This is very depressing. I find it incredibly difficult to lose weight dieting. And now it's telling me I just wasted all this money on a treadmill (and the effort it took to get it down into the basement).
Me too, and so many people do. I hope the treadmill helps, because it can.
FWIW, the article is making intentionally controversial statements and implications. Don’t let it convince you that exercise is wasted; it’s not.
Building a new habit, whether exercise or diet, is the hardest & most important port. I think it’s 90% mental, figuring out how to not give up and not let myself get depressed.
Might not work for you at all, but some tricks that helped me… I resisted counting calories for decades while I exercised a lot. Then I finally tried counting calories, and somehow managed to hold it and it worked. A coworker had lost a lot of weight and when I asked him about it in passing, without stopping to talk, he flashed his phone and mumbled “counting calories, man”, as if it was the easiest most obvious thing ever. That hit me a bit hard and stuck with me. So, it took time, many months. I set my calorie goal to my goal weight, not below. This meant it took longer than necessary to lose weight. I was interested in making sure I knew what it felt like to eat the right amount every day, forever. It helped me mentally to save room in my budget for a small treat snack at the end of the day. Starting with tracking but not restricting calories is a good way to put together your tools (e.g. a phone app) & daily workflow without worrying about being hungry. Calorie counts don’t have to be perfect, just doing it for a while and trying to be accurate, and you’ll get a very good sense for how many cals things have.
When you eat carbs your body turns them to sugar because that's all it can do with it. Then your pancreas notices there is too much sugar in your body and tells it to store it in the fat cells for later use as energy. When the sugar is cleared out of your body, you become hungry again. This process only takes a couple of hours which is why people who eat carbs get hungry between meals.
Instead, eat healthy fats. They don't cause your sugar levels to spike so they don't cause you to have that sugar crash and hungry feeling. You can remain feeling full for 8 hours on fat.
Of course you also need proteins so make sure you get enough. Proteins do cause your sugar levels to go up some, but no where near as much as carbs do so they don't cause a crash either.
This video of Dr. Sarah Hallberg explains this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ
If the problem is with self control, remember that torturing yourself and viewing it as a battle can be counterproductive. If you just starve yourself you will likely bounce back directly afterwards. Its about making an actual change and normalizing your eating. For that i found it helpful to first stick to my sustaining calorie level, so planing what you eat at the level you dont gain or loose weight. You can then build on that structure with cutting out the addictive stuff, eating slower and figuring out being full vs not hungry.
Personally i found a week of just boiled potatoes incredibly helpful (you will have to work really hard to gain weight with just plain potatoes) to kick the addictive stuff and break with bad habits. Its like with any other drug and abstinence wont kill you in this case.
Dont beat yourself up, its one step at a time and with better planing you can make the steps a lot easier.
I find that I eat a lot healther when I'm not stressed out. Exercise helps with that.
You can spend months with completely different habits, and see almost no difference. Your muscles build up from the inside, and your fat burns off from the outside. Muscle is also denser when you get on the scale.
There is a silver lining. Muscles burn calories faster than other cells in day-to-day life. If you're persistent and patient, you will get there eventually.
Alcohol also trips a lot of people up. It'll run you about 100-200 calories/drink, and it metabolizes like sugar.