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Lately, much of our family’s dinner time conversation revolves around fitness and diet–shocking I know! I’ve previously discussed how I’m not a very good multitasker, so forgive me if this post seems repetitive. But I think it’s worth writing about again. During one recent dinner conversation, I was noting that I hadn’t lost much weight since we came back from Hawaii. (However, the scale did say 197.5 this morning) My wife retorted with this question that I’m now posing to all of you: Is it better to be thin, or fit?
Here’s some information about myself. I’m 5′10 and weigh 197 pounds. I have ~25% body fat and my BMI is 28.3 (at the upper end of the overweight category). I don’t have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes.
I ran 43 miles in February and 41 miles in March. So far, I’ve run 15 miles in April so I’m on pace to break both the February and March distances. When I started exercising, running at 6.0 mph was impossible, today it’s boring. Although I don’t have the numbers to compare, push-ups, sit-ups, and leg-lifts are all getting easier for me by the week and I’ve recently starting increasing my weights from those assigned to me by my trainers earlier on. I am definitely fitter now than I was in January when I started exercising regularly. I’m also definitely thinner now than when I was in November when I started dieting.
Now I realize that I’m still overweight and have too much body fat than is recommended. My risk of cancer due to these things is still not as low as I’d like it to be. But it seems many of the other afflictions caused by being over weight are skipping me by.
Based on my recent progress in the fitness arena it’s obvious that that’s where I’ve been concentrating my efforts. My body feels and looks better as a result. I’m always poking and prodding myself in areas that are now firmer than they used to be and I often catch myself looking at myself in the mirror. Usually I think to myself, “good job man!” but sometimes I think, “you’d look even better if you lost more weight.”
But, since I’ve established that I’m not good at both diet and exercise at the same time, I ask you what would you do? Accomplish all your fitness goals and then move on to your diet goals? Would you do the opposite? Or maybe switch from month to month and risk losing some of your fitness progress?
J.D.
28 responses so far ↓
1 grimsaburger // Apr 11, 2008 at 5:56 am
This is coming from a woman who is a tad pudgier around the middle than she’d like to be, but is perfectly in the middle of normal BMI. I’d say screw the diet and focus on fitness.
And by “screw the diet,” I mean you should eat sensibly, and eat quality foods, but not obsess too much about portion size or those three beers you had Friday night.
This may be advice that applies more to myself than to you, since if I have any weight to lose, it’s 5 pounds or less. So dropping weight at my current 1-pound-per-month by training for a 10k is perfectly satisfactory. But it seems to me that if you’re increasing your fitness, you’ll be better equipped to make a long-term (if slower) change in your weight.
2 greenman2001 // Apr 11, 2008 at 5:57 am
The medical opinion is pretty unambiguous at this point: having a “healthy” BMI is much less important that being active, whether you’re fit or not. Activity will lengthen your life and reduce the likelihood of disease.
I’ve said this before, but I think weight loss and exercise should be separated. Losing weight is a calorie control project; getting fit is an exercise project. Exercise requires requires that you feed yourself. It’s very difficult to pursue both at the same time — when you work out a lot you get hungry, and when you get hungry it’s hard to restrict calories. Your own experience proves this. You could achieve a 40 lb weight loss strictly through diet in 40 weeks and then move on to an exercise program that you pursue for the rest of your life. That’s what getting fit slowly is all about.
3 d.a. // Apr 11, 2008 at 6:02 am
Fitter, or course! Some of us are predisposed to more body fat than others, and so moderate body fat may not be a good indicator of fitness or health. Also when looking at the scale, know that muscle weighs more than fat, so the scale is not going to be a totally accurate measure of fat loss, either.
4 Aaron // Apr 11, 2008 at 6:08 am
I think the right answer is the one that keeps you motivated. Some people really like to build muscle and adding weight to their workout gets them going. Others are motivated by pants size or other thin indicators. I think you need to figure out what gets you in the gym and focus on that.
