If you insist!
What matters about matter is how much you eat of it.
Portion size <===and timing <===is the secret?
You eat too much meat you will get fat?
You too much fat you will get fat?
You eat too much sugar you will get fat?
So simple a caveman can do it?
Heck yes. We’re all free to disagree all over the place, but pretense seems to be overwhelmingly creeping in, here.
Thanks. I was most immediately talking about the idea that we can’t measure energy accurately, and that this pretense morphs into denying the existence of a fairly complete, sensible scientific explanation. While there’s much to yet be learned, why deny what we do know already?
And does this lead to assuming we can’t make glucose from fat, and that our fat tissue or the lipid droplets in the fat cells are mostly protein, or that the lipid droplet surrounds fat cells rather than being inside, in the center of them? 
Sheesh!
Speaking of pretense… It’s indeed proper to look at RCTs. Yet we also see people beginning with pretenses, and when the evidence disproves or at least casts severe doubt on the pretenses, they sometimes just ignore the evidence and walk away.
Much of this discussion is about basic science and how well we can measure things, energywise.
Right there’s a study. You were obviously going with the pretense that we can’t measure things well enough and that the overall consideration of energy, weight and metabolism won’t work out. Yet that study had things work out surprisingly well, with more accuracy than anybody should have issues with, and it presented a picture complete enough that it should satisfy very well on a general rational basis.
The results didn’t go well with your pretense, and at that point you wanted to drop it like a hot potato and walk away, ignoring it entirely. And YOU were the one who posted the RCT… Sheesh!
This looks like just jumbling up a bunch of words and putting them together. The lipid droplets surround the adipocyte?
Your welcome for my effort at an explanation it is kind of a more recent description of something not well explained or explored, I’m sure you’ll find some better ”jumbling“ else where?
A thousand apologies for not meeting your expectations of perfection!
@PaulL Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful post. 
You may be right. I should read the whole thing, carefully, at least a couple times.
No - CICO is two quantities, not any statement of necessary equality. Look how many times ‘CICO’ comes up on this forum. 
But nobody is saying that all calories are exactly the same, with nothing more to be considered. Why CICO comes up on this forum is because of the question of what the energy balance is, and if it matters.
Their advertising does try to imply that 140 or 100 calories and the like isn’t anything to worry about. But if you really pressed the Coke executives, even the advertising ones, they’re not going to say there’s no difference at all between the macronutrients, or that a person could live forever on Coke. And that’s not the issue here.
Definitely, as several people have talked about in this thread, alone.
Everybody should know intuitively that the laws of conservation of energy and matter will be satisfied. The ‘First Law’ talk usually includes stuff about a closed or not closed system. While you can make some observations peculiar to a closed system, that really has nothing to do with human digestion and metabolism obeying physical laws - they do that anyway.
It usually comes up with ‘anti-CICO’ people pretending that the human body not being a closed system means that physical laws somehow do not apply, which is of course false.
Interesting line of thought, and obviously it can be that way sometimes, and it makes sense (for example) that if we’re taking 1000 calories from fat storage (or the equivalent mass, if you prefer) then we probably won’t be as hungry or eat as much as if we weren’t doing that. But that doesn’t affect CICO. CICO is just the two quantities (plus what we can infer from them). Here’s 3 conditions:
Let’s say we’re talking about weight loss. We can start with Taubes’ hormonal effects/weight loss mode, and this leads to less on the “In” side (as a result). Or we can start with less on the “In” side (as the driver). Either way, as long as the condition is satisfied, i.e. CI < CO, then there’s weight loss. The direction of causality does not matter.
No argument - I will personally testify that hormonal effects are huge, even for adults. Low-carb -> fat-adaption -> less hunger and less often eating. Here too, CICO will change along with it.
I’d also say that while hormones are driving those teenage changes, enough food intake is necessary, as well. A kid isn’t going to gain mass unless there’s enough mass intake. And the body’s own energy accounting is always going on too - it’s not like hormones operate in a vacuum, i.e. the physical laws remain satisfied.
Okay, so evidently the ‘Out’ differed between the two (assuming the ‘In’ was the same).
As above, okay - and CICO reflects the dietary context. If dietary changes alter the ‘In’ & ‘Out’ quantities, no problem. The only thing in that paragraph that I might disagree with is “the body tends to hold on to its fat stores until fairly late in the process of starvation” - I’d say it holds onto most lean tissue there . While there is individual variation, it’s generally true that the more fat we have, the higher the percentage of fat versus non-fat mass we’ll lose with weight loss.
