Exercise vs. Diet (Page 2 of 2)

• Exercise reduces the effects of stress. If you tend to eat in stressful situations, exercise will save you from this unnecessary eating.
• Exercise will lower your blood pressure, resting heart rate, and triglyceride levels. It will increase your HDL (good) cholesterol level, endurance and strength. This results in an improvement in your overall health profile.
• Dieting without exercising creates cycles of weight gain and weight loss. Repeated weight loss and gain ("yoyo syndrome") results in a drop in metabolic rate because of the loss of lean muscle tissue. It has been shown that with each succeeding cycle, fat is regained more easily. This is how dieting can actually lead to higher levels of body fat than no dieting at all!
• Low caloric diets (less than 1,200 calories /day) reduce your desire to exercise, because your energy level will be too low to perform exercise. Lack of exercise, in turn, results in a reduction of your fitness level.

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