Comment by dschuetz

The article is very interesting to read, except the part where his personal life is spotlit. Finally something more nuanced research done on this. In my lifetime I was told pretty contradictory views on how fat metabolism works and what exactly 'exercise' means. You cannot eat the same and hope to loose weight just by exercising more. You would be burning 'cheap calories' first, but the fat tissue stays untouched, as it is more expensive to burn. Changing or regulating diet correctly reduces the intake of those cheap calories, most of them are liquid or in processed food, like beer, alcohol in general, processed sugar, some dairy products, and so on.

Exercise and the right diet complement each other, and according to this guy it makes only sense: exercise forces the metabolism to burn calories for physical activity instead of stress response, and that means lower levels of stress hormones. The correct diet forces the metabolism to burn glucose stored in the muscle tissue first, and then slowly starts using the energy from the regions where the digestive tract is.

So after decades, the right balance between diet and exercise is still the better way to loose weight and be healthier, however this guy says that body burns calories differently than assumed, each activity burns calories, even if it's sitting on a couch all day.