I would be cautious about ignoring weight gain though. Metabolic disease, brought on by poor diet and activity level, is a greater pandemic (in the US) than Covid. Diet is a bigger factor in weight loss than exercise, though the body has an adaptive response (ghrelin/leptin) to that also. It seems that in the game of maintaining a healthy bodyweight, the deck is stacked against us.
Yeah, I know. I just know that my current life circumstances are not conducive to dieting. I have lost significant weight in the past, so I know how to do it, and I also know that it takes 100% mental commitment over a long period of time to do it, which I do not have now. So I'm just going to take advantage of it and set some lifting PRs. For some reason body weight equals strength even if a lot of it just fat, which I don't fully understand.
Did some googln', Pontzer is also featured on Dr. Gundry, which is the same branch of social media that promotes things like "Cholesterol is healthy" , " Cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease."
The danger of the health guru scene is that it's full of "half truths" which seem convincing
I don't think he should be dismissed via guilt by association. But I haven't vetted him myself. I am only aware of him because he was on the Barbell Medicine Podcast, whose two hosts are medical doctors who are so evidence based that they take very little for granted, almost annoyingly so. So I am doing the opposite and giving him the benefit of association. From what I remember, he did primary research for this rather than just interpreting other studies. But I should just read it myself before I go defending it.
Although I don't think exercise is a great weight loss strategy, my preferred cardio is bicycling because it's easy to do for long sessions and it's easy on joints. For lifting, I like the big three movements (bench press, squat, deadlift) to keep the joints healthy and strong.. As someone else mentioned, overuse injury is a concern for any repeated exercise (especially running, and especially with bad form, and especially if you're overweight). What's the minimum? The American Heart Association says 150 minutes per week, which would be about one 30 mile bike ride once per week, which doesn't sound like enough to me. I would say doubling that would be a good start. In my experience, only really, really long cardio sessions assisted weight loss, so 60+ miles on the bike per week, split between one or two rides, and/or 7+ miles of running per week, split between one and three runs. Running really sucks if you're already heavy though.