Yeah, it’s a balance. It can also depend on where you’re starting and what your goals are.
I’ve hit plateaus in my exercise routine, which I then had to lean on my diet to balance, and just the opposite-- I would be doing the diet, but needed to shock my body again to see more growth. They go hand in hand.
Decent poll responses, but you did leave out my main reasons: performance, health, longevity.
My main problem with being fat for a while wasn’t that I looked fat, but that it impacted my mobility to some extent and was going to start affecting my long-term health. When I started trying to get myself back into some semblance of my old shape after a relatively short time (handful of years) of being inactive, I was appalled at how weak, inflexible, and easily winded I was. It was horrible. Maybe if my baseline fitness was different I wouldn’t have noticed, but there was an enormous subjective and objective difference in capability.
I exercise so that I can do things, not so I can look a certain way or maintain a particular arbitrary weight. Looking good naked is a side effect, not the goal. I exercise so that I can go out and do a 3 day hike in rough terrain with a full pack; go rock climbing because I’ve actually got a weekend free for once; play with my kid in the park at full-out small-child intensity; carry heavy boxes up and down 4 flights of stairs (like at my last apartment); and be able to (at least occasionally) put in some martial arts practice without screwing myself up and not being able to walk for the next two days — all real-life examples. I don’t have to chase people down and beat them up, but having the capability to run and fight is always in the back of my mind, given part of my childhood environment.
I don’t particularly like how it feels to work out because — let’s face it — lifting heavy weights hurts, and anything endurance-based is mild torture at best, to serious thumbscrew-and-rack time, depending on intensity and duration. I like having lifted heavy, or having run a better time for a given distance, but the act itself is not fun. Having the fortitude to be able to exercise despite that unpleasantness is extremely valuable. Many aspects of success as adults entail performing tasks we don’t necessarily find pleasant, but that need to be done.
Being able to perform well physically is important to me. I like being able to pick up heavy things and move them without wondering if I’m going to cripple myself, because I know my capabilities and I know how to do it without injury. I like being able to run fast, jump high, and climb damn near anything I can find a handhold on. I like being able to move better than and generally outperform people literally half my age. Putting in a handful of hours a week to maintain what I consider a necessary level of fitness is a cheap, cheap price to pay for that significant reward.
Plus, I look good with my shirt off. And even in Japan, where many people look significantly younger than a Westerner of the same age, everyone guesses I’m several years to a decade under my actual age. Like I said, appearance isn’t the main thing, but it’s a nice bonus.
I’m likely to live longer too, but more importantly, I’ll have a longer active and useful period before senescence. I’d rather croak outside doing something — at the very least faceplanting on a sidewalk while out for a walk in my neighborhood — than shitting the bed in a nursing home somewhere.
I may still die in bed, but I hope to keep that time to a minimum. Jack LaLanne had something like a one-week decline at 90-something (!) before he became worm food. Pretty close to ideal, in my opinion.