This is not a well researched opinion, but I would think that diet makes a bigger difference than exercise. Looking at the amount of energy contained in the average food and drink and the amount burned while exercising. A long and difficult exercise session ends up using far less energy than you burned simply living.

Absolutely.

When working from home, i managed to lose on the order of 5-6 kg by eating less and skipping the occasional meal.

Now that the office is open again, the weight is slowly creeping upwards. This is due to the rather large plate served in the canteen at work.

To balance that out, my estimate is that the 45 km of biking a week i do, will have to be supplemented with gym visits 2-3 times a week.

With the above it will be possible to get within 4-5 kg of the ideal weight:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_weight

So maintaining a healthy weight is not easy without reducing servings and the ideal weight is even harder to achieve.

One of the problems is we tend to offset exercise with reduced activity elsewhere. It seems the body/mind is really good at balancing these things out. So you might find your extra gym visits don't have the effect you want (although they will have other benefits).

I'm jealous. I bike that much every two days when active, and was still gaining weight. I don't eat sugar foods, as it messes with me. I just eat lots of food.

I tried switching to smaller plates. Doesn't seem to help too much.

I was finding that salads help. Not sure how much, though. I was basically in a starvation diet when it was working well.

That said, counting calories definitely helps better than I want it to.

One thing that often gets overlooked is that muscles consume much more calories just for maintenance. So if you build a substantial amount of muscle, your base calorie consumption goes up and even if you don't love a lot on a particular day you burn more calories and gain less weight.

Is the effect really that significant? A cursory Google search suggests not. [1] Either way I don't see most Americans getting jacked any time soon.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/health/la-xpm-2011-may-16-la-he-fitn...

Yeah, I'm going to guess it doesn't make a huge difference.

Though, I am sympathetic to the idea that some foods encourage you to be more active. At least, some do the opposite. Eating a full pizza will almost certainly not be followed by anything active.

Oddly, following anything active with eating a pizza seems better.

> even if you don't love a lot

That's a good typo there :)