It's really easy to burn an additional 500+ calories with exercise, which is very significant. Of course it's not a substitute for a proper diet, but it can be a huge factor in weight loss.
500 calories in one session? Or over a whole week? In one session it is definitely not "easy." In a whole week it is.
If you walked at 2.5 MpH and weighed 160 pounds, it would take you two and a half hours to burn your 500 calories. To me 2.5 hrs is not an "easy" workout. Somewhere between medium to hard (depending on fitness level).
A single Big Mac is almost 500 calories, two snickerdoodles are more than 500 calories on average.
> Of course it's not a substitute for a proper diet, but it can be a huge factor in weight loss.
That's just not true.
A single combo from McDonalds could set you back an entire weeks worth of exercise, literally. If you exercised for an hour a day every day, it only takes a single meal to undo most of that weight loss.
PS - Exercise is, of course, very important for overall health and a long life. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But for weight loss? Heck no. The maths simply doesn't work at all.
It depends on whether you consider intensity or duration to determine how "easy" a workout is. Sure, 2.5 hours is a lot of time to invest, but walking at 2.5 MpH hardly seems strenuous enough to qualify as exercise.
A 160 pound person could burn 500 calories in ~40 minutes jogging at a 10 minute per mile pace, and could easily offset a Big Mac in a single day's exercise (not saying that the person should use this to justify eating a Big Mac).