| > but I think the conclusions one draws from it fail to take into account how much the body can control expenditure. Yes, this is has been observed and studied. From this page: https://physiqonomics.com/constrained-energy-model/ the relavent source materials are: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26832439/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34453886/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34519717/ So, yes, it seems that the body "compensates" and controls expendeture as you've suggested. Speaking in general, there are a lot of details to consider for CICO. When people count calories to below their TDEE, their estimate of TDEE is just that, an estimate, not their actual TDEE. When calories are counted, how accurate are calories being counted? FDA regulations in the US call for the nutritional information on packaging to be +/- 20%, and when audited, the information is often found to be outside that ranges. Every gram of glycogen stored in your muscles, the body also stores 4 grams of water. The cycle of exercise, fasting, caloric restriction, and refeeding and glycogen storage are going to cause large swings in weight that can make it hard to pull out trends until several weeks/months have gone by, but frequently people are micro-focused on daily weight flucuations and draw their conclusions about diet and weightloss from what is effectively changes in glycogen storage/water weight. |