[galdosdi]

Maybe, but so what? Exercise has so many positive second order effects, and then those may help with weight loss indirectly.

- Improved mood, focus, calm, etc, make it easier and more pleasant to adhere to a better diet

- Can improve sleep quality. Low sleep quality is linked to overeating and obesity and other problems. In fact, poor diet, poor sleep, and poor exercise are all interlinked. So start anywhere and expect the others to get easier to deal with over time too.

- So what if weight doesn't change, but it's due to fat decreasing and muscle increasing? That's a good thing -- weight is an imperfect measure of obesity. Muscle, just by existing, burns more calories. And unlike abdominal fat, is not linked to organ problems.

- And on and on and on. Just do anything to get healthier. Every healthy action will synergestically reinforce every other healthy action. Don't be a narrow beancounter looking at just one component, because your body is not just a handful of components narrowly linked together via thin black box abstraction layers; it's a big spaghetti code system that cannot be seperated cleanly out into pieces. Not exercising is really, really unhealthy, contrary to modern customary belief, so you might as well, rather than fixating on fixing only some other component while keeping this important component broken.

- Moderate exercise seems to actually moderate appetite a little. And heavier exercise seems to make hunger less cravingy and more indiscriminate, making it easier to adhere to a diet (eg, a couch potato might really crave a specific candy or chips, but someone who just ran some miles will ecstatically and happily devour some beans and cabbage and oatmeal and whatever)

- Improves digestion quality and gut motility!

- Besides, isn't the goal of weight loss to get healthier in general, anyway? Focus on the overall goal and start anywhere, anywhere that is easiest. If getting better sleep is easier, do that. If cutting toxins like alcohol and nicotine is easier, start there. If improving diet is easier, start there. If improving positive human relationships and sense of purpose is easier, start there. If exercise is easier, start there. Start anywhere, and keep improving anywhere the wins are most easily found, and gradually everything else will become easier.

One more tip: It's easier to change what you eat than how much. Also, calories in calories out is bunk. It's true to some degree in that they are related, but ignores the fact that (1) how much your body is spending is highly variable, even somewhat independent of movement -- imagine how much energy your body has to spend to fight an infection for example (2) why would anyone imagine every calorie consumed will actually be absorbed? the gut is highly complex and depending on many factors calories could be absorbed or go right out the other end unused, and the gut flora interacts complexly with all this. Focus on eating healthy things first above healthy amounts. It's easier, and will have a positive impact all its own, creating another stepping stone towards other goals.

[Kirby64]

> Also, calories in calories out is bunk. It's true to some degree in that they are related, but ignores the fact that (1) how much your body is spending is highly variable, even somewhat independent of movement -- imagine how much energy your body has to spend to fight an infection for example

The human body is not that variant. Sure, during illness you may burn more calories from the illness and potential fever… but you’re also usually extremely low on movement since your body physically makes you exhausted. The rest of the time though? No way. Humans generally are not that variant in expenditure.

> (2) why would anyone imagine every calorie consumed will actually be absorbed? the gut is highly complex and depending on many factors calories could be absorbed or go right out the other end unused, and the gut flora interacts complexly with all this. Focus on eating healthy things first above healthy amounts. It's easier, and will have a positive impact all its own, creating another stepping stone towards other goals.

What evidence do you have to the contrary? The human body is extremely efficient at absorbing calories, and outside of extremes (eating 10kcal a day, or having some sort of deficiency such as celiacs that doesn’t let you digest certain things), I see no reason why you don’t absorb the vast, vast majority of all calories consumed.

[galdosdi]

Even something as commonplace as chewing more carelessly will result in finding seeds in your faeces.

But what's the point of giving you more specific examples? You seem to be eager to "no true scotsman" your way out of this by labelling every example of varying calorie consumption as an exception.

Even the top article referenced in this wikipedia article admits it's based on a study of bushmen who -- surprise surprise -- were in very healthy average weight and also did tremendous physical activity. What a coincidence. But sure, keep telling yourself exercise doesn't matter and it's all about Calories In Calories Out and that the body is as trivial and simple a machine as an internal combustion engine.

