I was wondering when someone would point this out.

Oh wait, I already did that: " I’m about to do what every smart person likes to do: drastically simplify a complex phenomenon."

and

"Well, if it please the court: I’m guilty of this too. I’ve simplified enormously."

The point of that particular song and dance was that the ultimate cause of long term weight is net caloric balance. That's the one, simple, verifiable truth about nutrition that everybody agrees on. Everything else is a bunfight.

Any hypothesis which sincerely proposes that net caloric balance does not necessarily determine long term average weight must explain by what biological mechanism the conservation of matter and energy is being violated.

> Go with what works, and for most people, losing weight on a low-carb diet will be a helluva lot easier than on a low calorie, high-carb diet, your personal experience notwithstanding.

You have no idea what my macros are, you're just assuming. For me protein is the number one priority and I let the rest of the chips fall where they may.

Lots of people swear by keto. Swing past /r/keto and you'll find a success story every day. You can also swing past /r/paleo, /r/loseit and so on and so forth.

I don't really care about how the caloric deficit is imposed. In my case it was through intermittent fasting. What matters is that it was imposed.

Funnily enough, I thought of that point too:

"The key to weight control is finding the dietary template that you can stick to for the rest of your life. That will be different for different people. Some folks are happy with calorie counting a la John Walker. Some people are happy with paleo, primal or ketogenic diets. Others swear by zones or low fat and so on."

Only in the tautologically meaningless sense, in which you define "calories in" by "what the body laters takes out at some point".

Everyone agrees carbohydrates provide 4kcal per gram, right? Well, cellulose (e.g. paper) is a carbohydrate as well. But eating it does not provide you with energy. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol, which, when first introduced to a diet, makes zero (0) kcal per gram available to the body, but apparently settles at 2.7 kcal after a couple of weeks of consumption, in which the body ramps up the enzymes that can actually digest it.

Furthermore, the amount of fat your body uses for e.g. skin lubrication, can vary by a few hundreds of percents (depending on factors not perfectly understood, as far as I can tell), so the "energy out" balance also includes "energy in the form of fat used for mechanical purposes".

The "calories in - calories out" balance is a very crude approximation, that works for most of the people most of the time - but there's a very significant chunk of the population (under their present living conditions) for which it is completely useless.

Yes. Yes absolutely!

And a centrifugal governor in no way resembles the internal state of a steam engine.

And it doesn't matter.

Observing inputs and outputs is enough to control weight.

e.g., I've recently discovered that my unexplained weight gain (which over the last year looked like 4-5 step functions, rather than anything continuous) is a result of Niacin (Vitamin B3) deficiency.

That's something I discovered (accidentally) by observing inputs and outputs, the input being B3 supplementation (taken for a completely different matter), which quickly undid all the weight gain (and a lot of other symptoms).

10 or so Doctors (specialists and generalists) and nutritionists have seen me over the last 15 years for my weird weight. Not one ever suggested B3 might be the problem, or ever had a test that would indicate I'm B3 deficient -- although, I have reason to believe I've been deficient for at least 20, and possibly 30 years.

So, yes - observing input and output is definitely enough to control weight. But as this anecdote shows, it's not necessarily the caloric balance, which is what you stated in the first place.

What we're arguing about is the boundaries of causality. Take mental illness. Some people get fat because they have a mental illness. What's the cause of their obesity? Caloric balance or the mental illness?

Depending on the boundaries you draw, one or the other, or both.

Same caloric input, same exercise (that is, main control signal for caloric output the same). Difference in input is a substance without caloric value. Huge difference in weight.

The only caloric balance here at play is the tautological one ("caloric balance was positive as evidenced by gaining weight. later, caloric balance was negative as evidenced by losing weight"). Other than that, assuming you believe this anecdata (which you may not), the notion of caloric balance is useless.

(And, feel free to disbelieve anything I say, but read on B3 and you'll realize there are numerous reports of reduced weight that starts with B3 supplementation, despite no other change in intake or exercise)

Consider this complete hypothetical, just to prove a point. Suppose that one individual's body functioned like this, due to a bizarre genetic mutation: Any excess calories this person ate under a high-carb diet would be turned into fat. Any excess calories eaten in a zero-carb diet would be turned into pure muscle mass, burned off in a raised metabolism, or are simply excreted.

Simply put, this shows that calories in/out can remain true, but only a fraction of what you need to consider to keep your weight under control, and this is essentially the assertion by Taubes et al., backed up by significant empirical evidence that these diets actually work, even if you disagree with the biochemistry of his arguments. In addition, there are issues like how hungry you feel (more likely to consume excess calories) under each diet, even after consuming enough calories to maintain a healthy body weight, and therefore how sustainable each diet is.

