If you've ever Googled, Is diet or exercise more important for weight loss? you've probably come across this seemingly arbitrary formula for dropping pounds: It's 80 percent diet and 20 percent exercise. But where did that 80/20 ratio come from? And what does it
The key to weight loss is achieving a negative energy balance, or taking in less calories than you burn, says Albert Matheny, R.D., C.S.C.S., co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab and PROMIX Nutrition. To shed a single pound, you need to achieve a 3, 500 calorie deficit. So if you're following the 80/20 ratio, you'd want to burn approximately 750 calories through exercise and cut an additional 3, 000 calories through dieting, says Matheny. That’s a total deficit of 3, 750 calories for the week.
The reason dieting is so much more effective than exercise is because it takes a ton of activity to create a 500 to 700 calorie deficit through working out. Essentially, you’d need to run seven to 10 miles a day to lose one pound a week, says Holly Lofton, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and director of the weight management program at New York University's Langone Medical Center. The average person can’t keep this up, especially without increasing their caloric intake.
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“I see this in patients all the time, ” says Lofton. “People think, ‘If I run the marathon or start going to boot camp, I’m going to lose weight’ but they’re often disappointed when they don’t.”
You don't need to hit an exact 80/20 ratio to shed pounds, but it is important for people to focus primarily on diet when they're trying to lose weight. You can lose weight without exercise, but you cannot lose weight if your nutrition counteracts your energy expenditure through exercise, Matheny says.
Sure, it’s much easier to create a 500-calorie deficit through diet alone than it is to burn 500 calories through exercise, says Lofton. But when you combine a sweat sesh and a healthy diet, you don't have to make many dramatic changes at all. For example, instead of eliminating 500 calories by painstakingly striking all dairy from your diet, you could burn 250 calories at the gym and then cut another 250 calories just by skipping your nightly bowl of ice cream.
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“A combination of diet and exercise is best at any stage of weight loss, ” says Mathenny. “Exercise should be a mix of strength training and cardiovascular training, not just cardio. Both modes of exercise burn calories and, in turn, lead to stored fat being used as a source of energy.”
Keep in mind that the body tends to resist weight loss when you start eating less, which can lead to a plateau, says Lofton. That's what we call starvation mode—and it happens to everybody who successfully sheds pounds. Though your metabolism might actually start to slow as you lose weight, you can speed it up again by working out—and especially by strength training.
The bottom line: What you eat matters more than how you work it off, but fitness will push you past plateaus and help you achieve your ultimate goals.
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“How much exercise is enough for what?” asks David Bassett Jr., PhD, a professor and the department head of exercise physiology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He explains that, before you make a decision on how much you need, you should have a good idea of your exercise goals: Are you exercising for physical fitness, weight control, or as a way of keeping your stress levels low?
For general health benefits, a routine of daily walking may be sufficient, says Susan Joy, MD, codirector of the Kaiser Permanente Sports Medicine Center in Sacramento and a team physician for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.
If your goal is more specific — say, to lower your blood pressure, improve your cardiovascular fitness, or lose weight — you’ll need either more frequent exercise or a higher intensity of exercise.
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“The medical literature continues to support the idea that exercise is medicine, ” says Jeffrey E. Oken, MD, acting chief of staff at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Illinois. “Regular exercise can help lower risk of premature death, help control your blood pressure, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, combat obesity, improve your lung function, and help treat depression.”
According to 2019 guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for general health adults should aim for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity each week. (1) When repeated regularly, aerobic activity improves cardiorespiratory fitness. Running, brisk walking, swimming, and cycling are all forms of aerobic activity.
Additionally, HHS encourages balance and stretching activities to enhance flexibility, as well as muscle-strengthening workouts two or more times a week. Older adults should focus more on balance exercises — like tai chi, which has been shown to improve stability and decrease fracture risk in older adults
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The most recent version of the HHS physical activity guidelines eliminated the longstanding recommendation that exercise had to last at least 10 minutes to be counted toward your weekly requirement. According to the current guidelines, any increment of physical activity can be counted toward your weekly goal.
“This may stem from the concern that if people can’t do 10 minutes, they may get discouraged and do nothing, ” says Neal Pire, CSCS, an exercise physiologist based in Englewood, New Jersey. According to HHS, nearly 80 percent of adults are not meeting those minimum aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercise benchmarks. (1)
The HHS encourages more playtime for preschool-aged children to enhance growth and development. This includes a mix of unstructured and active play, like biking, jumping, or swimming.
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Children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 17 should do one hour of moderate or vigorous physical activity a day. The majority of those 60 minutes should be spent doing aerobic activity — that which involves repetitive use of the large muscles, getting heart rate and breathing up. (1)
According to the guidelines, children and adolescents should do muscle-strengthening and bone-strengthening activities, like jumping or exercises that use body weight for resistance, three times per week. (1)
Another important part of the HHS physical activity guidelines for all adults is a warning about the health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle. The guidelines recommend adults should move more and sit less throughout the day. The risks of sedentary lifestyle are becoming more well-studied, with a review from 2020 noting the wide-ranging negative effects of being inactive on mortality, heart disease, cancer risk, diabetes risk, depression, joint issues, and cognitive impairment.
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Research consistently shows that, to lose weight, integrating exercise into your routine helps. For example, a 2017 review concluded that consistently exercising is linked with increased weight loss and weight maintenance efforts over the long term. (3)
Still, if you’re trying to control your weight through exercise, the general HHS activity guidelines might not be sufficient; you’re likely going to need to devote some extra time to exercise.
According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), 150 to 250 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity yields only modest weight-loss results, and to lose a significant amount of weight, you may need to perform moderate-intensity exercise more than 250 minutes per week (in addition to dietary intervention). (4) So how much exercise do you need in a day? That equates to about one hour, five days per week.
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The government suggests that those looking to lose a substantial amount of weight, or more than 5 percent of their body weight, should do more than 300 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week to reach their goals. (1)
, women who performed high-intensity interval exercise lost the same amount of weight and body fat compared with those who performed moderate-intensity cardio, but they did it while exercising for significantly less time. (5)
It’s important to remember that once you hit your weight loss goals, you need to continue exercising to make sure you don’t regain the weight. A 2014 study investigating the role of exercise in weight management found that one of the biggest ways exercise helps with weight management is by preventing weight gain (perhaps even more than it helps you lose weight). (6)
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Though the ACSM recommends performing more than 250 minutes of exercise per week to prevent weight regain, the HHS says it varies: Some need more physical activity than others to maintain a healthy body weight, to lose weight, or to keep weight off once
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