[mrighele]

> Purely mechanically, mild effort simply does not burn that many calories over baseline metabolism

I think that the point is not just "burning calories"; exercise has many effects on your body that go beyond just consuming energy. For example it affects the level of hormones, which in turn affects (among other things) your mood and stress level. I am one of those persons that end up eating just because I am nervous or depressed, and regular exercise makes me do that much less.

[masklinn]

> I think that the point is not just "burning calories"

That's a weird take given entire thread is about weight loss, and the gp was specifically noting that exercise won’t help with that. thomasfedb’s statement is rather explicit on that subject.

[mrighele]

Sorry, that phrase was meant to be "I think that the point of exercise is not just "burning calories"".

To lose weight you need (roughly speaking, I know it is not only about that) two things: reduce the amount of energy that you intake, and increase the amount of energy that you consume.

The traditional wisdom is you have to exercise because while doing that you consume more energy, but it is not only that. When you regularly exercise you also tend to eat less (- intake), process the food differently (- intake), speed up your metabolism out of the physical activity (+ consume)