Amen 
I thinks it’s great & possibly helpful that people share the info on what works for them but these threads often run so long I do wonder how many people read through the whole thing anyway.
EDIT TO ADD: I heard a saying today - ‘success leaves clues’ & I think the same can be said of failure. The CICO model doesn’t work long term. Short term? Sure & that’s how I use it. Long term it’s proved to be a failure.
No, that’s actually the standard average caloric level for men. In our calorie-conscious world, that is often forgotten.
The key word is “want.” We are talking about eating fat to satiety, not cramming fat in our gullets until our stomachs are about to burst—even if that were possible (very few people could even try, without getting badly nauseated in the process).
Since it contains twice the calorie count, fat is far more satisfying than carbohydrate. And that is not even taking account of the effect of elevated insulin in blocking leptin from reaching the hypothalamus. @richard’s new book is called Why Is the Fat Man Hungry? in which he discusses all this. He also has a preliminary lecture with the same title, available on YouTube, that gives the highlights of the biological mechanisms involved.
Also, you have to allow for a certain amount of hyperbole, given the climate of fat-fear in which we all live. Getting people over their indoctrination against saturated fat takes a bit of doing.
But don’t you think eating 4000-6000 kcals a day had to be past the satiety signals? They were overeating experiments after all.
This topic is important I think because old threads get buried and there’s still confusion about the “eating at a deficit” concept. I think it’s something people starting out need to understand that there’s a difference between restricting food intake and dialing back on fat some once adaptation has taken place. I don’t think eating at a deficit is clearly understood and it should come naturally and not by our conscious limitation. I was confused by information I got here on the forum and felt it was an important topic to chew on with people now. It has proven to be a popular debate thread so it got longer than I thought it would, but I still find it interesting. 
For most people, certainly. We know that eating past satiety is doable, up to a point. There have been many overfeeding studies, in which people forced themselves to eat quanitites of meat. Though in one such study, a participant reportedly broke down in tears at one point, faced with the prospect of “just one more pork chop.”
Of course, there are outliers. The guy in the weight-loss study who lost weight while eating 3000 calories ad libitum is one such.
According to the US Gov. Dietary Guidelines ‘moderately active’ 71-75 aged male estimated caloric requirement is 2200. ‘Active’ it’s 2600 and at the age of 76 drops to 2400.
Moderately Active means a lifestyle that includes physical activity equivalent to walking about 1.5 to 3 miles per day at 3 to 4 miles per hour, in addition to the activities of independent living.
Active means a lifestyle that includes physical activity equivalent to walking more than 3 miles per day at 3 to 4 miles per hour, in addition to the activities of independent living.
‘Moderately Active’ better describes me. Since getting my daily calories up to 2500 about 4-5 months after starting keto, I’ve been above the average for my age to maintain. Also, I’m eating ginger root again and as I’ve noted, it seems to accelerate my metabolism a bit. But I’m still unclear how much and whether it’s really significant. My recent test here did not indicate much at all.
What it was before keto I don’t know because I never thought about it. But during the last 2-3 years on SAD I did put on that extra 30-35 pounds I shed when I went keto.
Why does it require calculating it exactly? Would it disprove keto if you can’t tell me exactly how many carbs would knock me out of ketosis?
We do know that if you eat too few calories consistently, you’ll continue to lose weight until your body fails, and if you eat too many calories consistently, you’ll continue to gain weight until your body fails.
From that perspective, we know CICO does matter. Like any “rule of thumb”, it has its flaws. We also know that the body can make adaptations, just like it does with almost any change.
The devil is in the details.
Yup. Calories really aren’t the defining measure, because it is more complex than that. You can also die from getting too few or too many of the wrong calories. But, again, we can’t measure it exactly.
Can you tell me a simple measure that is exact?
Both keto and CICO fail to lose weight and keep it off for the vast majority of people that start using them to lose weight. If you could even get people to agree on what the rules of keto are. It’s disciples are about as varied as those of any religion. Keto varies depending on which temple echo chamber you visit, even to the point where some people get banned from some because they preach different views.
And, in the end, even being in ketosis is not a guarantee of weight loss, which is why I complained about the subject of the thread earlier. Which way are you going to lose weight – eating at a deficit or eating at a surplus? I have to actively restrict intake of my favorite foods – bacon, sausage, cheese, butter. I can guarantee I’d gain back all the weight I lost if I let those go unchecked, even though I’d be in ketosis the whole time.
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@OgreZed Because CICO claims that exact calories in and exact calories out is the only calculation that matters. All one must do is prove that claim wrong.
No matter how smart a person is, no matter how elegant their hypothesis, if it does not agree with experimentation, it is wrong. Richard Feynman, 1964, the key to science.
You reckon?.. I think we see far more success stories on keto and low carb diets with people maintaining weight loss for years…at least that is my experience.
If it’s so awful being in the echo chamber then why bother posting at all?
