It's all about what you eat

Many people think that spending hours in the gym will slim them down and melt off the pounds, but that is not entirely true. There are a lot of elements that go into toning your muscles. Exercise alone cannot equate eating healthy.

At it's core, weight-loss and weight-gain revolve around how many calories you are taking in. In is important to note that cutting down on calories can negatively impact you too. You don't want to not eat enough. Eating is important; it's all about what you eat.

Shawn M. Talbott, a nutritional biochemist, says, "for a healthy daily calorie count, allow 10 calories per pound of body weight, so a 150-pound woman should shot for a 1,500-calorie target. That way, you should be bale to lose weight no matter how much you exercise."

Now, eating that many calories is pretty easy if you're hitting up McDonald's. If you were to go there and get a Big Mac and small french fry, it would be 770 calories. For a 150-pound woman, that would mean are more than half way there, and that was only one meal for the day. So, think about how many calories you intake throughout the day.

Another great way to track your calories is calorie counting. Yes, this can be annoying but smartphones have made apps that help you. They remember all of the items that other people put in, from grocery store items to meals at a restaurant and most of the time, whatever you ate is already in the system and you don't need to figure out how many calories were in that meal on your own. It's super easy and it's a great way to make sure you are on track for the day without going under or over by too much.

Talbot did a study on weight loss and whether exercise or dieting made people lose weight faster. He says, "weight loss is generally 75 percent diet and 25 percent exercise. An analysis of more than 700 weigh loss studies found that people see the biggest short-term results when they eat smart. On average, people who dieted without exercising for 15 weeks lost 23 pounds; the exercisers only lost six over 21 weeks."

So, it's much easier to eat the right foods than to burn off the wrong ones. This doesn't go to say that exercising isn't good. Exercise is great! It works your muscles and keeps you healthy. However, exercise is not going to be the answer to your prayers.

As Talbott says, "You can't out-exercise a bad diet."