At the end of the day:
Calorie Restriction
equals
Calorie Restriction.

See the article below from Dr. Arya Sharma, who is one of the world’s top medical obesity specialists.

Dr. Sharma is highly respected by obesity researchers, health professionals. His opinions are based on many years of extensive obesity research as well as many years of practical experience with obese patients. 

Alternate Day Fasting Is No Better Than Any Other Fad Diet
                   by Dr. Arya Sharma,  July 11, 2017

It seems that every year someone else comes up with a diet that can supposedly conquer obesity and all other health problems of civilization.

In almost every case, the diet is based on some “new” insight into how our bodies function, or how our ancestors (read – hunters gatherers (never mind that they only lived to be 35) ate, or how modern foods are killing us (never mind that the average person has never lived longer than ever before), or how (insert remote population here) lives today with no chronic disease.

Throw in some scientific terms like “ketogenic”, “guten”, “anti-oxidant”, “fructose”, or “insulin”, add some level of restriction and unusual foods, and (most importantly) get celebrity endorsement and “testimonials” and you have a best-seller (and a successful speaking career) ready to go.

The problem is that, no matter what the “scientific” (sounding) theories suggest, there is little evidence that the enthusiastic promises of any of these hold up under the cold light of scientific study.

Therefore, I am not the least surprised that the same holds true for the much hyped “alternative-day fasting diet”, which supposedly is best for us, because it mimics how our pre-historic ancestors apparently made it to the ripe age of 35 without obesity and heart attacks.

Thus, a year-long randomized controlled study by John Trepanowski and colleagues, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that alternate day fasting is evidently no better in producing superior adherence, weight loss, weight maintenance, or cardioprotection compared to good old daily calorie restriction (which also produces modest long-term results at best).
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The Best Online
Calorie Calculator,
According to Science.
But it might not work for you.

Another free online calorie calculator, the Body Weight Planner, is now available to the public after several years of being used as a research tool for scientists at the National Institutes of Health. This one is noteworthy because its algorithms were validated in several controlled weight loss studies in human beings, and because it takes into account a person's slowing metabolism.
 
Kevin Hall, a scientist at the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, created the tool.

Dr. Hall says the 3,500-calorie rule is accurate only if a pound of human fat is burned in a lab.  However, unlike a lab, the body is not a static environment, and instead adapts when a person changes their diet and exercise.

As a person diets and loses weight, the body slows the metabolism in an effort to conserve energy. As a result, eating 500 fewer calories a day leads to slightly less weight loss as time goes on.

Instead of 3,500 fewer calories, over 12 months, a person will need to eat 7,000 fewer calories to burn a pound of fat.

Dr. Hall said that the biggest flaw with the 3,500-calorie-rule is that it assumes weight loss will continue in a linear fashion over time. "That's not the way the body responds. The body is a very dynamic system, and a change in one part of the system always produces changes in other parts.”

He admits that dieters may be “bummed out” by news that they must double their efforts at reducing calories. “But we believe it's better to have an accurate assessment of what you might lose, that way you don't feel like a failure if you don't reach your goal.”

Dr. Hall added that very few people seem to be able to keep losing weight after 12 months.

The BWP calculates how many calories a day a person should eat to achieve their weight loss goals in a certain time (for example, to lose 10 lbs within a year).  The link can always be found here in DietHobby, under RESOURCES, Links, Body weight Calculator - NIH (Timeline Projections).

The NIH bills the planner as a cutting-edge tool that will empower people to take their health into their own hands, but research on the success of such calculators and trackers is mixed.  Although the federal government is to be praised for its official nod toward the utility of trackers and calculators,  human beings themselves are not “simple machines” who operate on a calories in, calories out basis.
 

The issue of Projections about the Rate of Weight-Loss has been on my mind for a very long time, and so this article is going to be quite long and detailed.  Those who bear with me and press on through, might learn some helpful information, or at least be exposed to something other than empty promises.

The Diet Industry knows that people want to lose their excess fat ASAP, and that people also want to spend as little time possible on a weight-loss Diet.  It takes advantage of that fact by using the diet-of-the-moment’s maximum 1st week weight-loss number as a marketing tool. 

Typical is: “Lose 15 pounds in 7 days”; or 10 pounds or 7 pounds, etc.  We see that ploy used continually in the media.  It is almost impossible to look at any magazine display rack in a supermarket checkout line without seeing a similar Headline.

What is implied by this claim is that the number of the first week’s weight loss is a prediction of weight-loss for the subsequent weeks. Marketing claims: “10 pounds in 1 week”.  People think, “Wow, If I stick to this Diet for just 5 weeks, I can lose 50 pounds.” 

Then, when they don’t experience that rate of weight-loss, they feel disappointed. Upon expressing their disappointment to the medical doctor, the nutritionist, the diet guru, the group leader, the program counselor, or whoever, the most common response is: “YOU didn’t follow the diet correctly.”  People are blamed for their weight-loss failure; while the Diet Industry gets the credit for their weight-loss success.

This is universal. I’ve never seen or participated in ANY diet program that didn’t follow that line of thinking, and during the past 60 years …from adolescence on… I’ve been involved with a great many of them.  I have personal experience with a great many diets and diet programs, and I’ve closely watched the experiences of many hundreds of other people as they dieted.

People WANT TO BELIEVE the claims of rapid weight-loss that they hear, and they desperately hope that they will personally experience rapid weight-loss by following their latest Diet-of-choice.   Some of these rapid weight-loss claims are based on lies; some are based on ignorance; some are based on personal experience together with poor memory; and a few are based on the real results of very unusual people. There are those who make these incorrect rapid weight-loss projections in good faith; who stubbornly hold onto an unreasonable Belief by stubbornly ignoring the overwhelmingly-vast-weight-of-the-evidence stacked up against it. However, the fact is that almost all of those claims are false, and the rest of them are based on factors that...