The science is in. Burn more calories than you take in and you’ll lose weight, right? That’s basis of most medical advice on the subject. Diet and exercise is the mantra.

In theory that’s great but in practice if you’re overweight and your diet is not right first, you probably don’t have the energy to exercise. Without the proper energy, really trying to level up your exercising is miserable. There is some sort of psychological law that states: The more miserable a thing is to do the easier it is to find excuse not to do it. Since the approach is always diet AND exercise, when we give up one we usually give up the other too; bargaining with ourselves that some day in the unknown future the proper motivation for both will hit us. Some people break through, most don’t.

The traditional approach puts the cart before the horse. It makes it easy to get overwhelmed with the process so we lose the will to follow through and end up dropping both. The proper way is diet and THEN exercise. For most people that are significantly overweight that means taking three months or so to get one’s eating habits in order. For most people significant weight loss achievements can be made with diet alone. As the eating habits become healthier the body responds by boosting the energy levels. Exercise becomes both more enjoyable and more effective when the nutrition is right.

Exercise is very important for long term health and we should all do our best to maintain a healthy level of exercise but a starting a very ambitious exercise program combined with the beginning of a new diet is usually a recipe for failure. We stand to benefit the most by changing our approach to a diet then exercise program… it’s a lot easier to follow through.