I never was very active but almost never was inactive either.
Of course I gained while exercising (like, 70km walking/hiking a week, that was my best time exercise wise) when I ate a ton. Very slowly but I did.
Not exercising has little effect on my weight, I stall or gain 1kg a year just the same. I suspect it is more important when I want to lose but I happened to lose fat in my inactive higher-carb (still low-carb) times and never when I exercised or did keto, incidentally. But both lower-carb and exercise should help me out normally, it’s just the interesting combo of different factors that gave this misleading result.
I typically eat less when exercise more unless I am super active, still better for my fat-loss according to numbers and it seems I lose fat according to calories and that’s it… But who knows? I almost never lose fat so I have little data. I know I stall under almost all circumstances.
This is not so simple. Some people gets hungrier or just more indulgent after exercise. I don’t really but still never saw it being super helpful for some reason.
My SO did, he can’t maintain let alone lose fat without being active. He gets less active and immediately start to gain as he lack my ability to maintain even when overeating (technically not, I just get a metabolism boost immediately). He does HCHF as it’s the only option for him but it works for him.
So exercise may or may not be helpful but even if it is, it’s very easy to overeating for many of us. It’s not THAT simple that much exercise = fat-loss, keto = fat-loss, IF = fat-loss… It never worked for me, well very much exercise (not a mere 2-3 hours of walking) might but I don’t do that. I am pretty sure 8 hour heavy physical work would work on me. My food intake (even if I only try to eat enough for satiation… and I may or may not fail) has not so much to do with my actual energy need. There is a correlation, sure but it’s not strong enough. That’s why I easily lose fat when my need is over 2000 kcal and never when it’s around or lower. (As far as I can tell.) As my body loves getting 2000 kcal. It counts calories zillion times better than me, I can’t do it even when I measure everything and use a program while it’s automatic for it.
I think I got carried away again.