They're discussed on the Colpo link on the last page. There's not (to my knowledge) any ward studies that show low carb as capable of creating weight loss without an associated calorie deficit. Also no advantage for body composition vs high carb.
There's really no point in discussing anecdotes either. Hell, I'm currently eating 4k+ calories a day and massive amounts of sugar... but not gaining weight. Do I think I have some magic metabolism? Of course not, I'm burning significant amounts through exercise and there's plenty of body recomposition going on.
Ignoring the fact that daily figures are largely meaningless... what really matters are the long term averages (see people eating 10,000kcal some days, 1,500kcal others).
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like any of the studies in the Colpo link are available for viewing online, so we only have the summary of a guy who wears his bias against anything that deviates from the energy balance hypothesis on his sleeve.
I'll read through it, but his first one is already about an undefined number of overweight (two with diabetes) patients being fed a variety of liquid diets. He doesn't disclose the caloric amount, other than that the different mixtures were isocaloric and formulated to maintain weight. It sounds like the formulae ranged from high-carb (45%) to ultra-high carb (85%).
Anyway, it seems like a bit much to me to take this guy's blog post as your evidence for calories being everything.
I really don't see how you can contend that daily averages are meaningless but what really matters are the long term averages. So one arbitrary window of time is meaningless, but another longer (but still undefined) window of time is what really matters?
The body processes food when you eat it. It doesn't put it all away in some holding chamber until the end of the week (or whatever arbitrary cutoff point you choose) when it then tallies up the total potential energy yield of the food consumed, subtracts the energy expended by the body during the same window, and then either reduces body fat or puts it on depending on the outcome. Instead, what your body does with the food you eat is determined by a variety of environmental and hormonal factors *at the time* of consumption. Furthermore, the nutrient composition of what you ate will further affect what your body does with the next batch of food it is fed. Finally, the body also determines from where it will get its energy *at the time* the requirement for energy arises.
The point of discussing anecdotes is to further drive home the point that everyone is different. For example, through my own experience and experimentation, I know that *what* I eat will affect my body composition. The same amount of calories from bread, pasta, and cake will cause me to put on more adipose tissue than an even higher amount of calories from steak, butter, and eggs. I've seen this happen in myself and other people. On the other hand, your body and your situation has you excelling on a sugar and starch-based diet. A Ketogenic diet makes you miserable. For all of these to be true, we would have to have pretty different physiology, and we probably do.
Discussion anecdotes is indeed pointless. There are too many variables. Genetics play a major role in weight loss or weight gain. A poor diet results in genetic changes in the parent that are passed to the offspring. The quality of food you eat also has an effect [whole foods vs refined/processed foods affect insulin, leptin, parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system and also affect behavior].
Your gut bacteria has a huge role in this as well. There are studies now showing that a prolonged lifestyle of eating "bad" food can lead to extinction of certain colonies of gut bacteria. Also, one study I read yesterday determined that of course you cannot pass on to your offspring what you do not have. So in the case of gut bacteria, whatever colonies have been extinct in the mom will not be passed on to the offspring.
Then with exercise there's again a genetic component. Exercises of course improves insulin resistance which is great but some people are responders and some are non-responders. Thus exercise will not affect us all equally.
I agree. There are some basic universal truths, obviously, but everyone's situation, environment, and bodies are too different. This is why the entire concept of reducing all food to numbers and looking at body fat accumulation as a simple energy balance equation is just ridiculous.
