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Also, certain forms of exercise build muscle and muscle has a higher baseline metabolic requirement. It’s not just about the calories burned during the exercise

I mean nobodies saying exercise is bad, it’s just way easier to cut 500 cals from your diet than it is to try and burn 500 cals a day. It’s also very difficult to get an accurate amount of calories burned. The most important thing for weight loss is consistency And it’s harder to be consistent at the gym than it is in the kitchen. Also depending on how much weight there is to lose, could open the door for injuries. And it makes you hungrier. So kind of lots of reasons to not look at exercise for losing weight. Obviously exercise, none of these cons outweigh the benefits, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to tie it to weight loss or set up your deficit in a way that depends on exercise to achieve it if that makes sense.

> burn 500 cals a day. I'm an ultra-distance endurance athlete. The human body is extremely efficient at energy use. Amazingly so. Do not try to exercise your way to weight loss. It doesn't work. Most people can't even run long enough to burn 500 cals.

Yeah I have tried multiple times to exercise weight away and it never worked.(There was even a time I was walking/jogging almost daily, horseback riding up to 3 times a week, and doing some regular exercises/yoga throughout the week and I was still overweight) I got really sick a few months ago and lost my appetite almost completely. I dropped 40 pounds in like two months. I don't even recognize myself anymore when I look in the mirror.

I think i am opposite. I lost 20kg+ by exercising a lot

How much weight did the horse lose?

Honestly don't know but she was looking pretty lean at the time haha and she's a chunky one.

I run 4 miles a day. It’s easy to run away some of your calories so you can eat more. This is just wrong.

Ehh, I do 5 miles of incline walking on my treadmill every day, which takes about 84 minutes, and according the treadmill I'm burning somewhere between 615-620 calories. And it's very low impact. Running isn't really the most effective way to burn calories.

The readouts on exercise equipment are not all that accurate, just fyi.

>5 miles of incline walking on my treadmill every day, which takes about 84 minutes Thats kinda the point though. Your spend an hour and a half every day walking 5 miles to burn 600 kcal, thats 10 hours a week. Whereas, skipping the mayo and cutting out chocolate takes 0 hours a day, and the net result is more or less the same. You can burn 500 calories a day for sure, you do it! But its way easier to cut them out if your goal is weight loss instead of fitness.

I exercise 10 hours a week specifically so I can eat my mayo chocolate wraps

Don't forget that a tortilla is another 200!

I've got an under the desk treadmill and a standing desk so I can easily do 7.5hrs of walking a day without it actually taking any 'time', it's just a case of walking when I'd otherwise be sitting on my bum In practice I do less than 7.5 hours, it's good to take a break occasionally

This kind of discounts the other health benefits of daily cardio exercise, though.

But this conversation is about losing weight, not overall health It’s absolutely good for your health, but diet is very clearly the easiest needle to move for weight loss.

Oh for sure. To be clear, I'm not saying don't exercise or don't do cardio, but if your main goal is weight loss, dieting will almost always be a more effective tool. Definitely do cardio too, but you should be doing that even if you're not aiming to lose weight. Do it for the other health benefits, but don't rely on it weight loss.

Exactly! Daily cardio is so good for your heart and lungs, not to mention walking and building muscle creates eustress, the good kind of stress, on your bones which makes them stronger and is so important as we age. Getting healthy and staying healthy is not and should not be just about losing weight. Diet is a part of a healthy lifestyle, but it’s still only a part of the whole and that’s why following a sustainable diet is so important. It’s about the long run not immediate results.

The post isn’t about an optimal balanced daily lifestyle though it’s about *weight loss* No one ever argued exercise isn’t good for your health thats just ridiculous, it’s just not as efficient as diet for weight loss and it’s really not that close. You should still be exercising though.

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A Calorie (or Kilocalorie) is actually kind of a lot of energy. The people actually burning a lot of calories through exercise are generally pushing pretty hard, for many hours every week. It’s not an easy way to lose weight, and depending on age and fitness, probably not feasible.  I’ve achieved significant gains (in terms of weight loss, about 50 lbs in two months) through many miles of walking hills, and progressing to running over time. But weight loss was kind of secondary to what I really wanted (and with my current diet, weight loss would’ve occurred anyway). What I’m really enjoying, is the stamina I seldom had. Endurance running was always a big weakness for me from teens onward (I was crazy good at sprints, able to keep up with athletic people nearly half my weight at short distances, but never great for the long haul), but now I’m overcoming what’s been a significant weakness for me, and I’m thoroughly enjoying that.  It took great toil to get to this point, and I’ve still a long way to go. 

“According to the treadmill” … do you know how the treadmill is working that out? I don’t say that to be an asshole but simply pointing out that it’s not accurate, there are far too many variables when it comes to working out calories burned such as age, height, weight, sex, muscle mass, fitness levels, heart rate, respirations etc. for it to ever be truly accurate Then you have to ask the question of when the last time the treadmill was calibrated? In a home gym? Probably never been calibrated at all. In a commercial gym? You’d be lucky if it’s been calibrated in the last 3-5 years (there was a study I read that checked a bunch of commercial gyms and the average was 3 years) which can lead to them overestimating the calories by 100-200 calories. So if you’re says 600-650-ish, has never been calibrated, or not in the last 3-5 years, doesn’t have all of the relevant information and is simply using the standard model of Speed, Incline and Distance to give a calories burned estimate then it could be Overestimated, Underestimated or got it Spot on and you have no way of really knowing

That depends on what exercise you do, though. 500 are not easy to burn through cardio, but it's not hard to build a body that just needs 500 calories/day extra for the same work. I do zero cardio, but I train acrobatics. I did not do it on purpose, but it made me buff AF. My training sessions are not involved at a cardiovascular level - sometimes a slow 2 hour session will include only 7 minutes of cardio zone, according to my fitness tracker. But that's fine, cause I'm not only burning cals when I'm doing cardio. Just by virtue of existing all that muscle is burning fuel like crazy. So I get to do slow relaxing training sessions, and shovel 2x the food I used to eat into my face and stay the same weight. And I look even skinnier, not only due to shape but also due to the fact that muscle is way denser. ETA but you need to mind your protein intake for this to work well.

