worth noting though that having more muscle mass does impact your daily energy expenditure

What you learn quickly is that the effects of calorie burning are real but way less than what people think. You can go destroy yourself running to the point you're half dead and that's gonna burn like 300 calories (like, one protein bar).

But yes on topic of the gym there's a few downstream effects, the bigger you get the more you eat to be on equilibrium. Also strength workouts keep your muscles "activated" for up to 48h during which you also burn a bit more calories at rest.

And finally of course there's the whole bulking/cutting thing, the basics is that basically, no matter how much you lift you're not gonna grow muscle unless you also have a calorie surplus in particular protein. During this process it's unavoidable to also put on fat so you bulk for a while (eat a lot+ workout a lot and improve personal records) then you cut (eat at deficit, maintenance workouts) so the fat recedes and etc.

There's a saying among body builders. Abs are made in the kitchen.

You get strength in the gym.

Yeah, I just mean it's easier to manipulate the intake side of the equation. Burning a couple hundred calories is a lot of work; choosing not to drink a soda is easy.

It’s important to note that “maintenance calories” are the vast majority of the energy you use on a daily basis. Exercise is just a small portion of the calories you burn.

Not sure what bread or chocolate chips you are eating, but this isn't even remotely true

So Calories = kilocalories =/= calories?

Unsurprisingly, fitness is always more complicated than it seems.

You are certainly correct that runners don't burn (much) more calories than a couch potato. But weightlifters do, vs a couch potato of the same weight.

The thing about cardio is that the calories go directly into effort. The calories burned are roughly proportional to the effort (distance). But the moment you stop, the calories stop getting burned.

If you are doing weightlifting, the calories spent at the time to lift a heavy object are minimal. But it instructs your body to add muscle to better handle all the heavy lifting you do. Once you have that muscle, you burn a ton of calories 24 hours per day just keeping it alive. It becomes part of your base metabolic rate. It burns nearly the same calories whether you're at the gym, or sitting on the couch. And it will continue to burn those calories until your body decides you no longer need that extra muscle mass and it atrophies.

Don't take fitness advice from Lemmy, case evidence #345322

Yeah the body compensates for it to an extent.

You know how lot of people report exercise makes them feel better? Releases dopamine, relaxes them. A result is that they actually fidget less, their heart rate slows, and other energy burning processes in their body relax.

The buffer is relatively large in fact, like possibly over 200-400 calories per day depending on the person. I think of it as the body’s flywheel for keeping an energy balance.

One should keep exercising, for the numerous benefits. There also is a point where you are burning calories that need to be made up (either through eating or weight loss), ask any endurance athlete. Just not likely to hit the threshold in 20 mins on the treadmill, which is what many people do for exercise

I saw it on kurtzgesagt YouTube channel. "rethink exercise" was in the video title I think.