I think most people have trouble losing weight and building muscle at the same time. Eating enough protein to build muscle without plateauing on your weight loss goals is an extremely tough balance.
5 Amber // Apr 11, 2008 at 6:13 am
It’s definitely important to be fit, obviously. However, I have a slightly different way of looking at things than a couple of other posters.
You will ALWAYS be able to get “fitter.” By that, I mean that you can push yourself to lift more weight, run faster/farther for the rest of your life. However, you’ll want to stop losing weight at some point. Your weight will get down to whatever your goal is and you won’t want to lose anymore. If you get caught up in getting fit, you might end up never really taking a break from your progress to lose weight through diet (and most weight loss is through diet). Even though you have lost a lot of weight, it’s clear that you’d still like to lose some more. I would try to lose that before buckling down with the weight lifting routine.
Maybe you could try keeping up with your diet while keeping a baseline of fitness going — you could run/walk a couple of miles a few times a week. Nothing strenuous, just staying active so you don’t slide back into a sedentary life. You wouldn’t really lose any cardio fitness, but you would lose a lot of fat.
6 Lance // Apr 11, 2008 at 6:19 am
Without a doubt - being fit is more important than being thin. In fact, I would also say that it is entirely possible to be “skinny-fat” — thin but still carrying excess fat. The key is to build up your muscle while reducing your fat stores. That is why it is important to have a mix of both strength training (for muscle retention) and cardio (for additional fat loss). Too much cardio will lead to weight loss — but at the expense of losing both fat and muscle. I experienced this a couple of years ago when I began my journey to get fit. I became thin, but still carried excess fat. Over time, I have come to realize that strength training plays a very important role in getting to “fit” — one that I have embraced now.
7 Healthy Amelia // Apr 11, 2008 at 7:19 am
For me, the whole point is to get healthier and to be in better physical shape. Losing weight is just one piece of that. Neither my diet nor my activity level will ever be perfect. The point is to keep striving towards the goal and in the process, I will naturally start looking and feeling better. I know how hard it is to focus on both the eating and the exercising at the same time. It’s tough! But for me, both need to be in control for me to see the pounds go down and to really see the results.
In the past, I have completed two marathons (2003 and 2004). I started out weighing over 200 pounds and looked to the running regime to “take care of” my weight problem without focusing too much on my diet. Big mistake. All that running made me hungry and I thought it was OK to eat a bit more as long as it was “healthy stuff”. But without some kind of metric to keep tabs on it, I pretty much maintained my weight. About halfway through the training I woke up to the fact that I wanted to see some weight loss results so I had to pay attention to what I was eating. Once I did that, I started dropping pounds and felt so much better about the whole thing.
I’m about to start this process all over again (I’m about to start training for a half marathon this time) and watching my food intake will factor in a great deal. Yes, I need extra fuel for long runs but it’s not a free pass.
So basically what I’m saying is that focusing on your health is the main thing – continue with the fitness habits and slowly try to be more mindful about the food. If you’re anything like me, you’ll start to *want to* so that you can maximize the results of all that hard work at the gym. Either way, you are on your way to being in the best shape possible for you and that’s the most important thing.
8 justin // Apr 11, 2008 at 7:29 am
I think both are important, and both are about changing habits as much as attaining goals. If you’re eating healthy and exercising the weight loss will come- that’s what I’ve found. I check in on the calories every now and then, but mostly I just try to eat healthy.
One thing you could try if you really want to focus on one goal is to alternate. Choose a fitness goal one week (or month) and a diet goal the next. Ultimately it will take a little longer to get where you want to be, but since both are about creating habits, you’ll start to see them snowball. Last months goal becomes a habit and you can focus on this months goal while maintaining last months.
Hope that helps…love both blogs- keep up the great work.
9 Rick // Apr 11, 2008 at 7:38 am
Couple things.
