Comment by anonfornoreason

What I feel much of this misses is the effect of exercise on metabolism. You have two energy pathways in your body, the quick glucose burning pathway and the slow and efficient fat burning pathway. By getting your heart rate up into the edge of the zone in which you are using that fat burning pathway but almost into the quicker glucose burning pathway, you work that pathway out and become more metabolically efficient / healthy.

Yes you can lose weight or maintain weight without exercise, but you can still get diabetes or other aspects of metabolic syndrome.

Plus exercise does help burn more calories. Sure it’s not as strong of an effect, but it helps. The more metabolically healthy you are the more capable you become of managing weight from what I can tell, but obviously to a certain degree you are a victim of your genetics.