[Kirby64]

> Even something as commonplace as chewing more carelessly will result in finding seeds in your faeces.

Most people’s diets do not consist of fully intact seeds, or at very least it is not a large proportion of their calories. And any processing of said seeds would give you all the calories in them. This is a trivial example to discard, since most people do not have undigested food bits consistently in their stool (unless you constantly eat corn, then maybe).

To be clear, I never said exercise is not capable of burning calories. It clearly does, however the impact is pretty muted compared to the relatively easy task of adjusting one’s intake. For people that have to do enormous physical activity or just walk a ton, they are going to burn quite a bit more calories. But your natural expenditure individually doesn’t vary that much unless you wildly change your behavior around exercise.

[galdosdi]

And my point that I've repeated over and over, is that the benefit of exercise is far broader than just merely numerically burning calories. It is in all these other beneficial effects that it can indirectly help. Focusing solely on calories in calories out is a big mistake when improving health and/or tackling obesity.

[Kirby64]

> Focusing solely on calories in calories out is a big mistake when improving health and/or tackling obesity.

For improving health? Certainly I’d agree. You have to be quite overweight before the risk factors really catch up.

For tackling obesity? Absolutely disagree. You’re asking someone who is likely making poor choices with food and exercise to make multiple lifestyle changes. We want something that’s going to be able to adherent to the broader populous. Saying you need both exercise and dieting to lose weight is a setup for failure. The predominantly most important factor in losing weight is diet. Exercise helps you be more healthy, but doesn’t meaningfully help you lose weight.

[KittenInABox]

> Besides, isn't the goal of weight loss to get healthier in general, anyway?

In my opinion, "get healthy" is more a moral judgement than it is an objective assessment. I've definitely seen fat women be shamed even while they're exercising as "not being healthy" or "glorifying being unhealthy" [yes, just for exercising in public, an objectively healthy behavior, except they're doing it while fat].

[galdosdi]

Wow. That is sad, and reflective of the world you live in and people you associate with I guess.

But healthiness can be measured pretty objectively through health outcomes, and high BMI and low exercise are both independently highly correlated with bad ones across the whole spectrum of health aspects. It's not just common sense, it's mountains of evidence over decades across every aspect of medicine.

The fact that some (in your community, many) people twist this around and make it about something else entirely is sad, but in no way affects the objective truths:

- it is objectively healthier to be active than inactive, regardless of obesity

- it is objectively healthier to have average weight than obese, regardless of activity level

I've lived in a few different places and found the culture around exercise and diet to be very different in different places, so I'm not surprised experiences can vary so much. I am curious where you see this bizarre culture of shaming people for exercising.

[KittenInABox]

> I've lived in a few different places and found the culture around exercise and diet to be very different in different places, so I'm not surprised experiences can vary so much. I am curious where you see this bizarre culture of shaming people for exercising.

I mean it's super common on any social media where a non-skinny woman is exercising with any real following tbh. It's gone all the way back to covertly photographing fat people in the gym or in public back in the reddit days of r/fatpeoplehate and 4chan. I mean there was that viral picture of a fat guy dancing off 4chan.

[galdosdi]

Oh OK. So just the internet, not real life then. There's your problem. It is a medium primarily focused on entertainment and spectacle, not a scientific poll and reflection of deep truths.

[watwut]

> Besides, isn't the goal of weight loss to get healthier in general, anyway?

I would argue that for majority of the people who talk about it does not. The goal is aesthetic and moral.

[galdosdi]

If so, those people are foolish. Aesthetics and moral fashions (of this kind) come and go, but your body's health is for life.

BTW: The majority of people where? Where do you see this? The internet (which parts)? A middle class neighborhood in a small Midwestern town? An upper class neighborhood in a cosmopolitan European city? Culture varies tremendously so "where" matters if you make assertions like "the majority of people" think this or that.

Regardless of what you think people think, I'm telling you what they _should_ think which is more timeless and objective, since it's about medical facts that were true 2000 years ago as they are now.