This is definitely not a fact, especially 'starvation response'. When I first read articles by Taubes I bought into it all to. Having now tried to lose weight 3 times, with the most recent being the one I have sustained the best, in my readings and my personal experience while on many points he is right, he has attributed a lot of things to the wrong reasons. The mystical insulin. This is also true if you've ever been tempted by Tim Ferris' 4 hour-body method.

I urge anyone considering weight loss to do some basic independent research to find out why. I have, I'm not posting this here to convince bad_user, this is just to add a counterpoint.

The starvation response, for example, was 'discovered' when they starved normal, healthy people for 6 months. 6 months. Let me just repeat that, normal, not overweight people, for 6 months. And even then, after all that, when they took into account muscle loss the difference in metabolism was statistically insignificant! Less than 100 cals a day. They can't even repeat the experiment now as it's considered unethical.

Another study that I saw frequently cited involved 2 people going to places like the artic! 2 people. And no debate whether the extreme cold was the reason for the metabolism drop.

And the bizarre thing about all this is there are not just a few counter examples, not a tiny amount, but millions of people losing weight through calorie restriction.

Your body will also never go into starvation mode, there are thousands of people on Reddit, for example, who do IF, intermittent fasting, they're all losing weight, often many of them gaining muscle at the same time through strength training.

Starvation response, if it even exists, is triggered in extremes, when you've lost all your body fat.

While 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' is kinda ok, there's plenty of evidence that pure calorie deficits work fine. A recent famous one is the guy who went on the twinkie diet, although I am obliged to point out this is 1 guy! Also there have been examples of people not losing weight on keto or paleo diets, the kind Taubes insists will magically make you lose weight, because they went mad on something that is calorie dense or they were small and so really have extra reason to count their calories.

Conveniently Taubes singles out nuts and diary, the two most calorie dense things that you're likely to over indulge in on his 'good calories', as not always for everyone waving his hands about insulin secretion.

I am consistently losing 2 lbs a week on a calorie deficit of 1000 calories a day. Guess what, the math adds up exactly. When I go a bit crazy on beer or food? 1lb instead of 2lb, quelle surprise, exactly what you would expect when I add up the calories. Yes there's fluctuations, yes there's water weight gains and losses. I sometimes have sandwiches for lunch, even cakes. I'm tall and have always stayed fairly fit so I can do that and still run a calorie deficit. Do those bad calories stop my weight loss? No.

One place you can find 100s of examples of weight loss on normal calorie restriction every single day is reddit.com/r/loseit. Most people there are on calorie deficits and are doing fine. Be warned that you will also find a lot of pseudo-science in the comments there too (the faq is a pretty good, no-nonsense summary).

What a lot of people report is going on a low-cal diet makes controlling hunger almost trivial. You don't have to go to the extremes of keto or paleo to achieve this. Fat fills you up, too many carbs causes insulin crashes that make you hungry again in a couple of hours. These are things I can believe in because I experience them myself. I have found this to be true, YMMV.

The most important lesson I can impart on weight loss is find what works for you. Oh and change your lifestyle permanently, if you gained weight before, diet and go back to your old life style, you'll obviously gain it again. I did.

Do NOT believe wholesale anything you read about weight loss. Including this! Some of this is probably wrong. It's still in the phase that early medicine was in, some truth, a lot of misunderstanding, lies and dubious 'scientific' studies. Including Gary Taubes.

EDIT: whoops, yes a week. Damn, a day would be good though.