I think they may be a negative correlation between short-term and long-term weight change on any given diet, causing them to pick in a way that’s actually worse than random. I’m planning a future post about this. I’m not super confident in this theory, but the core of it is that “small deficit every day, counterbalanced by occasional large surplus” is a pattern that would signal food-insecurity in the EEA. Then some mechanism (though I don’t know what that mechanism would be) by which the body remembers that happened, and responds by targeting a higher weight after return to ad libitum.
I think they may be a negative correlation between short-term and long-term weight change on any given diet, causing them to pick in a way that’s actually worse than random. I’m planning a future post about this. I’m not super confident in this theory, but the core of it is that “small deficit every day, counterbalanced by occasional large surplus” is a pattern that would signal food-insecurity in the EEA. Then some mechanism (though I don’t know what that mechanism would be) by which the body remembers that happened, and responds by targeting a higher weight after return to ad libitum.