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It's definitely true that eating less/healthier is the most important part of weight loss. However, perhaps because exercise played a big role in my own weight

It's definitely true that eating less/healthier is the most important part of weight loss. However, perhaps because exercise played a big role in my own weight loss journey, I do feel like people go too far in dismissing it as a weight loss aid. First of all, while a 3k run isn't going to do much to burn off that slice of cake you had with lunch, if you transition from a generally inactive lifestyle to a generally active one (eg, by getting into running as a hobby), you can cumulatively burn a decent amount of calories. Cardio as a hobby is not for everyone, but I thought it wasn't for me until I gave it a shot and found I really enjoyed it. There are also psychological advantages of incorporating exercise into a weight loss regime. I started eating better after, and partially because, I started exercising. When you work out a lot, you start to enjoy feeling healthy (or at least, thinking of yourself as a healthy person), and you start to realise that junk food is working against that. Finally, weight loss should not be your only goal if you are interested in getting healthier. It's true that you could lose weight by being very sedentary and eating very little, but I suspect that would bring its own health problems.

mmmpop 5y ago
I get the impression that cardio affects some people differently. I'm taking some time off from my 30+ miles a week running habit to let my foot heal up. I'm now at about 10 miles + cycling and nordic skiing when I can but overall probably 1/2 to 2/3 the cardio than I've been used to for the past 4 or 5 years. But I've had no problem keeping weight off by just adjusting the amount that I eat. However, if I upped the cardio, I'd be able to (and want) to eat an extra 500-600 calories to compensate, and still lose weight. I swear I can maintain weight eating more than what I supposedly burn while active, which could make sense if you buy into the whole "your metabolic rate can be work-hardened" concept.
- everforward 5y ago
  Those "calories burned" calculators are also not very good, so you may just be in the margin of error. It's easy to calculate how much energy it takes to propel a given weight 5 miles. It's hard to tell how many calories a person burns to produce that energy. Your ratios of aerobic to anaerobic respiration are going to impact that wildly, which will depend on how much oxygen your body can absorb and how quickly you're burning through oxygen. There's a huge gap in the amount of energy cells get from each. Aerobic respiration produces up to 38 ATP per glucose, while anaerobic produces only 2 ATP per glucose. Running form probably plays into that as well, if you've got some kind of suboptimal gait or you're swinging your arms a lot or something like that.
  - mmmpop 5y ago
    >> Running form probably plays into that as well, if you've got some kind of suboptimal gait or you're swinging your arms a lot or something like that. Yep, my form is atrocious and inefficient due to bunions and Morton's toe which has evolved into hammer toe. I'd argue that I burn calories more efficiently, however :)
JeremyNT 5y ago
My own anecdote: I've been a cyclist and/or a runner pretty consistently for the last 20 years. This year I moved to a place where cycling wasn't an option (without driving a long way), and at the same time I injured my knee by overtraining on hills. So I was benched from my typical cardio. The results are unsurprising... I gained 15 pounds over the next 6 months, and am now overweight. Exercise obviously plays a role in weight management. There's truth in the "you can't outrun your fork" meme, and it's good to remind people of the greater importance of diet for weight management to counter the widespread myths about exercise being some cure-all here. However, I do worry that overly reductive takes risk swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.
- coryfklein 5y ago
  The article seems to indicate that, counterintuitively, your Total Energy Expenditure (TEE) wouldn't have changed much after you stopped the regular cycling (see the section about how hunter gatherers walking 8-14 km a day had the same TEE as average US), so your weight gain may have been from second-order effects of coming back to your diet. Do you remember whether your diet changed at this time as well? Some other anecdotes shared here seem to share a similar theme, that exercise helps in losing weight on a more meta-level by shifting yourself into a generally healthier mindset which, in turn, seems to help you eat "healthier" foods, which is probably a proxy for "low-calorie foods" like fruit and vegetables. Maybe when you're sedentary it's easier to reach for the bag of potato chips?
  - JeremyNT 5y ago
    I am pretty sure my diet stayed pretty tight, as I monitor my caloric intake using my smartphone and it remained pretty consistent. Obviously this could be skewed for other reasons so it's not gospel. The "much" is carrying a lot of weight, so to speak, in your comment. As a reference I went from running ~25 miles a week to just walking a fraction of that as I've recovered. I did keep up my other non-cardio calisthenics throughout, though. Some napkin math suggests I was over my calorie target by just shy of 300 calories per day over the course of this time period.

