For me, it's worked every time for however long I stayed with it. The losses have always been consistant. The "golden" part, however, no longer applies. By that, I mean that I can no longer eat 300 calories more and still lose more than my conventional low fat dieting friends. The reason, I believe, is that it was pretty darn difficult for the body to convert to burning my own body fat instead of the easy carbs. It burned those calories just to learn the conversion. After some time, it was no longer difficult and the extra calories were not needed to get the job done so they were just extra calories. After the first time, my body says "Oh, we get to do this again, OK, no problem."