&gt; <i>The interesting part of the conversation to me is the plateau itself - according to many people, all people and especially individuals are the same, calories in minus exercise equals weight gained (or lost), there is no such thing as flux, every day is exactly the same, literally the only variable is your weight, and that hardly changes at all day to day.</i><p>I&#x27;ve never seen anyone claim that calories in &#x2F; calories out will have an <i>immediate</i> impact and should be visible on the scales within days. On any given day your body might hold onto lots of water, so you don&#x27;t lose weight. Later you might get really dehydrated on a hot day, so you appear to have lost weight, etc. etc. Times one million variations for why you won&#x27;t see &quot;results&quot; &quot;instantly&quot;.<p>Don&#x27;t for one second think that any of this is measured on the scale of days, or weeks. You are completely deluding yourself if you think it is.<p>A scale of months hardly makes sense either. Do <i>everything</i> for a <i>minimum</i> of 3 months before you expect to see a difference, on the scales or in the mirror. Everything takes time, and you&#x27;re in this for the rest of your life, so what&#x27;s the difference anyway.<p>&gt; <i>Correct. However, you can absorb less than you eat! Eat 2000 calories, absorb 1500, poop out the rest, gee, I wonder if that might have any effect on weight loss?</i><p>It won&#x27;t, because that&#x27;s how your body has been functioning for a long time.<p>If you&#x27;re trying to lose weight, you just have to feed it less, who cares how much it&#x27;s extracting, it&#x27;s completely irrelevant.<p>Like I said, it doesn&#x27;t matter if you&#x27;re in a car that gets 30mpg or one that gets 50mpg, as long as you put less gas in the tank than you are using, sooner or later the tank will run out!<p>Stop trying to make this harder than it needs to be, or more complicated that it needs to be.<p>Consume less calories than you burn, and <i>in the long run</i> you will lose weight.