Technically correct about the balance, but practically people overestimate the amount you can burn with extra activity. The main reason to exercise while losing weight is that if you do resistance training, you preserve more of your muscle and lose predominantly fat - it’s not to burn more calories.

And I disagree about emphasising “better” instead of “less”. “Better” than doesn’t lose weight.

Why estimate and not just calculate ? It’s not a hard calculation, walking calorie burn calculators are reasonably accurate. Walking just takes time, which you may value a little higher than burning calories.

> “Better” than doesn’t lose weight.

So you're saying that feeding oneself exclusively with chocolate will has the same result as feeding oneself with vegetables? Sounds counter-intuitive.

Let's say that you eat n calories of junk food every day (maybe that's all you eat or a part of your diet). Replace those with n calories of healthy foods. Great - you've probably made a good change for your health long term. But you haven't made progress towards losing weight because your calories are the same.

Now say you eat exclusively chocolate when you are hungry, during the whole day. And let's compare that to a day where you eat exclusively vegetables when you are hungry.

Will you have eaten the same amount of calories both days?