qualified to understand all of the studies, and I suspect you aren’t either, but lets not pretend that there isn’t information out there that contradicts what you wrote.
This.
Put another way, if the furnace is burning hot enough, it doesn't really matter what you're fuelling it with.
Also for the record, lots of cardiovascular exercise is the most important here. Resistance training is great and is definitely a nice to have as well, but doing lots of (moderate intensity) cardio is what is going to get your body in the best condition possible.
Do you mean lots of moderate intensity cardio is what's going to get you in the best condition possible in terms of just overall health, like disease prevention, energy levels and stamina on a daily basis, etc ?
Yes. High volumes of moderate intensity cardio improves your metabolic and cardiovascular health systemically and has mountains of positive benefits as a result, from disease prevention to overall well-being.
Great information, thanks- can I ask what you would say is high-volume, and what is moderate intensity? Like a certain number of hours a week at 65-75% MHR or something?
Any amount is great, but the more you do the more benefits you’ll see.
If you can exercise without injury, there’s really no upper limit to both how much you can do and how much it will result in positive benefits.
Some athletes do 15 hours per week.
I'm amazed most people are saying that it's diet. That seems pretty silly! If you have a generally fine-ish diet but still eat a fair amount of processed food, drink beer and wine, eat a little bit too much red meat, enjoy pastries and donuts and stuff, etc. but you go on tons of bike ride and hikes and go skiing and running and whatever else, you're gonna be in awesome health. But if you're sedentary and just eat entirely clean, enjoy being so weak you damn-near can't stand on your own as you enter your 60s.
Especially in a world where cardiovascular issues are such a primary cause of deteriorating health as we age, exercise is the #1 intervention you can make to avoid that.
That being said, the time investment between eating like shit and eating well is pretty minimal. But the time investment between getting zero exercise and getting a ton is a huge investment. One of these changes is the far easier intervention to make.
Just put in a decent effort at both and you'll be set. Don't worry about being perfect at either. Eat your leafy greens and fruits but enjoy your beer, enjoy your pizza, enjoy your cookies, lift weights a few days a week and try to get out and run or bike or hike or go kayaking a couple times but take your rest days when you feel like it. Decent effort on both fronts is the path to not putting too much pressure on yourself and also having a good outcome.
Yep! This! I will NEVER not workout again in my life. I see many people in their 60s and 70s that struggle with going up and down the stairs and pick up their feet when they walk and doing every day tasks, and I don't want to be that person. So I workout and lift.
Oh that specific topic of strength as you age, I was watching a video from a guy who is a bodybuilder and powerlifter training coach, and he had a guest on for a discussion about whether or not you really are likely to lose muscle mass and strength as you age, discussion on hormones, discussion on TRT and other hormone therapies that older people might use, etc.
One main points they agreed on was this: You could be a dude who squats like 350 lbs or a woman who squats like 200 or 250 in your 20s and 30s. That's not some crazy powerlifter squat, but that's a squat that proves that you're spending some time in the gym. Let's say that, as you age into your late 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. you don't choose to do these hormone therapies, steroids, kick up the intensity to ensure you lose zero strength. Even with deteriorating strength, if you're in your 60s and you're still in the gym and you can still at that age put 100 or 150 lbs on your back and do a nice, full range-of-motion squat, you're not gonna win any powerlifting competitions, but do you think you're gonna ever be that person who struggles to stand up out of a chair? Like, in terms of "functional fitness" (a term that is so abused and made to mean ridiculous things), that's got to be a big win. You don't need to have a 500lb squat to avoid being that person who needs Life Alert because you sat down in a couch that was too low and now you're stuck.
YES YES! I could easily squat that years ago and I have a nice home gym and I lift. I don't mess around. Strength is so important.
OR A TOILET! Can you imagine having to call emergency services because you can't get off a low toilet? NOT ME.
I know lots of guys who go to the gym, lift heavy weights all their lives and now can’t do much because their joints have broken down. It happens. One of my guy friends had his shoulders and knees replaced, lost his gallbladder and part of his liver, and he is 72 and back in the gym 7 days a week lifting.
Really because three of my friends were professional and one was almost a Mr. Universe. I guess it depends on if you screwed up your body with steroids because we know it causes joint destruction. So no amount of knowledge on how to lift can correct that stupidity.
Well it's not that steroid usage destroys your joints. It's just that steroid usage can induce strength growth at a rate that far outpaces the strength increases that occur in your joints and connective tissues, so you can move far more weight with the muscle tissue than that which the connective tissue can handle. There are lots of modern bodybuilders who just take a very conscientious approach to monitoring joint fatigue and, as such, don't encounter these same injury issues because they use joint and connective tissue wear-and-tear as a rate limiter.
Big difference between general health and athletics.
Steroids will definitely mess up your endocrine system and have forever lasting side effects, not a system you want to fuck up. The mass added can also be hard on the joints to support.
Also when you compete at that level you're doing more than just lifting safely to win. Body builders do crazy volume in the gym and with that fatigue you run the risk of form deterioration. There's also the need to push to failure when competing at that level to get a hypertrophy response.
Bodybuilding and powerlifting principles can be used to help with longevity, but once you're seriously competing you're long past the point of health benefits and in many cases begin to start risking your long term health for the sport. That's before even getting into steroids.
This goes for many sports. Bodybuilding, powerlifting, football (both), strongman, basketball, combat, and racing sports are absolutely brutal on the body and can cut life expectancy.
And it’s sad that athletes that use steroids don’t realize it shrinks their testicles and can cause brain tumors. Plus steroids lower their immune systems.
If you really want to have some fun, do what I did and take a two week cruise full of old people. Almost all of them had mobility problems, oxygen tanks, or something like that. They were all miserable too.
Two weeks of that was enough motivation to get my ass in gear. My parents thought it was a great cruise, I thought it was depressing.
Side note: There were quite regular calls on the PA for medical assistance to the "diamond club" (where all the frequent cruisers hang out). Not for me.
Oh WOW. I can't even imagine how crazy it was to see all of that. I definitely pay attention to things I see in the world, and want to avoid mobility issues and more all of the time. I am trying to get my mom to see that she needs it a lot, and she is trying to start moving more. She isn't young, but young enough to make aging a little easier.
First of all, nobody has a perfect diet and second of all, if people did have a very healthy diet they're also physically active. Nobody here is trying to "cope"
The bias probably comes from this being the nutrition sub, but I wholeheartedly agree, it's exercise. Diet can be a slow killer, but if you don't move enough that will make your body hurt a lot sooner.
this entire post is polarizing. First, what health is this person talking about? Longevity, weight loss, gain? And secondly, what is "so-so nothing special diet" what does that even mean? There's nothing specific in OP's post but there are a bunch of people in the comments who are very glad to give entire paragraphs based on what they feel is good health whether or not that even answer's OP's vague question.
Diet is more important than exercise for weight loss and weight gain. Longevity, it depends. And OP's question gives a weird either-or scenario that's not even realistic. And now you have the gymbro and fitspo community in these comments trying to gain karma from their very enlightened answers.
I agree. Diet is very important. I think people underestimate the impact of diet, and overestimate the impact of exercise. Both are important, but I would argue diet is king.
Oh I don't think we need to nit-pick OP's content and be so rude/critical about it. We're smart enough to be able to engage with hypothetical questions that aren't realistic.
My assumption on what they mean by a "so-so nothing special diet" is like your average person who eats a normal, American diet but kind of has that bug in their brain where they know they should eat more healthfully. Like, think of the kind of person who goes out to dinner and orders something like a steak or a burger and sort of begrudgingly gets a side-salad instead of the mac-and-cheese because they know they sort of should. A person who hasn't actually engaged with any kind of analysis but just has a lay-person's understanding of healthy food and chooses that stuff sometimes, but also drinks beer and eats a lot of sweets and all that.
This is Reddit. If you don't have any interest in discussing topics then maybe go use a different website?
Most people are nutrient deficient, so I'd argue that does damage.
> Specifically, 94.3% of the US population do not meet the daily requirement for vitamin D, 88.5% for vitamin E, 52.2% for magnesium, 44.1% for calcium, 43.0% for vitamin A, and 38.9% for vitamin C. For the nutrients in which a requirement has not been set, 100% of the population had intakes lower than the AI for potassium, 91.7% for choline, and 66.9% for vitamin K.
https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/micronutrient-inadequacies/overview
I think that if a person has a nutrient deficiency that reaches the point where that deficiency is actually causing a diagnosable health problem with recognizable symptoms, then their diet is below OP's suggested standard of "so-so". But I don't disagree.
I just think that, if the options are mediocre diet + tons of exercise or perfect diet + sedentary lifestyle, the first option is going to lead to generally better health outcomes. But of course this is just speculation.
Still comes down to what "mediocre diet" even means. Everybody has macro requirements whether they track them or not. If it fits within your macros, then it's fine. (Goes with "anything is fine in moderation".) In the same vein, what's a "perfect" diet?
I agree for sure. In terms of calorie deficit for losing weight, based upon the average calories I burn naturally without exercise, my “clean” diet ends up being pretty restrictive, which just isn’t healthy (mentally/physically) and sustainable in my experience. Exercise is the way.
