Every single diet which causes weight loss does so by creating a calorie deficit. They may claim otherwise, but this is not the case.
Low carbohydrate diet proponents claim that by controlling the hormone insulin, which allows things to be stored in cells, they in turn reduce fat stores. What really happens is you eat less cake and more meat, meaning your diet is full of more filling and lower calorie foods, so you eat less.
Low-fat dieting is based on the idea that fat makes you fat. In truth, if you cut fat right back in your diet you just eat fewer calories because you opt for lower calorie options. You also can’t eat cake.
Paleo dieting is based on the idea that our body is adapted to that way of eating (no cake) and therefore regulates itself when you stick to what cavemen ate. It does to a degree, and therefore this diet has some validity, but at the same time the arbitrary restrictions make it less than optimal.
We could go on and on, but the point has been made. This isn’t just an idle consideration, there is a lesson here which ties back to what we discussed earlier in relation to the necessity of calorie counting. Each of these diets doesn’t mention calories specifically and yet they cause a decrease in consumption, and they do it via means which are well understood, and which we hope to show you. Rather than looking at the differences to compare them, and rather than dismissing them for their flaws, it’s far more productive to look at these approaches as imperfect ways which undeniably do result in success for some people, and then compare the similarities so perhaps we can work out why.
There are methods you can use to utilise food choice and composition as a tool for producing involuntary and almost unnoticeable reductions in calorie intake (the same can be done for increasing intake to improve sports performance and cause weight gain). All of this will be explained later in the course, so stick around.