I have trouble reconciling this with my personal experiences - I did keto for several months and lost about 25 pound until I hit a plateau that I couldn't get past after trying for over two weeks, eating the same diet as before, and I know with certainty I was WELL below my maintenance caloric intake.

> You will lose weight, it can not be any other way

I wonder if maybe the logical impossibility people are having trouble with is maybe from not differentiating between calories consumed and calories absorbed?

> I hit a plateau that I couldn't get past after trying for over two weeks

2 weeks? 2 weeks?

We're talking about changing your eating and exercise habbits for the rest of your life. Two weeks is such a tiny drop in the bucket it's hard to even measure it, and likely too many things were in flux to have settled down.

Continue for 3 months. You will lose weight.

> I wonder if maybe the logical impossibility people are having trouble with is maybe from not differentiating between calories consumed and calories absorbed?

It makes no difference, because you can't absorb more than you ate. Don't think about how much your body is absorbing, because it's too hard to measure and do anything about. Think and focus on the thing you can impact - how much you eat.

You are worrying about what kind of efficiency your car is getting, when all you need to care about is to stop putting so much damn gas in every day because the tank keeps overflowing.

When the tank is overflowing each and every day, put in less gas!!!!

> We're talking about changing your eating and exercise habbits for the rest of your life. Two weeks is such a tiny drop in the bucket it's hard to even measure it, and likely too many things were in flux to have settled down.

I had already hit my target so didn't mind quitting. The interesting part of the conversation to me is the plateau itself - according to many people, all people and especially individuals are the same, calories in minus exercise equals weight gained (or lost), there is no such thing as flux, every day is exactly the same, literally the only variable is your weight, and that hardly changes at all day to day. Yet, myself and millions of other people do in fact hit a plateau with no noteworthy change in diet or exercise. I'm just having a bit of fun seeing the variety of ways people twist logic and dance around questions related to this phenomenon while still maintaining this hardline calories in calories out stance. :)

> It makes no difference, because you can't absorb more than you ate.

Correct. However, you can absorb less than you eat! Eat 2000 calories, absorb 1500, poop out the rest, gee, I wonder if that might have any effect on weight loss?

> The interesting part of the conversation to me is the plateau itself - according to many people, all people and especially individuals are the same, calories in minus exercise equals weight gained (or lost), there is no such thing as flux, every day is exactly the same, literally the only variable is your weight, and that hardly changes at all day to day.

I've never seen anyone claim that calories in / calories out will have an immediate impact and should be visible on the scales within days. On any given day your body might hold onto lots of water, so you don't lose weight. Later you might get really dehydrated on a hot day, so you appear to have lost weight, etc. etc. Times one million variations for why you won't see "results" "instantly".

Don't for one second think that any of this is measured on the scale of days, or weeks. You are completely deluding yourself if you think it is.

A scale of months hardly makes sense either. Do everything for a minimum of 3 months before you expect to see a difference, on the scales or in the mirror. Everything takes time, and you're in this for the rest of your life, so what's the difference anyway.

> Correct. However, you can absorb less than you eat! Eat 2000 calories, absorb 1500, poop out the rest, gee, I wonder if that might have any effect on weight loss?

It won't, because that's how your body has been functioning for a long time.

If you're trying to lose weight, you just have to feed it less, who cares how much it's extracting, it's completely irrelevant.

Like I said, it doesn't matter if you're in a car that gets 30mpg or one that gets 50mpg, as long as you put less gas in the tank than you are using, sooner or later the tank will run out!

Stop trying to make this harder than it needs to be, or more complicated that it needs to be.

Consume less calories than you burn, and in the long run you will lose weight.

> Like I said, it doesn't matter if you're in a car that gets 30mpg or one that gets 50mpg

But what if the car adjusts its fuel efficiency dynamically? If that's the case, it might be something worth investigating and understanding, no?

> Stop trying to make this harder than it needs to be, or more complicated that it needs to be. Consume less calories than you burn, and in the long run you will lose weight.

Correct, but if certain levels of caloric deficit can cause physiological changes that affect rate of weight loss, altering the difficulty of losing weight, why be opposed to discussing that idea? Why not maximize efficiency of weight loss?

> But what if the car adjusts its fuel efficiency dynamically?

And your body does just that. That's why you continually re-evaluate what your calorie needs are and adjust your intake accordingly. Weight Watchers does this every single week. See how much you weigh, figure out what your "maintenance" calories are, and make sure you eat 200-300 less than that.

