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D_Malik comments on Open thread, Aug. 17 - Aug. 23, 2015 - Less Wrong
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This article is interesting to me because I have this belief that weight loss is basically about eating less (and exercising more). And some extremely high percentage of everything said about dieting, etc. beyond that is just irrational noise. And that the diets that work don't work because of the reasons their proponents say they work, but only because they end up restricting calories as a byproduct.
This line is the funniest to me. This is why I think low carb diets work: Because if you eliminate the primary source of calories in a person's diet (carbs, which can be 50%+ of many people's diets), they will eat significant fewer calories overall restricting themselves to only protein and fat. But people have, instead, made up all sorts of fancy, science-y sounding reasons why carbs were evil.
Yes, the effect of diets on weight-loss is roughly mediated by their effect on caloric intake and expenditure. But this does not mean that "eat fewer calories and expend more" is good advice. If you doubt this, note that the effect of diets on weight-loss is also mediated by their effects on mass, but naively basing our advice on conservation of mass causes us to generate terrible advice like "pee a lot, don't drink any water, and stay away from heavy food like vegetables".
The causal graph to think about is "advice → behavior → caloric balance → long-term weight loss", where only the advice node is modifiable when we're deciding what advice to give. Behavior is a function of advice, not a modifiable variable. Empirically, the advice "eat fewer calories" doesn't do a good job of making people eat fewer calories. Empirically, advice like "eat more protein and vegetables" or "drink olive oil between meals" does do a good job of making people eat fewer calories. The fact that low-carb diets "only" work by reducing caloric intake does not mean that low-carb diets aren't valuable.
I think it has a net negative effect on the global dieting discussion that it contains these superfluous steps to the actual causes of weight loss.
Having a rational discussion about satiation is one thing. It is a long way from the woo that has been involved in getting people to believe carbs are magically evil.
I remember first digging into the Atkins diet. I thought, "No. This is dumb. It's just calorie restriction. Why are they pretending it's more than that?" But I shut my mouth for a while because I didn't understand the science and Atkins and other low carb variants seemed so popular.
"Eat less and exercise more" is the best dieting advice (Or perhaps even better, "Create a reasonable calorie deficit over time".) It may be difficult to follow, but it's clear. It allows people to rationally attack the problem of "how" to accomplish weight loss. Everything else is just muddying the waters.