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Is eating 100 calories and walking two miles (supposing that, at my height and weight, one mile walked burns an additional 50 calories above TDEE) chemically the same thing as eating nothing and doing nothing? I'm in the middle of a weight loss campaign and love to walk, but am continually baffled at the futility of "exercising to lose weight."
Assuming your math is correct, then there are two opposing processes at play:
like @JhanicManifold said, your body reduces NEAT when it's tired and tries to entice you to eat more calories
cardio improves your cardiovascular system and endurance
Assuming you have your food intake under control and thus the number of calories is fixed, walking two miles shouldn't tire you out to affect NEAT in any meaningful way other than replacing NEAT for these 40 minutes. Just don't count it as exercise at all, so no +100 cal.
Reducing NEAT due to systemic fatigue means stuff like doing cardio that you can barely finish when the hour is over. For example, instead of walking two miles you run six miles in an hour. I am not a good runner, so this would tucker me out. The calculator says that's 750 calories, so now I actually need to worry about how many hours it takes for me to recover from it. If my hourly NEAT is 50 calories and I go into full lay-flat mode for the rest of the day (1 hour of cardio + 15 hours of being awake), then I could've burned 800 calories and burned only 750. If it's just for a few hours, then it's a good deal.
If, however, I were a more active person and my normal activity level was constantly buzzing around the apartment and not staring at the screen all day, then doing hard cardio would affect me much more. Let's say my average hourly NEAT was 150 calories. Let's say I crash for a three hours to watch a movie and then spend twelve hours more being slower than usual, consuming only 100 calories. That's 750+10012 = 1950 vs 15016=2400, a clear loss.
You might have noticed that I've been pulling the numbers out of my ass. That's the problem with estimating TDEE and its constituent components, so most people rely on rules of thumb: as long as your cardio is light enough that you don't notice it affecting the rest of your day (or the following day), doing it is a good idea to increase your TDEE without boosting your hunger. Just don't "compensate" for it by eating whatever the calculator tells you.
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likely not. the latter will result in more weight loss
metabolic adaptation. the Apple meter shows you burned 400 calories with that long walk ,and the number on the scale falls, but that was mostly water weight and your body makes up the 400 later by slowing metabolism a bit and increasing appetite.
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Short answer: it depends on how much cardio you're doing already. Cardio contributes to systemic fatigue, and too much of it will reduce your NEAT (Non-Exercise-Activity-Thermogenesis), basically you'll fidget less and be less inclined to take the stairs instead of the elevator, which will have a net-negative effect on caloric balance.
Very relevant video: Does More Cardio Equal More Weight Lost?
(and I'm very surprised by your 100cal per 2 miles walking number, I use this calculator for estimating walking calories, which gives me much higher numbers)
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Unsourced, so take this with a grain of salt, but my impression has been that the significant utility of exercise in weight management is either:
Body composition changes
Metabolic disorder maintenance
On (2), a salient example is insulin resistance, which can be modulated through either cardio or strength training.
The reason for this, as far as I understand it, is that exercise increases caloric needs, and typically folks will increase caloric intake to compensate.
I think a reasonable weight loss routine incorporates both dietary changes and exercise to normalize metabolism.
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