I would assume that this is the biggest contributor. Being consciously mindful of what you eat and how much you eat is extremely effective. But I say this for the benefit of others, and not to diminish your own efforts; if a regimen is working for you, then don't worry about analyzing and just keep at it! :)

- Wake up 6 - 6:15am - Espresso shot around 8am - Regular sized but healthy meal at 11:30am with a small pastry walk 12:30pm - Regular sized but healthy meal at 5:30pm - Little dessert 7pm - Sleep at ~11 - 11:30pm

Highly recommend, as OP have had essentially nothing but positives including preliminary weight loss, easy weight management, higher energy, etc

All along this journey a thing that's been going on is while I'm eating less and less, I have to be careful to eat better and better food. I simply don't eat enough to waste much eating "crap." By eating less and less "crap" and needing to focus on nutrient-dense food I've basically stumbled into what is called the MIND diet.

This isn't true though, it's not the amount of calories you consume but the amount of calories your body actually accesses out of those consumed.

If most of the calories you consume simply pass through or get consumed by the parasites living in your large intestine, calories consumed can exceed calories expended by you while still losing weight.

The researcher who discovered the general role a pancreas plays in weight gain back in the 1800s had dogs living normal lives after removing their pancreases. Except no matter how much food they consumed, they continuously lost weight, and eventually died as if they'd starved to death. He discovered their urine was sweet after seeing flies were more attracted to their urine than the normal; without pancreas-created insulin the fat cells wouldn't store the energy, it was leaving the system in the urine.

This illustrates the role hormones play in energy storage/release. Everyone's hormone levels are different, and how they respond to different foods varies, it's all very subjective, sex, and age-dependent. So even within those calories accessed via the GI tract, there's hormonal variability in what gets stored vs. used vs. excreted.

Calories consumed only sets an upper bound; if you consume less calories than expended, you will lose weight. It's not a symmetric relationship like your statement assumes.

The fact you don't absorb it all doesn't change the principle in any way. It just mean you need to recalibrate. But since you can't measure EXACTLY how many calories you're actually eating anyway or that you can predict EXACTLY how many calories you need with a calculator, you need to calibrate anyway. So really not absorbing all calories changes literally nothing about the calorie counting method.

The biggest advantage of calorie counting is it's more reliable than looking at the balance everyday because a ton of stuff will make you a few pounds heavier/lighter at any time it fluctuates too much. The scale doesn't move for weeks and people panic but really it was just random and then they lose 5 pounds on the 5th week and they think "omg, i must have lost all the weight at once because i ate that one apple!" You just can't use a scale short term. But all you have to do is count the calories, believe in the process, and if after months it doesn't work, you adjust your estimate of how many calories you burn and change your diet based on that.

Instead of believing the process and waiting for months to see if it works, you can weigh yourself every day and look at the moving average. That will let you ignore the natural daily fluctuations, but still give you regular feedback.

In my experience, that regular feedback really helps with the motivation to keep doing the calorie counting.

I've also heard the argument it's worse for women because weight changes with the menstrual cycles, so then you really have to look at the very least one month of data.

Let me quote: Orexin (/ɒˈrɛksɪn/), also known as hypocretin, is a neuropeptide that regulates arousal, wakefulness, and appetite.[1] The most common form of narcolepsy, type 1, in which the sufferer experiences brief losses of muscle tone (cataplexy), is caused by a lack of orexin in the brain due to destruction of the cells that produce it.

And another quote: Orexin-producing cells have recently been shown to be inhibited by leptin (through the leptin receptor pathway), but are activated by ghrelin and hypoglycemia (glucose inhibits orexin production).

To have a good sleep you probably need relatively high glucose level.

> Fasting decreases gallbladder movement, which causes the bile to become overconcentrated with cholesterol.

^ https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas....