[smoe]

How does it take less effort? I lost around 30 kg from being obese without doing low, high or abstain anything. Also no calorie counting except in the very beginning.

After going down the rabit whole of trying to understand all the details of nutrition. What eventually worked is the simple and stupid advice: eat less, move more.

The problem is that there are no easy 30 day hacks, which is what people often expect.

From my perspective, whichever diet, it will take time and you need to make lasting lifestyle changes. The rest are implementation details.

[ubercow13]

The claim (which the above comments are seemingly ignoring, and I kind of believe myself but am not asserting) is that low-carb diet decreases hunger, making it naturally less effort to eat less (or at least requiring less willpower)

[smoe]

From what I heard the hunger problem is mostly coming from refined carbs, not carbs in general. I have nowhere near the expertise to make a claim one way or the other.

But even if true, if you don't go for a drastic weight reduction schedule you can snack on fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. trough the day while still staying well within approximate calorie goals. I don't quite see why you should limit yourself to 3 fixed meals.

While at some point we might be able to say with certainty diet x is better for situation y, from my experience with myself and people in my circles, in practice, the by far hardest, but most important part of losing weight is switching and staying from an unhealthy lifestyle to a reasonably healthy one, whichever philosophy that might be.

I think for a lot of people Keto offers a fairly smooth transition. Just the images of the dishes alone look 10x more appealing than what is usually associated with diet meals. But in my case, you would have to pry that European bread from my dead hands before I remove it from my diet. I would not stick with Keto for a single week. On the extreme change side, I also saw someone going straight from living off of instant ramen, burgers and energy drinks to full on vegan buying only on farmers market or make/grow it at home.