Unless you went on a diet that restricted calories and were hungry - you'd know this - you likely didn't change your caloric count all that much but instead changed the makeup of those calories. This changed your insulin response and instead of building fat, your calories went more towards muscle cells for energy.
And based on your comments, your insulin level was likely low most of the time and the fats you ate (the fatty acids in your blood) went to energy rather than fat stores. I'd be curious if you knew your pre and post cholesterol readings as well. I suspect your cholesterol improved, particularly in triglycerides.
In the show do they show how they accurately counted his caloric intake of 5000 calories a day from lean moose meat? Was his meals recorded and frequency of eating listed to tabulate his caloric intake? What was his caloric expenditure daily? You do realize you are hanging on to a single example to make a generalization of nutrition across all science? because 1 guy ate moose meat for a limited period of time in a frigid isolated environment and lost body weight? Not the most scientific way to refute the science that you need a caloric restriction to lose weight with the caveat that the quality of food eat does also play a role. After all, if you eat 1000 calories a day of pasta you can lose body weight but you are going to be really unhealthy and most likely losing weight in things you are not supposed to. the scale is meaningless looking at absolute numbers since a person can lose 10 lbs. of fat and put on 20 lb.s of muscle and still look smaller and leaner.
I'm giving you an example with the show. I'm not making a scientific case study out of it. There are many, many studies to refute the statement of "you need to cut calories to lose weight". If I give you some, will you finally admit this statement is not true? Or will you continue to argue a failed concept simply to argue. Save me the time and answer honestly before I waste time providing the data. To be clear (using your example) if you eat 1000 calories of pasta a day ONLY, you will lose weight in the short term. But you cannot do this indefinitely and you will eventually gain it back when your diet reverts. This is not the same thing as saying you cannot lose weight unless you cut calories.
To lose weight, you need to be in calorie deficit. If you just restrict carbs without cutting calories or burning more of them, then you're just going to lose the water in your muscles from the glycogen depletion. So the weight you will lose will be water weight, not fat.
Well you can lose wait eating same calories as long as not really high as before if you change the quality of the calories and are doing resistance training because you will be increaseing you metabolic rate. So yes that is an example of how you can lose weight by not cutting calories but simply improving your calories burned through metabolic rate. Also if you are eating a normal diet of let's say 2500 calories daily and start lifting and running you can lose weight and still eat 2500 calories a day. If you eat 2500 calories a day and begin heavy resistance training you could increase your calories up to 3000 a day and still lose weight. These are examples of not cutting calories but still losing weight because you change your energy output. You are taking the cutting calories too literal. The bigger message is calories in v. calories burned but you are trying to argue the literal message to cut calories when we are saying caloric deficit. If you increase calories but increase expenditure you then lose weight.
Those are indeed examples of losing weight without cutting calories. They are also not what I was referring to at all, and I am not taking "cutting calories too literal". Do you believe that if you ate 2500 calories of sugars and bad carbs, say you gorged on cupcakes and soda for 1 year that this would be the same as if that exact same individual who ate 50% protein and fat and 50% vegetables (as an example)? As long as it is 2500 calories with the same physical activity, no difference in weight? Is that what you believe?