[parfe]

>'After several months of eating fewer than 800 calories a day and spending an hour at the gym every morning, I hadn’t lost another ounce.'

>So the 'not much science involved' calorie balance really REALLY should have resulted in a loss at this rate, yet it didn't - how do you explain that? I mean that literally entirely contradicts your claim.

Explanation is simple: The author either lied to herself or she lied to us. Her diet and workout plan did not violate the laws of physics, so she's wrong.

[bloat]

Mass is not the same as energy. If she claimed to be eating 1.5kg of food a day, and excreting 1.55kg, then your explanation/accusation would hold. But she didn't - she talked about energy intake and expenditure which is not the same.

[lqdc13]

You would expend more than 800 calories from breathing alone at the weight of 125lb.

The Base Metabolic Rate in the cited paper is still much higher than that even for people whose metabolism slowed down.

Normally, it's calculated as (9.99 x weight_in_kg) + (6.25 x height_in_cm) – (4.92 x age) – 161 for women.

So for her (assuming she is 5' tall and late 20's), to remain at normal weight and not move at all it would have been (9.99 x 56.699) + (6.25 x 152.4) – (4.92 x 27) – 161 = 1225

This is without any exercise. She must have missed some source of calories.