[DanBC]

the eating less part is more important (for weight loss) than the moving more part, especially because people doing exercise for weight loss often overestimate how many calories the exercise is burning, and underestimate how many calories are in food.

[wccrawford]

Plus, the difference between "not losing weight" and "losing weight" can be a lot of calories.

If you were gaining weight regularly and start exercising to lose it, you'd have to do a ton of exercise to compensate.

But if you're on the verge of losing weight and start exercising, it would be possible to tip the scales, so to speak. So long as you don't start eating more because of it.

I'm 205 lbs, and the charts say I need to eat between 1500 and 1800 calories per day to lose weight. I can eat 2600 and maintain my weight.

So if I'm just barely maintaining my weight at 2600 calories and I want to lose weight, I'd need 800 calories worth of exercise.

Moderate-pace walking burns 300 calories per hour for me. I'd need almost 3 hours of deliberate walking at a good pace to lose that extra weight, every single day. And I couldn't reward myself with a treat afterwards.

I got the exercise numbers from MyFitnessPal. The food calories I got from a site I found the other day, but I don't remember which.

[DoodleBuggy]

It's often willful ignorance, combined with most people not wanting to actually give up a vice.

[fleitz]

Yeah, it's more like body composition than 'weight loss', most people want more muscle / less fat, and then eat a diet that produces more fat and less muscle.

People act as if Arnold got his body by once accidentally picking up a barbell, then eat a bunch of food that immediately gets converted into fat and wonder why running on a treadmill to destroy their muscle & eating sugar to produce fat isn't giving them the results they want.