mmmpop 5y ago

I get the impression that cardio affects some people differently. I'm taking some time off from my 30+ miles a week running habit to let my foot heal up. I'm now at about 10 miles + cycling and nordic skiing when I can but overall probably 1/2 to 2/3 the cardio than I've been used to for the past 4 or 5 years. But I've had no problem keeping weight off by just adjusting the amount that I eat. However, if I upped the cardio, I'd be able to (and want) to eat an extra 500-600 calories to compensate, and still lose weight. I swear I can maintain weight eating more than what I supposedly burn while active, which could make sense if you buy into the whole "your metabolic rate can be work-hardened" concept.

everforward 5y ago
Those "calories burned" calculators are also not very good, so you may just be in the margin of error. It's easy to calculate how much energy it takes to propel a given weight 5 miles. It's hard to tell how many calories a person burns to produce that energy. Your ratios of aerobic to anaerobic respiration are going to impact that wildly, which will depend on how much oxygen your body can absorb and how quickly you're burning through oxygen. There's a huge gap in the amount of energy cells get from each. Aerobic respiration produces up to 38 ATP per glucose, while anaerobic produces only 2 ATP per glucose. Running form probably plays into that as well, if you've got some kind of suboptimal gait or you're swinging your arms a lot or something like that.
- mmmpop 5y ago
  >> Running form probably plays into that as well, if you've got some kind of suboptimal gait or you're swinging your arms a lot or something like that. Yep, my form is atrocious and inefficient due to bunions and Morton's toe which has evolved into hammer toe. I'd argue that I burn calories more efficiently, however :)

JeremyNT 5y ago

My own anecdote: I've been a cyclist and/or a runner pretty consistently for the last 20 years. This year I moved to a place where cycling wasn't an option (without driving a long way), and at the same time I injured my knee by overtraining on hills. So I was benched from my typical cardio. The results are unsurprising... I gained 15 pounds over the next 6 months, and am now overweight. Exercise obviously plays a role in weight management. There's truth in the "you can't outrun your fork" meme, and it's good to remind people of the greater importance of diet for weight management to counter the widespread myths about exercise being some cure-all here. However, I do worry that overly reductive takes risk swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

coryfklein 5y ago
The article seems to indicate that, counterintuitively, your Total Energy Expenditure (TEE) wouldn't have changed much after you stopped the regular cycling (see the section about how hunter gatherers walking 8-14 km a day had the same TEE as average US), so your weight gain may have been from second-order effects of coming back to your diet. Do you remember whether your diet changed at this time as well? Some other anecdotes shared here seem to share a similar theme, that exercise helps in losing weight on a more meta-level by shifting yourself into a generally healthier mindset which, in turn, seems to help you eat "healthier" foods, which is probably a proxy for "low-calorie foods" like fruit and vegetables. Maybe when you're sedentary it's easier to reach for the bag of potato chips?
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  I am pretty sure my diet stayed pretty tight, as I monitor my caloric intake using my smartphone and it remained pretty consistent. Obviously this could be skewed for other reasons so it's not gospel. The "much" is carrying a lot of weight, so to speak, in your comment. As a reference I went from running ~25 miles a week to just walking a fraction of that as I've recovered. I did keep up my other non-cardio calisthenics throughout, though. Some napkin math suggests I was over my calorie target by just shy of 300 calories per day over the course of this time period.