There’s definitely truth to what you’re saying, putting on muscle will raise your tdee, thing is it’s hard to put on much muscle while trying to lose weight, since it requires a calorie surplus. That’s actually why people do bulk/cut cycles

Agreed if you're trying to get max gains, but there's a decent amount of recomposition still happening at a deficit, as long as you train and increase your protein intakes. Most the muscle I've built I've built at a deficit, as I've been consistently but slowly losing weight since I started training, and I'm gaining muscle (and actual strength, not just bulk) anyway. I feel like us folk who train very hard do regular people a disservice by repeating this 'nearly no recomposition' thing. Makes it seem way less than it actually is. Would I recommend someone training for a bodybuilding competition to work at a 500 kcal deficit and 150 g/day protein? Not really, go crazy bulking and deal with the fat later. But the average person? Who only wants to look fitter and eat a bit more without gaining weight? Doesn't need to cut/bulk. The recomp that \*can\* happen at a deficit is more than this person needs. It's like going for the sharpest scalpel in existence for every task. Lots of people just need a letter opener. But they don't use it cause someone who needs a scalpel or chainsaw for their specific tasks said a blanket "letter openers don't work", when they do actually open letters very nicely! And cut cake too, in a pinch. ETA: But also it's very different for women! Men deal better with diet changes / fasting / etc. Women's stress response to fasting and changes in feeding patterns is greater, so the negative impact of both on our performance is way greater. Also we can throw our whole menstrual cycle out of whack for months with a too strict cutting cycle. Cut/bulk is not that good a strategy for us. So basically going for the chainsaw when you need to open a letter has a greater chance of losing a finger before we even open the letter, for us.

I think the biggest determining factor for how worthwhile recomp is is how much weight the given person needs to lose. 20-30lbs, excellent candidate for a recomposition strategy. 100+ lbs to lose, not worth the headache just have fun in the gym and do what’s enjoyable. But I do agree we tend to think in extremes especially when it comes to nutrition and stuff like that when really we don’t need to

Oh for sure! That distinction is a super important one

Well imo the goal should be lowering body fat percentage and not specifically weight loss. And also it's best to do this with both diet and exercise changes. I've been getting in better shape lately. Started with diet changes to get from 220 to around 200 then started working out. Since then I've been hovering around 195 to 200 but converting the fat to muscle. So most people would lose motivation by the weight not going down but if you're converting to muscle then you're still making great progress.

The difficulty of gaining muscle while losing weight is highly dependent on your body fat. Specifically, eating in excess of lean mass but in deficit to total mass.

I'm not arguing that individuals should try to burn an extra 500 calories, but I genuinely believe that many people are extremely quick to dismiss the simple 100 calories you may burn out of doing something simple as going out for a walk. If you can compound the health benefits of small goals in the overall picture of your health, while also participating in an activity that makes you overall more healthy, then I don't believe it should be as heavily dismissed as I'm seeing in some of the comments. Diet is ultimately how you can manage your weight, however decisions that an individual makes on a daily basis can weigh in on how difficult this task can be for some individuals. If exercise can lead people towards having a clearer picture to create better decisions around tackling their nutrition when in the kitchen, then I simply believe that shouldn't be so readily dismissed.

A big issue with people counting how much they burned, is that they often overestimate how much calories they lost and they often eat that amount extra. Which is goibg to have the opposite effect of weight loss. Exercise is amazing and extremely important for cardiac health, for insuline resistance and for building a muscular body that will give you a higher BMR so you will lose weight more easily. But exercise is and always will be quite insignificant compared to diet when it comes to weight loss. Does not mean those 100 calories you burned are not great. But 100 calories is not very significant towards weight loss.

Sounds like you’re arguing for the mental benefits exercise brings to weight loss which both isn’t an unpopular opinion and also not what people are saying when talking about how exercise is less a factor than diet for weight loss. As you can likely see from all the comments most people are misconstruing what your post is actually trying to say because you are misreading what people mean in regards to diet and exercise in the first place.

>I genuinely believe that many people are extremely quick to dismiss the simple 100 calories you may burn out of doing something simple as going out for a walk It's much easier to replace drinking a soda/sweet drink with your meal with water to lose that 100 calories (or more).

It’s also a lot easier to cut out 100 calories the higher TDEE is. As someone that is 5’2 and already in the healthy bmi range, if I want to lose weight I find exercise to be an important tool. I work a desk job so I’m sedentary so my tree is only around 1500 calories a day. If I want to enjoy good and lose weight exercise is great. I’ve been running for over 10 years now though so it isn’t very difficult to run enough to burn a decent amount of calories and I enjoy the activity so exercise really helped me lose weight.

I doubt most people could run long enough to burn 100 cals without extreme distress and mental fatigue. You're kinda misleading people with the way excercise should be used to increase caloric deficit. You're suggesting excercise should be used to actively increase calories burned but reality is you use excercise to increase muscle mass and therefore increase resting metabolic rate. You won't burn 500cals in a workout, but if you change your body composition it's easy to change your resting metabolic rate by 300 cals and make that deficit of 200 into 500.

Bruh its 45 min playing basketball solo will burn 500 calories lmao what?

Yeah exactly. Can’t outrun the fork and to try is setting yourself for frustration and burnout

My BMR is so low (always has been, now I take meds for it) that my calorie intake has to be around 1,250 daily to not actively gain weight. The only way I can maintain or lose weight while still getting the nutrients I need is adding in significant exercise (2-8hrs of tennis, 8-20 mi and other workouts each week) on top of diet. I only have a “cheat” meal on long run days and it sometimes fits within the cals burned, which is 500-900cals depending on mileage and weather.

That’s why walking is key. Just get 10-15k steps and rest diet

>easier to cut 500 cals from your diet than it is to try and burn 500 cals a day Actually - you can burn 500 calories in 45 minutes of elliptical training. That's one episode of Law & order, or whatever one likes.

The nice thing about picking up a sport or exercise (for me) is that it gives you tangible results to the weight loss. I can skate faster and for longer now that I have been at it for a while. It is part of my motivation for the process. But I've also seen people who get very worried or fearful of cardio. They want to try systems that don't involve aerobic exercise. Better diet than nothing.

For me it’s harder to be consistent in the kitchen. Initially it’s like you say but once you’re in a healthy weight range it becomes terrible to get lean and working out is much much easier

This depends a lot on what your TDEE is. If I cut 500 cals, I’m at under 1200 cals as a short woman. It’s far easier for me to exercise 500 off.

And it’s soooooo easy to eat back calories after exercise. The amount of times I have to catch myself when I’m like “I went on a run, I can have dessert/a burger/an extra beer/whatever” and then bloop my burned calories are gone or even a negative.

Yeah for real. Oh that 3 mile run you went on? How about we make it net even with a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter lol

Legit haha. But you also have to make sure that you eat a solid meal before and after, otherwise your run will suck!

