All things CICO - back from the dead thread

cico
calories
#21

You may indeed have discipline up the wazoo Robert but without patience you risk wrecking yourself. Natural bodybuilding is a long game.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #22
(Running from stupidity) #23

I’d prefer to be able to teleport around the place, but reality doesn’t agree. Looks like you’ve got the same problem.

(MooBoom) #24

Hey, it’s worth a try isn’t it? Sure seems to be working out for a lot of folk around here.

It’s a mental switch from focusing on calories, to focusing on carb intake. Then making sure you get enough protein to maintain lean body mass, and fat to satiety. Provided your hunger signalling is functional, your body will determine its energy needs and you don’t need to worry about calorie counting.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #25

While this gentleman’s well documented experience is quite interesting, for me it raises a question. Humans evolved during the Pleistocene, 2.5 million years of scarcity interrupted by short periods of plenty, such as now. For about 99% of our hunter/gatherer past, the successful kill when everyone could gorge themselves for a couple of weeks might and probably would be followed by weeks or even months of little or no food. It would be non-survival enhancing for the human metabolism just to dump and piss away a couple thousand calories of nutrient dense energy every day. So I wonder why that appears to happen.

In my case, from two+ years of trial an error I know that if I consume more than about 2800 calories per day, of which 2300 is fat, I will gain weight slowly. If I consume less than about 2500 calories per day, of which 2100 is fat, I will lose weight slowly. If I eat between those upper and lower limits I maintain. To me that makes sense: a positive energy imbalance leads to energy storage and a negative energy imbalance leads to burning stored energy. And if energy and nutrient intake and expenditure remains about the same not much changes.

Granted, it’s not a simple equation of energy in/energy out. We know lots of biochemical interactions are mediated by hormones and other factors. Still the question remains, why do excess positive energy/nutrients NOT get stored for future probable famine? Is it a matter of scale? If, like the author of this article you consume a couple thousand excess calories it gets dumped while if you only consume a couple hundred it gets stored? This seems to be an evolutionary conundrum to me.

Just wondering.

(Karim Wassef) #26

it’s a matter of hormones and biochemistry. Dr Bikman’s latest vids and interviews are focused on mitochondrial decoupling due to ketones.

Basically, these are triggers that make our fat cells intentionally less efficient so they convert more energy into heat = being more wasteful.

skip to 34 minutes in to get to the graph

so insulin makes the fat cells more tightly coupled = more efficient = less waste = less weight loss

ketones represent the low insulin state = more waste = higher weight loss

he calls it “affluent adipose” with ketones… when fat is abundant, the body basically burns it to the point of being wasteful.

more on metabolism as a function of food from Dr Fung:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #27

But your own experience of eating above 2800 cal/day shows that they do get stored. I am wondering whether the weight you gained was muscle or fat. Feltham reports that he lost a bit of fat and gained a bit of muscle, so that his weight was pretty stable.

Remember that before the invention of agriculture, obesity would have been extremely rare, and probably the result of a genetic defect. Awfully hard to bring down a mammoth if you’re too fat to chase it. No one would have gotten enough carbohydrate to trigger the kind of insulin levels we see every day until people started cultivating plants.

Of course, the decline in stature and health observed when a culture adopts agriculture is a pretty good indication of metabolic disregulation, so agricultural societies should not really be our baseline for trying to figure all this out. Remember that Feltham was raised on the standard Western diet, so his body’s response to the switch to low-carb is going to be skewed by his pre-adult development. Had he been raised on a diet of mostly meat and dairy, he would likely have ended up taller and more muscular in the first place.

Also, Feltham’s 5000-calorie experiment is, evolutionarily speaking, an aberration. The human body would not necessarily have had much opportunity to deal with such a situation, except that I would expect people who stored too much energy to be at a disadvantage during the hunt, and therefore to have been weeded out over evolutionary time. Also, remember that natural selection only works to evolve mechanisms that are good enough, not the best possible design.

There are several changes I’d make to the human eye to make the design more rational and efficient, for example. (I have to say, as a Christian, that the eye is one of the best proofs that God didn’t maintain hands on every last detail of the process. And don’t even get me started on the coagulation of blood!)

listed #28
(MooBoom) #29

Nice work @carolT I’m glad we don’t have to lose the knowledge generously shared by many in the original thread.
Thanks :+1:

#31

I’m going to merge in some more things.
Starting here is from another topic …

#32

If you’re keto you will burn fat for fuel but whether it is plate fat or body fat is the question. It’s not about “eating as much as you want” it’s about eating as much as you need - keto makes that easier. If you blow past satiety on a regular basis you probably will gain weight.

(Running from stupidity) #33

And “as much as you need” is a variable through time as well.

#34

Yep. Another reason why calorie counting is a hiding to nothing…

(hottie turned hag) #35

Nah mine likes to remain still :relaxed:

The thing with exercise is that it increases one’s appetite; not that exercise per se will stop losses, rather that exercise/exertion causes one to up their intake, often beyond what the increased activity expends, OR keep intake the same thus retarding metabolic processes thus stalling losses.

