Now, I have read a LOT of diet books; too many frankly. Most follow a fairly standard organization (the first chapter always explaining that YOUR FAT IS NOT YOUR FAULT) and, with very very few exceptions, most will tell you that ‘calorie restricted diets don’t work for weight loss’ and that whatever magic they are selling is the key to quick, easy (and of course permanent) weight loss.
Whether it’s insulin, dietary fat, the protein:carbohydrate or insulin:glucagon ratio, partitioning or whatever other bullshit, they will make it sound like caloric intake is not the key aspect in whether or not someone gains weight.
In almost all cases, the idea that food intake must be restricted in any fashion is dismissed; if it is mentioned it is generally as a short aside late in the book that nobody pays any attention to.
This is purely a psychological ploy; it sucks to have to consciously restrict food intake and this causes mental stress. Simply knowing that you can’t eat what you want when you want it blows; I hate it as much as the next person. Many people will feel hungrier simply because they know that they can’t eat what they want when they want it.
Yet the fundamental fact is that the body will NOT have any need to tap into stored body fat unless the individual is burning more calories than they are taking in. Of course this means that either energy expenditure has to go up, caloric intake has to go down, or both have to occur.
So how can these books make this claim? It’s simple: they all hide basic caloric restriction in whatever they happen to be proposing. Basically, this is Lyle’s Rule #1 of Diet books:
All diet books tell you that you won’t have to restrict calories, and then trick you into doing it anyway.