Yeah, for a few years in my 20s I was bike commuting 24 miles/day and running 6-10 miles/day on top of that, with longer runs or hikes on the weekends.

I was in the best shape of my life, felt great and ate whatever I wanted without thinking about it. BUT I was spending 4 hours per day exercising.

Now I have a 6 week old baby and WFH... I manage a 30 minute Peloton a few times a week. Maybe. Even though I try to pay attention the pounds have crept on because there's so little margin for error on 1500 calories/day.

Calorie counting is no way to live, IMO. I miss the days of a long run and guilt-free cheese and beer after :)

Some of that is just being in your twenties. :). Pretty sure just thinking of a hike lost weight back then.

I picked up biking in my 20s, and was slimmer than I was in my teens. That's with no intentional change to diet. No one will ever be able to convince me that you can't lose weight with exercise. When I was doing ~90 minutes of cardio a day, it was impossible not to notice.

its possible to work out enough that compensative eating is not possible, but very few people work out that much, and some people have amazing eating powers, such that even riding a bike 50 miles a day isn’t enough to stop them being fat unless they also count calories.

Riding a bicycle? It's roughly 5x more efficient than running or walking. If you want to lose weight from cycling, you're going to have ride significantly further than 50 miles a day.

Paul, if I am doing 50 miles at 300 watts that isn’t any different than running for two hours. You can set whatever level of intensity you want for the duration. 50 miles a day all out will wear out even olympic athletes. Source: I work with olympic athletes and time trial champions

Sure, 50 miles a day @ 300W is not much different than running for 2 hours at a sub-7min/mile pace.

But most people cycling 50 miles are not generating 300W continuously, and most people running for 2 hours are not doing a sub-7min pace for the duration.

ps. I have run for 2 hours at a sub-7 min pace, and cycled 50 miles at about 280W.

I successfully lost weight at only twenty miles a day. Now... For a time, that also included Queen Anne Hill, in Seattle. So a decent amount of climbing. Still, I could lose weight easily while biking.

I lost weight on 15-20 miles per day as well.

Also have lost a bunch of weight (or at least replaced fat with muscle) from just doing 10-15 minutes of PT exercises (strength training, stretching, and yoga) plus walking an extra mile or two per day.

I ride 20-25 miles a day on a stationary bike, at about 20-25mph steady rate. It burns a bit over 1000 calories during the hour. It's more than enough to make a significant change, especially when paired with a half hour of weights.

Depends. I can do 15 miles at a leisurely pace on a social ride and not burn very many calories. I can do those same 15 miles at a fast pace and burn 2-3x as many calories. And then you can throw in some hills too.

I lost 80 pounds over the last couple years with riding average of 12 miles a day.

Are you sure about those numbers? Running is about 1kcal/km/kg of body weight. For cycling to be 5x as efficient you would only need 14kcal/km for 70kg man. I don't think it's realistic. The numbers I've seen are closer to 25kcal/km.

It has very little to do with distance. I lose weight much faster with hiit than riding long distance.

"much faster" is ambiguous here. Ride 150 miles a day every day for a week, don't over-eat, and you will lose much more weight than you ever could from HIIT. On the other hand, that's a lot of hours, and HIIT will easily win in terms of weight-loss per unit time.

How is it ambiguous. You clearly understood I meant calories burned per unit time.

The ambiguity is what unit of time you care about. With HIIT you lose more weight per minute of exercise you do. With a lot of LISS you can lose more weight per week than you could with HIIT.

Understood, but the parent I responded to was talking about efficiency so I thought that was the context.

In my experience I'm not so sure about that either. I can't repeat centuries day after day when I am out of shape and need to lose weight. If one can, it's very unlikely he/she needs to lose weight.

Paul, you can lose all of your weight without working out at all!

You don't know anything about my weight! :))

For sure. But the discussion going on here (and in TFA) is the balance between weight loss via exercise and weight loss via lower calorie consumption.

Or live somewhere where you can climb hills on the way to the grocery store... : )

I'm guessing there are very few folks getting fifty miles a day in, and still heavily overweight. Possible, to be sure. Just very unlikely.

I know such a person which is why I mentioned it. That vast range of human physiology is fascinatingly wide. He also is very aerobically gifted, possibly related things. (efficient engine, but not confirmed with testing, maybe just a big engine and loves food)

Completely fair.

Thinking on it, if food is,I eat it. Any pizza is a personal pizza, if you like pizza. :)

Still. Guessing most folks that can ride fifty miles are not overweight.

I agree, maybe you got me a little wrong. I’m more or less talking about the good ol’ adage calories in, calories out. It’s never that simple, amen, but measuring and matching output with intake is a pretty good proxy and works in practice. When calories out is higher, calories in can be higher too (and should be for big exercises). My problem was unregulated calories in, and a tendency to overcompensate a bit.

> It’s never that simple

The details might differ some but the overall advice is the same.

If you want to lose weight, eat less.

If you want to be in better shape, exercise.

If you want to improve your health, change your diet (and probably exercise).

A big issue is that people conflate those three objectives.

Being skinny doesn't mean you're healthy and exercising doesn't mean you'll lose weight.

I exercise quite a bit and have always had an extra 10-15 lbs up until semi-recently when I put those three things together and quit eating so much. I still eat plenty of junk food and I've lost about 20 lbs and kept it off.

If you're unhappy with your weight, eat less. If that doesn't work, eat less. Some people might have an easier or harder time with that because we're all different but the advice is the same.

Certainly agreed that compensation for exercise is a dangerous and likely way to gain weight. Is why, in the winter, I have a tendency to gain weight... :)