> Exercising is at most 2-300 calories per day I can make any cardio machine at the gym tell me I've burned far, far more than this. > f you are making an eff

> Exercising is at most 2-300 calories per day I can make any cardio machine at the gym tell me I've burned far, far more than this. > f you are making an effort to count calories, you will notice if you're eating an extra 200 calories of food. The person I was replying to mentioned in another reply that they managed to lose 170 lbs which is a huge achievement. Someone with that kind of weight to lose has been overeating for a long time. Dropping calories to the point that they will just maintain there weight may feel very restrictive. I'm not surprised someone in this situation might underestimate their intake. It also doesn't take much to eat an extra 200 calories. Thats less than 2 tbsp of butter or oil. Pour too much salad dressing on your kale and now you're a couple hundred calories over what you thought. > And after a month, even if they were at a ~200 calorie deficit, they should have still noticed clear fat loss. The usual numbers you hear for weight loss are 3500 cals per lb of fat. A month at a 200 calorie deficit would give you 6000 calories. To make this easy let's say this leads to a 2 lb loss of fat, muscle, etc. I'd argue that when undertaking a lifestyle change a 2 lb change in weight could be hidden by other factors like hydration, more/less food in your digestive tract, etc.