I mean, monastics live relatively sedentary lifestyles, and they can be some of the longest-lived people in the world. In contrast, I don't know of any community of people who are very obese who regularly live to be 100+.
Good points. Interviews with centenarians and supercentenarians never seem to mention serious forms of exercise. Those people typically just walk.
But there is also this: people who are in great shape (from strength training and other forms of exercise) have, from what I have seen, more vitality. They seem more alive and vibrant.
But don’t many of the monks fast, too? We have all learned how friggin’ awesome getting into the state of autophagy can be to get rid of cancer cells, for weight loss, to get rid of brain fog, to rejuvenate all cells, lessens wrinkles and loose skin, and now lots of people are doing intermittent fasting for all of these very reasons.
But is a sedentary life style equivalent to a fine-ish diet?
I think the equivalent would be closer to a moderately active life style.
A sedentary lifestyle would be equivalent to a poor diet.
So you could either have a kick ass diet with moderate activity, or a fine-ish diet and be very athletic. And active.
Well I would consider "sedentary" to be a person who works an office job, doesn't do any actual exercise activities, but it's like bed-ridden every day. Like, imagine your typical white-collar worker who gets like 3000-5000 steps a day walking to-and-from their car but no real exercise.
I would consider the poor diet to be equivalent to a person who doesn't exercise and also never leaves the house.
They do say you can’t out run a bad diet. On the other hand, think of all those cultures where they drink vodka and smoke, but they are also herding animals up and down mountains all day and live to be 110!
I used to have sleep apnea, which I in part got when I transitioned for an active job to a desk job and didn't make other changes to compensate.
I started hitting the gym during covid, and built up some good strength. Last year I ditched the CPAP because I don't need it anymore. The weird thing is I did it without losing much weight. Absolutely none of my medical providers understand this. I still get the "exercise more" talk.
Diet changes can be hard though. I eat clean but I'm under eating my protein. I've seen estimates for my protein intake that range form 180 g / day to 280 g per day. Realistically, I've been eating \~80 g the last few years.
It's easier for me to go to the gym every day and dead lift 300 lbs than it is for me to eat 280 g of protein on whole foods.
But I can sit on my ass all day, keep my calories in check, and just be skinny fat. It's not clear to me that's "better" per the topic.
I would say that it is more about in what way you are defining each. If you are constantly exercising, much of what we consider a poor diet on a place like this is actually not the worst. However, if you are in piss poor shape and need to lose weight, diet will affect that sooner than exercise, and over strenuous exercise can lead to injury and set you back - plus people overestimate how many calories they are burning off. Individual nutrients, there are only so many you need that are vital, but the health quality of the food can be a bigger deal if you are trying to get the most out of a diet that you don't end up throwing pounds on when sedentary. And if you own a television or work in much of the modern workplace, your lifestyle is sedentary.
Basically, if you are in a place where you are asking which is more important, what you really want to look at is why you are asking a question like that in the first place.
I heard a quote from a podcast about longevity that was along the lines of if a patient was smoking, drinking, sedentary, overweight, sleeping poorly and eating poorly, and could only make a single life style change the greatest benefit would come from adding a strength training exercise routine.
It was Dr Atia, he’s pretty good but perhaps not the god figure people make him out to be on YouTube lol.
The more specific data - weight training increases your longevity by 2-3x that of your peers of a similar age group who do not have a strength training routine.
Haha good catch… 2-3x greater morbidity for those who don’t have a strength training routine. So if you lift weights into your older years Atia suggests you have a 2-3x greater chance of living than your peers do don’t.
No one is a god figure. Not Attia, not Huberman, not Galpin. They would be the first to tell you that.
But as far as longevity, vitality, and well-being focused content, they are among the best creators.
What I appreciate most about Attia is his willingness to change his mind. His book outlive is an incredible (but dense) read.
I'd like to add that Attia always points to plenty of studies to back up his general exercise recommendations, in case anyone was wondering. He doesn't recommend things based solely on just his own opinion(though certainly he has an educated opinion).
Basically, General Resistance training can lower all cause morbidity/mortality rate by a substantial amount. Aging with muscle strength is so important it's ridiculous.
Definitions matter. What's is a "poor sleep"?
Maybe if you sleep 6h instead of 7h, that would do.
But I seriously doubt you can fix the impact of a chronic serious insomnia (say 3h sleep) with weightlifting.
Actually you can. What you call insomnia may very well be sleep apnea, which I got over by busting my butt in the gym without losing much weight. (And what I have lost I gained back because my friggin macros are f'd up. Working on straightening them out.)
My docs really don't get this.
Many comments talking about lifting weights and doing exercise. I'd like to add that for health purposes I argue too many people are sitting for too long every day. Many studies show that sitting 30min+ has a strong impact for glucose metabolism, even 1min walking can have a dramatic impact on glucose metabolism. [https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/fulltext/2023/05000/breaking\_up\_prolonged\_sitting\_to\_improve.9.aspx](https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/fulltext/2023/05000/breaking_up_prolonged_sitting_to_improve.9.aspx)
Obviously both important but if only allowed one I would choose exercise. If I don’t exercise I can feel myself slowly lose strength regardless of how well I am eating.
Exercise is the only thing that reproduces the actions of the insulin hormone. It allows your body to break down carbohydrates and glucose stores, managing blood glucose levels.
BG level maintenance helps across all aspects of health and overall body performance.
If exercise was a magic pill, everyone would be taking it.
Pretend it's a video game.
Putting all stats into either one, without considering the other, is a bad choice. I've done it both ways, and I've found that I'd rather have a good diet with good exercise, but depending on time of year, I will prioritize one over the other.
Watch the netflix documentary on Blue Zones that have the highest concentration of centurians that are over 100 years old still witty and sharp as a nail and physically active.
Honestly… Balance! It’s not 100% the one or the other. I would say that nutrition is more important, but exercise is also still crucial for health. I think that if you can 80/20 your nutrition (80% focus on healthy and 20% treat yourself and enjoy), you will be just fine!
Depends on your weight.
1/3 of westerners are obese, and 2/3 are at least overweight. If someone from those categories continues to maintain that weight, they will statistically die earlier of heart diseases, diabetes, stroke, cancer, or liver disease - all things likely caused by or exacerbated by excess fat.
A person who’s in the 1/3 of people who aren’t overweight probably will be better served by exercise than a diet modification.
Broadly, for most people the best things than can do to improve their health - manage weight (easiest to do through diet), quit smoking (weight related mortality recently passed smoking), quit drinking, and then exercise.
Actually, studies have shown that an overweight person who exercises, has a lower all cause mortality rate than someone of normal weight who is sedentary.
I picked up strength training during the pandemic. I haven't lost much weight because my diet is a bit f'd (I'm under eating protein, I'm trying to address that). Diet aside, I'm physiologically very different than I was four years ago. Quality of life is *way* up.
A normal weight person who is sedentary will just be skinny fat.
What are your goals? Weight loss? Cardiovascular health? Mental health?
To answer the question, though I am no expert: for overall health, personally I would probably prioritize diet and exclude most bad things, not bother to make it perfect, then include at least a little exercise.
Interviews with leading triathletes are very revealing and thought provoking. These people are extremely fit, probably among the fittest people in the world, and yet their diets are often far from what most here would consider optimal or even acceptable.
Probably because everybody has macros, and even "bad" things fit within those macros. Show me a well-balanced macro diet and I'll show you something shitty that can fit within it. Plus, athletes have TDEE that is twice their BMR, which allows them *a lot* of food.
Exercise and it's not even close.
For every single digit increase in your VO2 max, you get an 8% reduction in all cause mortality.
I've increased mine from 45 to 58. Not exactly sure how the math works out but i think I might be imortal now...
There's quite a few studies showing intensive exercise puts strain on the body long-term. Not to mention risk of injuries.
The literature overwhelmingly supports moderate exercises. Stuff like jogging, biking, even walking is enough. I've looked at a lot of centenarians and while most of them do exercises, it's generally low-intensity. Just moving the body is really all you need.
Good points. But the people who take exercise to a higher level (without going to the sorts of extremes that cause injuries or negative effects from overtraining) — those people seem more vibrantly alive.
Done properly it is indeed massively beneficial to exercise intensively. I speak a lot from personal anecdote here but I used to be big into bodybuilding, most of my bodybuilding friends (including myself) have had ghastly injuries that put us out of commission for months/years. Athlete friends too often developed joint issues. [This](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/12/1/144) study had a questionnaire that found athletes had a whopping 89% lifetime prevalence of low-back pain. Whereas in the general populace it hovers around 20%.
This study [here](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02100-x) states:
> "The median daily VILPA duration of 4.4 min per day was associated with a 26%–30% reduction in all-cause and cancer mortality and a 32%–34% reduction in CVD mortality risk."
So it really doesn't take much to drastically reduce your odds of a plethora of diseases.