Separate post for this since it was getting so long. I’m with you all the way through, there, but again it doesn’t work against CICO. Keto diet, less insulin, part of the ‘In’ coming from our fat stores - all good. Protein & fat meaning less hunger than from eating carbs, ‘In’ changes, sure, and the ‘Out’ as well if we include the higher energy cost of digesting protein. That we know more now about science than we used to doesn’t change anything - the same physical laws are in operation.
Back to the reason that ‘CICO’ comes up for argument so often on the forum - the energy balance. And it’s really the same if we change it to mass. How about “a gram is a gram”? 
We all know that’s not the real deal, just the same. (Or even if we change it to ‘gram/energy equivalent’ or otherwise adjust for macronutrient differences.)
With only CICO, we know the In and Out, and we can figure weight gain/loss, including fat storage or usage, pretty close. And that’s really it. There isn’t much else, or is it that there’s nothing else? Metabolization, storage, waste. What else is there? All the ‘In’ goes to those three, right? If anybody doubts this - and it does seem to come up with amazing frequency, then they can never answer the question about where else stuff goes, or if the numbers aren’t going to add up, then what happens to the missing or extra numbers. We are talking about actual, real, physical matter here, after all - right down to the atomic level.
On a practical basis, we know that increased ‘In’ can and often does lead to increased metabolism and weight gain. Anti-CICO debaters usually have no problem pointing out energy change on the ‘Out’ side, i.e. carbs -> higher insulin -> more fat storage -> lower metabolism. Yet there’s sometimes a logical disconnect that prevents similar observations about the ‘In’ side.
The 3500 calories/lb thing comes up a lot. Humor me for the rest of this post. Doesn’t it make sense that 3500, even if not perfect, is going to be a lot closer than is 0 or 7000, for example? How about a practical examination of the theory?
@ctviggen’s posted study - Check out my comment I made at KetoCon2019
Going with CICO, we would predict that increased caloric intake would result in some combination of weight gain and metabolism. The study subjects were fed varying percentages of protein, and did gain different amounts of weight. The metabolisms also went up, again by different amounts. Yet in all three cases, when the increased metabolism/energy expenditure was combined with the weight gain, everything did come together remarkably well.
In the end, I’d ask what people think is happening, if CICO does not apply. Don’t Dr. Fung’s two compartments make sense - stuff going to either metabolism or storage? This certainly pretty well has things covered. We can hone it a little if we include excretion, but even without it we’ll still be so close that it almost never matters.
Following is a link to 36 citations regarding the subject of this topic. Based on the several I’ve already read, I think you will find wide support for the common concept of CICO and CICO diet/weight management as understood by most of the folks on this forum, including myself. That understanding is that CICO deals almost exclusively with calories in and calories out eating to a caloric deficit and that any effects due to different macronutirents having a ‘metabolic advantage’ as defined by Feinman and Fine is minimal and useless.
This is about as far as they’re willing to go:
But this is where they’re really at:
Unfortunately, the full text of this is behind a subscription/paywall. Maybe someone knows how to find it otherwise?
Abstract
Despite intensive research, the causes of the obesity epidemic remain incompletely understood and conventional calorie-restricted diets continue to lack long-term efficacy. According to the carbohydrate-insulin model (CIM) of obesity, recent increases in the consumption of processed, high–glycemic-load carbohydrates produce hormonal changes that promote calorie deposition in adipose tissue, exacerbate hunger, and lower energy expenditure. Basic and genetic research provides mechanistic evidence in support of the CIM. In animals, dietary composition has been clearly demonstrated to affect metabolism and body composition, independently of calorie intake, consistent with CIM predictions. Meta-analyses of behavioral trials report greater weight loss with reduced-glycemic load vs low-fat diets, though these studies characteristically suffer from poor long-term compliance. Feeding studies have lacked the rigor and duration to test the CIM, but the longest such studies tend to show metabolic advantages for low-glycemic load vs low-fat diets. Beyond the type and amount of carbohydrate consumed, the CIM provides a conceptual framework for understanding how many dietary and nondietary exposures might alter hormones, metabolism, and adipocyte biology in ways that could predispose to obesity. Pending definitive studies, the principles of a low-glycemic load diet offer a practical alternative to the conventional focus on dietary fat and calorie restriction.
