THE most effective way to lose weight is through nutritional changes, and it can be sustained through reasonable types of exercise.

Dieting alone can carry you all the way with your fat loss, but without exercise the muscle loss may be significant. The common rule of thumb is to be cognisant of the fact that successful weight loss will occur with emphasis on nutrition (80 per cent) and exercise (20 per cent).

You may still be wondering, how important is exercise in your life? It is incredibly important.

Keep in mind that anything you do not work on or exercise will begin to fail later in life. To explain this further, we can look at the InteKai five essential pillars of fitness for maintaining wellness.

Walking

Apart from the calorie burning and mild cardiovascular benefits, walking requires practice to keep a proper and safe stride. Strong and healthy hip joints are inevitable with consistent walking and exercising.

Progressive resistance training

Weight resistance training is often pushed down the list of fun exercises for most people, but after walking, resistance training is the most important form of exercise.

As you age, your muscle mass and bone density will decrease significantly. With muscle mass loss, your strength, mobility, joint, spine and core stability and strength will decrease as well.

Bone density decrease can make a fall or similar impact life-changing. With the same energy intake, your fat levels will increase over time as less muscle and less action means a slower metabolism.

The only way to avoid this is to maintain more muscle mass than your body weight requires. Calisthenics or body weight exercises are useful, but progressively increasing resistance is invaluable for maintaining muscle mass.

Cardio

Cardiovascular exercises are among the most popular forms of exercise, as it can take many entertaining forms like aerobics and sports. The benefits are in the name.

These activities target your heart and vascular functionality and your pulmonary (breathing) health.

Agility, coordination and balance

Any activity requiring you to be on your feet, shifting your weight, changing directions, accelerating and suddenly stopping, can help you build and maintain agility and coordination.

Sports, dancing, martial arts and more can all be useful. Yoga and small lifestyle actions, such as how you bend to pick up objects, putting on pants and footwear, and choosing to walk on a narrow curb, can all help you to keep your balancing ability intact.

Flexibility

Flexibility is critical for balance, motion and tissue health. Muscle development, range of motion, tendon durability, and pain management are all dependent on your flexibility.

Balancing your lifestyle

Exercising will increase your appetite, and if you are not prepared for that or do not manage your nutrition, it could stall or completely jeopardise your weight loss goals.

Nutrition without exercise will yield significant results, but exercise alone as a weight loss solution is next to futile.

We all have to strike a balance with our nutrition as well as our exercise routines. Finding that balance is a call or click away at Intekai Health and Fitness, where professional coaches will provide healthy, balanced meal options, guidelines and exercise routines aimed at managing weight loss and providing a sustainable path to a healthy lifestyle.

Fitz-George Rattray is the director of Intekai Academy, which is focused on helping people live a healthy lifestyle through nutrition and weight management. If you are interested in losing weight or living a healthier lifestyle, give them a call at 876-863-5923, or visit their website at intekaiacademy.org