Can someone tell me if my thoughts are correct on CICO

(Running from stupidity) #282

How is that controlling calories out?

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #283

You do realize that the “100 pounds of feathers vs 100 pounds of bricks” thought experiment is one that is made in reference to gravity, and always relates to dropping them in a vacuum? Right?

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #284

It’s not.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #285

Have I ever made the arguments on these boards that anyone should up their exercise regimen?

#286

I’m here for the fight.

(Cindy) #287

Yeah, but then you put them in a bag. :smiley:

(Robert C) #288

Good one!

But, if you want to contribute, considering your awesome shape (if I remember correctly), can you get to where you are by looking at a nutrition label and:

  1. Look at the calories alone - keeping your hand covering all other macro/micro information and adding to your cart based on calories and craving alone OR
  2. Look at the rest of the nutrition label along with the calories and sourcing/quality information
(Robert C) #289

Calories matter!

CICO is not bad because of what it does support (i.e. why a 350 pound person should not be sitting at an all-you-can-eat buffet).

CICO is bad because of what it implies (i.e. calorie macro breakdown and calorie timing are unimportant).

You have control of calories.
You have control of calorie macro breakdown and timing.

We know that controlling calories alone (straight daily reduction) is a path to fat loss failure (but is good physics).
We know that controlling calorie macro breakdown and timing is a path to fat loss success (but seems to contradict physics).

(Jane) #290

Yes, because you change the argument. Who ON THIS THREAD has stated they can stuff their bellies full of fat and never gain weight because calories do not matter.

NOBODY.

#291

When looking at nutrition labels I only look at total carbs.

#292

I pay zero attention to calories.

edit:

Disclaimer: I eat OMAD.

#293

:raising_hand_man:

(John) #294

So I have never been to big.im 6 2 and my high weight was 235. I have always been told im not fat but I knew that I could do better. Before I knew about keto 4 or 5 years ago I did the exercise thing. 2 and a half rounds of p90x plus was just overall more active. I got pretty strong and dropped to 205 but still didnt look lean and cut. I was just strong. Then I got hurt at work and the activity level dropped way off. lost alot of muscle and put back on most of the weight. Without knowing about keto I decided I was going to control my weight by the amount I ate. I dropped to 182 within 3 months. I ate 500 calories for breakfast lunch and dinner and had 1 snack bar a day… This was my lowest weight I had been in almost 20 years. I didnt worry about what I was eating just the amount of calories. This included bread. This CICO model 100 percent worked for me(I dont really care if you believe me or not). The problem is that that way of eating was not sustainable for me and I slowly started eating more because to be honest I just didnt feel that good. That surprised me because the best I remember ever feeling was in my early 20s and 185 pounds. So the weight crept back u. Not all the way but to about 220 225. Then came keto. the weight started dropping till I hit 195 then stopped.I know you would call this a stall but I think it was just where my body set at based on the amount I would eat a day. I ended up cycling in and out of keto recently. (Mostly cause of the holidays)and my weight is about 205. I just wish that I would have started keto when I dropped all that weight. Adding more calories from fat may have helped me feel better. I know this is kind of a ramble but maybe if when you hit your set point and your body has stabilized you could try doing keto and watch your calories. I dont mean for a week or 2 and give up. I mean give it the same chance we give the keto way of eating itself. Everyone seems to agree that CICO works for a bit but then your body just drops the bmr and you stall again but what that was that last 10 pounds you were trying to lose. I think i would be ok with my bmr going down a bit as long as my hunger went down with it. Ok this was a ramble for sure.

(Cindy) #295

You can’t really say it works when it’s not sustainable or healthy. That’s like saying “Hey, starvation works to lose weight!” Well, yes, that’s true, but it doesn’t work for living life.

I don’t know why, with weight loss, we still use short-term losses as a way of judging success.

If you painted your house with premium paint, and it covered the walls just fine, initially, but in 6 months, the paint was peeling, would you still say “Hey, that was great paint, covered those walls like a dream!” Probably not…you certainly wouldn’t buy that brand again.

You buy any appliance that works well for the first week or month and then falls apart, do we say “Hey, it was great! Worked very well.” Nope.

We expect some degree of sustainability in our cars, our mattresses, our appliances, etc…without which, we consider them failures. So why, when it comes to diet and weight loss, do we not apply the same standards?

(Jane) #296

:unicorn:

(Consensus is Politics) #297

As humans, we tend to stick with what’s familiar to us. Music, food, drink, even exercise, passed down the line from parents to child. We… indeed that statement needs a few caveats. Perhaps it’s the things that seem enjoyable by the parents that the kids hold onto? :rofl:

Perhaps the things that are perceived as enjoyable. I remember when I was about three. My mom was in the hospital when my sister was being born. My dad just lit a cigarette. I asked if I could have one. He said “sure, breath it in real deep like this”. That one time cured me of ever wanting to smoke. Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. I don’t drink at all because my father was an alchemist (:roll_eyes: thanks iPhone) a drunk.