Then, yes, your body changes, adapts and becomes more efficient, because you're changing things, and it's getting lighter so be definition it needs less calories. So then check-in again a week later repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

> If certain levels of caloric deficit can cause physiological changes that affect rate of weight loss

I wouldn't go there. I mean, if you want to change the rate of weight loss, just eat absolutely zero calories for 6 months. I grantee you'll lose a massive amount of weight. Is that a good idea? absolutely not. There is an amount that's sensible and works well. It's something like 200-300 less calories than your maintenance requires.

> * Why not maximize efficiency of weight loss*

It's interesting to me you're still viewing this as "weight loss", and something to be maximized and made more efficient, and something with an end date. What hasn't dawned on you yet (and usually takes most weight watchers people a very long time to get) is that, at some point in the future, you will weigh your goal weight. When you get there, your calorie requirements to maintain that are going to be massively lower than they are now. Actually, they're going to be right around what you were eating the week before you got to your goal weight. Guess what? That's now what you're going to eat for the rest of your life.

You can't really maximize the efficiency of the rest of your life. So just start working towards it, today.

> Then, yes, your body changes, adapts and becomes more efficient, because you're changing things, and it's getting lighter so be definition it needs less calories.

This doesn't require any "adjustment" on the body's part, it is a natural outcome of having less mass to maintain. I am speaking of something different, of the possibility of the body sensing starvation and shifting into kind of a high efficiency sustainment mode, perhaps lower metabolism, perhaps more efficient extraction of calories from food. Does this actually happen, I don't know, but I believe from personal experience and reading forums that there is a phenomenon of hitting a weight plateau that is not explained by the simplistic calories in, calories out theory. I don't know why this idea seems so offensive to people.

> I wouldn't go there. I mean, if you want to change the rate of weight loss, just eat absolutely zero calories for 6 months. I grantee you'll lose a massive amount of weight.

Why do conversations on certain topics have to degrade to nonsense if someone doesn't agree with your point of view?

> It's interesting to me you're still viewing this as "weight loss", and something to be maximized and made more efficient

Some people, me for example, can diet for a period, drop <x> pounds, and then I'm good for years with paying very little attention to diet - not everyone has it that easy though. But while I am dieting, I prefer to optimize it so it's over as quickly as possible.

The idea of optimizing things is a fairly common theme on this site, but again, there seems to be something about the topic of dieting that changes the way people think.

> Does this actually happen, I don't know, but I believe from personal experience and reading forums that there is a phenomenon of hitting a weight plateau that is not explained by the simplistic calories in, calories out theory.

It doesn't. People are bad at self-reporting their intake. Reading forums isn't a good source of information.

Even if there was some kind of ultra-efficiency mode, it's worth noting that it doesn't mean calories in/calories out is wrong. It doesn't disprove the law of conservation of energy, I don't see why you think these two concept are opposed to one another.

The reality is that there is no special starvation mode or metabolic damage that makes people ultra-efficient food processing machines. The research doesn't support it and a bunch of forum posts of people self-reporting their intake (badly) or outright falsifying information (but everything on the internet is true!) isn't backing up your case.

> This doesn't require any "adjustment" on the body's part, it is a natural outcome of having less mass to maintain. I am speaking of something different, of the possibility of the body sensing starvation and shifting into kind of a high efficiency sustainment mode, perhaps lower metabolism, perhaps more efficient extraction of calories from food. Does this actually happen, I don't know, but I believe from personal experience and reading forums that there is a phenomenon of hitting a weight plateau that is not explained by the simplistic calories in, calories out theory.

I personally think that what you're describing can happen under certain circumstances, most common when you suddenly under eat calories by a wide margin.. i.e. you've been eating 3000/day for years, then suddenly start eating 1500/day.

So it's important to only go a little below your maintenance requirements.

If you still hit a plateau, just drop a little more, and repeat. You will push through the plateau, eventually.

>Why do conversations on certain topics have to degrade to nonsense if someone doesn't agree with your point of view?

Sorry, that's the Engineer coming out in me - when I'm thinking something through I always immediately think of the minimum and maximum case to better understand what's going on. I didn't mean to offend.

>Some people, me for example, can diet for a period, drop <x> pounds, and then I'm good for years with paying very little attention to diet - not everyone has it that easy though. But while I am dieting, I prefer to optimize it so it's over as quickly as possible.

You're a very lucky person.

>The idea of optimizing things is a fairly common theme on this site, but again, there seems to be something about the topic of dieting that changes the way people think.

I'm all for optimizing, and I personally think the calories in / calories out method is optimizing weight loss. I've never heard/seen a better and simpler way. It's the fundamental starting point of all diets - i.e. eat less energy than you burn.

thank you. said it better than I would've