Changing Your Body Composition: Exercise vs. Nutrition
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There is a debate on whether nutrition or exercise is more important for changing your body composition. Some people think that nutrition is the most important factor, while others argue that exercise is the key to gaining muscle and losing fat.
Which is it?
Join me in this episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast, where we will explore this topic and try to determine which factor is more crucial in achieving the body that you desire.
What I discuss:
Nutrition’s role in changing your body composition
Exercise’s role in changing your body composition
Links mentioned in the episode:
Episode 315: 5 Differences Between Changing Your Body Composition vs Weight Loss
Episode 317: 5 Reasons to Love Carbohydrates when Building the Body You Want
Episode 321: Why You Need Fat To Build The Body That You Want
Episode 325: Why You Need Protein to Build the Body You Want
Movement with Julie | App: sale.movementwithjulie.com
Macro Counting Made Simple Academy: macrocountingmadesimple.com
If you want more from me, be sure to check out...
Instagram: @embraceyourreal | @movementwithjulie
Movement With Julie | App: https://sale.movementwithjulie.com/
Website: www.juliealedbetter.com
Free e-book: www.juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/influencer-6bda1ca8?ref=cm_sw_em_r_inf_pub_influencer-6bda1ca8_dp_DgsIam9salgfi
Transcript:
Hey there, beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. A podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I issue a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get it, let's go.
Hello and welcome back to another episode on the Embrace Your Real podcast. You guys love the topic of changing your body composition, and so I kind of wanted to just go further in this topic. And the biggest debate that I see when it comes to body composition is nutrition or exercise. Which one is queen? Which one is queen?
Some people believe that exercise is the key to building muscle and burning fat, while others argue that nutrition is the key to success. So which is it? Which is more important for changing your body composition and building the body that you want? That is exactly what we're going to be diving into in today's episode.
But before we dive in, you know, I had to share the review of the day. It comes from Oh boy, X and I, I land. I'm so sorry about that. But they gave a five star review and said:
Practical and inspiring. My favorite part of the Embrace your podcast is the variety, yet consistency of every episode. There's a great variety of very practical tips and information that can be used to grow in physical and mental health, but also many episodes focusing on mindset or inspiration. This podcast is a great place to come for both physical and mental tips and easily implemented hacks, as well as more long term work. Julie melts all aspects of health and happiness beautifully, regardless of the episode topic. I always finish listening with a sense of peace as well as a fire under my booty to progress and grow. I also find her voice very soothing. This podcast is definitely worth a try, whether you're just starting out on your health and fitness journey or you've been at it for a while.
Well, that was like, so heartwarming. Thank you so much for all of that. I mean, I'm so grateful for this community. I'm so grateful that this podcast is helping so many of you. If you haven't already shared it with a friend or someone that you feel like would really benefit from this episode or this podcast in general, I just ask that you do it. We are on a mission to serve over a million people this year and we're well on that, I think. Last I checked, we're like a little bit over 600,000 downloads this year, which is amazing and so insane. And I'm so incredibly grateful for every single one of you guys who shout out the podcast. This is just a place and a time throughout the week where I get to sit down with you and just kind of share my thoughts on specific topics. And man, it has just been such a blessing in my life to be able to connect with you guys and that this podcast is serving you like that's my only goal with this. Like I don't get paid to do the podcast, I don't have sponsors. I specifically do that because I just want this podcast to be a place where it can serve you and it can encourage you and it can empower you or educate you. So thank you in advance. I appreciate every single one of you guys who tune in to this episode, to this podcast in general. It genuinely means the world to me.
With that being said, let's dive into changing your body composition, exercise versus nutrition. Which one is Queen?
Okay, so the first part of this episode is going to focus on breaking down the roles in nutrition plays, in the roles that exercise plays individually, in changing your body composition. And then after looking at what each one does on its own, that will then help us understand which one is more important.