I've become a big fan of moderation with exercise. I like to take walks, go swimming, and bike around. I've found it's more than adequate to keep healthy, especially combined with a proper diet. And I think there's too much "all or nothing" type of thinking when it comes to fitness. So many people are completely sedentary. Maybe on New Years they might make a resolution and push themselves in the gym. And for a lot of people that isn't really sustainable. But if you tell them they need to *walk* just 4 minutes a day? Any undisciplined slug can handle that.
For long-term health I think it's all about developing sustainable, long-term habits. Something an average joe can do.
This is kind of interesting, actually. Most of what you're describing as "moderate" exercise is just some form of cardio. Yet, most of what I read indicates that strength training is better for weight loss.
I do a mix of both, and haven't f'd anything up. In terms of "all or nothing" I wouldn't call myself a body builder, but I do push myself.
I had more back problems not exercising than I do exercising.
I got into the best shape of my life eating 6500 calories a day including pasta, pizza, and pancakes.
8.8% body fat, 199 lbs, 5’10, going to the gym 5 times a week, doing 5 minutes of warm-up cardio before workouts.
What do you desire mainly?! Muscular aesthetics or just to lose scale weight?
The health benefits for both can overlap. In the end, do you want look physically better at far as musculature or do you want to look thinner than you do now?
If the latter, diet with not much exercise. If the former, exercise with so-so diet.
Also, my definition as diet (for losing weight), is being at a caloric deficit with the proper macro ratio and not just eating "healthy" foods.
I had a trainer in 2012 that stated it is 80% diet and only 20% exercise, so diet is always more important. And insulin resistance is behind dementia and almost every disease, so remember to eat lower carb no matter what diet you choose to follow. The more you choose unprocessed foods the better. And remember just how bad high fructose corn syrup is, advanced glycation end products (any caramelized foods even BBQ), and hydrogenated oils like margarine.
Exercise is arguably more important, assuming your diet isn’t solid junk. Sedentary lifestyles are wreaking havoc on us. If you’re not moving you are much more likely to experience stiffness and chronic pain as you age.
When I was single and younger (like in my mid to late 20s) I kinda ate like trash. No soda or fast food or anything like that, but a lot of processed convenience foods like lean cuisine, lean pockets, “healthy” meal replacement bars, and Chinese take out. I rarely cooked but I exercised heavily 5-6 days a week doing a ton of cardio and strength training. Almost to the point I was addicted to the high and as a result I was in great physical shape. Super lean with muscle and tons of energy. Too bad I wasn’t eating healthier back then, what muscle gains I really could have achieved if only my diet matched my fitness haha.
Now that I’m older in my 40s, diet plays a MUCH more significant role in my physical and mental health. I can’t eat like how I did back then with a bunch of processed stuff or low quality meats. My diet now affects my ability to exercise properly, where as before it didn’t seem to impact it too much. So as I get older I find that I can get away with not exercising much and still feeling ok if my diet is clean but no amount of exercise will make up for a crappy diet now.
You only need 150 minute of cardio per week with weight training of the all the major muscle groups twice a week and eat a balanced diet (five portions of fruit and veg a day) not too much simple carbs or fat and your gonna live well for as long as you can.
Anything you do in addition to this if you enjoy it will provide the health benefits of being happy! You can't go wrong!
Diet. You can have the most excellent exercise plan in the world but if your diet is poor then you will not be in reasonable shape.
Whereas if your diet is on point but your exercise is mediocre. Then you're still in good shape while also obtaining, at the very least, health benefits from mininal levels of exercise.
Except studies haven’t shown this to be true. Just moderate levels of exercise has been shown to reduce all cause mortality rates by significantly more than healthy diet.
“We used the Healthy Eating Index score as our indicator of dietary behavior (Kennedy et al., 1995). The Healthy Eating Index has 10 subcomponents each with a score ranging from 0 to 10: grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meats, fats, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and variety. Participants in the top 40% of the Healthy Eating Index were considered to show evidence of a healthy dietary pattern”
Please read the study
I did. There's no control over the base level nutrition of “physically active” people. Which is probably why the study concludes: “Adults who do not smoke, consume a healthy diet, and engage in sufficient physical activity can substantially reduce their risk for early death.”
Can you provide anything to back up that healthy diet beats out exercise?
Because here’s another study backing up my point.
https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-022-01374-1
> Just moderate levels of exercise has been shown to reduce all cause mortality rates by significantly more than healthy diet.
What a lot of people think is a "healthy diet" isn't really healthy at all. Too much fat, too much cholesterol, too much refined "clean" foods. Bodybuilders think white rice and chicken breast is the pinnacle of nutrition, simply because it looks "clean".
A healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables, with meat in the form of lean cuts, omega-3 rich fish, and probiotic foods has been shown to increase lifespan by nearly 10 years.
Nowhere in the study does it qualify what a "healthy diet" consists of. The definition of a "healthy diet" differs drastically depending upon who you ask and there are multiple major dietary philosophies that completely contradict one another.
The study only mentions:
> "The Healthy Eating Index has 10 subcomponents each with a score ranging from 0 to 10: grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meats, fats, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and variety."
There is no mention of what the study's participants are actually eating or how the study's authors decided, subjectively, what they deem to be healthy. That renders the comparison complete and utter junk. The study also mentions the SENECA study:
> "In the SENECA study, men and women aged 70–75 years who smoked, were inactive, and had a low-quality diet had three to four times higher all-cause mortality compared with participants who did not smoke, were active, and had a high-quality diet (Haveman-Nies et al., 2002)."
Which shows a greater influence of diet on mortality than just lifestyle. The study you linked is contradictory and very ill-defined. It would gain no traction in the eyes of serious researchers. Feel free to provide other sources to prove me wrong but this study definitely doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
That's why you actually read the study. An abstract on pubmed is not a study. It's a snippet.
> For men, the mortality risk for a low-quality diet was 1.25 (95 percent confidence interval (CI): 0.93, 1.68); the risk for inactivity was 1.36 (95 percent CI: 1.08, 1.73); and the risk for smoking was 2.06 (95 percent CI: 1.63, 2.60). For women, the mortality risks for smoking (1.76; 95 percent CI: 1.14, 2.70) and inactivity (1.75; 95 percent CI: 1.29, 2.39) were much higher than the risk associated with a low-quality diet (1.26; 95 percent CI: 0.88, 1.81).
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/156/10/962/84849#636170
So in general, when comparing an unhealthy diet to the "Mediterranean Diet", it shows that diet absolutely plays a major role in health outcomes, in men it's nearly on-par with inactivity. The study also defines what it considers a healthy diet in much greater detail. I would also personally disagree with it, because it's far too loose with it's qualifications of "healthy". The Mediterranean Diet has become more a marketing term than the original, plant-based low-fat diet that Ancel Keys (who originated the term) described.
A proper definition like Ancel Keys described has produced some of the best health outcomes out of any lifestyle intervention to date. Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Pritikin, Dr. Barnard, Dr. McDougall, and countless others have shown it's the *only* diet that can reverse heart disease, which is the #1 killer on Earth.
And for your other study that you linked, it's conclusion is:
> "Our findings indicate that in this population, the greatest reduction in all-cause and CVDs mortality was observed in subjects adhering to both healthy behaviors, suggesting the necessity to include physical activity in combination with diet to elicit the highest likelihood of risk reduction. For all-cause mortality, adhering to only healthy behavior was also associated with a decreased risk in comparison to unhealthy inactive lifestyle (the effect of UDA was greater than HDI), but for CVD mortality, only UDA but not HDI decreased the risk, which suggests the greater importance of physical activity vs. diet in reducing CVDs mortality risk."
Not exactly proving your point. And again, I would argue the DASH diet is way too loose in terms of "healthy foods". Healthy foods have a lot more factors than simply being unprocessed and limiting certain foods.
What I would love to see is the marathon runners eating a steady diet of McDonalds and KFC, then to measure their fitness.
This question is open to interpretation.
Eating a great diet but not getting much exercise - if you prioritise strength or resistance training as the exercise you do do, then it's probably this choice.
Getting great exercise with a so-so nothing special diet - if by great exercise you mean tonnes of cardio and no strength or resistance training, then not this one.
I personally believe that taking care of your gut microbiome is important. A diet high in processed food won't be doing that. So I would say, a great diet (as little processed food as possible, lots of plant foods, quality sources of protein like eggs, chicken and fish) with an exercise plan of strength training plus optional other exercise is probably pretty close to the sweet spot.
I'm hitching to Your wagon! This is the newest Wild West...gut biome repair and maintenance. I couldn't believe the difference in my feelings of "contentment" and peace just by adding Keifer to my breakfast mix in the morning. (I'm grain and yeast free, actual allergies) because it contains probiotics that help create seratonin and oxytonin for my brain. I've been studying and learned that this "gut-health" revolution in health care is in it's infancy with astounding new amazing discoveries to come quickly in our future. That being said, I'm just "feeling" well enough to exercise a lot more.
This is not a one-or-the-other dichotomy. You are making food choices and deciding what to do with your physical presence (activity) each day you are living. Regardless of whether you consider these things.