Many people have the opposite experiences I had with these two simple things. They grew up enjoying things like smoking and drinking without the negativity to it, possibly just long enough for them to always be enjoyable regardless of what they’ve learned about the risks.

Before I learned about low carb, every weight loss method I tried was lower calorie intake until I began to lose weight. I’d lower it little by little until I began seeing a difference on the scales. By that time, I was eating nearly 50% of what I was eating before. Ravenous hunger. Will power needed to push me through it. I was a stubborn s.o.b., learned that from my dad. But I lost those 10 pounds, in about 6 months. Made my Air Force weigh in, and went right back to eating normal again and gained those 10 pounds back plus about another 10, in less than a month. I hit the lucky age of 35, I think where the Air Force had allowed a certain amount of weight because of age. Nearing retirement we all considered these guys as old. That was over 20 years ago. I feel better now than I did back then :wink:.

So my opinion, we just learn it. It simply takes will power to break it. Or perhaps really, and I mean REALLY wanting the truth. Going back as far as I could remember clearly, I was like a little scientist. While other kids were making sand castles, I was looking for the biggest rocks I could throw to make craters with. Making comparisons to the size of the crater to the size of the rocks :thinking:.

I think most of us in this community (90something percent I’d wager) are in the want to know the truth about “such and such” which is why we came here and seem to stay. Hunger for the knowledge we were denied. Nay, the knowledge that was hid from us.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #298

“Should not be sitting”—there’s the problem with the energy-balance hypothesis right there. The 350-pound person is sitting at the all-you-can-eat buffet because his body is in weight-gain mode and he is therefore really hungry; he is not gaining weight because he is “doing it wrong.” I suspect this is the reason people react so strongly to CICO; we are tired of being blamed for doing it wrong, when the problem was that we were eating as advised, and the advice was wrong.

Professor Bikman has a nice take on it: he says that the energy-balance hypothesis is not wrong, it merely fails to explain all the facts. The complete explanation takes the hormonal response to food into account, as well as the energy balance, and it also recognizes that there are a lot of possible physical responses among which the body can choose.

Of course, if you eat 10,000 calories a day when you only need 2500, you’re going to gain weight, but who on earth is capable of eating that much? The normal human being is going to start vomiting long before that point (talk about “energy out,” huh?). I vaguely remember a line from a researcher conducting an over-feeding study, in which he described the reaction of a man who simply could not face one more pork chop! In my memory, the researcher made it sound almost as though the poor guy was weeping! I suspect, however, that the body can cope admirably if we accidentally give it 3000 calories when it only really wanted 2500, just as it can if we only give it 2000.

The point that physics is always relevant is very well-taken, but so also is the point that a complex system can react in complex ways, and that Einstein was right: the explanation should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. CICO is just too simple to be an adequate explanation.

#299

And probably the reason many react strongly in favor of CICO is not wanting to release the blame and personal responsibility aspect of obesity. It must be laziness and gluttony and lack of self control that caused it! Fat people did this to themselves and they should not be let off the hook for it in any way.

I think a lot of us who have been obese or overweight know that there are contributions we have made to that. Sure, we have overconsumed. The question we are focused on is not the what, but the why.

And a lot of us have done CICO-style dieting. There is a reason we are in keto land and not still CICO land. For those of us with really broken metabolisms, CICO doesn’t give the results you’d expect based on what all the books say will definitely happen.

It seems to me the most pro-CICO posters are usually young men who are not heavily overwieght, who decide to try keto to cut weight, it works, and that’s basically their whole experience with obesity and weight loss. Many of us have been on the merry-go-round for a LONG time. And the reason we react so strongly against CICO is that it is inaccurate and also IMO harmful.

#300

I think it also scares people to believe that it’s not all within their control. If something can go wrong with the system then they themselves could end up overweight & on the receiving end of all the blame & opprobrium - nobody wants that.

(Cindy) #301

I think that, whenever we make assumptions about people, or have biases and prejudices, it can be hard to let them go. We don’t want to think that we’ve unfairly judged someone. We don’t want to think that we could BE that person with a slightly different set of circumstances. It’s also simpler (and easier) to blame the victim vs thinking that an entire industry (medical field, etc) is wrong…and maybe intentionally mis-leading us. It’s a bit off-topic, but this is true of the US’s educational system. It’s pretty blatantly not working, but the work to change it will be massive…so the system continues to blame the child (and the teacher) when results aren’t achieved. But it’s an old paradigm that just doesn’t work in today’s society.

Your last paragraph is right on target, too, I think. My husband used to be one of “those.” His doctor says “You need to lose 25 lbs” and 2 months later, just with cutting out a bowl of cereal, he’s lost the weight. We used to have mild arguments about it until I had my LabBand and he could SEE how little I ate, how much I exercised, and it still took a year to lose 85 lbs. He’d say “How can you survive on so little?” and he knew I wasn’t eating elsewhere because the band didn’t allow it. Now he understands how much more difficult it is for me. He’s much more sympathetic to the “merry-go-round” now.