Exercise Lets You Eat More
Pound for pound, muscle burns more calories at rest than body fat. So the more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate.
And, of course, you also burn calories while you’re exercising.
All this means that “cheating” with a cookie once in a while isn’t going to take you back 10 steps. “Can you eat anything? No,” says Atkinson.
“But you can afford to enjoy some of the things you like when you exercise regularly. You can better get away with those things in moderation than you can when you’re not working out.”