Exercising for health not weight loss

Yuup.

Also I've heard that diet is more likely to get the weight off, excercise and diet keep the weight off (though the later seems to be based on coorelation, which is always a slippery slope). The general idea seems to be if you're eating 2000 calories over your budget and working out for an hour to burn 300 calories, you're still gaining weight.

Weight loss takes way too long for my taste but athleticism seems to progress somewhat often. Maybe it's a little more rewarding?

I love cycling. I don't consider hiking to be fun, it's still enjoyable, I love doing it. I love doing a lot of things that involve being active, and do them for their own sake, or for the enjoyment they bring me. I'm leaving work early to swim in the lake again today.

I exercised (a good lot) for a dozen years or more, mostly for fun, while remaining class 1 obese. I did pretty much the same exercise type/amount during weight loss, for the same reasons. I still do it now while maintaining a healthy weight (actually, probably do more now, but still mostly for fun and to feel good).

In my individual case, the concept of exercising for weight loss doesn't even really make sense. Exercise didn't much change, fat to thin. Eating changed. 🤷‍♀️

I started off doing it for weight loss. Burning 400-500 calories a day (I was way overweight) helped with the deficit. But I've always enjoyed it. Now, I do it because I hate that "blah" feeling I get when I don't exercise. I enjoy feeling physically tired after a run. I also bike to work (saving lots of $$ rather than burning calories) but any reason to get out there and exercise is a good reason! Mentally and physically. As a perimenopausal female, I also need the strength training and resistance training to keep strong.

endorphins fly through the roof when I do my 3am strength training, then take extremely slow walks (20 min/mile) at 5am when everything is still dark and no one else is around, and just listening to chill podcasts

I've never exercised specifically for weight management. I started in competitive athletics when I was in 3rd grade all the way through high school. After high school I joined the military and regular exercise (PT) was just a daily thing. In college I was just a very active person. I didn't own a car for much of that time so I walked or road my bike everywhere. I also did a lot of hiking with my buddies and played quite a bit of Ultimate Frisbee and worked in landscape construction and warehouse retail. The only time in my life that I haven't been an active person was for the 8 or so years right after I graduated and started my corporate climb and was working 60-80 hours per week and traveling 25 weeks out of the year and just never made time to get out and have fun.

I'm not much of a "workout" person, but I'm active. I enjoy cycling and mountain biking as my primary forms of regular exercise, but also do some hiking, kayaking, swimming, some rock climbing here and there and I walk my dog most days.

I exercise for my health, both physical and mental.

I think that humans as a species are meant to burn off stress through physical exercise. For example getting chased by a predator or whatever… stress hormones were raised and the actual fight or flight reduced them. That’s just my opinion. I go on my treadmill to “run away from my problems” sometimes and it works. 👍

I do need to lose weight, but I try to accomplish that with my diet.

I've always exercised a lot and managed to get to very, very obese (bmi 43ish) while exercising a lot. Then the pandemic hit and I stopped exercising but felt I needed to do something so I taught myself to eat fruit regularly as opposed to the 1-2 fruits every 1-2 weeks I was eating before. Since I restarted exercise last september, my weight started dropping. I actually had to adjust my calories upwards so I wouldn't lose weight too fast.
Now I eat at approx. sedentary maintenance, which is coincidentally maintenance at goal weight if I keep up my current amount of exercise.

It was never about my weight. I just really like to exercise (but not by myself, as illustrated by my behaviour during the pandemic).

I have to separate the two. I have exercise intolerance due to a post-viral syndrome. So I can't exercise enough to burn any reasonable amount of calories without putting myself in bed for a week. Exercise for me is about being strong and healthy and being able to live my life in the best way possible. My diet is about losing weight/maintaining at a lower weight.

Predominantly I exercise because I enjoy it and enjoy living in a healthy, fit and strong body.
I've had periods of being either unhealthy, unfit or weak and it really affects my mood badly.
As I'm very self-competitive my choices of exercise also gives me a nice outlet and feelgood factor.

Nice bonus from doing a high volume of exercise (and high activity level) is that I get to eat far more and that makes long term weight maintenance much easier.

After many years on MFP the sub-culture of don't eat back exercise calories, unpleasant/dull exercise routines to boost rate of weight loss, etc. always come across to me as quite sad and an indicator of likely failure to achieve long term success in losing and then maintaining at goal weight.