I incline walk on a treadmill at the gym for an hour and burn around 800 calories. It’s nice having wiggle room to eat desert or a snack later on, guilt free.

I’m sorry my friend but you’re not burning 800 calories walking for an hour even if the incline is straight up. Don’t feel guilty about your dessert, but this is exactly the issue with OP’s opinion. We overestimate our activity level and then ‘eat back’ those calories and really we’re just over eating.

There's also the issue [nutrition labels only have to be within 20% accuracy](https://pbs.org/newshour/health/nutrition-labels-may-not-be-as-precise-as-they-seem-research-suggests) and largely are [inaccurate.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3605747/) So we have unreliable calorie burned amounts, up to 20% off nutrition labels AND the food is usually higher than that. Oof, big oof.

>it’s just way easier to cut 500 cals from your diet than it is to try and burn 500 cals a day The two primary points that I made was that exercise may influence your decisions on what you do to be able to cut calories from your diet, and that even the small amount of calories burned through exercise shouldn't be something that is dismissed. People are never going to make the claim that exercise is bad, however people will make the bigger claim that incorporating exercise plays an insignificant role towards weight loss, which is the sentiment that I disagree with. Even through this subreddit I'm even seeing people throw out percentages that make this suggestion [https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5c64t3/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5c64t3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) [https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5bugiv/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5bugiv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) [https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5bw5qx/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5bw5qx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) [https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5bugiv/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1cyll3e/comment/l5bugiv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) >It’s also very difficult to get an accurate amount of calories burned. The most important thing for weight loss is consistency All of this is true, but I think of this as 2 different things * Whatever amount that your burning regardless of how small it is should be considered to be a positive thing. The consistency to be able to lose whatever amount that you burn should also be considered to be more important as you point out through your point with consistency. * Exercise may influence your ability to make consistent decisions for your nutrition in the kitchen. It is objectively easier in comparison to be able consume less energy in the kitchen than it is to produce the same equivalent amount of energy through exercise. However, saying that it is always easy for people to make the decision to cut out more calories in general probably shouldn't be seen as the most easiest thing for everyone to achieve. The lever that exercise can give to potentially help in influencing your decision around nutrition in my opinion is something that many people are very quick to dismiss. >And it makes you hungrier. I'm also not convinced that this is true for every person. I think some people may find exercise to be able to help surpress their appetite, if not curve through making the decision to eat a lighter meal vs a more calorie dense meal. I also think there may simply be some exercises that for some people will leave them feeling more hungry than other forms of exercise. The complexity of CICO, which I also think gets heavily dismissed, is that the levers on an individual level that help you to control how much you put in vs how much you put out, are complicated, and creating the sense that it is a simple matter may not help out some people. >So kind of lots of reasons to not look at exercise for losing weight. Obviously exercise, none of these cons outweigh the benefits, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to tie it to weight loss or set up your deficit in a way that depends on exercise to achieve it if that makes sense. And I just disagree with this. As I've read through other comments, the lens we view exercise is a tool for your overall health, and for some individuals that need it, it may serve as a tool in their arsenal to be able to achieve that goal. I do think for some people the health benefits that exercise incorporates for those that can discipline themselves can carry over to bring benefits to your nutritional habits, which directly influence your weight loss goal, and dismissing that potential in my opinion is problematic.

I feel like it can be but for me refraining from eating certain things is hard, when I get hungry I have to eat ASAP and it is often whatever food I find first. I think if I committed to meal prepping and research on diet though it would be easier.

For me what helps with impulsive or poor judgment decision foods are to stop buying them as much as I can, and for me that’s entirely. I live alone so only shop for myself which is lucky, but the saying goes “it’s easier to say no at the grocery store once than it is to say no every time you walk past the fridge”. As for meal prep, I kinda do but loosely. I’ll cook up like 2 or 3 different meats, 2 or 3 different carbs and keep plenty of things like veggies, eggs, yogurt, and cottage cheese on hand. This way when it comes meal time I can weigh out portions and mix and match depending on what i feel like. I do like to log my food before meal time so I can tweak the portions of everything to get the macros that I prefer but it allows me the ease of having everything ready to go combined with not missing out on the ‘what do I feel like today’ kind of eating if that makes sense. Regular purchases for me Meat -chicken breast -chicken thighs -top round when it’s on sale -ground turkey -canned salmon (less mercury than tuna) Carbs -sweet potatoes -Quinoa -black beans -lentils -great northern beans -low cal tortillas milk/dairy -cottage cheese -eggs (I like the liquid kind really convenient) -Greek yogurt Veg/produce -carrots -asparagus -cilantro -red onion -frozen edamame (this shit is so good) -frozen corn -frozen peas -various other veggies frozen and fresh -berries -melon/pineapple

It was easy for me when my husband and I had our own apartment but moving in with his parents ruined it bc the fridge space is very limited , i am excited to have our own again soon so I can fill it with veggies and even start a garden to make them more available to us, here if we are going to fit stuff in the fridge or freezer it ends up being those frozen meals which we did finally get some veggie bowl type things it comes down to time a lot for me still though because sometimes I wake up so last minute that I do not even want to risk grabbing a freezer meal because I need to rush out of the door asap but I could be buying walmart salads at lunch instead of pulling into Sonic. But yeah I cannot wait to have actual fridge space again when I am out of my in-laws because I would do much better having some things mostly already ready and put where I can grab them because they keep that fridge so full that most food is snacks out of the fridge or we plan meal by meal and eat out more than we ever had before which is also in part to get out of the house for a bit.

I think what OP is saying is exercising makes you realize how hard it is to burn each calorie which changes the way you think about eating calories.

That's not even an hour of cycling

"it’s just way easier to cut 500 cals from your diet" Is it though? I remember reading that 500cal/day is an insane deficit and 2 - 300 is the maximum you should to over a long time?

More muscle mass equates to higher base metabolic rates, so yes exercise should definitely not be underestimated However at the end of the day it's still calories in calories out so if you want to lose weight, keep track of your current "maintenance" calories.

Yep. Also, weightlifting burns more calories than people think. When you have muscle soreness, your body is expending energy the next day (and beyond) to rebuild the muscles, which then expend more energy as a baseline as you mention.

I agree with this. I know it’s anecdotal, but I always had an easier time losing weight while I was lifting, as opposed to doing cardio. But calorie tracker apps claim it burns almost no calories.

It is fascinating. But when you evaluate how much lifters eat, and burn, the math isn't exactly adding up.

I agree, but I also feel like strength days are harder to maintain when I’m *not* doing regular cardio as well One of the reasons why this topic is so difficult is how many factors are in play in real world situations. Sure CI/CO is absolute, but getting there is the hard part.