Even if calories required can be measured precisely in a research paper. Can we measure our own required calories daily without stressing ourselves out with precise measurements?
Seems like a lot of useless research papers and the wasted money/time to complete them. What’s missing to satisfy humans which can’t be obtained from food?
Maybe not having an overall picture of how a entire system really works, like is it an open system (is mass and energy leaving the system?) or a closed system (expansion and contraction?) then density (solidity), volume (capacitance) and thermal conductance (amount of heat required until sublimation).
Formula: p=m/V, or density § is equal to mass (m) divided by volume etc. (grapes to raisins)
Containment parameters, rate of flow etc.
So how much activity can happen within a given amount of space when you place a piece of mass into it, as matter can exist in three different states solid, liquid, gas (pure substances-mixtures-elements-compounds (molecules), homogenous-hetrohomogenous etc.
How long would it take for this volume and mixture of calories to turn from a solid==>liquid then into a gas? Time?
World peace?
That’s a pretty broad question. When this thread began, I thought
You’re not required to do anything - you don’t have to measure or read research papers or care. That doesn’t mean there’s not an underlying scientific reality at work. It’s that way for all of us.
We can say, “Ooh, pretty rainbow 
,” or we can say, “That’s pretty how the light refracts like that.” Or we can take all the emotion out of it. “Light is being refracted and reflected.”
It depends what “satisfy” means. Doesn’t that involve desire? We may want to get rid of hunger, or we may crave a scientific explanation, or even just “the answer,” among an unlimited number of things.
There is a continuum, and along it we differing people will want different things and make different assumptions. Yet at a very primal level or “at the beginning of it,” we are physical beings; we are all the same in some respects.
We’re still not like a star or a nuclear bomb. 
Agreed that our fat tissue has a higher density than that of ‘fat’ - because of the water (mostly) in the cytoplasm of adipocytes. And before anybody loses their mind, that’s actual ‘density,’ not energy or caloric density - with the latter, things are reversed, i.e. there are more calories in a given volume or weight of fat than for the fat cell as a whole.
Yeah, the body almost never burns protein, alone. But it certainly will do it if there’s nothing else; better than dying. Other than real starvation, there’s a mix of fat and protein consumption that occurs, with some of the protein being recycled. For the generalized “really fat person,” they’re going to be burning almost entirely fat and just a very little protein. With some of it being recycled, the net protein loss will be extremely small, versus fat loss.
As we get leaner, the percentage of protein loss increases. This is all well-known, right?
We’re definitely not closed systems - we’re inhaling and exhaling all the time, for just one example. It’s greatly related to metabolism and can be to transient weight/mass changes. How do you ever get away from that? If one cares about having a complete picture, that has to be taken into account.
I’m not sure about this particular point, Doug. Not saying it’s wrong, just that I haven’t heard it. Phinney says that as we get leaner, we need to compensate for no longer having extra stored fat, by increasing the amount of fat we eat, and that as long as we keep eating fat to satiety, that increase is automatic.
As far as protein is concerned, Bikman says that it is harder to prevent lean-tissue loss as we age, and harder to assimilate protein to make new lean tissue, but that is an issue of aging, not fat-loss, as I understand it.
Very small amounts, the ones who eat more die faster?
Small stature good, not ‘deformed,’’ no excessive growth hormone? And as far as being hunched over, probably not so good if your hunched over and have diabetes? …lol
She was talking about adipose tissue, though - and we don’t whack many of those cells. They stay around for like 7 years or more, mostly just swelling with fat or shrinking as they release it. Adipocytes have only a thin outer layer that’s the cytoplasm, where the amino acids are. I wonder what happens in true starvation.
Too long/don’t want to read summary = critical thinking identifies this as slanted and selective. They don’t have a good view of the entire picture, probably by design. It’s just an article - I don’t know why it’s so half-a$$ed.
Continuing to read the Abstract, there, it says, “Results from a number of sources refute both the theory and effectiveness of the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis. Instead, risk for obesity is primarily determined by total calorie intake.”
Okay, true or false? Before we answer that…
A lot of good questions and thoughts. As far as I know, nobody here is getting paid to type or to read posts. Nobody has to do this. We do it because we want to.
