This seems unnecessary. The rest of your comment does not support this assertion. And it's inflammatory, which is contrary to the HN guidelines.
To this point:
> There is also definitely nothing magic that happens at the 6 month mark and the absurdity of this should be enough to make it clear that this is garbage.
There doesn't have to be anything magical. I would have to read the book to be sure, but pretty sure 6 months describes the general point at which the continuous process fades into noise. Nothing about the body has an on/off switch, but that doesn't mean we can't describe biological processes in general terms.
Would you be so kind as to elaborate? You are literally stating that something is 'utterly untrue' without supporting rationale. I'm not expecting you to do a peer-reviewed study. Just to explain why you feel this way.
The statement is essentially that calories consumed are unrelated to weight gain and loss except in the short term after which the body will return to its normal weight no matter what you do. This simply doesn’t make any sense. If this were true people couldn’t starve to death and obesity wouldn’t be a thing. And also the conservation of mass would not be an actual physical law.
I am avoiding the normal urge to go out and buy the book to verify and share the references to you. But it is something you could easily verify and find for yourself.
A few hundred calories is ~10-16% of the daily necessary caloric intake of many people, I daresay most? It is most certainly a major effect and considering that people become obese most often by consuming a small daily surplus, a few hundred calories extra, over many years, a swing of 100-300 calories can easily make the gaining weight much easier or much harder.
As for obesity happening due to 100-300 extra calories per day, yes, but also not really. If a person’s intake is 300 calories per day over what’s necessary to maintain a healthy weight, then they will put on weight until TDEE (which increases with body mass) catches up with their intake and they land somewhere above their healthy weight. It’s not an unbounded growth unless caloric intake is also growing continuously. I would imagine it’s quite common to see obese people eating 300 calories over their current TDEE but also to be 1300 calories over their healthy-weight TDEE.
Also don’t forget that the 300 extra calories is after the metabolic adaptation from eating a surplus. So if an individual will increase TDEE by 200 calories in response to a surplus, then they’ll need to eat 500 calories above “real” TDEE to see a 300 calorie effective weight gain.
All this is to say that obese people are generally eating quite a bit more than just 100-300 calories too much per day.
I'm not the OP, but I'm also not convinced that the set point exists. Regardless, fasting is a better way of losing weight than caloric restriction IMO since it lowers insulin, but to each their own. Either way, the laws of thermodynamics haven't changed, it's just how your body responds, and we're all unique in that sense. Whatever works for people, so long as they're losing weight if they're obese or overweight.
> The same thing happens if you force someone to overeat even if they're not hungry. They will gain weight -- for up to 6 months. Then, the body increases its base metabolic rate and adjusts to the new food intake level.
This is pseudoscientific garbage. There is some amount of adaptation that the body experiences in response to a caloric deficit or surplus. It varies by person but is generally not a major effect. A few hundred calories is typical and is largely attributable to changes in NEAT.
This is also not an unbounded effect. It won’t prevent continued weight loss if the starting deficit is greater than the adaptation nor will it prevent continued weight gain if the surplus exceeds the adaptation. The many obese people in the world are proof that the “natural set point” does not place a cap on weight gain.
There is also definitely nothing magic that happens at the 6 month mark and the absurdity of this should be enough to make it clear that this is garbage.