Lets look at what happens from a different point of view.
You have an antenna, some feed line, and an antenna tuner, before some more feed line and a radio (or perhaps the antenna tuner is built into the radio), and a field strength meter. If you tune the antenna tuner so the radio sees the lowest SWR, you have maximum power transfer to the antenna, as measured with a field strength meter (which you are not moving). If you adjust the antenna tuner so it doesn't have the lowest SWR, the field strength meter will have a lower reading, and the lower the SWR the lower the reading.
I want to point out this is the same even if you have a radio that doesn't have a high SWR protection circuit.
From the point of view of the field strength meter, you are tuning the antenna, or you are at least doing something that directly affects the antennas transmitted power.. If you claim this effect isn't from tuning the antenna, I would love to hear your explanation of what is causing this effect.
The DB