Calories in vs. calories out?

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In the end, it still comes down to calories in versus calories out over some sufficently long time period. Or more precisely, calories/unit time over some sufficiently baseline time period to be meaningful but not to to radically influenced by short-period transients.

For example, while we may be "measuring calories" for food, we are actually looking at calories/day (or perhaps it would actually be better to look at calories/day on a 7-10 day block average). When we are looking at calories expended we are estimating calories expended per day. Thermodynamically, energy per unit of time equals power.

For human activity, there is some suffiently large non-zero minimum calorie expenditure or "burn-rate" required for the electrochemical processes of "living" to be maintained.. Being at a stable weight or a plateau means nothing more than your energy input for utilization by your body is ultimately being balanced by your energy expended for all activities. At best we have approximations of both with varying degrees of precision and accuracy.

^this

And to focus on the many tangential concerns without acknowledging this fundamental reality is silly to the point it borders on ridiculous.