There’s a saying:”you can’t outrun a bad diet”.

calories are so much faster eaten than used up that any serious attempt at weight loss HAS to start with controlling your diet.

As an example:

let’s say you’re ONE cupcake’s worth of calories over your budget. That can EASILY take 45 minutes of running to use up. And then you’re only back to square one. To actually LOSE anything that day you have to KEEP running.

If you have your diet under control, then exercise can certainly help.

But few people can exercise long and hard enough to lose weight by exercise alone on an uncontrolled diet.

This goes for ALL kinds of exercise. All activities that get you equally sweaty and winded for the same amount of time will burn near enough the same amount of calories. Doesn’t matter if it’s cycling, running, rowing, skating, zumba, swimming, trench digging, splitting firewood - whatever. Amount and duration of effort is king.