Can someone tell me if my thoughts are correct on CICO

(Justin Jordan) #61

Well, no. That’s clearly not what he’s saying.

What he IS saying is that you can’t consume infinite keto calories and not expect to gain weight. Saying that calories matter does not imply all calories matter equally, or any of a thousand straw men.

Alex’s 10,000 calories from fat experiment has several possible outcomes:

1 - He can’t do it. He just can’t eat that much without getting sick and not being able to keep down.

2 - He can’t absorb. He poops out some amount of fat, undigested.

3 - He compensates by ramping up metabolism to 10,000 calories or more per day.

4 - He gains weight.

3 is certainly possible, but it’s probably the least likely outcome. But IF you can absorb the calories, there will be a level at which activity and metabolism can’t compensate.

Metabolisms are adaptive, within limits that vary. There absolutely are people for whom you need to ramp up 10,000 calories to gain weight. It’s not, from overfeeding studies, a lot of people.

I can tell you, with absolute certainty because I have actually done it, that I can maintain a 280 pound body eating just unprocessed meat. And that to lose weight I need to consciously look at consumption.

That doesn’t mean everyone does.

There’s the pretty reasonable argument that CICO doesn’t work IN THE LONG TERM.Then there’s the patently ridiculous one, which has come up in this thread, that it doesn’t work in the short term. It does.

(Justin Jordan) #62

We do love to dance on the third rail, don’t we?

(Consensus is Politics) #63

Ok. Let me clarify here to the best of my ability without getting verbose it going off track.

Lowering calorie intake will not make you lose weight. Unless you lower it by extreme amounts. By extreme I talking 50% or more.

Lowering your energy intake does not guarantee a loss in weight. Your body will compensate for the loss of energy by just slowing down. Lowering its BMR. Not doing it’s normal repairs that it otherwise would do on a full tank. @gabe as much as you hate hearing CICO doesn’t matter, that’s they way I feel about people comparing it to thermodynamics. Sure, calories referred to a certain amount of energy, but has nothing to do with thermodynamics unless you are using the calorie energy units to calculate heating a vessel of water in a vacuum chamber and you want to calculate how long it takes to cook off while it sits next to a sun lamp.

That said, if you went from 2,000 calories to 1,500 calories, and the 500 calories you cut out were pure carbs, THEN I would agree some weight loss would be in your future. Assuming of course you were over weight.

Yes, eat more fat. Until satiated. Don’t force yourself to eat. There is a reason your body wants you to stop. Listen to it.

(Cindy) #64

That! Exactly. @Gabe, I have to ask…have you tried losing weight JUST by using CICO? And if so, when and how many times? Saying calories 100% matter, again, can go back to the fuel efficiency of a car. Using that analogy, if I know my truck averages 15mile/gallon, and if it has a 30 gal tank, then I’m positive I can travel 450 miles on a tank, right? Well, no. Let me load up my trailer with horses, drive over a mountain, sit in stalled traffic for a while, etc. and see just what happens.

There are simply too many variables to a calorie…where calories are coming from, how the person metabolizes them, etc, so that the unit of measure essentially becomes USELESS.
What I would NOT argue is that it matters how YOUR body processes the food you take in. Higher/lower metabolisms, other metabolic issues, male vs female, activity levels, age, etc, ALL play a role.

So when you say “Calories 100% matter”, that leads people to believe that if they stick to X number of calories based upon some stupid calculator, they’ll gain or lose weight by X amount each week. And when that doesn’t happen, it leads to frustration AND blaming the individual.

When I lost 85 lbs and kept it off for about 10yrs, I was eating 500-600 cal/day…EVERY DAMN DAY. It wasn’t specifically keto, but it was “protein and veg first, carb only if there’s room after.” I was working out 5-6 times a week, multiple times per day (personal trainer 3x/week, karate 4-5x/week, horse back riding 2-3x/week…and near the end of that year, I was also training for my black belt, so it included 3 hrs EVERY day of running, forms, kicks, forms, etc). I would get dizzy during workouts, had anemia by the end of the year…but YES, CICO worked! Hoorah! How much damage do you think I did to my metabolism in that year?

So for a KETO board, considering that calories are very much a part of the CICO philosophy that’s been predominate in the nutrition/weight loss world, I think it’s important to focus on energy needs vs some random caloric number.

Again, a calorie is "the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C " A piece of wood has calories, horse poop has calories…why are we still using that as a way of determining energy needs for a system that’s as complex as the human body?

(Robert C) #65

Exactly! That is exactly correct - calories in some way matter.

Maybe it is 70% calories and 30% hormones that determines final storage.

Maybe it is 90% calories and 10% hormones that determines final storage.

(Depending on the person.)

But - my point was - that it is definitely not 100% calories and 0% hormones that determines final storage.

Pure calories-in-calories-out and / or if-it-fits-your-macros statements can be very misleading (and disheartening) - especially in a forum where people are trying to manipulate and leverage the XX% hormone contribution to fat storage.

