My experience, in my mid 30s, has been that I slim down pretty damn quick when I'm able to run 10k 3-4 times a week. Unfortunately, due to my knees and my childcare responsibilities that's "not anymore". More generally, anytime I've trained for performance at anything other than pure powerlifting (climbing, kickboxing, cycling), my experience has been that my weight more or less falls in line.

It's not like I live off McDonald's or anything. But I'll be overweight, change only my exercise habits, and notice big changes in body comp on the timescale of a couple months.

So clearly I'm out-exercising my evidently-bad diet.

IDK. Maybe it's different with this kind of functional exercise vs 30 minutes on the elliptical or whatever.