[beardbandit]

"I can't help but groan at some of the "obvious" health and weight loss platitudes that get smugly thrown around."

On the flip side, the people that are told this are the ones that are annoyingly attempting to maintain their bad eating habits while just adding exercise, or adding fab foods, or anything really to delude themselves into thinking they can continue to eat the same way.

[StevePerkins]

I have never in my life met someone who has the physical and mental discipline to exercise regularly, yet also still sits around eating candy and pizza the other 23-hours of the day.

MAYBE if you're still in school, or a new grad in your 20's, you might know people who are physically active but also like to drink heavy / party. But by the time you're 30 or so, exercise and decent eating habits tend to correlate one way or the other.

Whenever someone strikes up a conversation with me about exercise being of minimal importance compared to diet... it's usually when I'm heading downstairs for a workout in the company gym, and some brogrammer with an energy drink in his hand takes it upon himself to justify why he isn't.

[bitexploder]

I have had periods where my diet totally relapsed but my exercise never did. That is why I think (most) people need mental, exercise, and diet based strategies to lose weight. If you only use diet and that gets sketchy for a while (life stress, whatever the reason...) then your chance of relapse and weight gain are much higher. When just one piece of your strategy falls away if you still have a few other legs holding it all up it will probably stay standing.

Plus I have met distance runners with ridiculous diets. Some of them run 50 miles a week just so they can eat a pint of ice cream every week and pizza multiple times per week. It happens, but those are always at the extremes. A balanced approach is needed for most mortals.

People will justify their beliefs in a whole bunch of different ways. Until someone has actually lived it and dropped 40+ lbs and kept it off for years I immediately down grade whatever advice they are giving as they are simply less credible (unless they are well versed on the actual science and literature of the topic, in which case they likely never gained excess weight to begin with or fall into that category of someone who has lost weight and kept it off).

The number of people I have met or know personally who diet it all off with no exercise and are convinced how right they are "I lost 100 lbs!" only to balloon back to their start weight or close to it is ... a lot.

[scarface74]

I have had periods where my diet totally relapsed but my exercise never did.

When I was going through a divorce over 10 years ago in my early 30s, I was still active (like I said in a previous post, I was a part time fitness instructor) but I ate with abandon and my weight shot up. It was easier back then - eat like a normal person and the weight dropped.

I could do that then when I was working out 10-12 hours a week. But that wouldn't happen now.

[sulam]

FWIW, basic habits like you're describing will get you pretty far. Then something changes. For me, it was kids. Because of kids I couldn't get outside for the 5-10 hours I used to, and I started putting on weight. That forced me to rework how I approach eating and nutrition from the ground up.