Exercise is many things to many people.

That’s a statement that creates no debate, so obvious it should go without saying. But here’s something that should be said, something that could create a bit of controversy.

Those who work out to pig out got it all wrong.

Exercise should never be the pretext for eating poorly.

Particularly in light of a study published online on July 10, 2022 by the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Especially if you plan to inhabit this earth for as long as you can and have good health while doing so.

University of Sydney researchers used UK Biobank info accrued on nearly 350,000 British adults across more than 11 years and found it was only those who exercised hard and often and also ate optimally who “significantly” reduced their risk of dying.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s translate the researchers’ way of evaluating diet and exercise into a four-tiered rating system: worst, medium, better, and best. Compared to those Brits with a worst rating for both, those with two best ratings had a 17% lower risk of any and all causes of death - as well as a 19% lower risk of heart disease and a 27% lower risk of the cancers linked to being overweight or obese.

Let’s be clear here: Eating well occasionally and exercising lightly will never harm your health. But the number crunching clearly shows the biggest bang for your anti-mortality bucks comes from exercising intensely enough to earn a rating of better or best while eating in a way that engenders a similar score.

And by the way the eating was assessed, earning a score of better really wasn’t that hard. To do so, those involved simply had to average eating 4.5 cups or more of vegetables and fruits daily and two or more servings of fish weekly while also consuming fewer than two servings of processed meat and five servings of red meat every seven days.

Why no consideration of whole grains and ultra-processed foods, you ask? The study was performed using already collected data, and the researchers acknowledge that seeming oversight in their paper: “Other important dietary components ... were not measured.”

It’s safe to say adding those other important dietary components would’ve only widened the mortality gap between those who received two worst scores and those who received two bests. It’s also safe to say meeting the universally accepted exercise goal - at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-intense activity a week - does more than allow you to live longer.

It allows you to live longer better.

That’s because moderate to intense exercise, especially if some is in the form of resistance training (which you’re most likely to do by lifting weights), mitigates the loss of muscle mass that starts in middle age and the medicos call sarcopenia.

In a seminal and fairly easy paper to follow on the topic, “Sarcopenia: The Mystery of Muscle Loss,” Chantal Vella, M.S. and Len Kravitz, Ph.D. explain that age-related loss of muscle mass, strength, and function is unavoidable. But these losses don’t begin with a reduction or cessation of exercise necessarily.

The specialized cells called neurons that transmit nerve impulses back and forth to your brain and muscles die as you age, so some of the muscle fibers in a given muscle group no longer receive signals to contract and elongate. That leads to muscle fiber atrophy and death.

A lot of death.

To wit: The vastus medialis - the quadriceps muscle above the inside portion of the knee that becomes more pronounced when you fully extend your lower leg while seated - contains about 800,000 muscle fibers when you’re 20 years old. By the time you reach 60, though, about 550,000 of them have already gone to that great weight room in the sky.

But luckily for you, your body’s so resourceful that it could play McGyver if the show is remade a third time.

Work out hard enough and especially with weights, and the still-functioning neurons near the dead ones perform what could be called a cellular CPR and bring some muscle back from the dead - albeit it a different form.

So sarcopenia is indeed “partly reversible.” The back-from-the-dead muscles, however, don’t contract or elongate with their previous force. But they do possess endurance.

That’s part of the reason why elite-level ultra-marathoners remain competitive far longer than elite-level track sprinters.

In an article a few years ago, I argued that you should want to keep as much muscle as possible for as long as you can, not necessarily to maintain athletic performance but to be able to do the things you want and need to do. That’s also the argument for eating as healthfully as you can as well.

Especially when you have far more opportunities in a given week to eat well (at least 42 if you follow my advice) than work out.