Penny-wise, Pound-foolish. Pound-wise, Weightloss-foolish.

Everyone knows someone who is great at saving pennies but terrible at the overall wealth generation picture. Likewise, many people do a fantastic job at obsessing over .5 pound gains or losses only to be the absolute worst at losing 10 or 20lbs, let alone the 40-80lbs they need to lose. Oftentimes, obsessing about the tiny fluctuations puts you in peril as far as making macro-level moves.
An average American adult might be around 200lbs or more. Sixty percent is water: https://www.usgs.gov/…/scie…/water-you-water-and-human-body…

That’s 120lbs of non-tissue.

How inflamed and water-retaining (or conversely how anti-inflamed and water depleting) you are will change hydration levels by 5-20 percent. That’s 6-24lbs which have nothing to do with tissue loss.

When doing metabolic troubleshooting, inevitably people must do increases in food intake or “refeeds.” Tim Ferriss and others have called this “cheat days” or “cheat meals,” which misses the point. You should never cheat on yourself. But you should reset leptin and a variety of other hormones which are preventing you from getting leaner. So refeed in an intelligent manner, looking to flip several switches before again returning to a depletion effort.
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If you always deplete, you’re like a person who never takes big risks in investments. Sure. You saved yourself from putting money into that startup, that business, that launch. You “saved” some pennies. But you also saved yourself from big reward.