Comment by naming_the_user

If you have a diet, say each week you eat X grams of meat, Y of vegetables, Z of cereals, and then next week (or for a number of weeks) you eat {X,Y,Z}1.1 or {X,Y,Z}0.9, that will have a net effect all else being equal.

There is nothing condescending about that. No-one is really claiming that all calories are equal e.g. you can replace 500 kcals of chicken with 450 kcals of olive oil and that be some sort of blockbuster great idea.

CICO does have an implicit "your diet isn't completely batshit insane" attached to it.