Exercising has nothing to do with weight loss, although it’s still good for you with obvious benefits. Just losing weight is in my experience purely diet if you’re living any sort of standard American lifestyle where you’re really sedentary, or even moderately active. Maybe if you were like thru hiking you’d lose weight from exercise?
This is completely absurd in my personal experience. The amount of long duration, low intensity cardio I do has a massive effect on decreasing my weight with no dietary changes.
Beware personal experience. When I was in my 20s and 30s your statement was true for me as well. Now in the second half of my 40s, my body compensates for arbitrary amounts of exercise (HIIT+hiking) by increasing my appetite and I reliably weigh 20-30 pounds more than I did when younger. I briefly tried one of the medications mentioned in this article and it wasn't magic: all it did is make my appetite and metabolism operate more like it did when I was 20s/30s.
…no? Exercising 2h/week (close to the minimum) costs 100 hours per year, at $100/hr that’s close to 10k already and that doesn’t include the attention cost, or anything to do with diet
Every human still needs at least that amount of exercise (and ideally a lot more) to avoid cardiopulmonary disease, age related strength, balance, and bone density deterioration, and a myriad of other health issues, even if we could take a pill to cure obesity.
If you have to do it anyway to have a long healthspan, and it generally has the side effect of assisting in controlling weight, then why lean on the costly drug?