Agree and disagree. And yes, fuck me for writing a fucking thesis as a retort.
Agree that weight loss happens in the kitchen. Disagree that calories in calories out is the method to do it.
Calories matter (you can't overeat like a maniac and stay thin), but a lot of it has to do with nutrient composition. A calorie, in fact, is not a calorie, The way the body processes fat, protein, carbs, and fiber are all different. In fact, the body uses more energy to burn or store a gram of fat than the calories that the gram of fat is worth. Carbs on the other hand, are easily stored in fat cells once muscles have been filled. The majority of Americans consume far too many carbs. What they fail to realize is those excess carbs are stored as fat.
In the same vein, yes, eating sub 1400 calories will cause you to lose weight. But if you do body composition scans you'll see that it's a blend of body fat as well as muscle mass.
Intermittent fasting is on the right track, but after 12 hours of fasting your body again starts to consume it's own muscle mass. The body assumes it's in starvation mode and after 12 hours switches to conserve fat. If you give it a fat load around hour 10 (pretty easy if you sleep 8 hours then go work out), the body has something to use and will not consume it's muscle mass.
Nutrient timing is the first key. The body wakes up in a fat burning state. Eating carbs spikes insulin and turns the body into storage mode and turns off fat burning mode. It's likely that the muscles are full, and in turn the body stores the carbs in fat cells. Breakfast is the most important meal indeed, to skip carbs. Give the body fat and protein in the morning, and it continues the fat burning state that it is already in.
The second key is weight lifting. This causes the muscles to use their stored glycogen and make them ripe for uptake of carbs that are ingested. Eat these carbs at night when insulin sensitivity has gone down, and the muscles soak them all up.
If you're not weight lifting, then the third key is just to cut out carbs all together. Strict high fat; moderate protein diet and ultra low carbs. Like between 20-40 max per day. The body will use up the carbs you have stored through the week (since you aren't lifting and cycling the carbs out daily).
Then at the end of the week, eat carbs from like 4-10 pm and refill the muscles as well as spike hormone levels. Then stop eating carbs for the next week. Rinse and repeat.
Key 1 - Skip carbs at breakfast and lunch.
Key 2 - Lift weights to use muscles stored glycogen and ready the for uptake of carbs at night.
Key 3 - If you don't lift weights, cut out carbs entirely through the entire week, then eat a fuck load at night at the end of the week to restart the system.
This system doesn't really fit for elite athletes as the amount of work they put their bodies through is constantly cycling carbs out so they don't really store that easily. Their bodies are fine tuned for turn and burn.
Want an example to prove this works and cutting calories isn't needed? I'll use myself.
I had some major injuries over the last few years and just started being a fatass. Eating what I wanted when I wanted it and stopped lifting entirely as that's how I got my injuries. Instead of learning that I was putting my body through too much with how much I was lifting and scaling back, I just stopped everything entirely. Gained a fuck load of weight.
This summer I decided it had gone too far and got back at it.
Lift Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at about 40% of the intensity I used to. Decided to have carbs once a week as I'm focused on fat loss over muscle gain. Doing body scans to track.
Eat a fat

rotein ratio of 1g:1g and target lean mass for total. Keep carbs under 30g total for the day (fiber doesn't count because it's digested as a fat), and then every Saturday evening for 6 hours I eat whatever the fuck I want. Tends to be pastries, pizza, pasta, and whatever other carbs I wanted all week. Also did about 8 beer festivals through the summer. Then Sunday-Friday it's back to no carb.
I've been tracking, and on average every week, I'm eating 2,500-2,800 calories a day.
From June 1st to September 1st, dropped 20 pounds. Muscle mass actually went up by 5 pounds so in total it was 25 pounds of fat loss without cutting calories, just cutting carbs and dialing back my lifting intensity since I wouldn't have the constant carbs to fuel my workouts.
*end counter-rant*
TL

R - I'll just go kill myself now for writing all that.[/b]