If any, I mean?

So, 1200 one day, 1600 the next... what/how does this help the body shed weight?

The theory behind calorie cycling is that your body never gets used to running on a set number of calories, and therefore stays "inefficient" and burns more calories.

Similar to switching up exercises so your body doesn't get used to doing just one thing.

Some people find it beneficial to have higher calorie days and lower calories days due to their schedules and energy needs, as well.

I don't purposefully cycle my food, but I do naturally have some higher days and then lower days. It certainly hasn't hurt my weight loss.

This is just another one of those "your mileage may vary" type of things. Up to the individual!

It may not make a difference for you, but some people find that it helps. There are several theories on why it works (or seems to), but ultimately most of us end up having to be scientist and lab rat when it comes to what works for us.

I never would have believed that low-carb eating allows me to eat more calories, be less hungry on less, and still lose better and more consistently than eating high-carb. Something about eating low-carb, apparently raises my metabolism. It's still a matter of calories in, calories out, but for some reason eating low-carb changes the calorie out part of the equation - making me or allowing me to burn more calories.

There are a lot of theories (some with good science backing them) as to why that can happen, especially in my personal case (having had insulin resistance and then diabetes), but all I really know is that my experiments helped me find what works best for me.

The science is interesting, and the more I understand the research and the science, the more it makes sense - but what it really boiled down to was experimenting to find what works best for me.

I don't have to understand all the whys to find what works (luckily), I just have to experiment and do more of what seems to work.

Of course, the key is long experiments. You can't determine what works in a week, a month or even sometimes two or three months. It's too easy to jump to false conclusions when your experiments are short ones. For example, I gain weight every month with PMS/TOM. If I changed my diet and saw a gain, if I didn't know that I ALWAYS gain that week, I could think my new diet was to blame. It takes months to see natural fluctuation patterns, and it can even take months to see any weight loss at all, if you're making small changes, or if you have health issues that cause a sluggish metabolism. It's not unusual for a person to lose nothing for two or three weeks, and then lose a good chunk (sometimes called losing in whooshes). If you happen to binge the day before your woosh is due, you could think "I lose more weight, the more I eat."

That's why it's important to realize that what you see on the scale may be due to weeks of work.

Varying calories may help you lose more, or it may just make the time seem to pass more quickly. Unless you're keeping a detailed journal, you may not be able to tell the difference.

I like calorie-cycling because it allows me to schedule a higher-calorie day on the day I like to go out for dinner.

I really don't know whether it makes my weight loss faster - but I don't really care. What I want is a plan I can stick to and be happy on. I could probably construct a plan that would cause me to lose weight faster but it's unlikely I could have stayed on it very long.