Fit & Fat: What you should be eating for weight loss

ROCKY RIVER -- Can you be fit and fat?  That's the question circulating in the fitness community over the past few months.  Does exercise really lead to weight loss?

"I would teach boot camp, muscle conditioning, step and a spinning. And either two in a row or three or four in a row.  And at that time I was my heaviest, I weighed 240."

She's the person you trust to guide your weight loss.  Tonya Banzhaf has been teaching group fitness for nearly 20 years.  

But poor food choices sabotaged her figure.

"I felt great! I mean, I was one of those fit but fat people, but I was not healthy. I would justify my working out with fast food, with a box of pasta, but I most certainly was in shape."

"We can't necessarily eat what we want. Our body doesn't work that way," says Dr. Elizabeth Ricanati with the Cleveland Clinic.

She says most people think exercise will make up for any misgivings in a diet - especially when you see athletes like Michael Phelps.

"Elite athletes are working out at a level that the ordinary person is not."  

Despite the fast food and not quite right portions, Michael Phelps and other elite athletes workout much more than the average person and have higher than normal metabolisms.

So for the average Joe, eating right must accompany exercise.

"You have to do both.  You have to balance the types of foods that you eat and you have to make sure - your mother was right - you have to eat breakfast.  You have to limit the transfat and limit the saturated fat, eat less sugar and still do the exercise as well."

For Tonya, she changed her habits and went from 240 pounds to about 140.

"A typical day is oatmeal, yogurt for breakfast, a salad with protein for lunch, protein bar.  I do treat myself every night.  I either eat a piece of cheesecake; I eat a brownie, a piece of cake.  And that's five or seven days a week."