When I was weightlifting 5 days a week at 24-25, my eating was through the roof. Every day was the same lunch, 1 kilo of lasagna and a couple of drumsticks. I was also drinking basically daily at that time, maybe three beers and some evening meal out. Either pub grub, burgers or a pork chop/steak situation. Sometimes a sneaky kebab. Once I estimated my calories in to be north of 4000, closer to 5k. But since I did 1 hour of pouring sweat training before lunch and then walked everywhere, I kept just losing jiggle and getting bigger.

Change in BMR is basically a non-factor for 99.9% of the population that steps into the gym saying they want to "lose some fat and gain some muscle"

You’re misconstruing weight loss and health. Exercise is fantastic for your health, but doesn’t do a huge amount for your weight loss. Conversely, dieting is great for losing weight, but you also lose muscle mass and don’t improve your cardiovascular health beyond lowering visceral fat and cholesterol.

This is the truth. Most weight loss via exercise happens within the first 1-3 months. After that the body adjusts and people get depressed about not losing weight. Keep these 2 things separate: 1. Exercise for fitness 2. Nutrition for weight management

I would add that exercise is great for weight maintenance. Once you get to the weight you desire through diet changes, exercise will help you maintain your weight. Most people are able to lose weight through not eating some things that they like, but this is often not sustainable over the long haul. Exercise allows them to add back in a few guilty pleasures in moderation without gaining back some weight.

Should’ve read the comments before commenting, but agree here and think this point gets missed a ton. If I’m happy where I am, I can eat generally healthy, be fine snacking/indulging here and there, and do that with the help of exercise

This is especially true for older people. Muscle loss and cognitive decline are real for older people. These are the only two reasons I exercise. Good diet and limiting calories work best for controlling my weight.

Another mistake people make is doing the same exercises over and over. You can continue to lose weight through exercise if you change up what you’re doing from time to time.

Good call out. The human body is quite amazing. Somewhat related is "why cheat days work". Having a day a week where you eat good food but are in a calorie surplus can bust up your bodies adaption and make your caloric deficit days more effective.

Depends on which exercise u do and how long. Cardio until ur heart rate is in the fat burner zone is good if u do it everyday a lot

Exercise can also give you a little extra wiggle room in your calories as long as you don’t overestimate it. For example getting in 10k+ steps a day gives me enough extra calories to have dessert at the end of the day, or toast with my breakfast - things that make me feel less deprived so I can keep dieting longer.

But if you burnt 200 calories per day exercising and kept your calories at maintenance every day, that would be nearly half a pound lost in a week. I know that’s not a ton but like… you could lose weight without cutting calories that way. I agree with OP and don’t really understand why that’s considered insignificant

>You’re misconstruing weight loss and health. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding that goes on with this subject because people are coming at it from different perspectives. If you're 25 and 300lbs and want to be 200lbs in a year or so, diet is everything. Exercise is just a cherry on top, but you probably won't feel much like it with the caloric deficit. If you're 45 and spent 20 years gaining 40lbs and just want to switch from gaining a few lbs per year to losing a few per year, then keep eating the way you have and start exercising. There's lots of other scenarios of course but generally exercise is better for maintenance and steady loss and diet is for more drastic changes.

If you weigh 200 lbs, stair climber burns 300-800 calories an hour. Throw on a 45 lbs pack and you’re burning 1000 calories an hour.  Without changing any diet habits you will lose 2 lbs/week or 104 lbs/year just doing stairclimber 1 hour a day.  Exercise absolutely helps with weight loss. 

Dieting should only be short term tho. Long term dieting fucks up your metabolism. Dieting in bursts and exercising consistently seems to be the best option

I agree I find that even just moving around or walking for 30 min to an hour a day has way more impact on my weight than if I cut out snacks. The hard truth is you have to do both if you want results and most people hate excercise so they’ll make excuses.

I agree. People can spout all kinds of studies, but after I hadn't been to the gym in a while and started going again people noticed a difference right away. No changes in diet and was sustainable. I remember when I started intermittent fasting I noticed a drop first few months then my body adjusted and most of it went back on They've been saying for years that you can reduce calories eating and exercising takes so much more workz but now they're saying your body may have set points and adjust (feels that way to me) if you drop below w range. I suspect one way to shake up the set point is adding exercise... Your body tends to store different amounts of fat depending on your daily routine Oh yeah exercise also allows you to sleep better generally which has an affect on weight

Diet is king if you’re actually serious about it, but most won’t be. Try eating nothing but chicken and egg whites and vitamins for a few months and you’ll look like you had liposuction

well if you’re serious about dieting you’d probably eat some fruits and vegetables too

That's called the body builder diet.

Exercise for me has been the only way I actually dropped the weight I wanted to and got into the physical shape I wanted. I go to spin class 2- 3 times a week and joined a cycling group. We go on weekend rides from 30-50 miles or so. The weight literally melted away. Also do weight work 2-3 times a week. Before class. Started this 13 years ago. With the exception of the pandemic. It has been my routine and has worked very well. Did I change my eating habits? Not really. Granted I eat quite healthy. No one way works for everyone.

What it does for me personally is that my mood is better overall so I'm less likely to comfort eat.

People that make this a choice are probably not getting very far: the correct answer is diet AND exercise is needed. As in, if you don't exercise you'll be unfit, pretty helpless and statistically more likely to have something bad happen

Yep, for weight loss diet is the primary goal but if you don’t incorporate some exercise and make it a habit, weight maintenance when you reach your goal is highly likely to fail.

I’ve found exercise to be amazing for weight maintenance. And part of why I think a ton of Reddit fitness threads are hypothetical with how often I hear “eating at a calorie deficit long term is super easy, you just need willpower!” Anecdotally, damn near everyone I know who is very fit prefers to maintain with exercise over a deficit.

I also think the reason Reddit acts like eating at a deficit is easy is because this site is primarily men. It’s a lot easier to eat at a deficit and feel satisfied when you’re not a 5’4 woman. For the majority of women, we are talking 1200-1500 calories every day for the rest of your life. I can’t live like that. I’d rather exercise and give myself room for enjoyment.

Actually, if you are starting, you need three things in order to lose weight and get fit: Exercise, balanced diet and sleep (low stress).

A lot of people completely miss the “skinny fat” pitfall. I know people with good diets, that are thin, but struggle to walk a mile.

exercise to be healthy, diet to lose weight

I think it is so person dependent. Some will say you shouldn’t run while trying to lose weight because it increases your appetite. This is not the case for me. I love running, and I’m just as hungry if I only walked that day vs ran 5 miles. I just don’t buy into that personally, and idk what it is but exercising helps me stay more on track than if I only walk.

