I'll be honest and say that I am not a fan of how that article is presented.
While none of the individual points are technically incorrect I think it implies a very false conclusion about weight loss and exercise.
I agree with the premise that there can be a tendency when you exercise to eat more than you should becuase the exercise causes your body to demand more nutrition (physical cause) as well as the fact that you might feel you "earned" the french fries after an hour at the gym (psychological cause).
It's the implication that I have a problem with...if the above is true therefore exercise is not a significant factor in weight loss. I think this a really inaccurate conclusion.
The fact that you are hungry after you exercise is great, it's a sign from you body that you need fuel, some of which might come in food form and some by burning fat.
It comes back to the same calories in < calories out. The article implies from a weight loss perspective any increase in calories out is paired with almost = increase in calories in therefore why bother?
Wouldn't a much better conclusion be that we need to tackle the problem of not eating more just because we exercise (skip the fries afterwards)?
If you eat too much solely because you exercise, are you really not going to eat too much if you don't exercise? Seems pretty unlikely for most.
I'll use myself as an example, these numbers are probably higher than most on here because I'm a guy, have a muscular build (underneath it all) and therefore have a higher BMR.
So let's suppose that in a week I want to create a 10,000 calorie defecit to lose 3 lbs.
There are a lot of different ways to accomplish this some healthy, some unhealthy. I could....
A) Create a 10,000 calorie defecit purely through diet - this is pretty unhealthy as it will ultimately slow my body down, lower energy, lower motivation to continue, etc.
B) Create a 10,000 calorie defecit purely through exercise - this is unfeasible from a time perspective, as well as too great a chance for injury, etc.
C) Create a 10,000 calorie defecit throug a combination of both diet and exercise.
So using C above I might say that I can create a 7,000 calorie defecit purely through diet. Say my base burn is 2800 calories and I eat 1800 a day. I can still get in lots of protein and fuel and my metabolism is going. Then I can create the other 3,000 calorie defecit through exercise, say 5 days burning an average of 600 calories a day extra.
So in my example you could look at it several ways. I think purely in terms of that calorie defecit, so for me exercise is 30% of the picture and diet is 70%. I would still lose weight if I didn't exercise, but with exercise I lose about an additional pound per week which really adds up over time. So I have lost about 30 lbs so far, and probably in the neighborhood of 8-10lbs has been a direct result of the increased calorie defecit from exercise.
Even more important the exercise greatly increases my mood, energy level, motivation, etc which makes the diet part much more doable.
So that was a long way of saying that just because some people are tempted to down 500 unhealthy calories after burning 400 in the gym, therefore making negative progress, does not equate to exercise not being a part of a healthy weight loss regimine.
