I went on a diet of 1500 cals/day and started running ~10 miles a week. I lost four pounds in 2 weeks and then stopped because I was hungry all the time and not doing lots of fun things with family an friends.. I lost 13 pounds intermittent fasting and probably on a whole take in more calories than before.

I grow micro-organisms for a living and you see very different physiological responses if you continuously feed versus pulse/pause (same net caloric input/unit time). I can get into the epigenetics if you wish but it makes a lot of sense to me and have seen it in my own body.