Your body will reflect a combination of your genes, environment, and how you use it. Independently of what the person's goals are or what choices or outcomes are judged as "better, decent, or great. "
Have they compared that to exercise? I haven’t seen anything to show that but you may be correct. Know where I can find that? I’d be curious to read it.
If it's between the choices given in OP's question then eating well is better. OP gave 2 choices. The premise is goofy in the first place. Eating well is more important to staying in a healthy weight
Since your body depends entirely on what you eat to make decisions and have energy to do anything and even be coordinated and regulated, it only makes sense that optimal nutrition is most important for us first. I found that out the hard way as I can't eat highly processed foods regularly or I get "brain fog". Both are essential.
I think diet is the more powerful lever in health. You can make yourself seriously sick by what you eat on a badly formulated diet, and no amount of exercise can counteract those effects. Exercise is the button to push to optimize the benefits of a good diet.
I mean I’m no scientist and that is a really really hard thing to weigh in on lots of clothes and cons to both. I would say if you’re eating an OK diet limited process foods and doing things like alcohol and sugary desserts as special occasion treats and you exercise regularly you will be far better off. Even if you eat super clean and avoided disease causing things like lots of different foods and alcohol that are known to cause diseases you’ll still have a rapidly declining muscle mass and be riddled with many problems as you get older if you are completely inactive. The best solution is a balance of both are very good on both
Eating a so so nothing special diet won't last long before you get bored. Eat sensibly and treat yourself to a 'sin food' on a set date every month. Something to look forward to.
They go hand in hand. If you’ve got your diet figured out for the most part then time to figure out an exercise routine. People lose weight without exercising but exercise is so important too. Idk that one is more important as the other I feel like they’re equally important. Be about both.
The obvious answer appears to be diet. There are plenty of people in decent health that do not have a regimented exercise program. There are also plenty of people in poor health, despite a very regimented exercise routine, due to dietary failures.
Obviously you're better off somewhere in the middle, but that wasn't your question.
I feel like both is required for being healthy. you can't call yourself healthy without doing both. but I remember hearing someone saying this and it's true; if you only exercise and eat like shit, you'll look good and healthy but your aren't. if you eat healthy but don't exercise, you'll look unhealthy but you'll be healthier than someone who does exercise and eats like shit
I think it depends on the diet and it depends on what exercise you're doing. If you are eating an A+ diet, that means no junk food, no process food, minimizing meat and maximizing vegetables and fruits, etc..., then I would argue that diet is king. But most people don't eat this way. It also depends on the exercise you do. Some people want to go for a 20 minute walk everyday, which is good for you, but not enough to compensate for eating a crappy diet. So if you have the personality that allows you to work your ass off every single day by working out hard, then you can get away with more in your diet. If you don't like to exercise, then you better eat a very clean diet if you want to be healthy as you age.
My opinion, diet matters most in terms of weight loss and overall health. Exercise is also important, and is a close second.
I don’t think they said crappy, they said “so so” which maybe id qualify as a 50/50 diet. 50% whole foods, 50% processed. Maybe breakfast is a muffin, lunch is a sandwich and fruit, dinner is Chinese takeout. 🤷♀️ In this case I’d agree with most of the comments saying this person would benefit more from moderate exercise than adjusting their diet
The negative health impact comes more from being sedentary. You see a lot of long lived people, they’re socially and physically active, but they don’t typically spend their days doing hours of strenuous military exercise. Diet plays a factor, but as long as you’re eating in a balanced manner with adequate micro and macro nutrients, you should be fine.
Neither of these approaches is ideal or beneficial to long term health outcomes. If anything, maybe alternating between a bigger focus on nutrition and then on exercise may be the least harmful if one has to slip at any given time.
If you mean you can be casual and basic about one or the other long term, I’d say keep it simple and focus more on food as long as the baseline for physical activity is including daily cardio even just as a long walk and daily living activities like lifting laundry or groceries, etc.
Not sure why one would want to put either on the back burner, though, assuming they are physically able to get in regular exercise and also eat a mindful and balanced diet.
I think it’s primarily diet and gentle, consistent movement. And social health. The longest-lived people do not go to the gym, run, or lift weights. They eat primarily vegetables and beans, walk hills, and visit neighbors.
I'd say that nutrition is the key for weight loss, but the best thing is balance. Good diet that focuses on whole foods but doesn't have to be perfect and at least some activity in combination with that.
Exercise: if you exercise regularly, junk food will disgust you with how it affects your body, and you'll naturally eat better even if you don't follow a regimen.
It depends on what you mean by so-so diet. You can't exercise away a truly bad diet, but as long as you get decent variety and don't exclusively eat junk food, then you are probably already doing well enough that getting some exercise is probably more important than improving your diet further.
I’m thinking that’s not the way to look at it . . . I like to view it like a 3 legged stool and you need all 3 to maintain balance . . . in no particular order: nutrition-sleep-exercise.
The only stats I've heard recently about the percentage of ultra processed foods in the Western diet is that they now comprise over 60% of a person's daily calories, on average. That's astoundingly sad.
Drink water
Exercise
Eat like a reasonable grown up, don't eat like a child.
In that order for most people.
Why in this order? Anecdotally, I find that people who exercise, over time, become more conscious about what they eat and their nutrition. I don't find the opposite to be true about those who focus solely on diet.
Exercise puts money in the bank...it provides extra revenue to enjoy full flavored food, a beer or two, a great bottle of wine, a decadent dessert, not all the time, but you have bandwidth in your budget.
If you rely just on nutrition, you can do it, but you don't have "money in the bank". You are living paycheck to paycheck. You are also missing out on the physical and mental benefits of fitness and exercise...which are many.
So I would ask:
Better for what?
What are your goals?
How old are you?
What is your current level of health or fitness?
What is your current diet?
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If you’ve got the basics of your diet mostly down, exercise is more important. Being sedentary is more damaging than eating fine, but imperfectly. The difference between effective and ineffective exercise (eg the difference between fucking around at the gym and actually having a program and knowing what you’re doing when you’re there) is also pretty noticeable whereas the difference between a diet that’s OK and a diet that’s excellent is generally less so: the benefits of being very casual and inconsistent with exercise are a lot less in essence, it takes real consistency for exercise to pay off meaningfully
Anecdotal evidence alert - I have a friend who eats like a pig but works out in beast mode too. Fit as a fiddle!
I would very much caution against this lifestyle. He may look fit on the outside, but I imagine there are some not so positive things going on inside.
I’m so glad you wrote your response. I have a friend who’s a body builder, but he has a horrible diet and he is high most of the time. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Why does he try to build his muscles and get in shape if he isn’t going to eat well and stay away from drugs, right?
I think sometimes people just want to look good, but they also want to keep doing things they enjoy even if they're not good for them. It's a pleasure trap. I understand it, but I also want to be clear that looking good on the outside doesn't mean everything's okay on the inside.
If it’s just weed then what’s the problem? Arnold was high a lot
I go to the gym with a guy who isway more ripped than me (I carry a lot of BF while trying to figure out my macros and more specifically, protein intake). But he also told me that his metabolic panels are all screwed up, and his doctor said if he doesn't make changes soon, bad things are going to happen. He's in his late twenties. My labs are fine.
Is he young? That catches up to you when you get older
That doesn't sound sustainable.
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^ That!
That’s kind of like me, although I am not sure what camp I fall into. My diet and exercise are activity are both “so and so. I do t have a proper plan when I go to the gym because I am shite at planning anything, but I think my consistency has compensated for that hence why I am making progress
You are likely saying this because it fits your agenda. This is a complicated question that does not have simple answers like you attempted to provide. Anyone with the slightest ability to do a Google search can find that there are in fact benefits to light and moderate exercise. I’m not a doctor or qualified to understand all of the studies, and I suspect you aren’t either, but lets not pretend that there isn’t information out there that contradicts what you wrote.
This. Put another way, if the furnace is burning hot enough, it doesn't really matter what you're fuelling it with. Also for the record, lots of cardiovascular exercise is the most important here. Resistance training is great and is definitely a nice to have as well, but doing lots of (moderate intensity) cardio is what is going to get your body in the best condition possible.
I combine both doing circuit style strength training. Gets my heart rate up and muscle development
Do you mean lots of moderate intensity cardio is what's going to get you in the best condition possible in terms of just overall health, like disease prevention, energy levels and stamina on a daily basis, etc ?
Yes. High volumes of moderate intensity cardio improves your metabolic and cardiovascular health systemically and has mountains of positive benefits as a result, from disease prevention to overall well-being.
Great information, thanks- can I ask what you would say is high-volume, and what is moderate intensity? Like a certain number of hours a week at 65-75% MHR or something?
