@zand I'll defer you to this recent bit of research.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7918325
"When two 'small-eaters' were supplied with their self-reported energy intakes (approximately 5 MJ/d) for up to 28 d both subjects lost about 0.75 kg body-weight/week. These results provide no support for the existence of 'metabolically efficient' women in the community"
Women who claimed they could not lose weight on 1400 calories per day. They were supervised and actually given that amount of food and viola - they all lost weight.
People suck at estimating their intake in free living conditions - a bite here, nibble there, the piece of cake they forgot, not accounting for liquid calories, I could go on.
Their intake in the study above was verified with doubly labelled water, so we know they were lying, even if unconsciously.
That's why I hold little weight in your "self experiment" or anecdotes, you just found a way of eating for you that worked.