New Delhi: When it comes to achieving fitness, exercise is the most important factor. Fitness is primarily defined by strength, endurance, and flexibility—parameters that cannot be significantly improved through nutrition alone. While a proper diet plays a supportive role, true fitness improvements come from consistent exercise. Even without a structured diet, one can enhance these fitness components through training.
Shivam Dubey, Health Coach and Fitness Influencer, Founder of Yourfitnesstories, while interacting with News9Live, shared tips on the role of nutrition in health and wellbeing.
The Role of Nutrition in Fitness
An argument in favor of nutrition’s importance is that body composition is also a component of fitness. This is the one aspect that can be improved solely through diet, regardless of exercise levels. For example, reducing body fat and maintaining muscle mass is largely influenced by caloric intake and macronutrient balance. However, beyond body composition, nutrition alone does little to improve core fitness attributes like strength, endurance, or flexibility.
Exercise: The Key Driver of Fitness
Consider strength training: while adequate protein intake can enhance muscle recovery and slightly boost strength gains (by approximately 2-3%), resistance training itself can increase strength by 200-300%. Similarly, endurance improvements require activities like jogging, cycling, or swimming. No amount of dieting alone will significantly enhance cardiovascular endurance or muscular endurance. This clearly shows that the common belief that “diet and exercise are equally important for fitness” is misleading. Exercise is undeniably the primary driver of fitness improvements.
The True Role of Nutrition: Health
Does this mean nutrition isn’t important? No. However, its primary impact is on health rather than fitness. Proper nutrition ensures overall well-being and helps prevent diseases. Getting enough iron helps prevent anemia, antioxidants can reduce inflammation and support longevity, sufficient calcium intake helps prevent osteoporosis, and so on. These benefits are essential for long-term health but do not directly enhance fitness.
While consuming an optimal 2g of protein per kg of body weight can help you achieve peak fitness, exercise alone can get you 90% of the results. However, maintaining good health does require a well-balanced diet. Health is about overall well-being and disease prevention, whereas fitness is about performance and physical capabilities. To maximize both, a combination of exercise and proper nutrition is ideal—but if the goal is purely fitness, exercise takes the lead.
Nutrition and workout are both equally important for weight loss and overall health. However, it is imperative to know which one is more relevant and why. Health Conditions Health News: Latest News from Health Care, Mental Health, Weight Loss, Disease, Nutrition, Healthcare