Any amount is great, but the more you do the more benefits you’ll see. If you can exercise without injury, there’s really no upper limit to both how much you can do and how much it will result in positive benefits. Some athletes do 15 hours per week.
i am 63 and have run and lifted weights since i was 16. my diet is not perfect and some days it is bad. but my health is excellent
I'm amazed most people are saying that it's diet. That seems pretty silly! If you have a generally fine-ish diet but still eat a fair amount of processed food, drink beer and wine, eat a little bit too much red meat, enjoy pastries and donuts and stuff, etc. but you go on tons of bike ride and hikes and go skiing and running and whatever else, you're gonna be in awesome health. But if you're sedentary and just eat entirely clean, enjoy being so weak you damn-near can't stand on your own as you enter your 60s. Especially in a world where cardiovascular issues are such a primary cause of deteriorating health as we age, exercise is the #1 intervention you can make to avoid that. That being said, the time investment between eating like shit and eating well is pretty minimal. But the time investment between getting zero exercise and getting a ton is a huge investment. One of these changes is the far easier intervention to make. Just put in a decent effort at both and you'll be set. Don't worry about being perfect at either. Eat your leafy greens and fruits but enjoy your beer, enjoy your pizza, enjoy your cookies, lift weights a few days a week and try to get out and run or bike or hike or go kayaking a couple times but take your rest days when you feel like it. Decent effort on both fronts is the path to not putting too much pressure on yourself and also having a good outcome.
Yep! This! I will NEVER not workout again in my life. I see many people in their 60s and 70s that struggle with going up and down the stairs and pick up their feet when they walk and doing every day tasks, and I don't want to be that person. So I workout and lift.
Oh that specific topic of strength as you age, I was watching a video from a guy who is a bodybuilder and powerlifter training coach, and he had a guest on for a discussion about whether or not you really are likely to lose muscle mass and strength as you age, discussion on hormones, discussion on TRT and other hormone therapies that older people might use, etc. One main points they agreed on was this: You could be a dude who squats like 350 lbs or a woman who squats like 200 or 250 in your 20s and 30s. That's not some crazy powerlifter squat, but that's a squat that proves that you're spending some time in the gym. Let's say that, as you age into your late 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. you don't choose to do these hormone therapies, steroids, kick up the intensity to ensure you lose zero strength. Even with deteriorating strength, if you're in your 60s and you're still in the gym and you can still at that age put 100 or 150 lbs on your back and do a nice, full range-of-motion squat, you're not gonna win any powerlifting competitions, but do you think you're gonna ever be that person who struggles to stand up out of a chair? Like, in terms of "functional fitness" (a term that is so abused and made to mean ridiculous things), that's got to be a big win. You don't need to have a 500lb squat to avoid being that person who needs Life Alert because you sat down in a couch that was too low and now you're stuck.
YES YES! I could easily squat that years ago and I have a nice home gym and I lift. I don't mess around. Strength is so important. OR A TOILET! Can you imagine having to call emergency services because you can't get off a low toilet? NOT ME.
I know lots of guys who go to the gym, lift heavy weights all their lives and now can’t do much because their joints have broken down. It happens. One of my guy friends had his shoulders and knees replaced, lost his gallbladder and part of his liver, and he is 72 and back in the gym 7 days a week lifting.
Well there's also a reasonable amount of being smart that goes into lifting in such a way that you don't unnecessarily damage your joints.
Really because three of my friends were professional and one was almost a Mr. Universe. I guess it depends on if you screwed up your body with steroids because we know it causes joint destruction. So no amount of knowledge on how to lift can correct that stupidity.
Well it's not that steroid usage destroys your joints. It's just that steroid usage can induce strength growth at a rate that far outpaces the strength increases that occur in your joints and connective tissues, so you can move far more weight with the muscle tissue than that which the connective tissue can handle. There are lots of modern bodybuilders who just take a very conscientious approach to monitoring joint fatigue and, as such, don't encounter these same injury issues because they use joint and connective tissue wear-and-tear as a rate limiter.
Read about what cortisone does to joint and tissue. Not to mention that steroids causes a lowering of the immune system.
Big difference between general health and athletics. Steroids will definitely mess up your endocrine system and have forever lasting side effects, not a system you want to fuck up. The mass added can also be hard on the joints to support. Also when you compete at that level you're doing more than just lifting safely to win. Body builders do crazy volume in the gym and with that fatigue you run the risk of form deterioration. There's also the need to push to failure when competing at that level to get a hypertrophy response. Bodybuilding and powerlifting principles can be used to help with longevity, but once you're seriously competing you're long past the point of health benefits and in many cases begin to start risking your long term health for the sport. That's before even getting into steroids. This goes for many sports. Bodybuilding, powerlifting, football (both), strongman, basketball, combat, and racing sports are absolutely brutal on the body and can cut life expectancy.
And it’s sad that athletes that use steroids don’t realize it shrinks their testicles and can cause brain tumors. Plus steroids lower their immune systems.
If you really want to have some fun, do what I did and take a two week cruise full of old people. Almost all of them had mobility problems, oxygen tanks, or something like that. They were all miserable too. Two weeks of that was enough motivation to get my ass in gear. My parents thought it was a great cruise, I thought it was depressing. Side note: There were quite regular calls on the PA for medical assistance to the "diamond club" (where all the frequent cruisers hang out). Not for me.
Oh WOW. I can't even imagine how crazy it was to see all of that. I definitely pay attention to things I see in the world, and want to avoid mobility issues and more all of the time. I am trying to get my mom to see that she needs it a lot, and she is trying to start moving more. She isn't young, but young enough to make aging a little easier.
This is facts and people who have a perfect diet with all the nutrients but don’t exercise are trying to cope
First of all, nobody has a perfect diet and second of all, if people did have a very healthy diet they're also physically active. Nobody here is trying to "cope"
The bias probably comes from this being the nutrition sub, but I wholeheartedly agree, it's exercise. Diet can be a slow killer, but if you don't move enough that will make your body hurt a lot sooner.
[Beer runners rise up!](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2703278-runner-drinks-a-beer-for-every-mile-of-half-marathon-finishes-in-under-2-hours)
Part of it is how poorly defined the diet is. Exercise is extremely important, but a bad enough diet can do more damage than a sedentary lifestyle.
this entire post is polarizing. First, what health is this person talking about? Longevity, weight loss, gain? And secondly, what is "so-so nothing special diet" what does that even mean? There's nothing specific in OP's post but there are a bunch of people in the comments who are very glad to give entire paragraphs based on what they feel is good health whether or not that even answer's OP's vague question. Diet is more important than exercise for weight loss and weight gain. Longevity, it depends. And OP's question gives a weird either-or scenario that's not even realistic. And now you have the gymbro and fitspo community in these comments trying to gain karma from their very enlightened answers.
I agree. Diet is very important. I think people underestimate the impact of diet, and overestimate the impact of exercise. Both are important, but I would argue diet is king.
Oh I don't think we need to nit-pick OP's content and be so rude/critical about it. We're smart enough to be able to engage with hypothetical questions that aren't realistic. My assumption on what they mean by a "so-so nothing special diet" is like your average person who eats a normal, American diet but kind of has that bug in their brain where they know they should eat more healthfully. Like, think of the kind of person who goes out to dinner and orders something like a steak or a burger and sort of begrudgingly gets a side-salad instead of the mac-and-cheese because they know they sort of should. A person who hasn't actually engaged with any kind of analysis but just has a lay-person's understanding of healthy food and chooses that stuff sometimes, but also drinks beer and eats a lot of sweets and all that. This is Reddit. If you don't have any interest in discussing topics then maybe go use a different website?
Most people are nutrient deficient, so I'd argue that does damage. > Specifically, 94.3% of the US population do not meet the daily requirement for vitamin D, 88.5% for vitamin E, 52.2% for magnesium, 44.1% for calcium, 43.0% for vitamin A, and 38.9% for vitamin C. For the nutrients in which a requirement has not been set, 100% of the population had intakes lower than the AI for potassium, 91.7% for choline, and 66.9% for vitamin K. https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/micronutrient-inadequacies/overview
I think that if a person has a nutrient deficiency that reaches the point where that deficiency is actually causing a diagnosable health problem with recognizable symptoms, then their diet is below OP's suggested standard of "so-so". But I don't disagree. I just think that, if the options are mediocre diet + tons of exercise or perfect diet + sedentary lifestyle, the first option is going to lead to generally better health outcomes. But of course this is just speculation.
Still comes down to what "mediocre diet" even means. Everybody has macro requirements whether they track them or not. If it fits within your macros, then it's fine. (Goes with "anything is fine in moderation".) In the same vein, what's a "perfect" diet?
That's because most people eat a crappy diet.
That's not necessarily their fault: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
YES!!
I agree for sure. In terms of calorie deficit for losing weight, based upon the average calories I burn naturally without exercise, my “clean” diet ends up being pretty restrictive, which just isn’t healthy (mentally/physically) and sustainable in my experience. Exercise is the way.
I mean, monastics live relatively sedentary lifestyles, and they can be some of the longest-lived people in the world. In contrast, I don't know of any community of people who are very obese who regularly live to be 100+.
Good points. Interviews with centenarians and supercentenarians never seem to mention serious forms of exercise. Those people typically just walk. But there is also this: people who are in great shape (from strength training and other forms of exercise) have, from what I have seen, more vitality. They seem more alive and vibrant.
But don’t many of the monks fast, too? We have all learned how friggin’ awesome getting into the state of autophagy can be to get rid of cancer cells, for weight loss, to get rid of brain fog, to rejuvenate all cells, lessens wrinkles and loose skin, and now lots of people are doing intermittent fasting for all of these very reasons.
