[incrudible]

This ignores the (admittedly under-researched) aspect of autophagy after 12-14 hours of fasting.

It's also not clear from your sources whether there actually was a caloric equivalence in the diets. Dietary patterns can significantly affect base metabolic rate, which is the biggest problem with just caloric restriction, where your base metabolic rate is lowered. This means you eventually stop losing weight while also being restricted to consume fewer calories. It's a vicious cycle.

Anecdotally, you can lose weight with just restricting your feeding window to 8 hours while eating "normally". Perhaps that inadvertently results in caloric restriction, but it feels different. As such, it's more sustainable.