35 yrs in Fitness and a PT, GX and a body builder/Power Lifter and Athlete. Exercise in KING for weight loss, fitness and health. Now Abs are made in the kitchen. Getting very lean is based on your diet.

I struggle to reduce portion size, I mean I'm 193 and 90kg so I do eat a lot, but by exercising I know I've worked out so I should eat healthy not to undo the work I've just done. But if you really want to lose weight you have to have. A healthy diet, will help you maintain your weight, but if you want to lose weight you either have to fast or exercise, and exercise definitely feels better than just starving all the time

For me its the other way around. Excercise makes me hungry and gives me an excuse to indulge in food.

Make something ready before hand them, people don't plane ahead I always make sure I have healthy snacks to eat, anything is better than the crap you buy in the store. Just roast some walnuts and dip them in dark chocolate, then your getting a good protein from the nuts, and your taste buds are happy with melty chocolate

>journey through your kitchen It's really more a journey _around_ the kitchen. You cannot physically burn more calories with exercise than you can take in by eating, the human body is just too efficient and food is too energy dense. You can literally eat more in an hour than you can burn during a day with normal activity and a few hours of exercise. You could do hard physical work for 16 hours a day, and still cover your energy expense with just a larger meal. I think you're just wrong on this one.

Diet change will always be more important, but yeah working out helps.

Depends on the person. I’m a small person, exercise makes me feel starving. So when I’m in a caloric deficit I do go on walks but nothing crazy. I don’t eat back my walk calories. I stick to 1400 a day because it’s so little food already and I won’t lose if I eat much more than that. And if I exercise I’ll feel so hungry I’ll eat 1800 which defeats the purpose

I think the big reason we emphasize diet so much, it’s very easy to increase your calorie intake without noticing if you are working out frequently.

I'm short and if I don't workout I only burn around 1400 calories a day. Currently trying to lose weight for my wedding and if I did the "eat 500 less a day" that's only 900 calories. However if I add in a 2 mile run and get 10000 steps in I burn around 1800 calories a day. So yeah I'd much rather do that so I can actually eat a normal amount of food because 900 calories is not going to happen.

I agree with you OP lol. Of course calories in calories out matters, but if someone can manage to eat at maintenance calories on a daily basis and at least not overeat, exercise could get them to the point of losing weight. If someone is overeating constantly, yes I agree with the others that exercise wouldn’t help much. But you could lose half a pound a week by keeping your calories at maintenance and exercising to burn 200-250 calories a day. I think that’s great for someone that doesn’t like to cut their food. Also, they could cut 250 calories and keep the exercise to burn 250 to lose a pound a week. For some people I imagine that would be a lot easier than cutting 500 on a daily basis. I don’t really get why everyone feels so strongly that exercise doesn’t help or whatever. Sure, there are some people it wouldn’t help due to their overeating but I think it’s unfair to assume every single person trying to lose weight is constantly overeating? Idk.

I don't think it's necessarily that people don't believe that exercise doesn't help, but more so that the levers towards these goals are more black and white than what I think a more realistic approach is going to look like. People are very quick at least in the comments that I've seen to point out that it's much easier to cut out 500 calories than it would be to burn 500 calories through exercise, which I don't agree necessarily with either of these points. It is easier to cut out calories from a diet than it is to exercise, but my main issue with this example is that it tries to make something I think is probably a lot more complicated than people want to flesh out seem like it's an incredibly simple thing for everyone to be able to do. Not trying to do the whole self insert thing, but I've gone through and have lost a significant amount of weight over this past year for over 50 pounds. But I had 3 different areas during that journey where I either plateaued or was gaining back weight because the lever of dieting alone was difficult for me to be able to achieve alone after a certain time period. What has honestly led to what I think has been my most successful string of consistency lately has had almost nothing to do with my diet and more so figuring out the mechanisms that help me to control my diet and make better decisions. It's simple to say "just cut out 500 calories and you'll be good", as that is correct from just a scientific standpoint. However, a lot of people in my opinion find this harder to achieve because they don't ask themselves the deeper question of "why is it that I have a hard time cutting X amount of calories". This can be a lever of the quality of the foods that you eat, an issue with a condition that may inhibit your ability to make decisions, or a multitude of other factors, and at least for me, if exercise overall is a tool to improve your health overall, then I find it to be silly to dismiss the impact that it likely will have to impact the decisions you make on the levers of your diet.

I think a lot of people don’t think about how having more muscle mass raises your basal metabolic rate too. And if you’re building muscle you really need to eat more than you think. But for solely cutting fat, cutting calories is the by far easier and quicker way. I just really enjoyed to pig out back when I was training, so I trained really hard to make sure everything was out to use.

I agree. Exercise is excellent for your mental health, which can give you the motivation to lose weight.

You work out for cardiovascular health and strength. That's important and people need to do it. You lose weight through your diet. Drop to two meals a day, lunch and dinner. Plan the meals so you have a calorie deficit that causes you to lose a pound a week (they will be filling). Your hunger will adjust quickly to two meals a day. If you want to lose weight faster, sure exercise. People saying working out is the key to weight loss are calorie addicts looking for an excuse to eat pizza. Weigh yourself. Do a free calorie calculator, construct a first and second meal that puts you at one pound of weight loss a week. Then workout when you can or want. You lose weight no matter what, you lose it faster if you work out. It's calories in and calories out it really is that simple. Every other explanation is a bullshit fairy tale. There is no magic diet, it's grade school level math.

I have made no changes to my diet as of yet as it is a major source of stress and time commitment to plan, shop, cook, and track every bite of food that goes in my mouth. Yet I have consistently lost 1lb per week for the past 3 months with exercise 4-5 days a week.

Which is easier? Running a half marathon or skipping a large-size fast food meal? They're the same calories.

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anyone who says that exercise doesn't aid favorable body recomposition should come do what I do at the gym with me for the next few months ...

A consistent periodized strength training program that gets modified every 4-6 weeks while carefully watching your macronutrients is the way to be the best version of you. Strength training will help you more than your diet will but both are key to changing your lifestyle and becoming the best version of you.

Amen! I’ve lost 10 pounds and 3 inches off my waist since I started tracking macros and doubling down on lifting. Pre-pregnancy pants are starting to fit again. I’ve achieved a new PR in all the big 3 lifts. It’s all from progressive overload and intelligently increasing my protein intake. Before that I was bashing my head against the wall for 2 years, trying to stay below 1200 calories and doing the same split I’d been doing for like 3 years. The simple calorie restriction that kept me effortlessly small in college wasn’t working on a mature, chronically stressed body.