So first, let's kind of dive into the role that nutrition plays in changing your body composition. So simply put, nutrition is really the foundation of any successful body composition change. So no matter how much exercise you do, if your nutrition isn't on point, you're not going to see the results that you're looking for. Your body needs the proper nutrients to function properly, and without them, your progress will be hindered. And here's why. Because macronutrients are the three types of nutrients that our body needs in large quantities carbohydrates, protein and fats. So each macronutrient plays a unique role in our body that contributes to whether or not our body composition will change from our workouts. So when we exercise, our muscles need energy to perform, and carbohydrates are a very important source of fuel for that energy.
So let me kind of explain why in as simple terms as possible, while still kind of breaking down the process that's happening in your body. So carbohydrates are broken down into glucose and stored in our muscles as glycogen during our workout. Our body uses this stored glycogen as fuel to power our muscles. This energy then helps to stimulate muscle growth by allowing our muscles to work harder and longer during exercise. Plus carbohydrates. Preserve your muscle tissue by providing energy for your body to use instead of breaking down muscle protein for energy. This is very, very important to note. So when you have too little of carbs, your body will oftentimes turn to protein as a source of energy. And since protein is the building block of muscle, when you turn protein as fuel, you'll actually start breaking down your muscle. And muscle is the building block to changing our body composition. So without muscle, our body composition would not change the way that we want it to. Which leads me to why the macronutrient protein is so important.
So protein is made up of amino acids, which is the building block of muscle tissue. So when you consume protein, your body breaks it down into amino acids, which are then used to repair and build new muscle tissue. And in terms of consuming the right amount of fats for building the body that you want, will fat intake plays a super important role in hormone regulation, which, believe it or not, your hormones actually do play a huge role in muscle growth and fat loss. So when your hormones are out of whack, it makes it a lot more difficult to see the results that you're looking for. Build muscle, lose fat. I've done three specific episodes diving into each macronutrient separately. If you want to dive way deeper into kind of the understanding of what each macronutrient does for you, check out the following episodes. I will also link them in the show notes below, but we have Episode 317 five Reasons to Love Carbohydrates When Building the Body That You Want. Episode 321 Why you Need Fat to Build the Body That you Want in Episode 325. Why you need protein to build the body that you want.
Again, I will link those in the show notes that you can easily go listen to them next and you can add them to a queue so that they'll just automatically play after this specific episode. So to kind of sum it up, if you don't have enough carbs, you won't have the energy to fuel your workouts and you could lose muscle as your body is turning protein as fuel during your workouts, which could break down your muscle fibers. If you don't have enough protein, your muscles will not grow, period. Protein gets broken down into amino acids, and amino acids are the building blocks of muscle. So without enough protein, your muscles don't have what they need to grow. And then if you don't eat enough fat on a daily basis, your hormones will become imbalance. And when this happens, your body wants to store fat and not build muscle.
On the flip side, if you are eating too many carbs or you're eating too much fat, you are giving your body more than what it needs. You will trigger your body to store that extra energy as fat. So yes, you can be building muscle when you eat too many carbs and fats, but it won't be as visible and you won't look like your body composition is changing the way that you want it to change. I didn't include protein in that because it's nearly impossible to over-consume protein like it's I mean, genuinely, I rarely, rarely meet people that are like, oh, I could eat, you know, 250 grams of protein as a £150 woman. Like it's just it's very, very impossible. Nearly. I don't want to say it's impossible. It's nearly impossible to over-consume protein.
Okay, so from all of that, it might sound like, oh, nutrition is more important than exercise for a while in the body you want? Not quite. Now I want to dive into why exercise is so important for building the body that you want. So simply put, exercise helps you build muscle and burn fat, which will improve your body composition and help you achieve your goals. So to understand why exercise is so important, resistance training in particular is what I will be referring to when I say exercise as cardio does not have the same effect as resistance training.
