Anyone who’s trying to lose weight hears it all the time, along with its cousins: Eat less, move more; eat fewer calories than you expend.

Most people try a diet — a particular way of eating that’s supposed to help you lose weight — and it works, almost regardless of what the particular diet is.

I asked my Twitter people to send me their stories, and I heard some of the many ways life derails diet: illness, pregnancy, bike crash, new baby, new job, menopause, bad work situation, even a church breakup.

But sometimes, it’s just that you get really tired of not eating bread.

To lose weight, don’t just resist temptation.

People can lose weight until they can’t.

They go on a particular diet, and as long as they stick to it, they succeed, but they usually can’t stick to it forever.

Weight loss is, for most people, a toggle between diet and not-diet.

Diet = weight loss, not-diet = weight gain?

So why on God’s green Earth are we spending all our time arguing about the difference between this diet and that diet, when people lose weight on all of them.

The obvious, stare-you-in-the-face problem is the difference between diet and not-diet.

The difference is rules.

And it works?

An additional 13 maintained their weight loss, give or take?

The weight losers made rules.

Diets are useful for the very obvious reason that they usually help you lose weight.

We’ve been told — by experts — that weight loss is the province of experts.

We need a list of rules developed by somebody else, often somebody with a complicated physiological explanation for why eating their particular way is better than eating all other ways.

When rules work, weight loss works.

(Although it’s possible that diets can affect the way your body burns calories, those differences are small; next month, I’ll be writing about keto and its claims, so hold your fire.) But who’s going to be better at figuring out a combination of rules that work for you — you, or some “expert” who has never met you.

There is absolutely nothing about weight loss that is true for everyone.

For some, too many rules may feel like the road to disordered eating, and this is the wrong path.

Others do find a specific diet that works for them long-term, and that’s great.