If you didn't count your calories, there's no way to tell where you were eating relative to your TDEE. People think they're eating more than they are all the time, it's an incredibly common thread on any fitness forum.
That's OK. I'm not claiming that I was eating equivalent or fewer calories by controlling sugar.
I'm claiming that the set of dietary rules I chose which are based around limiting sugar and simple carbs have an end result of some weight loss. Whether that's a direct property of lowering sugar, or an emergent property caused by that is a good question, but one I don't need to have an answer for if the rules happen to work.
For what it's worth, my rules are roughly:
* No sweets unless I am socializing or it is a dessert I prepared from scratch. "Sweet" means roughly candy or dessert.
* No beer unless socializing.
* Minimize carb-heavy snacks like crackers and chips.
The last rule is fuzzier than I'd like, but I'm still dialing it in.
These rules may seem a little arbitrary, but they work for me and I find they do a good job of improving my overall diet without subjecting me to the real annoyances of rigid diets that make you do things like ask a waiter to bring you a burger without a bun, or not eat a curry that has a teaspoon of sugar in it.
Of course, but it's pretty well accepted that fibrous and fatty foods are typically more filling that sugary foods, with fewer calories (especially for fibrous foods). It doesn't invalidate intake with respect to TDEE being the primary cause of weight gain and loss.
