This has probably been mentioned earlier in the thread, but regardless of how much you work out, what macronutrients you consume, and whether or not you are diabetic, the only way to lose weight is consuming less energy than you expend. If you are not losing weight, you are eating too much of whatever you’re eating. Carbohydrates themselves do not make you fat, and neither does fat or protein. Eating more than you expend makes you gain weight. Eating less than you expend will make you lose weight.
With this said, the composition of your diet will greatly affect how you feel, how many calories you burn, your body composition, your hormones, and so on. Protein is muscle sparing, filling, and has a high thermic effect. Thus, making sure you incorporate enough of it while trying to lose weight is essential. Fat is vital for hormone production and cortisol regulation, so cutting it out will leave you feeling poor and tired. If you are looking to do high intensity work of any kind, carbohydrates will fuel that expenditure. Technically, you could do without carbohydrates entirely, but I would argue that it improves the quality of HI exercise greatly, which also makes it more enjoyable.
Bottom line - if you are not losing weight, you are eating too much for the amount of energy you expend. Macronutrient composition is important in terms of how you perform, feel, and what your body composition will be during weight loss, but regardless of what you eat, you need to eat less of it to lose weight.
There is a belief that this is a over simplification of how the body works, and if you don’t feed it enough during exercise, you are training it to use fat/glycogen reserves, in which case it it will make sure that you have enough fat/glycogen reserves when you are exercising
Well, I agree with that to some extent. However, most people simply overconsume energy. There is much more to weight loss than calories in and calories out. Hormones play a massive role, and the type of exercise you do will affect hormone balance. With that said, most people eat more than they think. Unless you have glaring symptoms of hypothyroid, non-existing libido, or terrible sleep quality, i donät think there is much to gain from overcomplicating it.
Also - while it may be an oversimplification, that does not mean it is untrue. Starvation will kill you. Dieting is just controlled starvation. No one gains weight while starving. Some people may have a poorly functioning metabolism, but if the goal is simply weight loss, eating less than you expend will surely do it.
Also, the argument I made still stands. The body can to some extent, however, control how much energy you expend.
