I’m on the Atkins diet:
I play my guitar and drink a lot :-)
Seriously, there is absolutely no way around the fact that if you burn more calories than you consume you will lose weight. The timing and quality of food and exercise matters, but you can no more eat fewer calories than you burn and NOT lose weight than you can levitate (or violate any other law of physics_. I did the low carb thing and DID lose weight, but keeping a sane balance of protein/carbs/fats and eating less than you use is a lot more fun and easier to maintain in my experience.
“Seriously, there is absolutely no way around the fact that if you burn more calories than you consume you will lose weight.”
You’ve just repeated the misconception and half-truth which has doomed millions of people to obesity, misery, and suffering. The phrase is a misapplication of the laws of thermodynamics, because the phrase includes an implied assumption which is not present in normal metabolisms or in cases of metabolic syndrome. If you stop, reconsider the phrase, question the implied assumptions, you should be able to quickly see the false assumption/s.
Mere "calories" is a false metric for weight loss. The source of calories is the proper measurement, because food sources are treated very differently by the body, and have very different effects on the body. That's what this series of articles is about. For example, per this article, if you're overweight and start to get your calories from fat instead of heavy carbs, your body goes into a mode where it starts burning fat, instead of storing it. Whereas, if you keep eating heavy carbs, it keeps using those carbs as fuel to store more accumulations of fat.
But diet can impact both how many calories you eat (via satiation) and how many you burn (via different metabolic effects and energy levels).