The metabolic benefits of exercise do not end here...
It causes every cell of the body to create more mitochondria, increasing the base metabolic rate of energy consumption. Even at rest.
There’s more.
But the fat and lazy will not give a whit.
The benefits of intermittent fasting are very similar to those of exercise, withholding calories induces those same effects all the way down to the cellular level or mitochondria. The pathways for burning fat become disused, instead becoming accustomed to burning a constant fuel of glucose. Fasting or time restricted eating is a metabolic workout.
I have come to believe the commonly accepted advice or strategy for dieting and weight loss demoralizes people before they even begin start to some degree, because it is always and ever couched (heh) in disagreeable terms - radically changing not only the amount, but crucially, the type of food, as well as the exercise.
The first thing an overweight, or obese individual needs to do, is purely mental - they have to want to lose weight, in their mind. But they check into it - “Day 1. Breakfast - 2 pieces hackberry sawdust toast, water. Walk 2 miles. Lunch. Broccoli smoothy, 1 almond. 25 sit ups. Dinner . . . Yeah, screw this!!