How do nutrition and exercise affect a person's weight?

Question

I really don't understand how this works?

Answer 1

Eating correctly is the most important thing for your health, the second would be exercising.

If you can not count calories or weight the food you eat, than you should divide that quantity in five meals per day, every 3 hours, the last meal being no later than 7 o'clock in the evening.

That means you'll have 3 main meals and 2 snacks between them per day. You will no longer feel the hunger.

The snacks would be consisting of a fruit or an yogurt (30-40 calories), and your body will consume those with 70-80 calories, thus making you loose weight (negative calories).

But EXERCISE at least two times a week to boost your energy and confidence.

AND BE POSITIVE ABOUT IT!

Kiss, Vera M  

Answer 2

If you eat fatty foods and don't excercise to burn that extra energy it's giving you it will turn into "stored energy" aka fat. Healthy foods release their energy slowly so your more likely to burn that energy off easier... I think. Exercising and sweating just makes you burn off the calories... Do you get it?? Sorry if this doesn't help.

Answer 3

The answer is: it depends.  There are a number of scenarios you have to consider.

Calories from food are what gives our body the energy it needs to run its processes.  Without enough Calories, we would starve to death.

Poor nutrition (such as a diet filled with processed food and sugar) would surely increase your bodyweight.  Sugar (a simple carbohydrate) is rapidly absorbed by your body and is the most likely form of energy (compared to complex carbs, fat, and protein) to be stored as bodyfat through the action of insulin (a hormone secreted by your pancreas to convert carbohydrates into storage fat).

Increasing your activity level (i.e. exercising more) will help you burn off the Calories that you eat.  If you are very active, it is likely those excess Calories from sugar which would be stored as bodyfat will be burned off and not stored.

You probably hear a lot these days about how fat will make you fat.  This isn't necessarily the case as carbohydrates tend to raise your insulin levels, and thus put your body in an environment where it has a tendency to store bodyfat.  This is partly why a diet like the Atkin's diet (a low carbohydrate, high fat diet) works, though you don't need to go to extremes like that unless you are in desperate need for shedding pounds.  Eating large amounts of fat can still cause you to gain weight though, especially if you aren't exercising enough.  If you don't believe that carbs tend to cause excess weight gain more than fat, you can run the experiment on yourself by trying the different meal plans for while and you'll get the picture.

Exercise itself does not necessarily cause you to lose weight.  You have to make sure you aren't eating in excess and that you are exercising a great deal in order to lose a considerable amount of weight.  Restricting your Calories and increasing your activity level is a sure way to burn off excess bodyfat, though Caloric restriction often times has the negative effect of decreasing your metabolism (the rate at which you burn Calories) and making you feel miserable and hungry (because restricting Calories actually tricks your body into thinking it is starving, so it responds by conserving its resources).  Increasing your dietary protein intake will help, but it is by no means a safe method to lose weight.  If your carbohydrate and fat intakes are too low relative to protein, your body will convert protein to usable forms of energy such as glucose.  Doing so requires energy input, and will raise your metabolism to levels that are potentially unnaturally high.  You could end up starving yourself if you eat too much protein, but this level would be hard to achieve if you eat a balanced diet with plenty of fat and carbs, so don't worry.  If you use lots of protein shakes or eating lots of skinless chicken b*****s, then you may have something to be concerned about here.

By far the best way to lose excess bodyfat is to NOT restrict Calories (to avoid the adverse effect of decreasing your metabolism), but instead just cut out the processed food and sugar and get plenty of exercise.  Choose whole foods over refined foods (like whole grain bread over white bread; or fresh fruit over candy) as these tend to be higher in vitamins and minerals, are less energy dense, and more properly processed by your body, contributing not only to a healthy bodyweight but also longevity.

Believe it or not, certain types of exercise can help you gain weight if this is what you wish to achieve.  Strength training (i.e. weightlifting) is the primary type of exercise that helps one build muscle mass.  If you want to gain muscle mass, you need to lift weights frequently and consume plenty of Calories.  This is actually a scenario where you actually want to err on the side of eating MORE food/Calories because not doing so will hamper your goal of building muscle mass.  Calories are needed by the body to gain muscle mass or fat.  Your muscles are made of protein, so it is important to consume plenty of protein.  Don't overconsume though.  Eating more than 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight is likely to not have any added benefit.  Besides, your body primarily relies on carbs and fat for energy, and having plenty of these in your diet will allow the protein you eat to be used only for muscle building rather than energy.

Regardless if you want to gain (muscle mass) or lose weight (excess bodyfat), you always want to steer clear of eating processed food.  Calorie counting (i.e. keeping track of food labels and calculating how many Calories you eat vs. how many you burn) is NOT at all necessary, as the common theme of burning more Calories than you take in is just simply not true.  It is far more complicated, and food actually has a "thermic effect" (manipulates the speed of metabolism often by increasing it).  Calories have the purpose of being used as energy for your body's cells, but 1 Calorie from your food does not mean that your cells will get 1