One, you’re using a body scale to calculate body fat. Its not going to be terribly accurate no matter what the box says. This, I think and have noticed in your other posts is your bigger concern more than your weight. And rightfully so, I feel; although, you keep coming back to weight as a bad thing. This leads to:
Two, BMI is an unrealistic measurement for some people. According to it, I have been obese my whole life. Before an injury, I could run consecutive 6 minute miles, swim for 30 minutes straight and bench press over my weight. Even during my competitive soccer days. . .I was OBESE according to BMI. Think of NFL players. . . There are some linebackers who are 6′ and 230-250. They are not obese.
Fact is, I have a different body build. I have large muscular legs and a thick torso. I was born that way, I’ll die that way. If I’m eating right, and exercising regularly, that is what matters.
Sure we can lose some weight and we need to lose body fat, but BMI is not a measurement I will ever take that seriously.
10 Darren Meyer // Apr 11, 2008 at 7:42 am
Well, fit is better than light, in any case. But I don’t think that’s really your question.
Instead, you seem to be asking whether you should focus on diet or focus on exercise, because you’re “bad at multitasking.” IMO, though, it’s a viewpoint problem.
Diet and exercise are not two separate things, with independent goals. They are two *parts* of the same set of fitness goals.
You should eat a healthy diet because you don’t want to be doing things that interfere with your exercise. A good diet gives you more energy for exercise, but also helps your exercise program work.
At the same time, you exercise to supplement your diet. Eating better won’t magically convert fat to muscle.
Put another way: You’ll get fitter, faster, by having a good, balanced diet along with a solid exercise program. Picking one will only make that one go more slowly.
I’ll repeat it: it isn’t multitasking, it’s the *same thing*.
11 J.D. // Apr 11, 2008 at 8:51 am
I like Aaron’s answer. I think it’s important to do what works for you, Macdaddy. Whatever keeps you motivated and on-task is good.
For myself, I’m still trying to focus on food and fitness, but if I had to make a choice, I’d choose to pursue fitness. Why? Because when I’m physically active, I feel good. It makes me happy. And I know it’s improving my health.
But when I concentrate on my diet, it’s an exercise in deprivation. When I’m eating six small boring meals a day, my life isn’t as good as it could be.
For me, fitness is about fun, but diet is about deprivation.
Now, I’m doing fine on both of these right now, and I’ll continue to pursue them, but if I have to let one slip, it’s going to be the diet. I’d rather eat chocolate chip cookies while lifting weights and running than to eat tofu while not doing any exercise at all.
12 Tiffany // Apr 11, 2008 at 9:42 am
I think fitter is ultimately more important. There have been studies that have indicated that people who are a little overweight but are in shape and fairly fit are actually healthier than really thin people. So I think pursuing fitness is critical.
However, from personal experience, when I went through a period where I was overweight and needed to lose weight (~50 lbs), I focused really strongly on diet and nutrition at first, with a little exercise mixed in. It was easier for me to kick off the pounds and see some tremendous difference. After some months at this and about 25 pounds, I maintained a healthy diet, because by now it had become habit, and hit the gym hard. Now I’m at a healthy, comfortable weight and the nutrition and diet is easy and I don’t enjoy poor eating (except candy and chocolate) anymore and now my focus is solely on fitness and getting into the best shape that I can.
13 Kym // Apr 11, 2008 at 10:24 am
I agree with Justin: eat healthy and exercise, and the weight will come off. You don’t want to focus on eating healthy only, and lose lean body mass, just as you don’t want to work your butt off in the gym, only to go home and eat a greasy burger. Both will undo your progress.
What I’m focusing on is always do my workouts - the weight training and the cardio. When it comes to food, try to eat the healthy stuff, and don’t worry too terribly about restricting portion size. If you eat 2 grilled chicken breasts, you’re still way ahead than if you had 1 Chipotle burrito. If you must have something unhealthy, allocate it towards the start of your day, when it has a greater chance of being worked off throughout the day. Case in point, I really wanted a chocolate chip cookie last night, shortly before bedtime. I told myself I could have it in the morning when I got up, instead. In the morning, I didn’t want it anymore, but if I had, I wouldn’t have let myself feel too bad about it cuz I knew I was picking the best time I could to eat it.
