Definitely. But unions are the cure for that one

never argue with an idiot, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience

Technically you can unscrew a screw twice in a row by covering it in something that can harden but won't grip it too hard. Once the material has hardened, the screw can be unscrewed without having been screwed in.

It's still possible to build up endurance even while fat, if you never got completely sedentary or if you take the time to build it back up. But if you're too fat there comes a point where physical activity starts becoming dangerous without proper guidance - and if you have that then you're probably looking into your diet too.

When I was marathon training I found that eating enough calories was a matter of meal timing, simply because I didn't have the stomach to be able to eat that much in a single sitting.

With training a total of 50 miles (80 km) per week at a body weight of 190 lbs (85 kg), that's basically 6700 calories per week of direct energy expenditure, maybe another 1000 calories of excess post-exercise energy expenditure. That's 7700 calories per week from running, which allows you to add a whole 1100 calories per day to your diet, plus the amount you'd normally need for day to day.

With intense exercise, there's a lot of room to work with.

I wasn't trying to be pedantic as such. It's just that I found fitness when I was on a path to trying to bring my body fat down to a level I was happier with. I had originally though "losing weight" was healthy, but then I read that being active is more beneficial than losing weight, so I thought I needed to include a bit of fitness training in there.

And then when I started running, to my great surprise, I found out that I loved it, and I kept running. I ended up SUPER SUPER in to running. And one of the things that I discovered was that after a period of trying to watch how much I eat, when my training peaked, I was often struggling to get enough calories to match my burn.

And I often joked to myself back then that if I'd have known I could have outrun my bad diet, I'd have started there :P

But in all seriousness, as you said, it's not possible to sustain. Age, injury, decreased training levels, eventually, something happens and your calorie burn returns to more regular levels, and then you're not outrunning it anymore

In the literal sense it can become shiny but you still dealing with shit.

That’s not the same thing, though.

You didn’t overpower your own bad technique.

You overpowered her good technique, and presumably did so using good technique of your own.

It is losing fat and gaining muscle, but you don't have to change your diet for it to happen. Eating better makes it go quicker and easier, for sure. But in the absence of metabolic disorders your body will burn fat to get the energy it needs to build muscle. Your protein intake really doesn't need to be very high.

You'd also be at a calorie deficit any time you exercised if you're not supplementing the expenditure, and depending on the workout it can be a large deficit. I have HIIT workouts that can burn upwards of 800 kCal an hour.

The downside is that you will eventually plateau with this method, so if you're very overweight you'll need to change your diet at some point. But if you're not significantly overweight (like me this time around) converting ~15% of your body fat to muscle should be obtainable just through lifting.

The great part about building muscles before you go on a deficit is that your BMR will be decently higher, meaning you can eat more than you would otherwise since muscles require more calories than fat to exist.

Recomp happens at maintenance calories.

Caloric deficit is simply a cut, not a recomp.

In both cases the amount of muscle you can put on depends on how new you are to training and or if you've previously trained and are coming back from a long break. If you have been at it for a good period of time then recomps are not ideal, you'll see better results faster from bulk/cut cycles.