> Want to lose weight? Eat fewer calories than you burn. Want to gain muscle mass and tone? Work out regularly. Etc.
This is why research about diet is important. Animals are complex systems, and rarely are "simple" explanations correct (or correct enough). What we know about about food and how we process it is remarkably incomplete considering how important it is to supporting life.
So with that in mind, I'm excited that the prevailing view of diet, nutrition and health in our society for the last century or so is getting challenged, just as science should be challenged and overturned ("disrupted" in SV parlance) in the face of new, better, more sound evidence.
What's coming out of this new research is that, perhaps, the mechanisms concerned with storage of energy (fat) are unconcerned with the rest of what's going on in the body. That perhaps the reservoir of energy available to your muscles and brain to burn, intentionally and with conscious control, are in competition with a sometimes overly-aggressive energy storage system.
It reminds me of how the U.S. does income tax - it comes directly out of your paycheck, before you can even think of spending it. Even if you wanted to go negative, the Govt still gets theirs.
And let's say that the regulator of storage vs. use is controlled by the kinds of food that you eat... that, stretching this metaphor, your income tax bracket was affected by where you worked, or where you got the money from.
Anyway, a more complete picture of how our bodies actually function is a good thing, and the more people try these "fad diets" is actually a boon for the people studying them. ;)
(As an aside - the gluten free craze has helped a lot of people who actually have celiac disease to have more options in eating things that don't taste like crap, or, you know, eat out once in a while.)