A Physician’s Take on Exercise vs. Healthy Eating

When my patients ask me what’s the better New Year’s resolution, exercise or diet, the obvious answer is both. But most of us can’t tackle two major resolutions at once.

I advise my patients to choose healthy eating, and there’s one simple reason. Let me use a Twinkie as an example. 

You can burn off the 270 calories in a serving by running for 27 minutes, but you cannot negate the ingredients with any amount of exercise. When you eat a Twinkie, you not only consume calories, you also consume a plethora of chemicals which your body has to process. Weight is about calories in and calories out, but health is all about the nutrients you ingest. 

Take a look at the ingredient label:

Wheat flour, folic acid, niacin, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, ferrous sulfate, sugar, water, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable shortening, animal shortening, whole eggs, dextrose, modified cornstarch, corn flour, glucose, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sweet dairy whey, soy protein isolate, calcium caseinate, sodium caseinate, soy flour, salt, monoglyceride, diglyceride, polysorbate 60, corn dextrin, soy lecithin, cornstarch, cellulose gum, sodium stearoyl lactylate, sorbic acid, FD&C Yellow #5, Red 40.

If you don’t recognize what you are putting into your body – don’t put it in! Rates of chronic disease in the US are an all time high not because we don’t get on the treadmill for an hour each day, we are sick because we load our bodies up with garbage.

Health depends upon feeding our bodies with real food. Food that is made up of real ingredients that are nutritionally impactful.