It's not quite the same, though. I'm currently eating around 1800 calories, and I have probably 25 pounds of fat or more on my body. Suppose I cut it to 1600, and keep it at that, and go on a forced march every day, like they did in the Minnesota Study. At some point, I'm sure I'd get crazier than usual. But when? At 160 pounds? 150? 140 or 130? Semi-starvation in this study didn't mean partial starvation--it was real starvation, these men ended up looking frankly anorexic, because they were. I'm not defending simply insisting that people eat less to lose weight--and certainly one person's metabolism might start defending against starvation much sooner than another's--but what these men were subject to was unquestionably more severe than the mainstream advice. I think we should go up against what's actually there, not our worst nightmare version of it.