Does exercise really not help with weight loss?

Riding hard and getting sweaty, you might burn 600 calories an hour. If your commute was a gruelling hour each way, then yes, you were burning 1200 a day.

Building muscle is more impactful than the calories burnt by the activity.

I would burn 600 calories running for 60 minutes, it is unlikely to be the same when cycling. We are all different but you would have to be really doing some to burn that many calories cycling for 60 minutes.

For me it would be half that amount in 60 minutes.

I run a fair bit , about 20 miles per week. I have to eat enough to fuel my runs but the running also to offset my coffee & wine calories!

Of course exercise can help weight loss - you just have to not eat all the calories back!

I lost (a lot of) weight through eating well and running. Now I just want to maintain that weight, I eat a normal diet (ordinary home cooked meals plus cake if I want it!) and stay a size 8-10 through running, as well as cycling when I'm not wfh.

The problem is that most people underestimate how much they eat and overestimate the calories burned through exercise. For example, if you're doing c25k, by the end you're doing roughly three miles, three times a week. That equates to - roughly - just 900 calories of exercise a week. Which is very easy to eat back in just one takeaway or a big pudding.
Whereas if you're burning an extra 500 to 1,000 calories a day through running, cycling or whatever, it becomes much harder to eat it all back. And I wouldn't want to.

The other thing that made a huge difference to me was that, when I started running long distances, I no longer wanted to eat crap meals such as pizza the night before, as it made me feel nauseous and sluggish the next day. It's a lot easier to run better if you eat well.

So yeah, you can outtrain a bad diet. You just have to train a lot. And it won't work if your idea of a bad diet is takeaway 3x a day, as I doubt anyone has the time to outtrain that!

For me, the exercise is the thing that makes the difference. In the sense that I’ve been in quite extreme salad and grape diets, but unless I walk ten miles a day or equivalent, I don’t lose a pound.

Now I have a back problem and can only really effectively exercise in water and I’ve really put on weight while all the pools were closed.

Having said that, I do think individuals vary as to metabolism etc. So what you need in terms of muscle mass and calorie deficit to shed weight, may differ from what someone else needs.

30 minute run only burns about 300ckals. that is snack
Its not as simple as that though as when you exercise you continue to burn calories at a faster rate afterwards. Also the more muscle you build the faster you burn calories.
For me exercise is key. If I exercise I can eat what I want with no restriction and stay at my ideal weight. The times I have bern unable to exercise ive piled the pounds on even when I've dieted.
I only ever hear the 80%food 20% exercise thing from people who are constantly in and out of slimming world and never seem to be able to keep the weight off.

Yes I think its the "I've done a run so a chocolate bar won't matter" mistake that a lot of people make.

I've found that exercise changes your shape - the same weight can look very different if you're muscular vs flabby.

Regardless of how it helps speed things alone I think everyone should do exercise anyway during weight loss as you don't want to lose muscle mass instead of fat - and also, you know, its good to feel healthy!

I think you're right to say "contribute" but it's like covering faces in shops "contributes" to reducing covid spread -- only a small bit of benefit.

Point is not to over-estimate exercise impacts on your calorie use. From everything I can tell moderate exercise is hugely beneficial to health, but it isn't a miracle cure for those wanting to lose weight.

An hour of vigorous exercise burns about 500 kcal for me (mid 50s female, 63 kg). It is very easy to eat 500 kcal: 2 pieces of ordinary size toast with some butter is all you need.

I've been reading about how variety of vegetables, high fibre diet, diverse micro-biomes might be hugely important to help moderate appetite. I don't know if the idea is properly tested. But I wondered if everyone who was overweight had to eat at least 10 different types/servings of fruit+veg daily if their appetite might self-moderate better. That's the Holy Grail in the end.

it does help, but to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you eat.

a 30 minute run only burns about 300ckals. that is snack.

Of course exercise burns calories. But I think the problem is most of us substantially overestimate how many. It’s therefore very easy to eat back all the calories you’ve burned in a week’s worth of running, with just one slightly bigger than normal dinner.

Frankly I think the biggest thing exercise does for me weight loss wise is keep me busy and out the house in the period before dinner when I’m most likely to snack!