I have lost ~12 kilograms in 2.5 months. My rule of thumb so far has been to avoid anything that can be made into white powders or be made from white powders. e.g. sugars, grains, foods that grow under the ground, fruits, etc are avoided.

My current opinions about what works for weight loss are:

Exercise without dieting is useless and maybe even harmful.

Dieting without exercise works. In other words, diet is more important than exercise

Dieting with minimum exercise seems to work the best for the later stages of weight loss.

Dieting without protein intake leads to muscle loss.

Dieting without fiber intake leads to constipation.

Dieting without water intake leads to darker urine, and may cause renal issues.

Calories In Calories Out (CICO) is thermodynamically sound but psychologically it is harder to practice for some type of diets. e.g. a carbohydrate centric CICO diet is harder to adhere to without a lot of self-control.

Carbohydrate centric CICO diets e.g. an Indian vegetarian diet requires a lot of small meals per day. For people who have many meetings per day or labor outside this is impractical.

Protein-centric CICO diets require fewer meals per day (as low as 1 meal per day). This is because proteins give satiety faster than carbohydrates, and require less self-control or conscious management of food intake.

I do not think fat-centric CICO diets are possible because it makes people drowsy. But if such a diet exists let me know.

My favorite formulation right now is the role of food entropy. The more information you need to completely describe the molecular structure of your food, the better it is for weight loss.

For example, a crystalline substance usually requires very low information to completely describe its molecular structure compared to say a piece of meat. While both a crystal of sugar and a piece of meat can have the same amount of calories, meat has a higher entropy i.e. lower usable energy available in it. More work needs to be done, to create order out of the mess that is meat. For this reason, it is better for weight loss. Even within the meats, a nicely minced meat has more uniformity and hence higher bioavailability than a block of meat cut from an animal. Hence a steak is better than a hotdog for weight loss.

I am going to test this hypothesis after reaching my ideal weight. I plan to use low entropy meat to gain muscle.