If research about "diets" has found anything it's that they don't work. Any calorie counting approach is doomed to fail for most people.
This diet is straight out of the Stalinist four year plan school. Normal people have zero chance of tolerating this. The bondage and discipline rigid planning approach doesn't work in any field. People aren't machines.
The approach outlined here is pretty similar to what Weight Watchers uses. Theirs is a little looser, tracking calories on a weekly basis and offering incentives to eat filling foods. But it's basically the same idea.
I lost 70 pounds in about a year on a system like that, and most of the experience was simply being surprised at how easy it was. There was a bit of a fiery adjustment during the first week, but thereafter, I felt better than ever. I wasn't hungry a lot. I didn't feel overly disciplined. Really, I was eating exactly what I wanted, just subject to the full consequences of the decisions. A year of just paying attention and making informed decisions saw me at my ideal weight, and my main reaction was, "People think this is hard?"
It's not a moral/discipline approach at all. More like lifestyle engineering. You have the numbers in hand, you know what you want to achieve, you know what you're willing to part with and what you aren't. I personally incorporated a weekly pizza & pop D&D night I didn't want to part with . . . and still lost about a pound a week. When you compensate via cost instead of guilt, treats are guilt-free; pizza for lunch just means soup for dinner, pie on Wednesday means no candy bars on Thursday or Friday. It's really just a question of engineering, knowing your body, and setting up the system to do what you want.
The most curious effect of the whole affair was that my appreciation and enjoyment of food went up. My initial approach was that since I could only afford a couple ounces of cheese, I was going to make darn sure it was goooood cheese. But there was a strange feedback there; good food makes you happy faster. An ounce of fancy chocolate left me feeling treated in a way five ounces of crappy chocalate never did--and of course, neither ever satisfied hunger, so the smaller amount didn't matter. Net effect: not hungry, losing weight, enjoying food more.
It works, but it's not sustainable. You can't go through life counting calories. I also used the Hacker's Diet for a time back in 2003/2004. I lost about 60 pounds, and then over the next 4 or 5 years, proceeded to put 40 of them back on.
This year I've re-lost those 40 pounds, and am working on losing another 40, not by counting calories or otherwise trying to find low cal versions of everything (hard to do anyway now that I'm in Norway), but by being more conscious about what I eat (trying to eat more fruits, veggies, and whole grains, while eating fewer processed foods and sugars) and exercising regularly, which is much easier to do. Well, the exercise part still sucks, but I remind myself that once I get to the weight I want to be at, I only have to go enough to maintain that weight.
I think it's pretty sustainable. You should approach it as a lifestyle change, though, not a diet. That means don't make any tradeoffs in the process you're not willing to live with for the rest of your life. For me, that means find the occasional space for pie, and chocolate, and pizza . . .
But once you've got the initial engineering figured out, it's just a case of knowing what things cost in unusual circumstances. A little mental effort for a healthy body weight is a tradeoff I'll gladly make for the rest of my life.
How does calorie counting not work. You put in less energy than is being used and the body makes up the rest from reserves. Or is the body somehow generating energy without burning fat?
Or, you put in less energy and consequently lower your metabolism and move less and feel more tired to compensate while your reserves don't change, or even increase, or the difference could be made up by destruction of muscle or organs rather than fat.
If it was as you suggest, you could eat nothing and not starve as long as you have fat reserves.
Actually the body goes in to starvation mode and starts destroying muscle to lower energy consumption not to mention the fact that going on a diet lowers blood sugar so you feel tired and stop consuming as much energy.
Supermodels seem okay with it, so it can't be that difficult. Just kidding (sort of)! It just takes A LOT of time and discipline which yeah, not many people have.
This diet is straight out of the Stalinist four year plan school. Normal people have zero chance of tolerating this. The bondage and discipline rigid planning approach doesn't work in any field. People aren't machines.