I did zig-zag fasting which never lets the body adapt. About 1400 calories 3x/week (keto breakfast +snack lunch+ carb dinner + gym) and about 1,000 calories the other 3 days (low calorie carb breakfast + snack lunch + keto dinner). One day cheat meal but with 110 calorie protein shake for breakfast and lunch along with 10,000+ steps on that day brings the calorie count in line. Ideal for somebody like me with 1,350 BMR.

I hesitate to call it a diet because it doesn’t involve what you eat or when you eat it. But it works for me if I need to lose weight (like after the holidays) or want to maintain it.

I understand the rules have been relaxed since then, but autophagy had nothing to do with it.

Not so:
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fasting, abstinence from food or drink or both for health, ritualistic, religious, or ethical purposes. The abstention may be complete or partial, lengthy, of short duration, or intermittent.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/fasting

You can’t outrun the fork.

Also, skipping a meal here and there doesn’t qualify as fasting. You have to go without food longer than a few hours to achieve the state of autophagy, which is when the benefits begin.

The reason diets fail is that they are not sustainable over the long run, so people eventually go off of them and promptly gain back all the weight they lost. Fasting is easier and more effective, and I have found it perfectly sustainable. I’ve been fasting for 36 hours three times a week for more than five years now, with excellent results.

Finding a good diet isn’t an engineering problem matching inputs with desired outputs that works all the time for everyone.

Human response to diet is quite complicated. We evolved in many different environments and evolved to optimize response to the diets of those environments. Then we spread out all over the globe and interbred.

Who knows what genetic hand you’ve got to play when it comes to diet? As well as your current medical history.

I tried the Slow Carb diet and it worked for me. I could stick with it, get results, and feel good, so I did not have to rely on pure will power.

So I think people have to experiment and find what works for them. Sure, read about different diets and try them, but don’t necessarily expect the same results.

And yes, it works, IF you eat two meals a day instead of three, without increasing total calories. I do the 16:8 plan several days a week. It’s hard to get enough protein in while eating only two meals, and it’s hard for women in the later decades of life to lose weight .

Been there, done that, did not lose weight. In my 20s, I went on what was then called the Stillman Diet. Very low carb. I only ate meat or cheese, plus only lettuce or green beans for vegetables, no fruit or grains at all and of course no sugar. I did that for one month and lost something like 1/2 pound.

I’ve discussed Taubes et al many times on this blog. It doesn’t work for weight loss for everyone. Period. Plus, that sort of eating makes me feel ill.

I’m not and never have been mega-overweight, though. It’s usually been between 10 and 20 pounds I’d like to lose.