Can someone tell me if my thoughts are correct on CICO

[anon54735292]

So how did they manage to lose weight

Again, seriously? They starved themselves.

People are acknowledging that weight can be lost through deliberate calorie restriction - they’re saying it’s not a good, long term strategy.

[mememe]

What about the millions (I’m making up that number) of people who have lost weight and kept it off with Weight Watchers and slimming world etc?

I personally know of loads of people in that group. How did they manage it with CICO? To suggest that it doesn’t work long term is simply wrong. It is far more likely that the people who regained their weight, did so, because they started eating poorly again.

[RobC]

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.

This sounds similar to what doctors say - it is a willpower problem. I think not, I think that people, once they have lost weight, want to keep if off. The point is that most do not know they have damaged their metabolism. They do not know that with their slowed metabolism eating even 70 or 80% of what they used to eat will add weight. It just creeps back up because they did not solve their hormonal problems (get their insulin down and keep it low) - so in fact, made things worse for their long term outcome.

Back to the CICO issue - CICO implies meal timing, macro breakdown, food effects on hormones and many other keto ideals are irrelevant. Writing “calories matter” implies calories matter and not all of these other things (and it does not trigger people that know better). Healthy debate is great but triggered responses just turn into arguments.

[anon54735292]

What about the millions (I’m making up that number) of people who have lost weight and kept it off with Weight Watchers and slimming world etc?

The success rate is apparently about 5%. The return business is the business.

[mememe]

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.

… … (congratulations by the way) … …

Thanks. I really needed to lose weight

[OldDoug]

The success rate (for Weight Watchers) is apparently about 5%. The return business is the business .

From their own figures, I’ve read it is only 0.5%

[anon54735292]

From their own figures, I’ve read it is only 0.5%

Crikey! No wonder they’re raking it in

[cw2001]

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?

So you don’t make the distinction between a healthy, sustainable weight loss and just cutting calories to lose weight no matter the cost? We’re not talking about someone’s ability to starve themselves to thinness. Sure that works…until they start EATING again.

[juice]

So you don’t make the distinction between a healthy, sustainable weight loss and just cutting calories to lose weight no matter the cost? We’re not talking about someone’s ability to starve themselves to thinness. Sure that works…until they start EATING again.

It’s the easy way to make arguments that aren’t impacted by real-world considerations.

[cw2001]

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.

They go back to the way they used to eat because they believed CICO. By trying to lose weight by restricting calories, they’re hungry all the time. And for every bit of weight they lose, they need to restrict more. Less weight to move around, means less energy needed. They might finally hit goal and then find that almost ANY increase in calories means a weight gain…so realize that to MAINTAIN that weight, they have to eat the same restricted number of calories for the rest of their lives. No wonder CICO fails.

[Robert_Johnson]

I did say won’t lose weight by lowering calorie intake unless they did it in the extreme. I gave the example of 50%. Maybe it’s more than that, maybe it’s less. That was an example. Starvation would be another example. Eating disorders another extreme example.

Even when fasting, weight loss isn’t immediate. I just finished a 72 hour fast. The thermostat in the house says it was 75 degrees. I felt like it was 60. Normally, I want to keep the house at 70 or below when it’s cold out. I’m used to always being hot. When I fast, I get cold, and lose very little weight. I do however lose weight for the next few days after I begin feeding again. Anyone else experience that? A weight loss delay when fasting?

[Ketosong]

Congratulations first. That’s is a great accomplishment!

I do have a question… if you’re doing keto, why do you keep your total daily calorie so low? Do you happen to know what your TDEE is? This is sort of what I’m afraid of becasue I would die if I had to limit my daily calorie to only 1000… my TDEE is 1900 on a sedanitary day and 2400 on days I workout which is 4-5 days a week. I have to eat at least 2K a day. Some days I know I eat close to 3K… but have been losing weight still through weekly fasting 2-3 days a week.

Do you feel you can continue 1000 calorie days for the long run?

[OldDoug]

This (not burning all the calories we consume) is the fallacy of the calories in calories out argument. The problem comes when we try to explain the reverse of this the same way. Eat less, move around more, burn more calories than you take in, lose weight. But that doesn’t work.

Robert, I think that is ‘denying the premise,’ i.e. it does work if it’s as stated - if we’re burning more than we take in. That there are other factors at work, hormonal things for one, does not change that.

Honestly, in the end - if it maintained - if we all burned more than we take in - we’d all lose weight. It’s of course a great and incorrect oversimplification to say that “CICO is the end-all of everything in the diet realm.” Yet it’s just as incorrect to say that “CICO is wrong,” or that “CICO is necessarily flawed.”

It’s (around here) an old argument, but it seems that many people on both sides insist on taking an over-simplified view of things, as if with a ‘bumper-sticker’ mentality. Of course CICO is not all there is to consider (I will massively testify to that). And of course there is nothing wrong with CICO if we acknolwedge that the “Out” side of the equation can be altered due to metabolic changes (which may be related to the “In” portion) , and that it includes not just calories burned but those excreted and stored as fat.

