How To Know What’s More Important: Workout or Diet?

The Standards of Strength for Fat Loss

In my program System Six: The Absolute Minimum Workout™, I give a simple formula:

Women: If you can do 3 deadlifts with 135lbs, and you can do 3 pullups or chinups, then your diet is now more important to your fat loss results than your workout is.

Men: If you can do 3 deadlifts with your bodyweight, and you can do 10 pullups or chinups, then your diet is now more important to your fat loss results than your workout is.

If you haven’t hit those minimum standards, then it’s 50/50 – your workout and diet are both equally important.

It’s important to note that these are the strength standards for fat loss, not sports performance, not to win the super best ever Facebook strength competition, this is just to look good.  In general, my clients really only care about looking hot.

The Easy Part and The Hard Part

I saw a tweet a month ago that said:

“The workout is the easy part.
Get the easy part right”

(I can’t for the life of me figure out who it was.  If anyone has Twitter/search skills, let me know)

But this is about the truest way that I can put it to you.  Even if the diet is now more important, you still need both.

The pitfall is always killing yourself in your workouts to try to make up for a sloppy diet.  Don’t bother.  Get the diet right, then put in the easy part – three smart strength workouts per week, and a little conditioning work afterwards.

Work towards the standards above in your workouts, slowly and deliberately.

Get The Hard Part Right

Food, really, is the hard part.

But you can make it a lot easier on yourself: Prepare.

Prepare to go shopping (with a shopping list).  Prepare for lunch (by cooking it the night before – or better yet, cooking the whole week’s worth of lunches the night before).  Prepare for special occaissions (by planning out what your cheat days are, and what to say when an event falls on a nonpcheat day).

Then, after all of your preparation on the front end – track your actions with a food journal.

Then, track your results with a scale and body fat calipers or pictures.

Lets take a look a that again: Before – Prepare, During – Food Journal, After – Track Results.

It’s Usually The Food

I’ve seen people get pretty good results doing stupid workouts with great nutrtion.

It doesn’t work the other way around.

Obviously, great nutrition + great workouts is the most amazing results ever.  But just remember which one is totally foundational – the food.