Can someone tell me if my thoughts are correct on CICO

(John) #622

and he put on 1.3k. not to surprising

(Adam Kirby) #623

That was Feltham. Wittrock lost scale weight IIRC.

(John) #624

his was only 4000 a day. with that amount of muscle I cant imagine that was doubling his daily intake

(Adam Kirby) #625

Then you’re doubting his accounting of things. Your prerogative, I guess.

(Robert C) #626

CICO has many drawbacks but, one of the biggest, is that you have no way of knowing “calories in”.

Take a couple of identical pieces (weight, content – identical in every way) of pizza. Burn one up to determine its calories and get an answer of 400. What is that 400? 400 is what scientists think an “average” human would derive, calorie wise, from the pizza upon consuming it. (For example, maybe 10 ounces of wood would burn to 600 calories but, scientists know humans cannot deal with wood so they would correctly conclude calories of 10 ounces of wood would be 0 calories).

So, give the other piece of pizza to a 5-day fasted smaller female – she might derive potentially 600 calories of energy from that pizza (remember, 400 was an average).

Give the other piece of pizza to someone that has already finished most of a large pizza – that single slice (as that huge mass of calories flows somewhat less digested through the body) may only absorb 200 calories of that slice.

According to CICO – the fasted female should know that she should reduce any other calorie intake (or increase exercise) by only 400 calories – about 200 calories off from truth, based on the pizza’s calorie count.

According to CICO – the large pizza eater should do the same for the extra 400 they ate after most of the large pizza – again, off by 50%.

Both CICO assumptions are obviously wrong - way too misleading to use in the real world.

(John) #627

no I just use to lift

(Doug) #628

Robert, I sure hope so. :slightly_smiling_face: I wonder about it - thinking back to 30 years ago when I didn’t gain weight, no matter what - and this was even eating a whole bunch of carbs. Insulin resistance is the main culprit, I’m pretty sure, and it’s a question as to how much better we can get. Certainly, some people regain great blood sugar control, etc., but I imagine we only have a tiny bit of the protection against again becoming insulin resistant that we did when starting out in life.

That said, if we don’t push it - if we stay low-carb so we’re not driving ourselves toward the bad anymore, then I also wonder what type of hormonal changes are possible, beyond the insulin deal. In general, more age means we go ‘downhill’ to some extent with slowing metabolisms. So much to learn here…

Okay, I see what you mean, but once again something really doesn’t seem right, there. It’s the assumption that “Calories Out” doesn’t change, when in fact calories being metabolized rather than stored as fat - due to lower insulin levels - can account for increased metabolism and fat loss. Yes - your portrayal of the outside CICO concept has been well disproven. But is it really as simple as you make it out to be? I think that if I asked a group of hardcore “anti-ketoers” about CICO and isn’t it true that if we eat less, our metabolisms may slow down, that many of them would agree.

(Doug) #629

Robert, that seems extreme - do we really sometimes excrete like half the calories of what we eat? I can see cases like lack of bile meaning that fats “just go through,” to a large extent doing it, but I thought that for the overwhelming majority of us, we excrete very, very little. (:slightly_frowning_face:)

(Robert C) #630

No - I do not want to characterize hard core keto as simple. It has a lot of impact on social situations and lifestyle. But, if you really do it, and become and “outlier” (and can maintain it) - benefits seem to be awesome.

(Robert C) #631

A large meat pizza from Round Table pizza is 290X12 slices (or 3480 calories) which can be eaten in less than 1 hour. That is almost exactly a pound of fat calories wise which you will not gain. The next day you will get rid of many not-so-digested calories (you are not a perfect machine).

Eat one slice after a few days of fasting - easily more than 290 calories will be absorbed - body is a sponge.

(Doug) #632

I’m with you on the body being a sponge after fasting, but I still question that we will excrete “many” of the calories, under all but the most severe/rare conditions.

(Robert C) #633

Overfeeding studies show that it is difficult to add weight linearly. Many people with severe eating disorders (10,000 calories or more per day) should be the size of a shopping mall after several years but are not. The human body is not a machine, it compensates/adapts.

#634

If his hypothalamus was removed or injured that will still make a difference now. If he is on any medication that makes a big difference now. Chemo can permanently effect organs and glands so …

I cannot base my eating decisions on cases like that. Could just be click bait for all I know.

What I do know is - the keto diet is either a one way tick to skin and bones and there is no possibility of arresting weight loss. Or it is possible to maintain a steady weight and remain in ketosis. If that is possible then it must be possible to go too far.

The keto gurus (Westman, Phinney, Volek… ) all say you can overeat, “calories matter” but it’s too complicated so don’t try to calculate them", just “use satiety as the guide”.

Eat to satiety - the body is the calculator just we’ve been looking for. So natural. So great. Except when it doesn’t work, I know people who do not stop at satiety, they’re only getting starting!

(Doug) #635

I do agree, here. So much of the compensation is hormonal - I used to have weeks where I should have gained 5 lbs, while only gaining that much per year.

(Robert C) #636

So CICO said 5 and actual is 1? Seems like CICO has accuracy issues?

(Doug) #637

No - I definitely was hotter when I really pigged out, sweaty pillow at night, etc., so increased metabolism was there. Once again, there’s no real magic at work - everything that goes in will be metabolized, excreted, or stored as fat. Maybe I was excreting a meaningful amount… Yet we’re evolutionarily geared toward food shortages, rather than an excess of food - hard for me to believe we don’t store almost all the excess.

However, I do agree that it’s not necessarily a linear thing as far as intake/weight change, since there indeed is some adaptation. As far as excretion, I’ve read that when we are not eating or eating very little, the surface area of the small intestine increases, making for the greater absorption, as with your example of eating a whole pizza versus fasting for 5 days then eating one piece. Yet I’ve never seen a study saying that we excrete a really substantial amount even when eating massively.

On the non-linearity of things, I tried an online resting metabolism calculator. Going from 300 lbs to 600 didn’t double the resting metabolism, while going to 700 lbs did.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #638

I imagine that eventually the body would rebel, and you’d start gagging at the sight of food.

Did he gain muscle or fat on the SAD diet? It confuses the issue when people refer to “weight” as though it’s all the same. What I want to lose is fat; my weight can do whatever it wants.

And Feltham’s weight gain was muscle, not fat, according to his DEXA scan.

BTW, according to Feltham’s article, he was cleared of Hodgkin’s disease and hasn’t been in treatment since. I also don’t know of any mechanism of how Hodgkin’s disease could affect appetite, since it is a lymphatic cancer, and the lymph cells don’t secrete hormones, or so I understand.

(bulkbiker) #639

But if you watch the series he clearly states that he’s not working out so much due to his recording everything in the videos he’s making…and he finds it quite hard to eat all the required food.

(Consensus is Politics) #640

That’s an easy one. I’m over weight, under weight, and everywhere in between, until I step on the scale and look at it. :sunglasses:

(Scott) #641

But seriously folks…I’ll be here all week.