very high protein up to 50% of calories, almost no fat , zero high glycemic index carbs, basically very lean meat , low fat high protein dairy , fruit and vegetables, and ideally nothing over about 1.5 kcal/gram.
Hormonally, that could be a perfectly suitable diet for someone who wants to maintain a normal weight; however, a subset of obese and/or insulin resistant people are going to really struggle to lose significant weight with that. Your ability to do so is some very impressive determination and between that and your very informed and articulate responses gives me a lot of respect for you and the information that you share here.
The struggle I'm referring to is that although you're focusing on low-glycemic carbs (which will keep your blood sugar and insulin levels reduced), a high-protein diet is still going to raise and maintain your blood insulin levels higher than a low-protein diet would. I suspect you're already familiar with this, but others reading this response may not realize that protein spikes insulin levels (google "insulin index" for more details on this).
And as an important disclaimer here for others: Although I might advocate for protein-restriction on a non-GLP weight loss approach, that goes out the window when someone is on GLPs and I would NOT advocate low-protein for GLP weight loss.
Magical thinking is super common when people think and talk about diets and weight loss. If i follow this new diet, this time it will work, or if I fix my eating patterns this time it will work, despite all the evidence from all of the rest of your life trying these things that did not work in the end.
I appreciate your tactful way of calling "bullshit" on my dietary claims and I understand where you're coming from. There's close to zero clinical research to support such claims, but in my own experience and that of others, there's enough anecdote to support that there's something there (although I don't think we've nailed down what exactly). As I said, the significant results some people experience with keto (while simultaneously not experiencing significant levels of hunger) serves as a proof of concept.
Now I'm not claiming thermodynamics is violated and after the fact (by definition) a calorie deficit obviously existed there since the person lost weight. The point is that chasing a calorie deficit (while still eating the same foods that worked poorly for you) is all but guaranteed to fail, similar to how you can't hold in your pee forever. You're fighting a natural biological urge and you will almost surely lose. That's not a moral failing in any way and in that I agree with you.
However, if one stops restricting hunger and starts restricting their diet in different targeted ways, they will almost surely gain or lose weight with different approaches, until they plateau with each new approach. These approaches come with their own challenges, of course, and there's no guarantee a person will find an approach to reach their desired goal weight. That's where GLPs are great (and why we're all here). But let's not pretend that different diets don't play a major role too or that it all comes back to "calories." The foods you eat (or don't eat) have significant hormonal impacts on your body and interact with each other in complex ways. If you prefer to remain stuck in a CICO view then you could say that these hormonal changes impact CO, such that a calorie deficit is gained or lost. You obviously can't prove that's correct (other than definitionally), since outside of a metabolic ward with sophisticated equipment CO is always an inferred quantity and something that can't be directly measured.
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