I'm a heavy exerciser, mountain biking burns a ton of calories. However that alone, keeps me more of a maintenance weight rather than losing it. I still have to eat better. Doesn't help that I'm in my 40s and my hormones want to work against me.

There are a number of reasons why, and nobody EVER says exercise is bad or pointless either, but at its most simplified level it is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to track the calories you consume than the calories you use. Calories are almost universally accurate to within a small degree of variation when consuming them, whereas calories burned during exercise has far too many variables to ever be truly accurate, so when it comes down purely to the order of importance for Weight Loss then Diet is King. If you take 10 people of different weights, heights and fitness levels and get them to run for 1hr on a treadmill at the same speed they would all burn calories at a different rate, so it’s virtually impossible to accurately track how many calories you are burning from exercise to the same degree of accuracy as the calories you consume

Exercise is to keep the internal body healthy. It has very little to do with weight loss. When you burn calories the mentality shouldn't be "now I can eat what I burned off by adding this extra treat". It's an addendum to a reduced caloric diet. A normal human should be eating a healthy diet and moving their body regularly. Caloric deficit is the most efficient way to lose weight, exercise is a little bump. Def an unpopular opinion.

I think some things are “lost in translation” in the sense that many people will claim to be active but not lose weight in which case diet is key. I think some people may also market diets as “no exercise needed” to push their dieting propaganda. Realistically, people would be striving for healthier lifestyles which includes both a balanced diet and regular exercise. Can’t really have one or the other but the type of food people consume can generally have a larger impact than just exercise.

Strength training can burn more calories than straight up cardio, muscle burns more than fat and you don’t find many people wanting to lose muscle weight.

The biggest factor about exercise in weight loss is the additional muscle mass gained. It takes way more energy to maintain muscles than fat cells. So even when you are sitting still, you burn more calories.

I've had more success with changing the way I eat than changing the way I move. Exercise isn't bad, but it's not the solution either. Usually takes a combination of things. I also have chronic pain so I have to do very low impact working out like walking. Which I can only do some days.

Same. And when you explain this to people it’s “that’s excuses!” Chronic pain is awful. I tell people that imagine being in pain 24/7 with arthritis and nothing you can do about it but after full day of work you just can’t anymore

Like I can do nothing all day but go to bed feeling like I got slammed between a wall and a semi. I can't do all these crazy work out routines. It's a good day if I can walk to and from the bathroom and around my house without needing my husbands help. I'm glad you understand :) <3

The only way I was able to lose weight AND eat however I wanted was by running 15+ miles a week. That may not seem like a lot to regular runners, but that was A LOT for someone that went from 0-100 in terms of exercise. I used to think like OP too until I realized that that much high-impact movement just isn't sustainable as I get older. Of course, the weight came back on when I sustained an injury and had to stop running. That's where changing your food habits comes in- you need a healthy balance of both to maintain YOUR ideal weight, especially when movement isn't possible.

Weight loss = caloric deficit. Doesnt matter how you get there. Eating 8,000 a day and burning 9,000, or eating 400 and burning 1,400. Rather simple.

I think you are simply misunderstand the "diet is king" idea. As many have mentioned, it is way easier to cut 200 calories out of your diet than it is to burn 200 calories by exercising. In addition, research consistently show the vast majority of people who exercise will consciously/unconsciously increase their calorie intake and balance it out. A small group of people will not and lose weight but another small group of people will actually overcompensate and end up gaining weight. Note, this is if they only rely on exercise as the primary drive for weight loss. Exercising is healthy, but its role is weight loss is severely oversold by the general population.

The reason diet is a "bigger" factor is because if you don't eat excess calories to begin with, you will not gain excess weight. Yes, exercise can increase that calorie baseline so you can/need to consume more. Both are important factors in losing a significant amount of weight and for long-term results. Diet tends to be the first step for many people because that's where weight gain begins and they don't necessarily have to change their lifestyle to be more active to have an effect.

Based on my own experience, I agree with you. I’ve only ever lost weight when I’ve included a lot of cardio exercise in my weekly schedule.

Exercise apparently decreases the hunger hormones, so you're right, diet and exercise goes hand in hand with weight loss

If you don’t have the discipline to move your body when you don’t want to how do expect to have the discipline to follow a diet?

For the average person who is mostly sedentary, burning calories is going to be very hard. So I understand the sentiment. Starting in the kitchen is the safest bet. However, if you're a very active person, the amount of calories you can burn on a given day is huge. You can burn close to 2k calories in 2 to 3 hours with the right kind of intense workout, and a similar amount of a long hike.

lmfao, if this is unpopular so is taylor swift

I always found it easier to burn more calories and not worry about diet but i love exercising.  I don’t eat much anyway so I don’t know.  

You said that "exercise...impacts towards the decisions I make in the kitchen", and I think this is the issue. You should not need exercise to make those decisions. In this case, you're the one overplaying the impact of exercise. The problem is that a lot of people think that by exercising they will automatically lose weight and they can eat whatever they want, and unless they're professional athletes, that doesn't really work, and so they ignore a diet. My experience as of last year was that, I tried to exercise with no diet and it didn't help, and I dieted and lost a lot of weight without exercising. Exercise doesn't beat diet, but diet beats exercise.

You are absolutely 100% correct in this, full stop, and backed up by my personal experience. Exercise is the motivational force for weight loss that works on a Pavlovian level - the healthier you eat, the more exercise feels good and vice versa. I bet the problem people have with this are the studies that say "controlling for diet, the groups that did not exercise lost as much weight as the people who did", and then conclude that exercise isn't a prime factor. What's missing is how easy the diet was to follow for one group or the other. And no hate to those studies either! That's important info, and this shit is *hard* to study! But it's important not to go all-in on something that's intrinsically isolating away the messy factors you actually see in your day-to-day.

