this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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If someone is 150lbs overweight and sticking to that weight long term then the same logic applies (they're not staying at that weight by eating the average maintenance for their sex), increasing the calories they burn while eating the same number of calories as before will induce weight loss because they'll be at a deficit. They'll reach equilibrium at some point and they could continue increasing their activity level to continue losing weight, the same thing happens with adjusting your food intake, if you eat 3500 calories to keep your weight at 300lbs and you cut down to 3000 calories your weight will go down, but you'll never end up weighting 120lbs by sticking to 3000 calories.
I don't think you realize how few calories are burned by exercise relative to the amount packed into our food, especially if you eat without thinking about it. I was dancing for a while, 8 hours straight of sometimes very intensive cardio, and only burning like 1000 extra calories (according to my fitbit) on those days just to feel like shit the next day from all that work, which would definitely have driven me to eat even more if I wasn't paying attention to my diet or able to control my impulses (which tbh I think one or the other can be assumed for someone 100+ lbs overweight).
Even the most intensive bike ride or couple hours at the gym can be eaten away in as few as 7-10 oreos or a large fountain drink. Sure, if you just need to trim a pound or two to get to your ideal weight, exercise alone can do that along with many other great benefits if you can commit to it daily, but you simply cannot expect to see results if you are habitually overeating highly caloric/low nutritional value foods and do not change those habits.
"According to my Fitbit"
Starting on a high note I see
You burn 2200 a day doing nothing and eat 2200 a day, your weight stays the same
You start jogging 3 miles a day that's 240 to 420 calories right there, don't eat any more than you did and you're at 240 to 420 calories in deficit.
Don't jog and cut 240 to 420 calories a day and you have the same impact on your weight.
There's no magic to it, it's fucking maths! The difference is how hard it is for the results to last if you just do it through changing your eating habits, there's a reason why about 90% of people who go on a diet just gain their weight back, they didn't build a healthy habit, they make their life miserable for a while and then go back to eating the same as before.
My maintenance intake as a woman was somewhere on the low end between 1700 and 2000 calories. With the meals that I was used to having, this was easily exceeded just by eating more than one meal per day. So I switched to an OMAD diet and hit a plateau around 170lbs while I was dancing. I was happy with that weight so I loosened up, eventually stopped dancing, and now I use the time saved to eat healthier (or at least less processed) food instead of less food in general and maintain at that weight.
As for exercise; I tried biking and while I enjoyed it, it just wasn't something I was going to keep up with consistently. The hassle alone of getting a bike down from my 3rd floor apartment (and across a major intersection) was enough to end that, plus I can't do it in all seasons, and the stationary bike just isn't engaging enough. Again, any progress I make from that is gone with just one bad eating choice, which is going to happen if you change your activity level without any consideration for nutrition. This isn't a magical frictionless world of simple numbers, the psychology and physiology involved here is not negligible.
I do think the dancing boosted my metabolism a bit, or maybe something changed in my lifestyle like returning to office instead of WFH. I'm more consistently maintaining if not slightly losing at just over 2000 calories now. I really wouldn't be able to maintain if I didn't read nutrition labels and limit my snacking though.
edited for clarity