What is more effective? Eating or working out?

[MikeW]

My problem is I don't know what to eat and how much. Well I know to eat healthy food and vegies / fruit. How do you make them taste nice?

Honestly?

By working out hard!

I've found that once I'm in my training rhythm my body starts to crave healthy food and the site of anything unhealthy makes me nauseous. Its like my brain is sending signals to my mouth on what my body needs given its current mode of operation. Very clever thing the brain...

And in answer to your thread heading question: Training is more important to you than diet. Increase your physical activity and make it all weights focussed. Don't bother with too much of that aerobic stuff as its all temporary and just burns a few bonus calories on the particular training day. Increase your muscle mass and burn more calories every day.

If you don't know how much to eat then you need to do some reading. Its all here on this forum and in one of Markos' great newsletters at his site if you go look for it. You need to understand your BMR and that is dependent on your weight. From there you know how many calories to consume if you want to grow/stablise/shrink. I'd advocate consuming the stabilist or constant bodyweight level of calories and hit the gym weights room. At least them you might build some muscle at the expense of weight elsewhere on your body.

I'm carrying too much on my mid-section at present but I don't really care. I'm eating above my BMR requirements and working on building muscle mass and size. I'm willing to accept a less than ideal bodyfat percentage but am noting the workouts coupled with my clean diet are actually reducing this slowly anyway. Make sure you get the dietary mix right too once you know how many calories you need to consume. Again, any number of threads here discuss how to do that.

Read, read and read. Its all here. Know your body and make it do what you want it to do. I've been at this for 20 years and still haven't got it 100% right. If it was easy we'd all be national champions.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[11th hour]

My problem is I don't know what to eat and how much. Well I know to eat healthy food and vegies / fruit. How do you make them taste nice?

I'm fast becoming a fan of a low wheat and no processed foods diet. I eat heaps more veges now to replace all the bread I used to eat. I try to have a little protein in every meal then fill my plate with salad or veges. I find it satiating and provides better and more consistent energy - not sure if that's a good measure of a good diet but its working for me right now.

You can use herbs/spices, salt, pepper, garlic, onions, olive oil, vinegar, tomato paste, sesame oil, tamari, fermented cheeses, honey etc in your cooking to give food more flavour.

 

[dave]

I roast my veggies (100g sweet potato, 200g pumpkin, and 1 large carrot) or have them in a salad (lettuce/spinach, 1 large carrot, half a tub of cherry tomatoes). Also stir frying is good I have stopped the stir frys for a little but I usually put in peas, broccoli, carrots + more. 11 hour make some good points. I think garlic, onion and olive oil make all things taste better, just carry some chewy around with you.

 

[Shrek]

. How do you make them taste nice?

Why does it have to taste nice? Not everything we do has to titilate the senses. Sometimes we do things because that's what our bodies need, not want.