Some of the highest are things like “biking, >20mph” (1380 calories burned if you weigh 190lbs) or “rowing, >6 mph” (1035 burned). You have to be in good shape already to sustain that rate for an hour.
More likely, you’re going to be doing activities closer to 300-500 calories an hour. How much does that translate on the intake side? Roughly a 20oz bottle of Mountain Dew or two. So if you’re drinking a lot of soda, simply cutting it out will do more for you than exercise. (Well, in terms of weight loss, anyway. Lots of other reasons to exercise.)
This seemed obvious to me years ago just by looking at the numbers. The Exercise Paradox paper makes an even stronger conclusion by another route. Not only is the calorie input/output comparison impractical for any reasonable level of exercise, your body doesn’t even work that way.
Which also suggests to me that weight loss drugs are the only path for the majority of the population. No amount of lifestyle changes in adulthood are going to do it unless they’re very drastic.
I also think you can get to a similar conclusion by a totally different route. The conclusion being “more exercise is not a weight loss plan”.
This is a chart of calories burned in an hour for a given activity: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/publications/p4/p40109.pdf
Some of the highest are things like “biking, >20mph” (1380 calories burned if you weigh 190lbs) or “rowing, >6 mph” (1035 burned). You have to be in good shape already to sustain that rate for an hour.
More likely, you’re going to be doing activities closer to 300-500 calories an hour. How much does that translate on the intake side? Roughly a 20oz bottle of Mountain Dew or two. So if you’re drinking a lot of soda, simply cutting it out will do more for you than exercise. (Well, in terms of weight loss, anyway. Lots of other reasons to exercise.)
This seemed obvious to me years ago just by looking at the numbers. The Exercise Paradox paper makes an even stronger conclusion by another route. Not only is the calorie input/output comparison impractical for any reasonable level of exercise, your body doesn’t even work that way.
Which also suggests to me that weight loss drugs are the only path for the majority of the population. No amount of lifestyle changes in adulthood are going to do it unless they’re very drastic.
Oh yes, absolutely, that’s another conclusion to draw from this paper. Exercise is still good for you, but it’s not a means of losing weight.