Seems to me this thread is overdone but I'll add my little anecdote nonetheless and you can do with it what you will:

I was working very hard last summer to use 7000 calories in a week. there's 7000 calories in a pound of fat. It was actually pretty hard and I had to spend a lot of time on the bike to do it. (I have the Garmin 305 and Rubitrack uses its output to roughly track calories. The calorie tracker on the unit itself is garbage btw)

Finally one week I made it up to 8000 calories (about 10.5 hours ride time that week). During that same week they were having a special at Burger King for a two for one whooper deal. In NYC they have to publish the calories and right on the advertisement it stated that one of these meals was about 3500 calories.

If I had stopped just twice that week and treated myself to these meals as a reward I would have totally undone the full week of training. 10.5 hours of hard riding undone in 2 meals. Intuitively it doesn't seem possible but it's true nonetheless.

The point is that exercise is a very small part of the equation when it comes to weight. Id say its 90% diet 10% exercise. If you look at the peer reviewed studies this is kind of backed up. Studies have shown that exercise doesn't really help you lose weight. What it does do is make you fit and if you do lose weight exercise helps you keep it off.

References:
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...914857,00.html
http://www.wellnessresources.com/stu...ng_weight_loss

The diet book that's helped me the most:
http://www.burnthefat.com/index1.html