To me the whole secret is exercise, it really is. You can eat as much as you want as long as you exercise. I use to be overweight around 20 years ago and unemployed until a friend of mine needed help with his landscaping business and WOW, it was really bust-your-butt work. In one summer - 3 months - I lost around 60 pounds and I was eating MORE during that whole time. Since then I’ve never gone back. If a person goes jogging 3 or 4 times a week 3 miles each time, that person will never be fat and they will feel a million times better. Everything is better, the circulation is better, the brain functions better, you have no stress in life, exercise is so so so freakin’ important it’s not funny, it’s a necessity. We were built for it in the hunter/gatherer days. When a person doesn’t exercise, the body assumes the person is sick so it shuts down.
Exercise certainly burns fat. But it also increases your appetite. The reason you lost weight is because you were working. You could not go off and raid the refrigerator. When you were not working, you could.
Your body is more than a mathematical calculation of intake minus exercise plus storage. The reality is there is more to it. First there is desire to eat. Hunger plays a big part in how much you eat. Some of us are more hungry, more often. Second there is burn, store, or release.
Your body can burn calories, store calories or simply release them. Sometimes you burn them for no purpose other than to get rid of extra calories. Alcohol gets burned first even before sugar which is burned second. You tend to get hot like with a hang over. You can only really store fat. So if you never eat fat, or if you never eat carbs you can also lose weight. That’s because your body tries to use up sugar first. In doing so, it stores the fat for later. You can’t store sugar. Except by storing protein in muscles and converting the protein to sugar later. But that happens in the absence of fat and sugar.
So, if you can remove food by going to work, You can lose weight. You can eat no carbs and lose weight. Or you can eat only carbs and lose weight. But what ever you do don’t listen to those who say everything in moderation. Moderation is the worst thing for losing weight. That gives you just enough exercise to get hungry. Just enough carbs to store fat. And just enough fat to store. Moderation sounds good, but its not a diet that works for anyone.