In the end, it really is going to be whatever you enjoy doing the most. Your fitness level is sounding great - I’m sure if you keep that up and mostly make the effort to *not* eat the bad stuff, you’ll see those pounds coming off.
14 TosaJen // Apr 11, 2008 at 11:02 am
I like Aaron’s answer, too.
My original response at MacDaddy’s question is that “being sane is better than being either fit or thin”. Don’t make yourself crazy by doing things the hard way FOR YOU.
Point is, you have to work with who you are. If you’re bad at multitasking, then focus on one thing at a time. One goal at a time — one aspect of behavior you want to change, one bad habit you want to make really, really hard to keep doing, one good habit you want to make easier than rationalizing not doing it, one new form of exercise you want to give a good try, one new kind of food you want to prepare a few ways before ruling it out . . . you get the idea.
I’m kinda like that. I have to start one thing, get that plate spinning more-or-less on its own, then choose the next thing. Repeat. Revisit something when it stops working and fix it. Go on to a new thing. Repeat from the beginning. Forever.
I can’t try to change 5 things at once. Maybe two. But one works best for me. I have enough other things I’m trying to do better at the same time, too (kids, job, music). Oh, wait, I AM multitasking . . . just not with fitness and eating well. (Sound familiar?)
15 Andrew is getting fit // Apr 11, 2008 at 11:09 am
Personally I would say go with being fitter. Better to be fit, healthy and a bit overweight than thin and not fit.
Since I’ve focused on getting fitter the weight loss has happened as well. Not always as steady or regular or as quick as I might like but it does happen.
16 greenman2001 // Apr 11, 2008 at 12:55 pm
J.D.:
“When I’m eating six small boring meals a day, my life isn’t as good as it could be.”
Sounds like you’ve hit a rough patch.
17 Cecily T // Apr 11, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I’m also with the ‘fitness first’ crowd. For reasons of looking good as well as being ‘healthier’. If you are working out, and know you’ve got muscles under any pudge (like my post-partum behind!), my bet is that you will be more motivated when you are settled into your exercise as a habit to move on to dieting. The other way ’round can lead to losing weight, which makes your pants fit better, but you might be left with some droopy parts that need firming.
Another point is that by working out first, you are already getting your body in the shape that you want it, and when the time comes to work in earnest at feeding it, you hopefully will be dealing with a more finished machine than if you were trying to do both at once, which can be a moving target if you are trying to match up calories with activity and weight.
18 metroknow - AlmostFit.com // Apr 11, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Wow, what a great set of responses. Its such a polar issue, obviously.
Not surprisingly however, I think greenman’s latest comment is getting to the heart of things (greenman has a way of doing that, it seems). In my opinion what you should be focusing on is making sure that the choices you are making to facilitate weight loss (either diet OR fitness) are the choices that you can truly enjoy for a lifetime.
The rice cake is a perfect example.
Most of us probably tried the “rice cake” solution at some point in the 80’s, where we adopted this idea that if you ate styrofoam-like flavorless rice cakes instead of pretty much anything that tasted good, you’d be fitter, happier, and more productive.
The problem is, none of us seemed to notice that rice cakes taste like pretty much nothing at all - we ignored that fact to lose weight. And in the end, the weight came back when we were not dieting, because we weren’t building a lifelong practice - we were buying a product that offered an immediate, tasteless solution.
If your meals are boring, and your life is not as good as it could be as a result, then you are missing a big part of what is going to make your changes stick. Focus on finding things that bring intense satisfaction (like learning to cook phenomenally good food - and retraining yourself to savor the intensity). Its the old “teach a man to fish” principle. THAT is what will lead to success, not rice cakes or excessive exercise-driven body punishment.
