Calorie restriction, logging your calories and eating a deficit everyday, actually works for many people who can't figure out how else to lose weight. It also teaches you about how to eat healthy: portion sizes, how caloric each food is, how snacking impacts your total, etc.
> Fat won't make you fat
I had always understood this as true, but it's more complicated than that. The body converts calories from fat into fat much more efficiently than carbs, and protein is the least efficient.
> The body converts calories from fat into fat much more efficiently than carbs
Does it now? I have some doubt considering carb consumption stimulates insulin more than fat consumption and this is ultimately the storage hormone.
Much more efficiently. Carbs and protein rely on de novo lipogenesis to convert into fat. But you're right in that a surge of insulin from carbs ensures that the available dietary fat will prefer to go to storage instead of being used as fuel.
In a scenario where you're running a calorie surplus, the effect of overeating carbs will work together with and make dietary fat more significantly contribute to body fat. In a scenario where you're running a calorie deficit to lose weight, and the insulin isn't surging, choosing carbs over dietary fat can actually make sense.
Well, carbs have to be converted to fat. Fat doesn't have to be converted
That would be a reasonable assertion if the human body consumed bread and olive oil and stored it all as olive oil.
Fat also satiates better than sugar.
It's a lot easier to drink and eat X calories of sugar than the same amount in animal fat + protein.