So - can we get a good handle on the dietary context, is it possible to view human metabolism fairly completely, are we forgetting anything substantial if we say “yes,” do we need to measure or even care in the first place, is it “too stressful” to have the overall picture, and can we be satisfied with our understanding?
Most of us are here because we do want to know more, to understand the science, rather than myth and fantasy. “Show Me the Science” - this appeals to most of us.
Are we able to think critically? Can we be independent and contemplative? Can we get the ‘bigger picture,’ rather than what somebody might want us to think?
Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings represent the entire picture and are open to finding that they do not.
I didn’t come up with those three italicized lines there, I just copied it. Seems very applicable to this thread.
So, true or false: “Results from a number of sources refute both the theory and effectiveness of the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis. Instead, risk for obesity is primarily determined by total calorie intake.”
It’s obviously true. But only because of the way they worded it. It does not present the entire picture. They are only talking about “a number of sources.” I would guess that most people on Ketogenicforums already would realize that something’s not right here. Perhaps even a majority of those people have already directly experienced proof that it’s not. It is a certainty that ‘many’ of those people have.
One of the ‘best’ pictures I’ve ever seen (certainly one of the most important).
Insulin can make an enormous difference. It may not in one given person, and it may not in some studies where insulin isn’t a problem in the first place. The article mentions studies that were woefully short - 24 hours, or 4 weeks of high-carb then 4 weeks of low-carb. It also talks about a larger group of studies of longer duration, at least 6 months, but these were comparisons of “low fat” diets with “normal” fat diets.
If we’re really going to test the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis, then let’s test people for a long enough time (months, to allow for fat-adaption, etc.), and let’s have it truly be low-carb, i.e. ‘ketogenic low-carb,’ so < 20 grams of carbs a day, or even zero. Hey, let’s really put it to the test.
The article talks about Atkins and a generalized ‘carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis’ (CHO), specifically it is claimed that both Atkins and CHO maintain there is a metabolic advantage from eating low-carb, that means “large amounts of fat could be consumed without significant weight gain.” In another place it is phrased as “a large amount of fat intake is enabled without weight gain.”
I don’t know about that - maybe Atkins did say something along those lines. But if we are keeping track of energy, if we’re thinking thermodynamically, and we’re giving the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis a fair chance, then let’s make insulin the variable. It has to change, or else the study isn’t going to address it in the right way. This doesn’t mean cherry-picking only a select few people - there is a very significant portion of the population that would qualify. Then let’s make things really low-carb, for a long enough time.
I thought the article was actually a pretty interesting read. There is some thought-provoking stuff in there. Yet I would say that it was crafted with a particular aim in mind - to argue against the CHO, rather than take a good look at the entire picture. And it’s sloppy - what does a “a large amount of fat” mean? We all know there is going to be an eventual limit, no matter what. Given the cherry-picking of studies they do, they could quote 36 references or 360 - it doesn’t matter. They are ignoring the evidence that insulin does make a meaningful difference for many people. People don’t generally start eating keto because they want to eat “large amounts of fat with no weight gain.” They do it because it may enable them to LOSE fat, improve their blood sugar control and other hormonal issues, etc.
The rest of the Abstract: “One of the central tenets in obesity prevention and management is caloric restriction.” – Yes - as stated that’s true. Like it or not, etc., it’s true.
“This perspective presents salient features of how calories and energy balance matter, also called the “calories in, calories out” paradigm.” – It’s also very slanted; one thing that really is prominent and conspicuous, i.e. ‘salient,’ is the lack of addressing what occurs in insulin-resistant people when by dietary means their average and fasting insulin levels are lowered. Considering the energy balance is all well and good - but let us not forget that we are postulating a change in the energy balance due to the beneficial effects of lowered insulin. If this occurs - which all of us here know does happen for many people - then it’s not only a change, it’s things happening in opposite directions, fat coming out of storage rather than going into it, making for a change in the net result between the two conditions that is twice the magnitude of the individual changes. Huge sentence, I realize, and a simplified view - I just mean, for example, that if we want to lose weight, then if we gain a kilogram of fat versus losing one, we’re 2 kilograms “to the bad.”
“Determinants of energy balance and relationships to dietary macronutrient content are reviewed.” – Same as above; they miss the part about insulin resistance and amelioration of it. Some people will respond as the article claims, i.e. no big difference where their calories come from. But the CHO doesn’t say that everybody on earth is any one way. CHO addresses what occurs when the energy balance does change due to macronutrient type.