I think if KETO is used merely as a weight loss scheme and people return to SAD @OgreZed is correct. Staying at 1200 kcals is never sustainable for people who use pure CICO either. The answer of course is keto for life as I believe @MarkGossage is implying. This isn’t a diet but a lifestyle when used properly because I believe it’s how our bodies are designed to function optimally. That’s where success is.
Such a claim is wrong.
Anyone that claims that keto’s “20 net carbs” is the only calculation that matters for weight loss is also wrong.
But if I took normal-weight quintuplets that matched up in every way, then fed them diets varying from 1,000 to 5,000 calories per day for 3 months, and controlled everything else, how accurately do you think I could predict the direction of weight change for each of the five?
In the end, weight loss (or gain) will come down to the amount of [foods, calories, whatever] someone eats. A deficit means less than needed. A surplus means more than needed. The target amount cannot be exactly computed, and it will be a moving target.
Calories are one way to measure that intake. The simplest. But not without flaws. Some major flaws. But any time a model is simplified, flaws are introduced. Exceptions exist.
You want exact? I recently posted something on Reddit that complained about the keto calculator recommended in their FAQ. Its guesstimates of macros was outrageous. And I compared it to several other calculators. All gave different numbers. That doesn’t prove keto is wrong.
My experience as well. But I would bet the numbers for short-term failures aren’t significantly different between those that start out with keto, CICO, weight watchers, alcoholic anonymous, bariatric surgery, whatever. Say, 90 to 95%?
But, again, echo chamber.
I do multiple echo chambers.
I agree. In nearly five decades of trying to lose weight, I never lasted longer than 6 months on any other diet. I’m approaching 3 years on keto. Sustainability is a big factor for long term success. No diet can keep the weight off after going back to old habits.
When someone asks me about using keto short-term to lose weight, I tell them to find a way of eating that they can follow and get the results they want. If a way of eating can maintain weight loss after keto is done, it should be able to lose the weight in the first place without keto.
If your goal is death yes. If your goal if life + weight loss no. Until your body fails is long term. Weight loss via deficit is short term which hormones and matabolism adjust to limit. Much the same as when the body sees plenty, it adjusts so that matabolism is high. This is assuming that fat storage issue of high insulin is corrected.
CICO makes the claim that calories in and calories out is the only calculation that matters.
That is the problem with CICO.
Whatever keto claims or not, is not the point. We’re talking about the failure of CICO. And calories in and calories out is not the only calculation that matters. The different metabolic pathways of the various macros and the hormones and enzymes that process them also matter. CICO ignores them.
Yes. It adjusts. Always. CICO or Keto or whatever.
As I drop from my starting weight of 650 pounds to my goal weight of 240 pounds, do you think my keto macros will need to stay exactly the same?
My needs would change, so I would have to find the new deficit if I wanted to continue losing weight.
If you place a bubble around someone and measure energy enering the bubble and leaving the bubble a deficit will always be a deficit. Telling someone to enter the best guess of BMR + exercise and calculate a caloric deficit they are almost certain to fail. It is that there are so many confounding processes that a basic deficit calculation cannot account for. If you can eat surplus calories in a combo nation that excelerates matabolism and fat loss it is a win.
And you cite an article from Healthline? Do you agree with everything they claim on the keto diet? For example:
Standard ketogenic diet (SKD): This is a very low-carb, moderate-protein and high-fat diet. It typically contains 75% fat, 20% protein and only 5% carbs
Those ratios refer to calories. Oops.
I hate that “high-fat” description. My pre-keto diet was far higher in grams of fat. It was one reason I gained weight. My need for proteins is not a percentage of caloric intake.
As I see it, the need for proteins is the most objective of the three macros?
But once I define my protein needs in grams (and thus calories), the 75/20/5 would define my fat and carb macros, in both grams and calories. So, ultimately, still a total target based on calories.
And, like I said, most people on keto modify carbs even further, because there are differences between grams of starch, sugar, sugar alcohols, allulose, soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, …, of which that article makes little or no mention.
Stop obfuscating the issue. CICO claims that calories in and calories out is the only calculation that matters. Period. That’s false.
I saw a great video recently with Dr. Eenfeldt, in which he talks about the sustainability of keto, and how unfair people think it is that if you stop eating keto, you gain back the fat and damage your metabolism all over again.
He then talks about this technique he recently learned about called “showering,” which gets you really clean. But it’s no more sustainable than keto is, because as soon as you stop doing it, you start to get dirty all over again. 
So how, exactly, does this match up with Dr. Fung’s assertion that nutrition is a two-compartment problem, so that the real issue is food partitioning, not caloric intake? And Prof. Bikman’s description of ways in which the metabolism can increase as caloric intake increases, especially in the matter of adipose coupling and uncoupling? I just don’t see things being as simple as you present them.
After all, we don’t gain our adult stature and musculature by deciding to start eating a lot of food, once we reach our teens. We end up eating a lot of food, because our hormones are causing us to grow. No sane person ever claimed that the pubertal growth spurt was caused by eating too many calories.