[dennis_jeeves]

Exercise is probably over rated is my opinion. Moderate activity like not being a couch potato, and walking around is probably good enough for most people rather than vigorous exercise. Also correlation is confused with causation. The person who is is not active is not necessarily lazy. It the the probably obesity and ill health that makes him/her inactive. Personally I'm on a ketogenic ( about 60 %to 90% calories from saturated fat) nearly all carnivorous diet for the last 4 years. Vegetables, fruit and greens aren't necessarily your best foods. I regret all the earlier years spend eating main stream definition of a 'healthy diet' ( low saturated fat, little or no meat, lots of greens, whole grains and other nonsense.) Takeaway - you can fool most people most of the times, including the mainstream 'scientific' community.

[jdc]

Would you say it's just a matter of calories in minus calories out?

[jonex]

It very certainly is. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is probably trying to sell you something.

However, as most people do not count their calories (an underrated activity I'd say, it makes weight control trivially simple if you can keep it up) what's more important is how much your food and activities makes you eat in relation to what you need.

This is what makes exercise not as obvious as a solution. If you move more, you will generally want to eat more. The function of diets is to have the opposite effect, by eating certain kinds of foods you can trick your body into feeling satiated on a calorie deficit.

Generally this happens for instance when you make restrictions on your diet, like eating a limited amount of fat or a limited amount of carbohydrates.

Some foods are designed to be tasty and make you eat more, sometimes your body won't compensate for that and you get on a calorie excess. Processed food and snacks are often in this category. By eating less of those, and more of whole foods you often will naturally reduce your calorie intake. Using less added sugar and fat is often helpful as well.

Going into details of how the body manages your calorie intake like your digestive system and the insulin system is interesting in itself, but it's usually not very relevant for adjusting your diet. This is because the way these affect your body is both non-obvious and often not as well known as it might seem.

[reese_john]

Being on a caloric deficit is a sufficient condition for weight loss[0]. The composition of your diet will determine what ratio of it is actually fat/lean body mass, ie diets higher in protein will usually yield higher fat loss and keep more LBM. Exercise/resistance training is also a factor.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1734671

[dennis_jeeves]

>Would you say it's just a matter of calories in minus calories out?

Strictly speaking , yes, Otherwise, no it is not. If one were to really calculate calories in/out that would be really complicated: you have to consider many factors for example energy required to digest food, energy extracted from the food, energy lost as body heat etc. as far as I vaguely recollect, even something like body heat burns more calories that vigorous exercise.

In general the calorie obsession is nonsense. Just because some scientific sounding jargon is thrown in does not make it well thought off. On a 'good' diet most people will never have to count the calories. Again the takeaway should be that you can fool most people, most of the time. Treat any subject that has popular endorsement with skepticism.

[oligopoly]

What's crucial is how it raises your insulin level. So No.

Start by eating homemade food and don't eat take-out or processed foods. Avoid Snacking.