We need to understand what it means to change your body composition. So here's kind of a more formal definition of what changing your body composition is. So changing body composition means altering the relative proportions of fat, muscle and other tissues in your body. This is typically achieved by decreasing body fat and increasing muscle mass. Let me repeat that last section while increasing muscle mass. This is the biggest difference between losing weight and changing your body composition.
Losing weight is just decreasing body fat, only changing your body composition is decreasing body fat while increasing muscle mass. So in order to increase muscle mass, the only way to do that is to resistance train. Here's why: By challenging your muscles with weights or body weight exercises, you're creating these small tears in your muscle fibers and your body then repairs these tears, which it actually leads to muscle growth over time.
Without exercise, you will not build more muscle and without building more muscle you will not change your body composition. But another great thing with exercise is that the more muscle that you build, the more efficient your metabolism becomes and the more fat you'll likely burn when you are not exercising. So let me kind of share why this is the case. So muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat tissue, which means that it burns more calories at rest. And this is because muscle tissue requires more energy to maintain that fat tissue. So as a result, increasing your muscle mass can increase your basil metabolic rate, which is the number of calories that your body burns at rest, a.k.a the amount of calories that you would burn when you are laying on the couch all day long, like I said, during resistance. This training, you are creating these small tear. So when I say resistance training, I mean dumbbell workouts, barbell workouts, whatever workouts you're doing at the gym that have weight, you're you're you literally using resistance, you're creating small tears in your muscle fibers, which then repair and rebuild during the recovery process. This process leads to an increase in muscle mass and strength. And as your muscle mass increases, your body requires more energy to maintain this new muscle tissue, which leads to an increase in your basal metabolic rate, a.k.a. a more efficient metabolism. How cool is that?
Like when you have a more efficient metabolism, it is going to be a lot easier to build and maintain the body that you want. Okay, so now you hear all that and you're like, Well, exercise is more important for building the body that you want because you need muscle in order to change your body composition. And without exercise, you can't build muscle. So which one is more important? Drum roll, please.
Okay, let's make it simple. One is not better than the other, but hear me out. I have a more kind of in-depth answer that I think will give you some peace of mind for those OCD people that are like, I need to have either-or. Okay, one is not better than the other. You need both to build the body that you want, but you need less exercise. Then you need nutrition. So with nutrition you need to be consistent daily. Not perfect, but consistent. Whereas with exercise you really only need 30 to 45 minutes, 3 to 5 days a week. So you could exercise every other day while you need to focus on your nutrition daily in order to see the real changes in your body. Plus, let's say you want on vacation or work trip or you have, you know, people visiting at your house, whatever the case may be, you can't work out as much as you'd like. Nutrition will help supplement that.
So if you stay consistent with your nutrition during periods where you cannot work out, you will maintain your muscle and maybe even lose some fat. If you have body fat to lose. This is where you could argue that nutrition is more important because if you were to exercise only and not keep your nutrition dialed at all, you're likely to see results in reverse.
Nutrition over exercise equals maintaining and even losing some body fat exercise over nutrition. You're likely going to start pedaling backwards and you could start to see your results disappear. So all in all, exercise and nutrition do work in conjunction with one another. And that's why I am a firm believer in both. I think that it's really important that you are, again, not perfect but consistent in your nutrition and also consistent in your movement. But here's where you have to ask yourself in this season of life, what is realistic for me in terms of my workouts? I find that when people get fed up and sick with where they're at, they go, I'm going to start working out six, seven days a week and I'm going to start eating clean. And I'm, you know, off limits to go to going out to eat and off limits for alcohol and off limits for ice cream and off limits for X, Y and Z. And it's like you're doing this whole life overhaul and you think that that's going to last. I just I have to kind of laugh because I'm like, that's not realistic.
