First off, thanks for sharing all of that. It’s a lot of great insight. There’s just a couple of points I’d comment on:

-Quality of calories matters quite a bit, especially processed sugar. This will mess up metabolism for a good number of people, such that they won’t lose weight while eating lower calories than normal. Decreasing your metabolic efficiency by eating excess harmful sugars typically will have a negative effect. The study about a person eating tons of candy and losing weight should not be construed as the norm.

-The science behind carbonation creating hunger is debatable, as there is some research which indicates carbonation takes up more space in the stomach and tricks your body into thinking it’s full. My own experience with intermittent fasting has been to use carbonation without calories as a food substitute during hard days, as I feel significantly less hungry after drinking a diet soda. Drinking diet soda while intermittent fasting is pretty common to decrease hunger pangs.

Like I said, thanks for that write up! Keep up the hard work!