It's easy to say all this is stupid, snake oil, unscrupulous, and of course it is, but it's also intriguing how so many people on so many different, wildly different, diets, achieve results of some kind or other, and are happy, at least initially, with those results. Diets as diametrically opposed as all beef and raw food vegan, from constant calorific surplus to fasting.
I think there is another mechanism at work here, one in which food and nutrients are less important than disruption and sacrifice.