I’ll use one of my kids (the only one who is heavy of them all, ages 19-36) as an example. She’s 19, just completed her freshman year at Purdue (high marks, so proud :crown:). When she graduated HS a year ago she weighed 136lb. Her life then was p sedentary; she was either at school or home, if with friends they didn’t do anything active. Her extracurriculars were not physically active ones, either.

Then she started uni and is now 151lbs. She dashes around campus and took a 30h/week job which has her on feet and moving entire time when there. She is far more active and has gained 15lbs due to increased appetite secondary to the activity. She lives five minutes away (in her own apt) from me and we see each other often and eat together sometimes; I chide her on the sheer amount of food she now eats. (She refuses to go keto, says “too inconvenient for how busy I am”).

Again a purely anecdotal case example; but the basic principal of move more, eat more OR move more, eat less shall both have the same result: a gain or a stall.

#36

I eat my first meal about 5 hours after waking–several hours after my work out (or I work out and don’t eat at all that day and sometimes do the same thing the next day). Lots of people do, and plenty of them are doing harder work outs than I’m doing.

I’m not sure why restricting your eating to an 8-hour window every day doesn’t wouldn’t work for you if you’re fat-adapted. It’s really just skipping breakfast. If you have trouble with this, try working up to it by pushing breakfast later for a while, starting with maybe a 14:8 schedule. Then switch to skipping breakfast and push lunch a little earlier as you keep adjusting the schedule until you’re comfortable doing 16:8 or even 18:6 (which is what’s recommended to get the full benefits of TRE).

If it’s not working for you, either you’re not fat-adapted, in which case trying to work out fasted and stay fasted after that is going to be hard, as you’ve noticed. Or you’re not eating enough. Or both.

Insane hunger cravings doesn’t sound like you’ve even broken the back of your carb cravings, let alone gotten fat-adapted. Or you’re not eating enough. Next time you have something like that happen, eat protein and fat, not carbs. How long have you been doing this? It can take months for some people to get truly fat-adapted. If you’re not, there’s no need to try to fast, especially if you’re into heavy workouts. You’re just going to make yourself miserable. Wait and KCKO.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #37

The key is listening to your body. Stop eating when you stop being hungry. Eating keto means eating all you want, not all you can hold. If you have been keto longer than a month and are still filling your belly to the point of bursting, you are not listening to your body. I find that I stop being hungry long before my belly is anywhere near full. There’s plenty of room for more, but I stop eating because I don’t want any more.

This is all in the context of a low-carbohydrate diet, of course. Too much carbohydrate raises insulin levels, and insulin blocks the leptin receptors in the hypothalamus, leaving us with a constant sensation of hunger. This is why eating as little carbohydrate as possible is fundamental.

(Nick) #38

Why does it matter that her appetite is higher (from being more active) if calories don’t matter?

(hottie turned hag) #39

@Nick1212 She increased her intake due to increased activity; intake exceeds expenditure and this is common. One’s appetite is up due to exertion so consumption goes up commensurately. It’s hard to (apologies for tacky cliche) “outrun your fork”. No matter how active, if one eats too much there shall be gains.

This is mitigated by eating to satiety once one’s hunger signals are normalized which is one of the best things keto does: normalize hunger signals.

If one has a stable sense of satiety that’s when “cals don’t matter” is applicable.

(Nick) #40

“If one has a stable sense of satiety that’s when “cals don’t matter” is applicable.“

But this is not what is preached on this board OR this specific thread. I read over and over that counting calories is stupid because it’s 100% a hormonal response that determines weight loss. And that CICO doesn’t matter (never any mention of a stable sense of satiety).

So you are on board with the fact that eating in a surplus will make you gain weight? And that keto is just a means to CUT CALORIES because of the satiety effect?

(hottie turned hag) #41

@Nick1212 it’s not that simplistic and I’m sure some of the wise heads on here shall provide you a better explanation than I shall but my understanding is that obvi if one eats an excessive amount beyond their expenditure one shall gain whether their intake is comprised of only steaks or only bread.
To say I could consume 4000 cals of steak or bacon or cheese every day and not gain is false.

I doubt anyone is saying keto is carte blanche to consume unlimited amounts -cals- of meat and fat and calories be damned, one shall still lose/reap health benefits no matter how much one consumes. What is claimed is that one needn’t count calories if one eats to satiety and reduces carbohydrate intake to not >20g/day or less for some (me), ups fat, moderate protein thereby correcting one’s endocrinologic status.

The satiety effect is key, yes HOWEVER the role of insulin in weight gain/illness is regulated by elimination of carbohydrate/introduction of fat as fuel. So the hormonal component is a major player, and satiety regulated by normalized hunger signals (which are also endocrinologically driven) in tandem are what makes it work.

In my case some days I consume 3000 cals I am certain (though I never measure) and others 300. I eat to satiety. My hunger signals are “on fleek”. I have had excellent success. I also eat once/24h (now once/48h) which aids in insulin response.