You specified that you were only speaking for yourself but I think that for most people, a healthy steady-state weight is easier to achieve by smart food choices rather than exercise.

Recommending exercise is good advice for overall health such as increasing endurance, bone strength, sexual performance, managing stress, etc. However, saying that exercise is a "key" to weight loss is very misleading because the act of exercise also causes an increase in appetite.

These days, I exercise less than half the amount I did a decade ago and I still weigh 10 pounds less. The difference is that I eat oatmeal for breakfast and vegetables + olive oil for dinner instead of sugary corn flakes and pizzas.

Optimizing eating habits (without causing starvation) is much easier than running an extra 10 miles on a treadmill. This disparity in effort is obvious if you ask obese people if it's easier to eat a glazed donut (consume 200 calories) or run 6 mph for 20 minutes (burns 200 calories).