What you should care about when trying to lose weight is how fat you get under a certain diet, period. Not calories in/out, just everything.

So while you can say that "in the end calories in/out is the ultimate rule that determines weight gain, everything else is an inaccurate generalization," you're missing everything else that could potentially interfere with your control of calories in/out. It's like saying "The only thing that determines whether I can drive to my destination in my car or not is if I have enough fuel for the journey, so I don't need to concentrate on things like remembering to inflate the tires or inserting the keys into the ignition." Excuse the left-field analogy, but I hope you see what I'm getting at.

The truth is that Taubes et al. never disagreed with and add enormousness value to the line "Calories in/out" by saying "Yes but low carbs and eat a lot of fats!". Again, as a rule for most people, or a helpful generalization.

>You have no idea what my macros are, you're just assuming. For me protein is the number one priority and I let the rest of the chips fall where they may.

Well I stated it as a contradiction just to hedge that your diet wasn't similar or overlapping with ketosis diets. If it is, one could argue the point that a lot of the success people have with non-keto diets is at least partially because they actually are following a ketosis diet, albeit inadvertently.

>Lots of people swear by keto. Swing past /r/keto and you'll find a success story every day. You can also swing past /r/paleo, /r/loseit and so on and so forth.

I agree that different individuals can have success under a variety of diets. My argument is that the default diet advice should be low carb, high fat, etc., rather than just low calorie.

Although I would say most paleo diets are actually a very strict keto diets themselves, and almost all are low-carb anyway.

To give you background, I have in the past year found myself arguing with "ketards" who have come up with some hilariously impossible theories. Such as: eat 8,000 calories a day; so long as you are in ketosis, you will lose weight.

Or: the human body is complex, so applying the law of conservation of matter and energy is erroneous.

Keto absolutely works for lots of folks. Protein is filling and delicious. But as a personal pet peeve, pinning everything on carbs/insulin when a) protein causes insulin spikes to, b) net calorie balance is still the bottom line and c) there are more hormones involved in appetite and satiety than just insulin gets up my nostrils a little bit.

And that's what I was referring to in terms of over-simplifications of a complex science via pop science books.

Why do you think it is impossible? I failed to lose weight on a ~1200 kcal/day diet for several years of relatively active lifestyle. Does that seem impossible to you as well?

And then I kept more or less the same kcal intake (from the labels, which I don't find trustworthy, but I don't have any other source), but I dropped anything grainy (corn, wheat, rice), and lost 30 pounds within one month. Does that sound impossible to you? After those 30 pounds, my weight stabilized, and started rising again very slowly (2 pounds over a few months)

And then following some parts of the "The Bulletproof Diet", I went to ~2500 kcal/day, (about twice what I had before, mostly fat), and started losing weight again, at about 1 pound/week. Does that seem impossible to you?

When I called out the wrongness of "caloric balance" in another thread, you said "well, that's true but it doesn't matter, you should observe inputs vs. outputs". Which is true, and is correlated, but very far from being inferable from the caloric balance.

Yeah, I would think that's impossible. I'm going to just state user error as the leading cause here for your inability to lose weight. Unless you're completely unique in some shape or form such that reducing your caloric intake also reduced your BMR down to basically 0 (i.e. dead), I'm going to have to call bullshit.

My ex was an MD. At some point she told me "well, I'm going to eat what you eat for a few weeks to show you that you must be eating more than you think" (She was studying for exams, and we actually ate almost every meal together for a few months). She started having blackouts after a few days, continuously feeling starved, and stopped the experiment after less than two weeks.

What did she do afterwards? put a big SEP field over the experiment (and my food input). What did other nutritionists and doctors I consulted say? One called me a lier (about a few things; all of which -- except my food intake -- I was able to prove him wrong). Another said I should start eating meat (I'm vegetarian) - not because I'm missing anything, but because he couldn't find enough relevant statistics to compare me to.

My BMR _was_ reduced, but I didn't have enough money at the time to spend on getting it tested. But my body temperature in those years was ranging between 35.2 and 36.2 celsius (normal is 36.7) -- obviously I generated much less heat.

Just about _everything_ you know about medicine and nutrition is statistics that works for 90% of the population 99% of the time. I'm (un?)lucky to be stuck in the 1% of the time and 10% of the population in many respects.

I'm not sure if I should be annoyed or amused of how religiously people tend to assume nutrition and medicine are hard sciences like math and physics. (See my long reply to jacques_chester above for deconstructing his popular argument)

"I used to eat <X>, now I eat <Y> and <delta Z>. Where is your precious net calories now!"