Do what motivates you. Be fit-focused. But I think the key is to make sure what you are doing is something that you will enjoy well into the second half of your life. Otherwise, all you’ve done is lengthen the yo-yo string, yet again.
19 Amy // Apr 11, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Keep going on the fitness goals, but maybe add one or two tiny changes to improve your diet… add one or two each month until everything is habit. Even thin people can be fat - check out this news article http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327172025.htm
- and while fit is certainly better than not fit, just thin doesn’t guarantee health. So a little of both is in order, as best you can.
20 macdaddy // Apr 11, 2008 at 8:19 pm
For me, the resounding piece of information that I’m receiving from the comments on this post and others is that being healthy encompasses both fitness and weight control. Maybe we should change the name of the blog to “get healthy slowly.” We can all arrive at healthy via different routes, but we should all strive to get there.
21 Emily // Apr 11, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Actually, I’m pretty sure studies have been done that demonstrate it’s better to be overweight and exercising regularly than a naturally thin couch potato. If you have to choose one or the other (and I don’t see why anyone would), take the extra 10-15 lbs if it means you’re regularly lifting and exercising your heart.
22 Beth // Apr 11, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I too tried to do the fitness and the diet separately. It didn’t work for me.
I get bored very quickly with the same meals over and over. I have a lot of allergies, so cooking is a serious challenge to say the least. It sounds like you too are in a food rut and need to mix it up a bit.
You say you have 6 boring meals a day. What are you eating? Can you mix it up? For example, are you having just a salad with fat-free dressing, maybe with some chicken? Why not mix it up? I have a chicken-apple salad recipe that has chicken, apples, celery, raisins, and a fat-free sugar-free raspberry vinaigrette. Or another is a chicken avocado with fat-free, sugar-free balsamic dressing? See what I mean? It may just be a case of it’s not that you are bad at multitasking, but are simply bored with your current meals and that’s bogging you down a bit mentally.
23 brooklynchick // Apr 13, 2008 at 4:51 am
slow and steady…I don’t think I’ll ever achieve ALL my goals because then I wouldn’t have a reason to get out of bed! I make small changes in both food and exercise that I can sustain over my life. I’ve dieted and lost tons of weight, and I’ve become a gym nut, but I couldn’t sustain either.
Now I’m all about moderation - I’ve lost 23 pounds in 15 months, and I know i can keep it off because it included a burger once a month, and wine a few days a week, and it didn’t include the gym EVERY day.
Slow and steady…keep up the GREAT work!!!
24 brooklynchick // Apr 13, 2008 at 4:59 am
Great post from another blog on changing habits:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zenhabits/~3/268080889/
25 Susan // Apr 13, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Fitness goals or diet goals?
I would work on both, but s-l-o-w-l-y and realistically (meaning no crash diets, starving, over training, etc).
I would try to make fitness and eating healthy more of a lifestyle in small ways instead of a temporary solution with drastic changes. It would be easier for me to stick with the lifestyle method!
26 sherthebear // Apr 13, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I think being fit is more important than being thin. With that said, I truly believe it is a balance of exercise and nutrition, I think finding that balanace is what leads to being healthy and it comes down to a lifetstyle change. That is truly difficult. I am not a fan of the word “diet” and think it is more about nurtition. Both are truly important, so maybe you can focus on the exercise part but slowly incorporate some healthy eating habits as it seems you have been doing.
27 MS // Apr 15, 2008 at 6:23 am
You’re making great progress on the fitness front. I would focus on that and just maintain the weight. Eventually, the gains will slow down and even plateau. At that point, shift focus to the weight loss and maintain the improved fitness.
28 Emily // Apr 15, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I think it is also important to note that if you find a fitness activity you love, then at some point as you pursue your goals taking the excess fat off will become important. For the vast majority of fitness-related activities–running, biking, soccer, doing pull-ups, whatever–excess body fat will hinder your performance, and for ALL of them a poor diet will eventually cripple your gains. So when you want your fitness goals badly enough, a change in diet will follow.
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