We have been telling people for decades now to be worried that they might harm themselves by too much restriction and it is just wrong. What is harmful is being over weight. What is harmful is then confusing people that they are somehow going to lose weight without much restriction or being hungry.
This also scales really bad with age because as you age the CNS recovery gets worse and worse compared to muscle recovery.
At 55, there is simply no way for me to lose weight other than being hungry. It is impossible to recover from the amount of exercise that would be needed. The reality is that no one needs to worry about too much restriction until they are down to around 12% or so body fat. The fact a person's bodyfat % is never mentioned in this is exemplary of how bad the standard advise is.
Most people have too much leptin and leptin resistance. Then those same people get the same bad advise over and over to not restrict too much because you don't want to be like an anorexic or extreme athlete and have too low of leptin. Of course, ignoring that the anorexic and extreme athlete are going to have incredibly low bodyfat percentages.