“The rationale and features of the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis postulate that carbohydrate restriction confers a metabolic advantage. According to this model, a large amount of fat intake is enabled without weight gain. Evidence concerning this possibility is detailed.” Cherry-picked evidence that ignores some facts that we here know to be in evidence. Because of that, we have a more complete picture, we have a better view and consideration. We don’t say the article is wrong about all people, but we know it’s wrong about some people.
“The relationship and application of the laws of thermodynamics are then clarified with current primary research. Strong data indicate that energy balance is not materially changed during isocaloric substitution of dietary fats for carbohydrates.” Again, that should be “cherry-picked data.” 
They conclude that changing the caloric intake makes for comparatively modest changes in energy expenditure. Finally, something I do agree with, even though I think that should be expected.
World peace is the opposite of capitalism. So it’s the end result. Not what’s missing.
It’s a hidden question with a (complex) hidden answer.
To satisfy the mind therefore it stops asking irrelevant questions.
To satisfy the mind therefore it doesn’t care about “want” material possessions.
To satisfy the mind therefore it doesn’t keep searching for the perfect stimulant, food, diet, joke, etc…
A desire for blissfulness.
It doesn’t seem like the majority would be able to accept the complex answer after their mind has been conditioned with incorrect information. Cognitive dissonance would kick in and they would defend and accept their previous belief.
People don’t know what they want because it’s all based on assumptions. The perfect job, the perfect car, the perfect house with the white picket fence, the perfect relationship, etc…
I can’t deny the last part you wrote because it is self-evident.
I have a question though. Do you believe that it’s better to have loved oneself and then been broken than to never have loved oneself and be completely oblivious to what’s missing?
@KetoGolem In the OP of this topic I posted the link to an article by Feinman and Fine noting the characteristic feature, ie specifically ‘a calorie is a calorie’, of so-called CICO theory of dietary management violates the second law of thermodynamics because it ignores the observed fact that the macronutrient composition influences metabolic processing and resultant energy balance. In addition to posting this article, I quoted significant points from the article, and expressed agreement with its overall content and conclusions. I also noted that the statement ‘a calorie is a calorie’ represents CICO as a whole since it is the fundamental characteristic of the theory and methods of dietary management based on it.
I expected general agreement with the views I expressed as they are the generally accepted definition of CICO theory and diet management. Yet, I was attacked vehemently by several posters. They accused me of misunderstanding, misrepresenting and oversimplifying not only CICO but the first law of thermodynamics. You can read their posts above to get the gist of their complaints so I won’t repeat them here.
I took this criticism seriously and did a literature search to determine whether or not I had, indeed, misrepresented CICO theory, method and how its advocates talk about it. I had not. CICO advocates and researchers equate ‘a calorie is a calorie’ with ‘calories in calories out’. They assert that the only thing that matters in weight management is overall energy balance and generally agree that any effects attributable to different macronutrient composition are small and inconsequential. In other words, they generally dismiss the Carbohydrate-Insulin (Hormone) hypothesis as much ado about little or nothing.
I posted the link to the contra article you note in your post to demonstrate to anyone interested, that the general description of CICO and the ‘Hormone’ hypothesis by CICO advocates is precisely as I have described it in my posts above in this topic. And precisely as most folks on this forum would describe it. This article has 36 links to other CICO papers that describe CICO and the ‘Hormone’ hypothesis in the same terms.
In fact, I find it rather bizarre that I was attacked and ridiculed by certain posters for posting and agreeing with a paper that lends support to the Hormone hypothesis upon which the ketogenic diet is based. Many hundreds of folks on this forum have first-hand experience with the failures of CICO diets, many of them multiple times. Many have sustained metabolic and overall physical damage from such diets. Most, if not all, have found improved health and permanent weight/fat loss from keto. Yet, my critics here seem to be defending and advocating CICO on the basis that I have misrepresented it by not understanding the first law of thermodynamics and not appreciating the complexity and sophistication of CICO overall.
Finally, I created another topic here to discuss the article you linked in your response above. It supports and advocates CICO and claims to refute the Hormone hypothesis. I wondered if my critics here would be my critics there. So far crickets. So they must find the CICO supporting paper agreeable.