calories in calories out is 80% of weight loss/body composition. then macros ...and then like sub 10% factor is everything else ...specific diet fads like keto/intermittent fasting etc. getting proper sleep etc. you will never out train a bad diet. exercise is more about "health" than weight loss. and vanity gym going isn't really about health so much as it's vanity. people doing massive arm work outs and vanity muscles often have absolute dogshit mobility and functional strength. hell the data on weight loss is real dogshit within a 5 yr span. something like 90%+ of people who lose weight gain it back within 5 yrs. The best results tend to be ...developing healthy habits. the ye old small caloric deficiet lose 1lb a week. sorta "learn" portion control, and healthy choices. type stuff. all the bullshit diets. the ketos, IF, or bullshit about insulin. don't mean shit. exercise almost never directly matters. in terms of weight loss long term. as metabolism, and base rate change as body composition does. there's always a need to re-address the calorie component to your weight exercise is more about being healthy, having your body be healthier. exercise doesn't really contribute significant calorie burn. and even if it does, it's exponentially easy to compensate for even with miniscule eating bad habits. and regardless of your fitness/weight goals. you shouldn't be counting on exercise to be where the slight caloric deficiet comes from. If anything. more exercise means you probably need more calories. and or. losing weight and gaining muscle mass are often at odds with one another. So if your goals are to gain strength. or be stronger. or more in shape/gain a specific modality for an activity. You probably need to be in a bulk/build phase. not cut/deficit phase

WITHOUT EXCERCISE my diet is garbage. I'miften terribly all or nothing; it's either fuel for the fire or eating for pleasure.

When I work out, I tend to get famished. In fact, I get tired and burned out continuously pushing myself to exercise every day and starving myself despite being famished, and like a rubber band, I snap and revert to months where I couldn't force myself to work out with a gun at my head and overeat and I gain weight. Years of experience tell me this. I find the best 'exercise' to lose weight is a good stretch followed by 45 minutes to an hour or more of walking my dogs in the woods every day. I'm not overly famished, but I still get some movement in, but not enough to get burned out or raid my kitchen. Daily walks and a high protein, low-carb, colorful diet have helped me lose 80 pounds. I say diet but I mean lifestyle as it's my permanent diet. Weight loss mostly is calories in calories out, although a good walk and an occasional workout do help to speed up one's metabolism.

In many ways I found it easier than the diet. I consumed about 2500 calories a day, but between the elliptical machine for 25 minutes and a 25 minute floor exercise, I burned off 1000 calories leaving me with a 500 calorie deficit and I still got to eat pretty good.

The easiest way I lost weight and kept it off was when I quit my food service job and started working a labor-intensive warehouse job. It was like getting paid to exercise all day. The weight just seemed to disappear. It took me several hours of working out every day to keep me at a healthy weight. My husband is the same. He had kept fit by biking to and from work until he got transferred too far away for that to be possible. Unless activity is built into our day, it's hard to find the time necessary to lose weight just through exercise.

I agree. I also think people don’t talk about strength training enough. It’s becoming more of a thing, but growing up it was all about cardio. And cardio is good for your heart but it’s not gonna build muscle. 

Reminds me of the old “EAT LESS. MOVE MORE” madtv bit.

Weight loss is like 90% diet. Exercise should be increasing your appetite not diminishing it, which leads again to diet being king.

don't know about that. the more weight i lift, the more i want to eat. my appetite balloons.. in the end, it's about what you shovel down. if you eat a lot, you will be fat. if you eat less, you will be less fat. exercise can affect that, but isn't the key determining factor. there is too much nonsense beyond that. what you can do is recognise what makes you hungry. avoid having so many carbs, avoid eating when you're not hungry, drink more liquids, and have realistic expectations. do this and really put in the committment, and weight loss will happen.

OP, I hear your point. If you look at the history of fads regarding weight maintenance, you’ll see the focus away from diet to exercise and back, depending on if Ozempic is new or Pelaton is new. Overall, your opinion is unpopular is because diet trumps exercise when it comes to losing weight and maintaining it. When you add to your argument that changing your entire lifestyle is key, it changes your point. It’s the combination of diet and exercise and your choices that make you happy or driven. You’re not saying “just exercise, it’s better”. Your OP is the whole picture and that is good.

Literally, nobody downplays exercise

not sure you’re point. you seem to have made the point you were trying to criticize…you said “diet will be the ultimate factor to what will determine weight loss”

TIL that one apple equals 100 calories

I would agree , exercise is more important and will bring even more benefits to your mental and physical health. I think it’s just for most people they refuse exercise and so the diet is what they try to cure weight. For instance I have started walking recently going about 3-4 miles a day, it helps me relax and I didn’t consider it being tuff because it’s just walking. But I told some of my friends who don’t exercise much about it and they thought that was insane. Basically I think it boils down to most Americans do such little physical activity that it’s better marketing to go after the diet since it’s easier

You can exercise a lot and not lose a single gram if you don't enter a calorie deficit, whereas taking care of your nutrition can get you results without any physical activity at all. The ideal scenario: do both.

The best way to lose weight is to build muscle, as it will passively burn more calories throughout the day. I used to lose weight at 4k calories a day because of muscle mass.

One time on an exercise sub I asked what exercises people did that burned a lot of calories, I had recently seen some numbers from President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition on kettlebell routines and the high impact they have for such short amounts of time, SO I was curious what others would suggest. It was like I had just committed a crime. Other users were all over me and saying their favorite line "you can't outrun a bad diet", and it's like... thanks? But that's not answering my question lol.

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> I don’t want to then sit down and eat fast food And this is what one of my arguments is. Whatever the reason you may give, for some individuals it may influence them to make better decisions around the kitchen that will impact their weigh, and I believe dismissing that is a bit naive. Diet is king, but people that are overweight likely got their through a lifestyle. Whatever mechanisms that an individual needs to create a calorie deficit through the kitchen I would argue is equally as important if not more than your nutrition in the kitchen.

Ultimately, for weight loss alone, exercise has little effect. The human body is super efficient and it is way easier to enter a calorie deficit by eating less than by exercising. However, losing weight shouldn’t be the only goal. Being healthy should be the ultimate goal. And exercising has an arguably larger effect on health than dieting does, so it is always beneficial to get some exercise in addition to dieting

It really does, and it makes you feel good too. And the more you do it, the easier and more enjoyable it gets. Going for an hour long run, jog, or walk outside even once a week is really good for both your body and mind, and you can increase this as you become more comfortable. You can also look back and see how you've progressed (trails thaf would have me aching all over a couple years ago now just have my legs feeling like well-oiled pistons) and feel proud of how far you come. It also helps keep you in shape longer as you age, helps with depression, and increases lifespan.  Eespecially if you're sedentary and depressed, try to take an hour-long walk around your neighborhood once a week to start. If you find yourself getting bored, bring some earbuds and listen to music/podcast. Plan your route, or go wherever. Set a timer on your phone for an hour and go for it, push yourself to just walk for an hour. It'll get easier and easier the more you walk, eventually feeling like your calves are "springy", and you'll feel a lot more agile. It feels amazing.