#66

Not really sure where to start with this Cindy. I have NEVER said that CICO is the only way or even that it’s the most important thing in weight loss. I have ALWAYS maintained that CICO works and as such, calories do matter. The vast majority of my posts about CICO here, have been in reply to those who claim that either CICO doesn’t work or that calories don’t matter.

I’m sorry my beliefs on CICO upset you (I genuinely am), but I’m not going to change my belief just because you don’t like it.

There is a definite stigma on this forum, for anyone who dares to point out that calories matter. Most of this stigma is coming from people who just don’t understand it (in my opinion). Then they start telling everyone that calories don’t matter, just eat to satiety. This is a load of [spoiler]crap[/spoiler] and can derail a newbies efforts, if they don’t recognise satiety when they feel it (which a hell of a lot of fat people can’t). It can lead to over eating and weight loss failure.

As for my own keto dieting, I started keto this time around, on 13th August this year. I started at 239lbs, and Monday this week, I weighed in at 178. A loss of 61lbs. I have done this through strict keto. <20g carbs (normally 8 - 9g), protein approx. 30%, fat approx. 65% and calories av approx. 1000 (varing from 700 -1400). The protein and fat were not designed to be at those levels, that’s just where they fell. I am very rarely hungry, but I am very often freezing cold. Here is my loss chart
image

Oh and, you might insist that ‘calories are useless’ but without them, you will die.

#67

Ah Gabe, thanks for adding to the debate. You have put it better than I have.

#68

This is my problem with you Rob. You are very quick to pick up on people who talk about CICO mattering or calories absolutely matter but, when people (many of them) say calories don’t matter or CICO doesn’t work, I don’t see you fighting them with as much vigour. 1 of the above statements is true, but you’d never know which one if you believe what most say here.

CICO is a very simple term used to mean the difference between calories consumed and calories burned. If anyone thinks this doesn’t matter, they will probably fail.

(Robert C) #69

Trying to clarify again - CICO implies you could have done the same weight loss (congratulations by the way) by eating the same number of calories in chocolate cake. But you know you cannot. You leveraged keto to some extent - for fat burn and satiety signaling (which you won’t get with chocolate cake). So, again, rethink the CICO usage considering it is such a loaded term.

(Justin Jordan) #70

This just isn’t true. There are literally millions of people who’ve done it, and there probably hundreds of studies where you can see people losing at much smaller deficits. Some people can’t lose weight with small deficits. Most can.

This is different than being able to keep it off.

(Running from stupidity) #71

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That way you’ll be able to post without the dogmatic misinformation.

Pot, meet kettle.

And the wrong emphasis as well, by using the term CICO simply because it’s a trigger.

If you’ve got time to type out a post, you’ve got time to read the thread.

And that’s the key. It all depends on what you mean by “losing.” People can “lose weight” by taking a big dump in the mornings. However, it’s not a viable long-term strategy.

(Robert C) #72

I am trying to get CICO out and get people to state what they mean.

Calories matter little if they are coming from healthy fat, your stress is low, your sleep is on point and you are completely fat adapted. People in this situation can down lots of high fat food calories with little or no gain.

Calories matter a lot if you are a newbie, not fat adapted, stressed etc. so, it might not be good to go overboad on calories, add fasting too quickly (another stressor), have cheat days (putting off being fat adapted) etc.

#73

This idea that lowering calorie intake will not make you lose weight because your body will compensate for the loss of energy by just slowing down our metabolism, is at best very misleading.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that the body can’t slow down it’s metabolism, we all know it can. However, to suggest that this means you won’t lose weight is ridiculous. If this were true, all anorexic, bulimic and genuinely starved people, would never get skinny. Let me ask you all, do you know of many fat anorexic people? Surely most of them are fat, because our bodies will stop weight loss by slowing down our metabolism right?

Does that sound like a load of [spoiler]shit[/spoiler] to anyone else, or is it just me?

(Running from stupidity) #74

It sounds vastly over-simplified and extreme, not to mention short-term, which makes it pointless and counter-productive in a real-world setting such as a ketogenic forum.

(Robert C) #75

In the past 40 years literally millions of people have lost significant weight by restricting calories.
The weight for the vast majority has come back on - and more due to slowed metabolism.
The long game is what counts - short term weight loss accomplished by damaging metabolism is likely not a good long term solution.

#76

Rob, I think to suggest that most people regain the weight because of their metabolism is knackered, is being a little generous to them.

In my experience, most regain their weight because they simply go back to the way they used to eat, and pile the weight back on, in the same way they did before.

#77

I know fat former anorexics & fitness models. They can gain weight on few calories due to years of severe calorie restriction.

#78

Great but, not what was asked.

#79

Well of course there are no fat anorexics - I mean seriously :roll_eyes:

#80

Exactly my point. So how did they manage to lose weight (albeit involuntarily) when people here maintain that they WON’T lose weight if they restrict they’re calories, because their body will slow their metabolism down?

This notion, whilst not strictly untrue, is so misleading, it’s ridiculous.