Oh, if only it were that easy! Eating uncontrollably because you’re exercising, and then getting upset because nothing changes, is generally one of the biggest mistakes people make.

Exercise is absolutely essential for weight loss, weight maintenance, and maintaining stable health, but it’s not enough on its own for weight loss. Generally, the balance for weight loss and fitness is said to be 70% nutrition and 30% exercise. While this isn’t something that can be precisely measured, I believe it’s more likely to be 80% nutrition and 20% exercise. However, this doesn’t mean we should just lie around without exercising or eat whatever we want just because we’re exercising.

As in every aspect of our lives, balance is important here too. The most important thing is healthy and good nutrition. When we support this with exercise, it’s impossible not to see results. The motivational contribution of exercise to the weight loss and maintenance process is undeniable.

On days when we exercise for an hour, we turn to healthy foods so that the suffering isn’t in vain. No pain, no gain, Rocky.

With the effect of the happiness hormones we release when we exercise, we feel more positive. Therefore, we avoid the psychological eating that we normally do. Opening the refrigerator and standing there thinking about it, or rummaging through the snack drawer, even though we ate two hours ago, is all psychological hunger. After exercise, we experience a level of excitement and happiness that a slice of pizza or a bar of chocolate can’t provide. We’ve already released endorphins, so we don’t need pizza or hamburgers.

There’s also the reality of calorie balance. If we burn more calories than we consume from food, we lose weight. Those 500, 600, or 700 calories we deduct from our reserves on a workout day will return to us as baggy jeans a week later.

If our diet isn’t 95% healthy, we won’t achieve our goals even if we exercise 7 days a week. Nutrition is the biggest factor in staying healthy and losing weight.

We all have goals to achieve starting January 1, 2017. May the new year bring everyone days where they achieve their desired goals. We can achieve anything if we truly want it. 2017 will be a year of big changes in my life too. Let’s go, let’s list our goals and achieve them. Be wonderful, 2017!

I wish everyone a healthy, happy, and sweet new year.

This text was originally published on www.hthayat.com on December 31, 2016, and is taken from that site.