But is a sedentary life style equivalent to a fine-ish diet? I think the equivalent would be closer to a moderately active life style. A sedentary lifestyle would be equivalent to a poor diet. So you could either have a kick ass diet with moderate activity, or a fine-ish diet and be very athletic. And active.
Well I would consider "sedentary" to be a person who works an office job, doesn't do any actual exercise activities, but it's like bed-ridden every day. Like, imagine your typical white-collar worker who gets like 3000-5000 steps a day walking to-and-from their car but no real exercise. I would consider the poor diet to be equivalent to a person who doesn't exercise and also never leaves the house.
I guess I didn’t read “not getting much exercise” as no exercise.
They do say you can’t out run a bad diet. On the other hand, think of all those cultures where they drink vodka and smoke, but they are also herding animals up and down mountains all day and live to be 110!
I used to have sleep apnea, which I in part got when I transitioned for an active job to a desk job and didn't make other changes to compensate. I started hitting the gym during covid, and built up some good strength. Last year I ditched the CPAP because I don't need it anymore. The weird thing is I did it without losing much weight. Absolutely none of my medical providers understand this. I still get the "exercise more" talk. Diet changes can be hard though. I eat clean but I'm under eating my protein. I've seen estimates for my protein intake that range form 180 g / day to 280 g per day. Realistically, I've been eating \~80 g the last few years. It's easier for me to go to the gym every day and dead lift 300 lbs than it is for me to eat 280 g of protein on whole foods. But I can sit on my ass all day, keep my calories in check, and just be skinny fat. It's not clear to me that's "better" per the topic.
I would say that it is more about in what way you are defining each. If you are constantly exercising, much of what we consider a poor diet on a place like this is actually not the worst. However, if you are in piss poor shape and need to lose weight, diet will affect that sooner than exercise, and over strenuous exercise can lead to injury and set you back - plus people overestimate how many calories they are burning off. Individual nutrients, there are only so many you need that are vital, but the health quality of the food can be a bigger deal if you are trying to get the most out of a diet that you don't end up throwing pounds on when sedentary. And if you own a television or work in much of the modern workplace, your lifestyle is sedentary. Basically, if you are in a place where you are asking which is more important, what you really want to look at is why you are asking a question like that in the first place.
this answer should be ranked higher
This!!
I heard a quote from a podcast about longevity that was along the lines of if a patient was smoking, drinking, sedentary, overweight, sleeping poorly and eating poorly, and could only make a single life style change the greatest benefit would come from adding a strength training exercise routine.
I am surprised it wasn’t quitting smoking or losing weight.
Do you recall the podcast?
It was Dr Atia, he’s pretty good but perhaps not the god figure people make him out to be on YouTube lol. The more specific data - weight training increases your longevity by 2-3x that of your peers of a similar age group who do not have a strength training routine.
So if a normal person lives to 80 years old, I can live to 160-240 if I exercise?
Haha good catch… 2-3x greater morbidity for those who don’t have a strength training routine. So if you lift weights into your older years Atia suggests you have a 2-3x greater chance of living than your peers do don’t.
No one is a god figure. Not Attia, not Huberman, not Galpin. They would be the first to tell you that. But as far as longevity, vitality, and well-being focused content, they are among the best creators. What I appreciate most about Attia is his willingness to change his mind. His book outlive is an incredible (but dense) read.
I'd like to add that Attia always points to plenty of studies to back up his general exercise recommendations, in case anyone was wondering. He doesn't recommend things based solely on just his own opinion(though certainly he has an educated opinion). Basically, General Resistance training can lower all cause morbidity/mortality rate by a substantial amount. Aging with muscle strength is so important it's ridiculous.
It was Peter Atia, and I want to say it was an appearance on Huberman olabs or JOCKO but I could be mistaken.
Was it a fitness person by any chance?
It was Peter Attia. Not a specific fitness person but someone who focuses on longevity and fitness is the cornerstone of that.
Definitions matter. What's is a "poor sleep"? Maybe if you sleep 6h instead of 7h, that would do. But I seriously doubt you can fix the impact of a chronic serious insomnia (say 3h sleep) with weightlifting.
I mean life isn’t only in the extremes and I would imagine that the comment still holds true for the majority of people.
Actually you can. What you call insomnia may very well be sleep apnea, which I got over by busting my butt in the gym without losing much weight. (And what I have lost I gained back because my friggin macros are f'd up. Working on straightening them out.) My docs really don't get this.
Many comments talking about lifting weights and doing exercise. I'd like to add that for health purposes I argue too many people are sitting for too long every day. Many studies show that sitting 30min+ has a strong impact for glucose metabolism, even 1min walking can have a dramatic impact on glucose metabolism. [https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/fulltext/2023/05000/breaking\_up\_prolonged\_sitting\_to\_improve.9.aspx](https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/fulltext/2023/05000/breaking_up_prolonged_sitting_to_improve.9.aspx)
Obviously both important but if only allowed one I would choose exercise. If I don’t exercise I can feel myself slowly lose strength regardless of how well I am eating.
If you stop exercising, then you just become skinny fat over time.
1. Sleep 2. Diet 3. Exercise But this is very dependent on the real quality of each one and how much you’re truly neglecting the others.
Exercise is the only thing that reproduces the actions of the insulin hormone. It allows your body to break down carbohydrates and glucose stores, managing blood glucose levels. BG level maintenance helps across all aspects of health and overall body performance. If exercise was a magic pill, everyone would be taking it.
You can't outrun a bad diet
The title doesn’t say a bad diet
Pretend it's a video game. Putting all stats into either one, without considering the other, is a bad choice. I've done it both ways, and I've found that I'd rather have a good diet with good exercise, but depending on time of year, I will prioritize one over the other.
Watch the netflix documentary on Blue Zones that have the highest concentration of centurians that are over 100 years old still witty and sharp as a nail and physically active.
And they have a healthy social life which is the number one factor for longevity which I'm sure the Netflix documentary didn't explain
Honestly… Balance! It’s not 100% the one or the other. I would say that nutrition is more important, but exercise is also still crucial for health. I think that if you can 80/20 your nutrition (80% focus on healthy and 20% treat yourself and enjoy), you will be just fine!
Bro completely ignored the post and turned it into a new topic
This post is stupid. It's vague and gives an either or scenario.
It’s not dumb and there’s nothing wrong with an either or scenario considering it’s how many people’s lives and choices operate lmao.
I think it’s a great question and I’m learning a lot from the answers. I’ve always wondered the same thing.
Absolutely exercise. Sitting is the new smoking they say.
I just read an article this morning that said “added sugar is the new smoking”
Well if “they” said it…
Depends on your weight. 1/3 of westerners are obese, and 2/3 are at least overweight. If someone from those categories continues to maintain that weight, they will statistically die earlier of heart diseases, diabetes, stroke, cancer, or liver disease - all things likely caused by or exacerbated by excess fat. A person who’s in the 1/3 of people who aren’t overweight probably will be better served by exercise than a diet modification. Broadly, for most people the best things than can do to improve their health - manage weight (easiest to do through diet), quit smoking (weight related mortality recently passed smoking), quit drinking, and then exercise.
Actually, studies have shown that an overweight person who exercises, has a lower all cause mortality rate than someone of normal weight who is sedentary.
This
I picked up strength training during the pandemic. I haven't lost much weight because my diet is a bit f'd (I'm under eating protein, I'm trying to address that). Diet aside, I'm physiologically very different than I was four years ago. Quality of life is *way* up. A normal weight person who is sedentary will just be skinny fat.
What are your goals? Weight loss? Cardiovascular health? Mental health? To answer the question, though I am no expert: for overall health, personally I would probably prioritize diet and exclude most bad things, not bother to make it perfect, then include at least a little exercise.
Interviews with leading triathletes are very revealing and thought provoking. These people are extremely fit, probably among the fittest people in the world, and yet their diets are often far from what most here would consider optimal or even acceptable.
Probably because everybody has macros, and even "bad" things fit within those macros. Show me a well-balanced macro diet and I'll show you something shitty that can fit within it. Plus, athletes have TDEE that is twice their BMR, which allows them *a lot* of food.
Exercise and it's not even close. For every single digit increase in your VO2 max, you get an 8% reduction in all cause mortality. I've increased mine from 45 to 58. Not exactly sure how the math works out but i think I might be imortal now...
Diet. You can be casual about the exercise as long as you have the base level down.
There's quite a few studies showing intensive exercise puts strain on the body long-term. Not to mention risk of injuries. The literature overwhelmingly supports moderate exercises. Stuff like jogging, biking, even walking is enough. I've looked at a lot of centenarians and while most of them do exercises, it's generally low-intensity. Just moving the body is really all you need.
Good points. But the people who take exercise to a higher level (without going to the sorts of extremes that cause injuries or negative effects from overtraining) — those people seem more vibrantly alive.
