The other day at work I caved and went for a pub-lunch, a burger with cheese, served with chips and coleslaw. I enjoyed it but immediately afterwards thought 'damn, that was greasy,' and remembered my marathon running colleague who always refrains from going for a 'crappy burger' with us. But here's the thing: I didn't feel hungry for the rest of the day. In fact I skipped dinner completely, just went for long walk round the city and stopped to have a beer somewhere. If you want to lose weight, surely the trick is to consume less calories per day and avoid the feeling of hunger. Few people are going to have the discipline to refrain from eating when they actually feel hungry, day after day after day.
I can second this. It's actually quite easy to test on yourself. Try two kinds of breakfast for a few days each, and compare how much snacking you want to do before lunch:
1. Bagels + scone
2. Eggs + bacon
For me, the second kind undeniably leads to less hunger later in the morning. After a breakfast of 4 scrambled eggs + 4 strips of bacon (so 550-600 cal) I can easily not feel hungry at all until lunch. Couple of small bagels with some cream cheese + scone (also ~550-600 cal) and I feel much less full after a couple of hours.
This has been my experience with low carb - I can eat a high protein, high fat meal that will stuff me and be ~1000 calories, but I'll be satisfied for at least the rest of the day if not most of the next. Even if it's just calories in / calories out it's a clear win over my normal diet.
Of course people used to think this long fasting is really bad (my parents, for example), but it seems like new research says it's fine, if not healthy for weight loss.
