Yeah, I feel about this similarly.
The motte of "calories in, calories out" is a purely descriptive post-facto theory. If you lost weight, it means that your organism somehow spent more calories than it gained, and if you gained weight, it means that your organism somehow spent less calories than it gained, but the details about the calorie flows are completely unspecified.
The bailey of "calories in, calories out" is: "You complain about not losing weight? Just eat less and exercise more, dummy! You say you already tried that, but it didn't work for you? Congratulations, you have successfully violated the laws of physics, go collect your Nobel Prize!"
What people who complain about this actually want: a strategy that fat people could use to lose weight without negative side-effects... or admitting that for some people such strategy doesn't exist for metabolic reasons. The motte version of "calories in, calories out" is definitely not such strategy, but the bailey consists of pretending that it is.
The motte of "calories in, calories out" is a purely descriptive post-facto theory.
It is a also a predictive ex ante theory. It successfully predicts the change in your weight on the basis of your persistent net energy balance.
The bailey of "calories in, calories out" is: "You complain about not losing weight? Just eat less and exercise more, dummy! You say you already tried that, but it didn't work for you?
... then continue. Eat LESS and exercise MORE. Still doesn't work? Eat LESS and exercise MORE. I guarantee that at some...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.
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