alt Hacker NewsYou say they did little exercise ("their activity not particularly large", "little exercise routine") and yet they stayed lean, QED. But also you say they didn't achieve much. I don't know what you're saying. I suppose this flailing around is a kind of exercise, and you like exercise.
I know the study said nothing about "extreme exercise", I put that part in to appease you by providing a way in which you might be right.
OK, reading again, you mention "basic activity" at the start, which is reasonable, in contrast with your massively strenuous starvation bike rides. If the thesis is "move around a little in order to accomplish the basic energy expenditure which is as good as it gets," then fair enough.
>You say they did little exercise
LOL, no, I didn't. You seem to have read my comment like your understanding of that study.
Moderately active hunter/gatherers consuming a massive number of calories a day for their size saw plateauing energy consumption, where increasing the activity saw a reduced climb. Again, humans are not perpetual motion machines, and anyone seriously arguing that doing more activity is magically free suffers from self-delusion.
I referred to "little exercise" relative to gluttonous people with a gross calorie excess who then add a little exercise routine and thinks they'll lose weight. They'd be massively more successful cutting calories.
This really isn't difficult to understand.