Try to ask yourself realistically, okay, can I commit to three times a week working out in this season of life? The majority of us can say, yes, I even if I'm watching Netflix while I'm doing my workout, you know, kill two birds with one stone or even there are so many things that you can be doing while still working out, especially especially if you're doing demo workouts at home, which is why I'm a firm believer in them because they're so dang convenient. You have no literally no driving time, like no commute. The commute is to where you are in your house, to your basement or where you are in your house to your living room, or where you are in your house to that spare bedroom. It's literally a few steps and especially the go at your own pace style workouts, the ones that I have and same amount with Julie app, you can literally be watching a show while you're working out, which is awesome. I mean, there's so many things that you could be doing. You'd be watching a show, you could be listening to a podcast, you can be banging out with music. Like there are so many things that you can be doing at the same time. You don't have to be listening to me the whole time. It's not a follow along style workout and that's why I love them so much. But on the flip side, this is also why I talk so much about utilizing the 12 Macro counting. And I also promote my Macro Counting Made SimpleOnline Academy because I truly believe that if you want to have the body that you want and also live a fun, realistic lifestyle, you've got to be doing both. You've got to be having that nutrition and movement in conjunction in conjunction with one another.
So if you're ready to commit to building the body that you want and you need the tools to help you, I've got them at Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy. You can head over to macro counting made simple dot com and if you're looking for resistance training demo workouts, even if that's three times a week, four times a week, five times a week. I've got a program for you. It's the movement Julie App weekly workout program. Five brand new workouts every single week. There's a 60 minute, 30 minute variation for every single workout. So whether you're low on time or you want to go the full 45 to 60 minutes, I've got to work out for you there. Go at your own pace. Video Demos. For each movement, you can learn more about the movement with Julie App The demo workouts at sale. That's S-A-L-E Dot movement with Julie dot com, so I will link both of those in the show notes that you can easily go tune in.
But all that to say, I believe that both of them are important. But let me highlight this again. Nutrition over exercise means that you could maintain and even lose some body fat, which is where a lot of people say nutrition is clean. And I'm not going to argue that because nutrition is so important. Exercise over nutrition, you're likely going to pedal backwards and you could start seeing your results disappear because if you're staying consistent with your workouts, but your nutrition is crap day in and day out, you're just you're not doing yourself any good, you really aren't, and you're not going to feel at your best. You're not going to have that energy. You're likely not going to be able to see the results for all the hard work that you're putting in. So both of those in conjunction, but please hear me when I say it doesn't have to be perfect. Your movement doesn't have to be perfect, your nutrition doesn't have to be perfect. You just need to be consistent.
I'm also going to link another episode that I think you'll find really helpful on this topic. Episode 315 five Differences between changing your Body composition versus Weight Loss. I ran a lot of really good feedback on that specific episode. People found that really helpful. So link that one as well as the other ones that I mentioned in this series of kind of be in depth of the macronutrients, I really dive into the Five Reasons to Love carbohydrates, why you need protein and why you need fat. So I will link all of those episodes as well as my two resources for movement and nutrition in the show notes that you can easily go check all of that out after this episode.
I hope that you found this helpful. I hope that this gave you some good insight and now you have kind of a more concrete answer when it comes to if this topic comes up with your friends or if it comes up again. You know, another good reason why having this knowledge can be helpful is if you, for some reason have an injury or you have an operation, something happens where you're out of your workouts for, you know, a small period of time, or maybe you're just traveling, you just don't have access to workouts. Just know that you can totally manipulate your nutrition and you can maintain your results that you've been working so hard at. So don't think that it's like, man, I, you know, I got this accident or I have this injury and now I'm not going to be able to see all my results and I'm going to start losing progress. Just know that you can absolutely manipulate your nutrition to ensure that you are still properly fueling your body and genuinely 4 to 6 weeks out of workouts If your nutrition is on point not perfect but consistent, you will likely not even see. You won't even miss a beat when it comes to getting back into your workout. So I hope that that gives you some peace of mind and that is a goal that I have for today's episode. I love you so much. I mean, I'll talk in the next.
All right, sister. That's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so. Julie, a lot better. Yes. It's with an eye in the middle for that daily post workout real talk, Healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. And I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.