Thanks. I didn’t care at all about this until close people started to do random diets they see on instagram. Every single one of those were rooted on pop science, garbage studies and very shaky foundations. That got me to look a lot more on a regular basis into what we actually know, and the answer was “very little”.

I think it’s fine for us to not know much about something. We don’t have all the answers in the universe, we’re just hairless monkeys after all. I just wish more people would be accepting of a “that’s complicated, nobody really knows and you’ll have to try a bunch of stuff to see what works for you specifically” approach.

To your question, I am slightly above the prescribed line in a lot of metrics and don’t really do anything special, I am lucky enough it doesn’t have any impact on my life in general.

Ah I wish we’d gotten to this earlier, you make some great interesting points we could talk about more. I think I should bite my tongue though, because my narrative isn’t helping you, and all I wanted to do was be helpful, especially for people who are where I used to be. That might not be you, I just want to say this in a way that would have convinced a younger me earlier. The only thing I’ll say here that is that fad diets are fundamentally different from setting a budget, I completely and totally agree that most fad diets are bullshit, especially the ones on Instagram. Keto has a pretty poor long term outcome rate, for example. The whole point of a diet is to avoid setting a budget, which is the main reason they have low success rates.

I like the way you put it, it’s okay that we don’t know everything, and you’ll have to try a bunch of stuff. That really is at the core of what I was trying and failing to say. :) We don’t actually know how gravity works, but we use it anyway. I made an analogy to PID controllers in another comment, maybe that’s a better way to describe calorie I/O; PID controllers know nothing about the thing they control other than it’s output, and yet they are an extremely useful tool.

My wife reminded me of a book that might interest you and might have pointers to some of the research you’re looking for. “The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You“ by Sylvia Tara.