Unfortunately, it's readily-apparent that you can never outrun your fork, so forget about "burning calories" through cardio. The goal of fitness to lose weight ought to be weightlifting to gain as much muscle mass as possible to raise one's BMR. Passive metabolism is about the only way to do it without enrolling in BUD/S. In general, gymrattery and endless treadmill running are wasted effort.
I’m not a keto maximalist, do whatever works for you. But most people looking to lose weight would do wonderfully on 1,250 calories per day of high protein, medium fat, with the odd day of fasting and plenty of water and coffee. Refeed every couple of weeks to keep leptin in check.
From what I understand, a pound of muscle burns 6 Cals/day (that’s kCals, but in the US we just use Cals capitalized). A pound of fats burns 2-3 Cals/day. A 25 year old amateur non- drug- enhanced male can put on maybe 10 lbs of muscle in a year with a oot of hard work.
So the idea of putting on muscle to increase metabolism in order to get lean won’t pay off for most of us.
Muscle makes you look good with clothes on. Diet makes you look good with clothes off.
That's not how muscle gains work. It's exponential decrease per year with steady training: 13-18 lbs the first year, 7-9 lbs the second, and so forth until about year 5.
The decreasing ability makes sense as nobody seems to put on, say, 90 pounds of muscle. Above I was referring primarily to people just starting out trying to “get in shape.”
However, as you say you cannot outrun your fork, well you also cannot outlift your fork either.
Your body burns its carbohydrate and fat stores when exercising through cardio, now if you're going to the gym and running on a treadmill for 20 minutes you're unlikely to burn much. But if you do this consistently outside multiple times a week, you will absolutely see changes provided you aren't overeating.
This idea that cardio doesn't burn calories or help you lose weight is ludacris. If this was the case, every triathlete, cyclist or runner would be overweight.
When I first started lifting, strength, stamina and hypertrophy all surged for the first 6 months, and plateaued. Aside from caffeine and whey, I don’t supplement with anything else but I see plenty of people that either have great genetics, or more likely dabble with anabolics in order to get the lean mass that they have.