Well this leaves us with two alternatives:

1. Something in biological systems is capable of defying the conservation of matter and energy. Somewhere in the spaghetti bowl, matter or energy are being wicked away or added in a fashion so subtle that it has never, ever been observed.

2. You measured incorrectly.

Nothing personal, but I know which hypothesis I will back.

(Also note the careful use of the qualifying phrase long term average weight to account for the general noisiness of weight).

However, there's more than two options, because "I eat X" doesn't necessarily mean "at BMR which would not vary with diet, I metabolically convert X at the caloric density listed on the label for the macronutrients involved."

A cup of black coffee has 5 kcal. Surely you would agree that consuming 1200 kcal/day of just coffee for 6 months (if you somehow survived) would lead to a different weight delta than consuming 1200 kcal/day of, say, non-dairy cream substitute?

> Somewhere in the spaghetti bowl, matter or energy are being wicked away or added in a fashion so subtle that it has never, ever been observed.

Well, being that I'm anonymous, you are welcome to think that I measured incorrectly, (and whatever else you come to think of). I accept that.

However, the statements I quoted above indicate that you're following religion while you believe you have a scientific world view. So, I will not try to convince you of my measurements (which I admit could be very erroneous, even though they are based on food labels, which are an accepted, if idiotic, method of measurement).

However:

There is NO law of conservation of matter or mass. If you believe there is one, you should revisit your physics; There is conservation of energy, (and depending on how your system is modeled, probably momentum as well). But no such thing as conservation of matter or mass.

There IS a law of conservation of energy, but it does NOT in any way apply to the question at hand -- except at the tautological sense which I pointed in the first place. To wit:

1. Cellulose (paper, wood) is a carbohydrate. You can eat 1kg of paper a day, which is thus assumed to have 4000kcal, and all the vitamins you need, plus 20 gram of protein (a suboptimal, yet generally livable diet) - and you will die of starvation. Yet, exchange the paper with 1kg of sugar, and you won't die of starvation (you will eventually of diabetes).

Now, if this "energy balance" you allude to meant anything in this context, the paper<->sugar exchange would not have made a difference. But it does. And the reason that it does is that enzymes in our body know how to break up sugar, but not cellulose - and cellulose, DESPITE ITS ENERGY CONTENT, gets out the same way it came in. So atwater (the guy who set up the food energy system we now use) added a "per food factor" to say how much we can derive from it, and paper gets 0. Great - but it has been shown (see below) that his numbers are far from precise.

Furthermore, the 4kcal/edible carbohydrate gram is available only through cellular respiration (oxidation). However, the body can get energy through fermentation (glycolisys) as well (which it does under some oxygen stress conditions, and which is what many cancers do because their oxidation mechanism, the mitochondria, is borked). And fermentation produces about 1/8th of the energy that oxidation does.

Furthermore again, some energy production is "learned" - the first time you try to digest sorbitol or xylitol, you derive exactly 0 kcal/gram from them. After a few weeks, you max out at ~2.5kcal/gram. After a few months of not digesting either, you're back to 0 (I read conflicting reports, the minimum of which is 3 months, the maximum of which is over a year - but apparently, the required enzyme production eventually winds down when you do not need them).

Furthermore, atwater factors (the way all caloric content is computed these days) have been shown to be 20% wrong for nuts (and have similar errors for every other group that was tested recently; not many have been. atwater factors are now 140 years old. They're bad, but no better system has been devised).

So, "energy balance" is not a balance unless you know:

a) you know how much of your food is actually digested

b) you know how much of your energy production is done by respiration as opposed to fermentation (about 99% when you are healthy. But are you healthy?)

c) you know you are in a steady state for your diet (so that, e.g. you get 2.4 kcal/g from xylitol and not 1.2)

d) you know your so-called BMR (which is not constant, and is in fact dependent on your food intake)

e) know your biome and how it effects your food (about 10% of your weight, 1000% of your cells by number, and about 30% of your feces are bacteria that are not the same in other people. Do you know how to account for them?)

I could go on for hours. You're repeating misguided religious arguments, believing that you're speaking science.

I obviously can't measure anything, per your conclusion. But you should study your body chemistry/physics/biology better. Because your option (1) above implies significant misunderstanding.

References:

How labels are computed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy

One example of how imprecise this system is: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Science/Study-Almonds-may-h...

I've spent some time among "ketards" and they ate much more fat than they did protein. I think the recommended ratio was around 80% fat vs 20% protein.