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Apparently it's not exercise! [0]

Yes exercise is very healthy, that has been proven, but loosing weight is mostly a matter of eating less, at least according to this (reputable) meta source. Apparently, over eating but not getting fat (which holds true for me), leads to other problems (also true for me, I have an autoimmune disorder).

Eat less to lose weight. Exercise more to be healthy.

(nice, got my first downvotes in less time it takes to watch 1/10th of my source ;))

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSSkDos2hzo

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They said activity levels. Activity is more than exercise.

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OP was wondering about why we are so much heavier. It seems to be the food. Not much to do with activity levels.

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I don't know if OP was strictly on topic or was generalizing to health in general. It’s not like there’s a point to neatly delineate obesity from overall health on this topic since the overall topic is health.

There are a lot of pathological things we do regularly, not just overeat/eat the wrong things. They all contribute. Last I saw less exercise is more caused by obesity than the other way around. And sitting a lot can cause biomechanical maladoptions which makes movement (and in turn exercise) more inconvenient.

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Well if you'd watch the movie and read the sources, you'd see that there is not much difference in the amount of calories you burn exercising or sitting at a desk. Consequently you won't loose weight one way or another.

Weight seems to be almost exclusively about the calories you ingest. It has little to do with obesity causing less exercise or the other way around. There is not a swathe of pathological things we do that contribute. We eat too much.

I also found that surprising. You can exercise without changing your diet, but you won't loose (much) weight. You can sit at a desk and start eating less and loose a lot of weight.

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> You can exercise without changing your diet, but you won't loose (much) weight.

Exercising without changing your diet is seriously nontrivial for most people, due to compensatory eating - if you burn an extra 400 kCal, you will likely experience commensurate increase in appetite & eat an extra 400 kCal. It takes a lot of vigilance & discipline to avoid that.

IMO that's the 'real' reason diet is a more effective lever for weight loss than exercise. In theory, burning those extra 400 kCal thru exercise is just as effective for creating a caloric deficit as reducing daily consumption by 400 kCal, but in practice it still requires you to eat less than what feels normal/adequate.

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So if you’d watch the movie you’d learn that you won’t burn much more calories when you start exercising, perhaps at first but the body rebalances until it’s back on budget. Your body keeps that, they say for some evolutionary reason, very constant.

It sounds paradoxical but I know people struggling with their weight and to them it must sounds like a very good explanation.

So perhaps first change your diet and don’t exercise? It’s less healthy but it’s more effective for weightloss.

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You’re the one who keeps talking about calories.

It’s my mistake. The OP was maybe going on a tangent, then you have yours and I entered out of left field with mine. Too much talking past each other.