During an interview with the Health Channel, Carla Duenas, a registered dietitian with Baptist Health South Florida, talks about why diet is just as important as exercise. Carla explains that being mindful of both diet and exercise is essential for reaching specific health goals. “If you’ve ever seen an overweight marathoner, you’ll realize that it’s not just about, you know, running 3-4 hours. It’s also about eating right because you have to fuel your body with just the right number of calories that it needs,” Carla explains. Everyone has different needs and goals that their diet has to account for. Carla states that working with a registered dietician is a good way to figure out what you should be eating to feel fueled for that exercise or goal that you have in mind.

 Physical activities and exercise improve quality of life and keep you healthy long term. “Anything that gets you moving, not just going to the gym for one hour a day but being active throughout the day…are the kinds of things that are going to help improve your health long term,” Carla states. Depending on what kind of exercise you are doing and how much you are doing, nutrition needs to be tailored to fit your goals.

Carla goes on to discuss how exercise and diet can help you attain specific fitness goals. If your goal is to get faster at running or biking, coordination exercises that can be found in aerobics classes such as Zumba or yoga could help. Muscle endurance, strength training, and, of course, agility would be helpful as well. Depending on the sport that you do, training in a way that targets all these things will improve how fit you are. Carla then adds that for people who are trying to become better at a sport, she would focus on their nutrition as well as their training. She circles back to the example of the person trying to run or bike faster, “Maybe it’s not just carb loading, it’s also just about maybe helping them lose some weight, so they’re lighter and able to run faster.”

Watch the full segment of Carla Duenas talking about the importance of both diet and exercise, here: https://youtu.be/Hsoczgs5B_g