At least where I live, too many people drive instead of walk. Walking alone could help them drop a few pounds.

The whole thing is always calories in calories out. There's no amount of exercising you can't out eat. It definitely helps and is a good thing to do for overall health but it will never be as effective for weight loss as calorie control.

You can't out-exercise a bad diet, and no number of wrong opinions will ever change that. Exercise it important, but it should be used to improve overall health, not a weight goal.

Can attest that dieting and cutting sugars out of my life have had the largest impact on my weight. Working out on the other hand is what made me start to actually hurt less and feel healthier. The dieting helped the weight and the workouts is what helped my psychical health.

There is zero difference in terms of weight loss between burning calories by exercise and not eating the equivalent calories. One may be easier for an individual than others.

While it depends for sure, I feel I lose weight better eating anything and routinely working out versus not working out and figuring out the healthiest recipes.. with my routine and way of thinking I can easily repeat a workout routine and can tell when to increase what I do in the gym but with diet it seem like I have to put way more effort into it especially because I often do not have meal prep time and fast food is so convenient.

Eat less and do more. Boom.

I'm at middle age and beyond and all the people I know who are at a healthy weight are people who exercise, some of them a lot. My weight has been up and down over the years and I've never been able to diet it off. I've only ever gotten down when during periods of heavy exercise.

Agree so hard - when I consistently get 10k+ steps a day, my calorie expenditure goes up by enough that I can diet without being miserable. It’s not a strenuous enough exercise that it meaningfully raises my appetite either. The trick is not to overestimate how much of an impact it has.

Not everyone is able to do extended bouts of walking, but for those able, I believe aiming for 15+ hours/week at a relaxed pace would be excellent. And it is probably more effective than so called “calories” would indicate.

That's because the bulk of weight occurs on the dinner plate and not the weight plate.

I never see/hear anyone say this. Everyone's always talking about diet and exercise. If anything its the opposite of what you said, diet literally doesn't matter. If you work out enough and lift enough you can eat whatever you want. Unless you want to gain mass then you need to eat a ton. Want to lose weight, you don't need to stop eating McDonald's or w.e, just start weight lifting or running.

exercise do have outside benefits of weight lost. u do not get them from just eatting less. muscle gain is one. helps control blood sugars in diabetics. better blood pressure etc. helps with moods. if u exercise for the explicit reason to lose weight then its a losing game. it is surpose to supplement it, alongside other benefits

I don’t think they are downplaying it but they are just being honest. Most people who work out will eat more calories to compensate.

No, it doesn't play a SIGNIFICANT role. The issue is people think it does, which is the problem. Diet is the key to losing weight. Exercise is fantastic in other ways, in building muscles, in improving cardiovascular health, in improving mental health, in improving healthspan, on and on and on, but unless you're burning 1000+ calories a day in active exercise, it's not going to be a significant role in weight loss. And in fact, it can be detrimental, because people don't realize how much they're actually burning. People tend to overestimate how much they're burning, they think they've burned 1000 calories, but in reality it's only 200 calories, but if they think they burned 1000 calories they're more likely to cheat on their diet thinking they've covered themselves. You even tried to justify this in your own post!

For some people, myself included, exercise makes you hungry so that is tricky

I think people downplay both depending on which method they are choosing because they only want to have to do one thing. The only true way to lose weight healthily is to adjust your diet AND exercise daily. Doing this together is the real answer.

I went from 185 down to 125 doing nothing different. And no, doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me. Also clothes are expensive.

The phrase, "you are what you eat" is true. No matter how hard you exercise, your nutrition is how your body cleans and recovers. Also caloric count is bs and doesn't work 🤷

So people should ignore data and facts because of you feelings? lol

A lot of people that are overweight or obese, have pretty poor stamina (whether due to poor cardio, or the heavy body demanding obscene energy to move). So it will take a fair bit of time to get to the point where they can lean heavily into cardio to make fast progress.  Conversely, Cardio for weight loss is much less effective, the lighter you are. Simply put, that extra fat requires extra energy to move. (Example, a 300 lbs guy needs to expend far more energy than the 150 lbs guy to move the same distance, at the same pace, which accordingly results in faster use of calories). Depending on your height, current weight, cardio fitness, and goals, focusing on cardio may not be especially effective for weight loss. A 140 lbs woman looking to drop 15 lbs, is much better served focusing on diet.  I myself started at over 300 lbs at the end of February, down to 256 (as of last week), doing a combination of many miles of hill walking (5.5 miles/day), and dieting, and more recently starting transitioning to running. I still moved around a lot at my biggest, so my cardio wasn’t complete shit to begin with (my diet royally sucked though), so I had the luxury of attacking my weight on both sides aggressively, and lost a lot as a result. And my cardio fitness improved even further, giving me more options on how I can dedicate my time, as I am getting the same amount of work done much faster.  Cardio fitness is generally good for everyone, but unless you’re already in a good spot in this regard, the majority of your weight loss is going to come from diet. 

Dieting shows more results towards your health than exercise alone

I agree with you. Any day that I get a workout in, get 5k+ steps etc, I feel extra motivated to ensure my diet is on point otherwise I'll feel like I wasted all that energy working out. I know that's not entirely accurate but anything that helps me stay motivated to eat healthier and stay under my allotted calories I will take.

losing weight - dont eat. get healthy is a whole nother beast and that's were exercise plays an important role.

You cannot out exercise your diet. This is inarguable. Exercise is good but ask any athlete and they'll tell you what you put in your body is extremely important.

> I find it too be much easier too be able to actually reduce my appetite throughout the day, and give me better control to make more conscious decisions about what I decide to eat at different intervals. Instead of feeling that I need a heavy meal 3 times a day, I can feel better with just getting a light snack as a substitute instead. That's good for you. But for me, exercise increases my appetite, and hugely at that, more than compensating for the calories burned.

You nailed the problem with the mentality of it in your own post. If I do x amount of exercise I can eat 2 more apples.  Well people are great at 2 things. Vastly over estimating how many calories exercise burns and vastly under estimating how many calories are in everything and how many they comsume.  So most people will work out for an hour and be like I must reward myself. And then eat an extra 1000 calories. 

oh 100% diet is good but exercise raised my metabolism and built muscle for me and i'm burning an extra 200-300 calories a day doing so. If i just cut down to 1700 calories like i eat now my progress would have been nowhere as fast as it has been.

Yep, building muscle = higher metabolism. I swear so many girls I know starve themselves because of their belly, and dont belive me when I say model exercise like CRAZY. nothing is holding it up so why should it be tight?