I lost about 150lbs since my heaviest weight, which was about half. The pandemic has caused enough stress and lack of activity that I put a between 40 and 50 of

I lost about 150lbs since my heaviest weight, which was about half. The pandemic has caused enough stress and lack of activity that I put a between 40 and 50 of that back on before I got control of it again and started working back toward a more ideal weight, and I'm currently about 20 away still. I say this for credibility of what I'm about to tell you, so that you'll understand this isn't coming from someone who had to lose 10 or 15lbs and did it by cutting out soda or something. We want a trick because losing weight is hard. Our bodies fight us because they are stupid, and our society fights us because it encourages hedonism. But short of a few dangerous and largely illegal medications, there isn't any trick, you just have to embrace the suck. You're right that most of the weight you lose leaves your body in the form of CO2, but the best way to exhale more CO2 is through aerobic exercise. I was at my lowest weight when I was running regularly, then I developed a knee issue that forced me to stop. Of course, if you don't control your caloric intake it's likely you'll just eat enough to replenish whatever you burned anyway. Our bodies are really stingy about calories and our brains are really good at rationalizing reasons to eat more when we're running a deficit. Don't get me wrong, I would love if you could find some hack like you propose that would make this easier, but a decade of riding this rollercoaster leads me to believe you won't. If you want to get serious about losing weight (and I'm not saying you have to!): start by calculating the sedentary BMR for your ideal weight, then institute a strict daily calorie restriction[0] regime where you never go above that number. Even if you do no exercise and sleep a lot you'll still eventually get there, but exercise will help in a few ways. For one, you might find a form of exercise that's actually fun and you'll want to improve at it, which will further motivate you to follow the calorie restriction, in general you'll have less time to sit staring at a screen getting bored and feeling the munchies, and obviously you'll burn extra calories. [0] Seriously it doesn't even matter that much what you eat as long as you can hit the target number. A nutritionist did an experiment where he ate nothing but convenience store junk food and all his health metrics improved including losing (IIRC) 30lbs. That said, certain foods will make it much easier to avoid overeating than others. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out which ones.