The Truth About Fat
2012 · Film · documentary · 52 min
Exploring the complex functions of fat and the role it plays in controlling hunger, hormones and reproduction.
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It's not nearly that simple. See the Nova episode "The Truth About Fat" for a good summary of the current science. It may be available for free online here [1], although Nova episodes go in and out of free availability (unless you are a donor to a PBS station then I believe you can get them all).
[1] https://www.wgbh.org/program/nova/the-truth-about-fat
This topic will inevitably lead to discussions of why people get overweight and/or why the fail to lose weight when they try to stop being overweight.
This is a more complicated issue that most people realize. Last year "Nova" had a really good episode caller "The Truth About Fat". It's currently available for free viewing on the PBS site [1]. It is quite interesting and informative.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-truth-about-fat/
A bigger problem with calorie counting even if you get past the mechanical difficulties of keeping track of everything is that it doesn't do anything to adjust what your body "thinks" your needs are.
If you are overweight but your body thinks that you are underweight cutting calories to lower your weight can be seen by your body as the onset of starvation and it can make adjustments to prioritize short term staying alive over long term health.
Even if you are careful to not lower your calories so much as trigger that and do eventually get down to your target weight, as long as your body still thinks it is underweight its going to be trying to get gain it back. Any day you eat a little extra or your activity level is off a little your body is going to try to snatch onto that to put on some weight and hold on to at as it tries to claw back to what it thinks is your proper weight.
A couple months ago there was very good episode of Nova on PBS about fat [1] that covers this (and much more--it's well worth watching). Unfortunately I don't think it is freely available at the moment. (The pattern with much PBS stuff is that after it is broadcast it is available for free streaming on the web and in their apps for a few weeks, then it becomes available only to people who donate at least $60/year to their local PBS stations. Looking at past seasons, some stuff is only for donors and some can be streamed free. I'm not sure what is going on there--whether a given one occasionally flips between donors-only and free, so there are just some that stay free and some that stay donor-only).
[1] https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/nova/truth-about-fat-preview-mhvntq/