The flipside of this is that people generally want to argue endlessly about what are essentially micro optimizations instead of addressing the core issue. Maybe your gut flora are “out of balance”. Maybe your metabolism is a little lower than average. Sure, there are factors that can matter. But if you’re not losing weight you’re not in a caloric deficit. If you’re not gaining weight, you’re not in a caloric surplus (or you’re spewing diarrhea and should talk to a doctor).

Address the core issue first before arguing about minutiae. The emphasis on relatively low impact factors is especially unhelpful and unhealthy because people latch onto all these discussions as justification for why they can’t lose weight. Sure, an obese person might have a low metabolism[1], but if they eat 3500 daily calories and live an entirely sedentary lifestyle, those are probably the major causes.

[1] But they don’t. Study after study have shown that obese individuals have high metabolism because metabolism is tightly correlated with total body mass.