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What you're saying is absolutely true of aerobic exercise, but is emphatically not true of anaerobic, muscle-building exercise.

While the act of going to the gym won't burn many calories, putting on muscle can drastically increase your baseline metabolic rate. 10lb of muscle (easily gained by a "newbie" who is eating well) will add about 1,500 calories per day to your baseline metabolic rate. That's a whole meal! (and that's just the calories burned by existing, not by recovery/muscle building, the workout itself, etc).

The body is remarkably good at maintaining homeostasis when losing weight. So as one gets lighter, the body becomes more efficient and burns less calories, requiring deeper and deeper reductions in consumption. Increasing muscle mass negates this.

Edit: @gduffy has a better source for how much energy a lb of muscle burns, which is "4.5 to 7.0 kcal/lb per day". So adding 10lb of muscle will increase caloric consumption by 450 - 700 Calories. So not quite a meal, but a solid 5 mile run.

Your numbers are way off. Adding 10 lbs of muscle won't increase your basal metabolic rate by anywhere near 1500 kcal/day. Something like 150 kcal/day would be closer to accurate.

It's not just about calories and metabolic rate. Lean muscle tissue is also a crucial component of the endocrine system, and it acts as a glucose sink to prevent the energy in that glucose from being stored as fat.

https://www.gabriellereece.com/muscle-as-the-cornerstone-of-...

https://peterattiamd.com/ama27/

> 10lb of muscle (easily gained by a "newbie" who is eating well) will add about 1,500 calories per day to your baseline metabolic rate

Per month?

https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/metabolismcon...

It’s still helpful: even 50-70 Calories per day is 18k-25k Calories per year. At 3500 Calories per pound of fat that’s 5-7 pounds offset each year, but it’s not a panacea for someone with 100 pounds of body fat.

You can’t out-lift your fork!

I’m confused about your edit.

Taking the numbers from @gduffy you end up with (4.5 to 7.0) * 10lb = 45 to 70 Calories.

So more like a half mile run for most people.

Unless I’m missing something?

1 kcal = 1 large calorie.

So 4.5 kcal/lb per day * 10 lb = 45 large calories per day, not 450.

> The small calorie or gram calorie was defined as the amount of heat needed to cause the same increase in one gram of water. Thus, 1 large calorie is equal to 1000 small calories.

> In nutrition and food science, the term calorie and the symbol cal almost always refers to the large unit. It is generally used in publications and package labels to express the energy value of foods in per serving or per weight, recommended dietary caloric intake, metabolic rates, etc. Some authors recommend the spelling Calorie and the symbol Cal (both with a capital C) to avoid confusion; however, this convention is often ignored.

> In physics and chemistry the word calorie and its symbol usually refer to the small unit; the large one being called kilocalorie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie

I agree, I have tried to train my brain into thinking weightloss and fitness are separate entities.

It surprises me that this invalid logic is continually reinforced by the media and even health professionals.

The most weight I ever lost was during 2020 lockdown when I made the consious decision to eat a bit less. I did virtually no exercise, one 30min walk each day, and I had no access to fitness equipment at home.

Same here, I love running and burn a ton of calories per week running but it is easier for me to lose weight while not running.

I agree with the adage that one loses weight in the kitchen and gets toned in the gym. But Diet and exercise are very much convolved.

Many folks gain weight very slowly. It creeps up on them. Typical scenario is a sedentary office job, family responsibilities, and little time for oneself. Calories are very much cumulative, so all it takes is some regular snacking (or stress-eating) to get the weight trend going up and, whoops, 20 extra lbs can easily appear in a year. A lot of this happened during the pandemic.

Losing that 20lbs, in such scenarios, can be done with a simple exercise regimen (or even some thoughtfully increased physical activity). One thing that's interesting is that you DON'T have to RUN a mile to burn 100 Calories. You can burn the same amount, 100 Calories, by walking a mile. It takes longer, of course, but it's easier on the joints especially for overweight people.

> A predator whose main method of hunting is long-distance running prey to exhaustion

A fun myth, but obviously false. Most human hunting was team oriented using javelins, or even stones and spears. Only a small number of human tribes have ever seriously practiced running to exhaustion. It's just easier to cut them off with a large gang and stab them with spears as you corner them.