> I can't accept that this doesn't matter.

It's not that it doesn't matter, it's the asymmetry. You can eat a small chocolate bar that costs $1 (or whatever) in about 15 seconds, and it will take you 2 hours of walking to wear off the calories.

Exercise definitely helps you improve your eating patterns. In particular it helps you deal with stress which is a source of bad food habits.

Well yeah, the sugar is also there to produce the soft squishy texture people expect from sandwich bread as well as the aiding the Maillard reaction when it's grilled. Miss me with a grilled cheese made with any other kind of loaf.

But we are talking about bread here, even in the absence of sugar and oil it's still got plenty of calories for you. Grain St Methode's white bread, a no added sugar brand is 180 cals for two slices and Wonder Bread, famously packed with sugar, is 140 cals for two slices. It's the bread which is making you fat, the sugar isn't moving the needle in any direction as far as the obesity crisis is concerned.

You can hop on a plane and go from a driving-city to a walking city, look around and see the difference. I can't accept that this doesn't matter.

It's a whole lot easier to hit up a drive through or grab a tub of ice cream at the grocery store when you're driving a car.

You're not wrong, though. Walking around doesn't burn a lot of calories (~100/mile), but most people become overweight by only slightly overeating on a daily basis, over a long period of time. One can of soda has 140 Calories. 140 excess daily Calories is an extra pound of fat per month.

I had a similar situation in my early 20s.

My conclusion was that past a certain point you need to use liquid sugar (soda especially) to get your body to put on weight past a certain point.

Even with absurd amounts of fat, carbs and proteins I could not process enough food to put on the weight I wanted too. Sugar is the backbone of massive weight gain.

I once trained pretty hard for several months for a martial arts competition. I upped my calorie intake to keep up with the training and put on about ~15lb of muscle. What people don't tell you about this sort of intensive training is just much extra time you spend each week shopping, cooking, eating and taking a shit - on top of all the training!

what is "processed" versus "highly processed" versus "ultra processed"?

the way these things are described feels very much like people are using a dowsing rod to find where to dig a well, or something. mumbo-jumbo.

I'm sure even "super ultra giga processed" foods are fine for you so long as you don't eat a lot of them. I'm not even sure that "processed" is bad at all. I don't want to eat raw cashews, I'll die (as will anyone else) I want those processed by cooking. Is pre-cooked food "processed" or "highly processed" or "ultra processed" or something else? all of the above; it depends on who you ask.

I don't know of any level of "processed" which is bad, I just know that if you consume 10k calories per day and only burn 3k, you're going to gain weight, level of "processed" probably doesn't matter. And I think that's all this study is saying: unless you're extremely active, you can't burn 10k calories a day, your body really limits how many calories you can burn in a day unless you are physically working enough to actually turn that amount of energy into physical work.

anyway, yeah. i immediately distrust anyone that starts mentioning "processed" or "highly processed" or "ultra processed" because I don't think those are defined. I think they're speaking entirely on vibes which are not quantitative.

I see fork put-downs touted by random influencers and life coach type people on the internet, but this feels like one of those things that sounds profound but isn't based on any research other than someone's individual anecdotal experience.

I'm skeptical that this actually does anything.

[citation needed]

That is not what any of the studies I have read find, particularly not past the short term: past calorie restriction diets is one of the factors associated with developing obesity.

And plate push aways

People tend to adjust their activity to maintain their energy expenditure without consciously thinking about it.

So a 30 minute session in the day might be followed by more time on the sofa later on.

The difference in metabolic activity as you age is relatively small until you are quite old, like a single digit percentage difference. You can go look at any TDEE calculator and see this.