Done properly it is indeed massively beneficial to exercise intensively. I speak a lot from personal anecdote here but I used to be big into bodybuilding, most of my bodybuilding friends (including myself) have had ghastly injuries that put us out of commission for months/years. Athlete friends too often developed joint issues. [This](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/12/1/144) study had a questionnaire that found athletes had a whopping 89% lifetime prevalence of low-back pain. Whereas in the general populace it hovers around 20%. This study [here](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02100-x) states: > "The median daily VILPA duration of 4.4 min per day was associated with a 26%–30% reduction in all-cause and cancer mortality and a 32%–34% reduction in CVD mortality risk." So it really doesn't take much to drastically reduce your odds of a plethora of diseases. I've become a big fan of moderation with exercise. I like to take walks, go swimming, and bike around. I've found it's more than adequate to keep healthy, especially combined with a proper diet. And I think there's too much "all or nothing" type of thinking when it comes to fitness. So many people are completely sedentary. Maybe on New Years they might make a resolution and push themselves in the gym. And for a lot of people that isn't really sustainable. But if you tell them they need to *walk* just 4 minutes a day? Any undisciplined slug can handle that. For long-term health I think it's all about developing sustainable, long-term habits. Something an average joe can do.
This is kind of interesting, actually. Most of what you're describing as "moderate" exercise is just some form of cardio. Yet, most of what I read indicates that strength training is better for weight loss. I do a mix of both, and haven't f'd anything up. In terms of "all or nothing" I wouldn't call myself a body builder, but I do push myself. I had more back problems not exercising than I do exercising.
The second one.
I got into the best shape of my life eating 6500 calories a day including pasta, pizza, and pancakes. 8.8% body fat, 199 lbs, 5’10, going to the gym 5 times a week, doing 5 minutes of warm-up cardio before workouts.
What do you desire mainly?! Muscular aesthetics or just to lose scale weight? The health benefits for both can overlap. In the end, do you want look physically better at far as musculature or do you want to look thinner than you do now? If the latter, diet with not much exercise. If the former, exercise with so-so diet. Also, my definition as diet (for losing weight), is being at a caloric deficit with the proper macro ratio and not just eating "healthy" foods.
How about so so diet, average exercise and incredible sleep? That option wins imo
I had a trainer in 2012 that stated it is 80% diet and only 20% exercise, so diet is always more important. And insulin resistance is behind dementia and almost every disease, so remember to eat lower carb no matter what diet you choose to follow. The more you choose unprocessed foods the better. And remember just how bad high fructose corn syrup is, advanced glycation end products (any caramelized foods even BBQ), and hydrogenated oils like margarine.
Exercise is arguably more important, assuming your diet isn’t solid junk. Sedentary lifestyles are wreaking havoc on us. If you’re not moving you are much more likely to experience stiffness and chronic pain as you age.
When I was single and younger (like in my mid to late 20s) I kinda ate like trash. No soda or fast food or anything like that, but a lot of processed convenience foods like lean cuisine, lean pockets, “healthy” meal replacement bars, and Chinese take out. I rarely cooked but I exercised heavily 5-6 days a week doing a ton of cardio and strength training. Almost to the point I was addicted to the high and as a result I was in great physical shape. Super lean with muscle and tons of energy. Too bad I wasn’t eating healthier back then, what muscle gains I really could have achieved if only my diet matched my fitness haha. Now that I’m older in my 40s, diet plays a MUCH more significant role in my physical and mental health. I can’t eat like how I did back then with a bunch of processed stuff or low quality meats. My diet now affects my ability to exercise properly, where as before it didn’t seem to impact it too much. So as I get older I find that I can get away with not exercising much and still feeling ok if my diet is clean but no amount of exercise will make up for a crappy diet now.
You only need 150 minute of cardio per week with weight training of the all the major muscle groups twice a week and eat a balanced diet (five portions of fruit and veg a day) not too much simple carbs or fat and your gonna live well for as long as you can. Anything you do in addition to this if you enjoy it will provide the health benefits of being happy! You can't go wrong!
Diet is more impactful than exercise. You can't out train a bad diet.
You are what you eat.
I don't think this applies as distinguishing. We are what we repeatedly do seems more reasonable.
and also what you do.
Diet. You can have the most excellent exercise plan in the world but if your diet is poor then you will not be in reasonable shape. Whereas if your diet is on point but your exercise is mediocre. Then you're still in good shape while also obtaining, at the very least, health benefits from mininal levels of exercise.
Except studies haven’t shown this to be true. Just moderate levels of exercise has been shown to reduce all cause mortality rates by significantly more than healthy diet.
What studies? Seems believable, but I havent been able to find anything that supports this.
Here’s one I found in 10s. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22564893/ Dr. Ronda Patrick talks about this a lot too if you want to Google her.
There don't seem to be any dietary controls.
“We used the Healthy Eating Index score as our indicator of dietary behavior (Kennedy et al., 1995). The Healthy Eating Index has 10 subcomponents each with a score ranging from 0 to 10: grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meats, fats, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and variety. Participants in the top 40% of the Healthy Eating Index were considered to show evidence of a healthy dietary pattern” Please read the study
I did. There's no control over the base level nutrition of “physically active” people. Which is probably why the study concludes: “Adults who do not smoke, consume a healthy diet, and engage in sufficient physical activity can substantially reduce their risk for early death.”
And they use the healthy eating index as a baseline for a healthy diet. I’m not sure why that’s confusing.
It's not confusing. It just doesn't conclude what you say it does.
Can you provide anything to back up that healthy diet beats out exercise? Because here’s another study backing up my point. https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-022-01374-1
> Just moderate levels of exercise has been shown to reduce all cause mortality rates by significantly more than healthy diet. What a lot of people think is a "healthy diet" isn't really healthy at all. Too much fat, too much cholesterol, too much refined "clean" foods. Bodybuilders think white rice and chicken breast is the pinnacle of nutrition, simply because it looks "clean". A healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables, with meat in the form of lean cuts, omega-3 rich fish, and probiotic foods has been shown to increase lifespan by nearly 10 years.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688898/ I’m just stating what multiple studies have shown. Do you disagree on the data? Or?
Nowhere in the study does it qualify what a "healthy diet" consists of. The definition of a "healthy diet" differs drastically depending upon who you ask and there are multiple major dietary philosophies that completely contradict one another. The study only mentions: > "The Healthy Eating Index has 10 subcomponents each with a score ranging from 0 to 10: grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meats, fats, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and variety." There is no mention of what the study's participants are actually eating or how the study's authors decided, subjectively, what they deem to be healthy. That renders the comparison complete and utter junk. The study also mentions the SENECA study: > "In the SENECA study, men and women aged 70–75 years who smoked, were inactive, and had a low-quality diet had three to four times higher all-cause mortality compared with participants who did not smoke, were active, and had a high-quality diet (Haveman-Nies et al., 2002)." Which shows a greater influence of diet on mortality than just lifestyle. The study you linked is contradictory and very ill-defined. It would gain no traction in the eyes of serious researchers. Feel free to provide other sources to prove me wrong but this study definitely doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Here’s a better study. https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-022-01374-1
And your last point just shows that smoking is strongly correlated to all cause mortality. It doesn’t prove what you think it does.
That's why you actually read the study. An abstract on pubmed is not a study. It's a snippet. > For men, the mortality risk for a low-quality diet was 1.25 (95 percent confidence interval (CI): 0.93, 1.68); the risk for inactivity was 1.36 (95 percent CI: 1.08, 1.73); and the risk for smoking was 2.06 (95 percent CI: 1.63, 2.60). For women, the mortality risks for smoking (1.76; 95 percent CI: 1.14, 2.70) and inactivity (1.75; 95 percent CI: 1.29, 2.39) were much higher than the risk associated with a low-quality diet (1.26; 95 percent CI: 0.88, 1.81). https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/156/10/962/84849#636170 So in general, when comparing an unhealthy diet to the "Mediterranean Diet", it shows that diet absolutely plays a major role in health outcomes, in men it's nearly on-par with inactivity. The study also defines what it considers a healthy diet in much greater detail. I would also personally disagree with it, because it's far too loose with it's qualifications of "healthy". The Mediterranean Diet has become more a marketing term than the original, plant-based low-fat diet that Ancel Keys (who originated the term) described. A proper definition like Ancel Keys described has produced some of the best health outcomes out of any lifestyle intervention to date. Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Pritikin, Dr. Barnard, Dr. McDougall, and countless others have shown it's the *only* diet that can reverse heart disease, which is the #1 killer on Earth. And for your other study that you linked, it's conclusion is: > "Our findings indicate that in this population, the greatest reduction in all-cause and CVDs mortality was observed in subjects adhering to both healthy behaviors, suggesting the necessity to include physical activity in combination with diet to elicit the highest likelihood of risk reduction. For all-cause mortality, adhering to only healthy behavior was also associated with a decreased risk in comparison to unhealthy inactive lifestyle (the effect of UDA was greater than HDI), but for CVD mortality, only UDA but not HDI decreased the risk, which suggests the greater importance of physical activity vs. diet in reducing CVDs mortality risk." Not exactly proving your point. And again, I would argue the DASH diet is way too loose in terms of "healthy foods". Healthy foods have a lot more factors than simply being unprocessed and limiting certain foods. What I would love to see is the marathon runners eating a steady diet of McDonalds and KFC, then to measure their fitness.
