People tend to get a little rankled at the idea that weight loss is "simple"... but I do stand by that.
Weight loss, specifically, is simple (not easy). Of course, these are all just my thoughts/opinions, no bio-science to back them up...
Take the case of eating and drinking absolutely nothing for a day. Unless you have some method of absorbing moisture from the air, you are guaranteed to lose weight, that very day. Simple physics. But the real issue is, you're not at all guaranteed to get the adaptation you want. Nobody looks at the number on the scale and says to themselves, "I wish I could drop 5 pounds of water weight" or "I'd be a lot happier with 5 less pounds of muscle in my legs". That's what you're getting at, and we're on the same page. The realization I was coming to was that I need to stop thinking in terms of weight loss; I need to think in terms of fat loss, which is what we all really want.
Then, take the case of training. If you spend 12 hours training in a single day, are you going to emerge stronger the next day (or however long it is it takes to recover)? Probably... but I don't think its guaranteed. Training is a statistics game; any single training session is at least likely to make you stronger (up to a point, of course), so when you add it up over the long haul of weeks/months/years, you are highly likely to get stronger. But on any given day, or cycle even, there's no guarantee.
The other thing I find interesting between the two are the feedback mechanisms from the body. The body doesn't really care that you want to deadlift 2x your bodyweight or have 6-pack abs; the body likes equilibrium. It doesn't particularly want to change, and it will try to resist the stimulus the mind forces on it through pain signals. Usually, it's mild; hunger, soreness, fatigue, that sort of thing. But the extreme cases are interestingly different. In starvation, the body has no way to force you to consume. If you are able to endure the pain signal, you can continue to starve. In extreme exertion, however, the body absolutely can put a stop to it. You won't be doing any squatting if a searing pain signal prevents your quad from developing any sort of tension.
Given all that, its fascinating to me how much more difficult fat loss is than training - for me at least - given that physics and feedback control would seem to say the opposite should be the case. Of course, there's an emotional aspect too, which means that all science just flies out the window. I love cheeseburgers and pizza almost as much as I love throwing heavy things around.
In the end, I'm concluding that fat loss is much more like training. It's more statistical in nature - when you're in calorie deficit, you are likely to loss fat on a given day, but not guaranteed. And, as you said, I'm thinking fat loss probably needs some aspect of waviness or variation. In strength training, we generally do not assume that you can keep doing the same thing every day and it will just continue to "work" forever (sorry, S&S....). When the body find equilibrium, we have to nudge it back our of equilibrium in order to trigger a response. I think the same must be true for fat loss.
Now, figuring out how to make that happen in my life is another ball of wax...
You mean, we're more likely to accept answers that agree with our per-conceived notions?
I don't believe that... so it must not be true.
Hydrate, you dummy!