[Robert_Johnson]

Doug, I 100% agree. I was trying to point out (unsuccessfully it seems) that the calories out isn’t a constant. It has many variables. Only one variable we can actually control, exercise, and for most of us that’s only a few hundred at most. Not counting marathon runners, et.al… just us

[cw2001]

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

CICO does NOT work. I’m not asking you to change your belief just because I don’t like it. LOL I’m asking you to RECONSIDER your belief because there’s a hell of a lot of statistics that show that calorie restrictive diets do NOT work in the long-term. Yes, you can lose weight that way…it’s just not sustainable.

If a newbie doesn’t recognize their own satiety signals, there’s probably a valid reason for that…they’ve lived their life trying to FIT into the calorie calculators, the food pyramid, the 3 meals per day dogma and they’ve lost any real connection to what it means to eat according to what their bodies need. So I would say that, even if it meant originally OVER eating, yes, let them eat to figure out what satiety means. By suggesting that they still have to live life following the macro counters and such, it just continues the abnormal behaviors that probably contributed to being fat in the first place.

Congrats on the weight loss! 61 lbs in less than 4 months is great! Do you mind if I ask if you’re male or female? How many times have you lost that 60 lbs? I think it’s ironic that you say CICO works, but you lost weight following a KETOGENIC diet. Yes I understand that you still restricted calories but you didn’t feel hungry all the time. A truly CICO diet ignores hunger and just emphasizes calories…which you’re NOT doing, and yet you’re determined CICO works. huh.

And last…again, saying that you’d die without eating calories is just not true. You could eat lots and lots of calories by eating nothing but wood and you’d die. You can eat no calories, fast for 300+ days, and survive just fine (the longest fasting record is 382 days, I think?). It’s so much MORE complex than saying “calories matter.”

[PaulL]

I understand what you’re saying about calories mattering, but I think it’s wrong to put such an emphasis on them.

As Dr. Westman likes to say, “Calories do count—but we shouldn’t count them.”

[Robert_Johnson]

And to think just two years ago I was firmly in the CICO move around more eat less camp.

Back around 2013 I tried Keto as an experiment. I had heard Steve Gibson talk about it. At the time I didn’t know it as keto, just low carb high fat. I also called it a cave man diet or paleo. To me it was just the removal of refined carbs only. I lost about 20 pounds in a month and kept it off for three months. For me this was just a faddish thing. A cool science experiment that could cause me to pee nail polish remover (acetone). I soon tired of it and wanted my pizza and pasta back.

If I had heard anyone saying the same things I say now, I would probably just stayed away and ignored it as just another fad. Luckily I stayed out of the forums like this or reddit, where the trolls were hanging out. Lucky because once I was diagnosed with Type 2 DM I began thinking to myself (after 6 weeks of failed ADA high carb diet for diabetics, criminal I say) what if I went ketogenic again? Would that help stabilize my BG? Did it ever and then some.

I hence have changed my mind on many things based on getting the science on the subjects. I had my own ideas. They didn’t always match the science. In most cases what I beleived, was because I beleived those who were experts. Surely they didn’t have an agenda. I’m looking at Dr Keys. Indeed I too beleived fat was bad for us. Carbs were essential, seeing as we burned sugar for energy. Indeed many changes.

Just saying we need to see the real science on these things to make our minds up. Arguing over the science should be where we spend the energy, not bickering between ourselves, as typical humans do.

[Robert_Johnson]

[H3ath3r]

From what I head from 2keto dudes podcast I think short term cico can make a difference but long term you can up your calorie intake to 3,500 with sedentary lifestyle and your metabolic rate will adapt and you may have even more energy. It’s very unhealthy to have a deficit.

[OldDoug]

I got to thinking (can you smell the smoke) while I was logging my food into My Fitness Pal about how many calories I had eaten and the great CICO debate. Is the reason they really don’t matter is because when I consume something high in sugar/carbs, the body produces insulin and thus stores it as excess body fat.

Calories do matter. To demean ‘CICO’ is just blaming the messenger - hey, if your weight is going one way or another, there is a caloric explanation behind it. It equates to grams (or other mass measurement) of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Nobody (I hope) is going to say that those three and the differences between them don’t matter. CICO does not say that a calorie of carbs is necessarily the same in effect as one of fats or proteins - it’s not making any hormonal judgments or predictions, and those do (obvious to most everybody here) have important effects.

If your body is metabolically healthy, i.e. not insulin resistant here, it’s not going to make much of a difference if you eat something high in carbs. Insulin resistance is a constant factor that leads to higher average blood sugar and blood insulin levels, and which indeed can have the body more in ‘storing fat’ mode versus ‘burning fat’ or ‘burning up calories for energy versus storing them’ in general.

But when I eat very little carbs and almost no suger, but healthy fats no insulin spike occur’s and the fat is not stored. Am I thinking right or out in left field?

It’s a long-term thing, not just on the basis of one meal, for example. You are right that very low carb means less of an insulin spike, but again - maybe this matters and maybe not - depending on your insulin sensitivity. If insulin sensitivity is a problem (if you are insulin resistant), then you stand to gain from eating very low-carb. This is no indictment of CICO, it’s just reflective of the difference that hormonal response can make, altering the “Out” portion of CICO.