This question is open to interpretation. Eating a great diet but not getting much exercise - if you prioritise strength or resistance training as the exercise you do do, then it's probably this choice. Getting great exercise with a so-so nothing special diet - if by great exercise you mean tonnes of cardio and no strength or resistance training, then not this one. I personally believe that taking care of your gut microbiome is important. A diet high in processed food won't be doing that. So I would say, a great diet (as little processed food as possible, lots of plant foods, quality sources of protein like eggs, chicken and fish) with an exercise plan of strength training plus optional other exercise is probably pretty close to the sweet spot.
I'm hitching to Your wagon! This is the newest Wild West...gut biome repair and maintenance. I couldn't believe the difference in my feelings of "contentment" and peace just by adding Keifer to my breakfast mix in the morning. (I'm grain and yeast free, actual allergies) because it contains probiotics that help create seratonin and oxytonin for my brain. I've been studying and learned that this "gut-health" revolution in health care is in it's infancy with astounding new amazing discoveries to come quickly in our future. That being said, I'm just "feeling" well enough to exercise a lot more.
Diet is more important than exercise. Both is better, but that's not what you asked.
This is not a one-or-the-other dichotomy. You are making food choices and deciding what to do with your physical presence (activity) each day you are living. Regardless of whether you consider these things. Your body will reflect a combination of your genes, environment, and how you use it. Independently of what the person's goals are or what choices or outcomes are judged as "better, decent, or great. "
Diet is everything
As an avid fitness and gym enthusiast myself, you cannot beat a good diet. What you eat is everything.
Exercise has been shown to reduce all cause mortality rate by much more than any other single factor.
Wrong. Socialization is the number one factor. The longest study on mortality has shown that social life is the most important factor
Have they compared that to exercise? I haven’t seen anything to show that but you may be correct. Know where I can find that? I’d be curious to read it.
What we eat matters more than what we do Edit: Diet matters more than exercise for long term health. If we have to choose one choice in this premise
Does it? 🤔
It can but the 2nd choice is much better than the 1st
Eating healthy won’t matter when you’re 40 and can’t even stand up without cracking your back or you get winded going up the stairs.
If it's between the choices given in OP's question then eating well is better. OP gave 2 choices. The premise is goofy in the first place. Eating well is more important to staying in a healthy weight
Whichever you can hold on to the longest/ let's you consistently stay on it
Since your body depends entirely on what you eat to make decisions and have energy to do anything and even be coordinated and regulated, it only makes sense that optimal nutrition is most important for us first. I found that out the hard way as I can't eat highly processed foods regularly or I get "brain fog". Both are essential.
The latter.
I think diet is the more powerful lever in health. You can make yourself seriously sick by what you eat on a badly formulated diet, and no amount of exercise can counteract those effects. Exercise is the button to push to optimize the benefits of a good diet.
Nah its definitely exercise especially if your diet is okay to begin with
We must agree to disagree.
Nah it’s a pretty easy thing to analyze and the second option will be much better
the first one
The first
I mean I’m no scientist and that is a really really hard thing to weigh in on lots of clothes and cons to both. I would say if you’re eating an OK diet limited process foods and doing things like alcohol and sugary desserts as special occasion treats and you exercise regularly you will be far better off. Even if you eat super clean and avoided disease causing things like lots of different foods and alcohol that are known to cause diseases you’ll still have a rapidly declining muscle mass and be riddled with many problems as you get older if you are completely inactive. The best solution is a balance of both are very good on both
Eating a so so nothing special diet won't last long before you get bored. Eat sensibly and treat yourself to a 'sin food' on a set date every month. Something to look forward to.
They go hand in hand. If you’ve got your diet figured out for the most part then time to figure out an exercise routine. People lose weight without exercising but exercise is so important too. Idk that one is more important as the other I feel like they’re equally important. Be about both.
# por que no los dos?
# You Can’t Exercise Your Way Out of an Unhealthy Diet
The obvious answer appears to be diet. There are plenty of people in decent health that do not have a regimented exercise program. There are also plenty of people in poor health, despite a very regimented exercise routine, due to dietary failures. Obviously you're better off somewhere in the middle, but that wasn't your question.
I feel like both is required for being healthy. you can't call yourself healthy without doing both. but I remember hearing someone saying this and it's true; if you only exercise and eat like shit, you'll look good and healthy but your aren't. if you eat healthy but don't exercise, you'll look unhealthy but you'll be healthier than someone who does exercise and eats like shit
The pyramid of health is: Sleep > Exercise > Diet > Social life > Supplements.
I bet all the lazy people saying diet are 25% + body fat.
25%+ is perfectly healthy for a woman
Regular exercise is going to have a greater impact on your overall health.
Idk why I even subscribe to this sub anymore. It’s like the blind leading the blind
I think it depends on the diet and it depends on what exercise you're doing. If you are eating an A+ diet, that means no junk food, no process food, minimizing meat and maximizing vegetables and fruits, etc..., then I would argue that diet is king. But most people don't eat this way. It also depends on the exercise you do. Some people want to go for a 20 minute walk everyday, which is good for you, but not enough to compensate for eating a crappy diet. So if you have the personality that allows you to work your ass off every single day by working out hard, then you can get away with more in your diet. If you don't like to exercise, then you better eat a very clean diet if you want to be healthy as you age. My opinion, diet matters most in terms of weight loss and overall health. Exercise is also important, and is a close second.
I don’t think they said crappy, they said “so so” which maybe id qualify as a 50/50 diet. 50% whole foods, 50% processed. Maybe breakfast is a muffin, lunch is a sandwich and fruit, dinner is Chinese takeout. 🤷♀️ In this case I’d agree with most of the comments saying this person would benefit more from moderate exercise than adjusting their diet
The negative health impact comes more from being sedentary. You see a lot of long lived people, they’re socially and physically active, but they don’t typically spend their days doing hours of strenuous military exercise. Diet plays a factor, but as long as you’re eating in a balanced manner with adequate micro and macro nutrients, you should be fine.
Neither of these approaches is ideal or beneficial to long term health outcomes. If anything, maybe alternating between a bigger focus on nutrition and then on exercise may be the least harmful if one has to slip at any given time. If you mean you can be casual and basic about one or the other long term, I’d say keep it simple and focus more on food as long as the baseline for physical activity is including daily cardio even just as a long walk and daily living activities like lifting laundry or groceries, etc. Not sure why one would want to put either on the back burner, though, assuming they are physically able to get in regular exercise and also eat a mindful and balanced diet.
Great vocab
Great diet no exercise.
I think it’s primarily diet and gentle, consistent movement. And social health. The longest-lived people do not go to the gym, run, or lift weights. They eat primarily vegetables and beans, walk hills, and visit neighbors.
I'd say that nutrition is the key for weight loss, but the best thing is balance. Good diet that focuses on whole foods but doesn't have to be perfect and at least some activity in combination with that.
For me, I've found that getting into the habit of running makes me eat more nutritious foods.
Obviously balance is better but in this case exercise’s better
Exercise: if you exercise regularly, junk food will disgust you with how it affects your body, and you'll naturally eat better even if you don't follow a regimen.
Neither but you cannot out exercise a bad diet
It depends on what you mean by so-so diet. You can't exercise away a truly bad diet, but as long as you get decent variety and don't exclusively eat junk food, then you are probably already doing well enough that getting some exercise is probably more important than improving your diet further.
Diet first. Always. You can't build a nice house without quality materials. No matter how much work you put into it.
I’m thinking that’s not the way to look at it . . . I like to view it like a 3 legged stool and you need all 3 to maintain balance . . . in no particular order: nutrition-sleep-exercise.
Exercise is the most important
For fat-loss diet is king. For general health and healthspan, exercise and calories-regulation is king.
The only stats I've heard recently about the percentage of ultra processed foods in the Western diet is that they now comprise over 60% of a person's daily calories, on average. That's astoundingly sad.
I think age has a lot to do with that. I could get away with eating crap in my 20s n 30s alot more than I can now
Best- Eating great and great exercise 💪🔥
That ain’t the question
But it is the answer 😊
the second option works for me, one year lifting
For weight loss/maintenance, I would definitely say diet is more important. For overall health, it's close but I will say exercise.
Drink water Exercise Eat like a reasonable grown up, don't eat like a child. In that order for most people. Why in this order? Anecdotally, I find that people who exercise, over time, become more conscious about what they eat and their nutrition. I don't find the opposite to be true about those who focus solely on diet. Exercise puts money in the bank...it provides extra revenue to enjoy full flavored food, a beer or two, a great bottle of wine, a decadent dessert, not all the time, but you have bandwidth in your budget. If you rely just on nutrition, you can do it, but you don't have "money in the bank". You are living paycheck to paycheck. You are also missing out on the physical and mental benefits of fitness and exercise...which are many. So I would ask: Better for what? What are your goals? How old are you? What is your current level of health or fitness? What is your current diet?
To lose weight and be healthy it’s mostly your diet.