Fast Answer to the CICO Contingent


(karen) #1

When discussing keto diet with people, even rational people who don’t start screaming about how I’m killing myself eventually come to their trump card: “but in the end, CICO.”

A few months ago I was one of those people. Now, I want to say, 'Not really, the body treats carbs very differently than it treats fat, especially once it is carb deprived and becomes more efficient at using fat for energy."

Do you have a quicker, snappier or perhaps more scientifically to-the-point response?


(German Ketonian) #2

You body does not know what a calorie is but does business with hormonal reactions to food. Carbs activate insulin, the storage hormone, whereas fats do not (i know this is oversimplified). Thus, the whole idea of calories are the wrong “unit of measurement”. The hormonal reaction and the opened “gate” (storage versus consumption) is more decisive than energy density. Period.


(karen) #3

I’ve also thought something along the lines of,

“well, you can’t gain more weight than the combined total of what you eat, drink, breathe and absorb through your skin. However, how much of that weight you keep is all about how your body processes those things, and it processes carbs and fat very differently.”


(Randy) #4

I tell people to search “Jason Fung” and “obesity” on YouTube. If they’re not interested in putting in a little time to learn, fuck 'em.


(karen) #5

Yah, but I’m thinking more of my Mom. Don’t want to fuck her, in any sense of the word. :open_mouth:

Just basically looking for something super simple to say that makes things other than CICO seem potentially plausible.


#6

I’m still in the CICO camp. I can’t do Keto as “all the fat and protein you can eat”. I have to restrict my calories. Otherwise, I could easily add thousands and thousands of calories per day of sausage, bacon, cheese, and butter to my meals.

I used to joke that I could turn a 60-calorie veggie side dish into a 700-calorie one by adding “just a little” butter and cheese.

If the body is using fat more efficiently, it just means I’m accumulating excess calories more quickly when I eat a lot of fat. But, yes, carbs work differently. For me, the important dynamic is that eating carbs increased my urges to binge, while Keto does not. So I end up with fewer calories.

My biggest problem is that 5 decades of bad eating habits means my eyes still do my meal preparation. Not my gut. I do better when I weigh and track everything I eat. But that’s such a pain. And I’m inherently lazy.


(karen) #7

Oh, I know. I start my cauliflower by sauteing garlic and a bit of mushroom in a lovely pool of butter, and sometimes … the cauliflower doesn’t make it in there at all. :slight_smile:

You’re right, “efficient” isn’t the word I want. Maybe more like “burning fat rather than storing it.” - I realize this isn’t what you’re saying, just trying to work out my own thoughts on the process.


(Jay AM) #8

Whatever you say probably won’t change someone’s mind honestly. Even here in the forums people still cling to CICO. “If I ate to satiety, I’d be able to eat forever.” This is fat to satiety, not protein which is the example food the other person usually gives, a high protein one.

When I try to explain it, I don’t explain CICO. I explain insulin in basic terms as well as how the body uses fuel. It gets a little long but includes examples.

The first thing your body burns off above all else is alcohol because it’s toxic in high amounts, the next is glucose for similar reasons. If you look at a SAD fancy breakfast, you’ll have a mimosa or champagne, pancakes with syrup, orange juice, toast, hash browns, eggs, bacon. Your body has to go through the alcohol first, sugar second. So, it’s working through this glucose and the bacon and eggs are waiting their turn but, before you get to them BAM lunch time. You eat a sandwich, chips, and a coke. More carbs to work through. Eventually the fattier foods will break down and be shuttled right to storage because carbs are first. So, working along and here’s dinner. Steak, mashed potatoes, flour gravy, maybe you eat a side of broccoli to be “healthy.” More carbs to work through, more food to store from before that you never got to. It’ll store anything extra because it has to until it can get to it. If we spend all day eating carbs, carbs, carbs we never get through them. Our blood glucose stays high. If blood glucose is high, so is insulin. If insulin is high, so is fat storage.

I actually just went through this with my own mom. She secretly went keto a month ago but still refuses to eat more. So now she has low energy and hunger problems.


(Alec) #9

My answer: you are absolutely right, it is CICO. You can easily measure calories in, but how do you measure calories out? This is the key: if you starve your body of calories it will reduce its use of calories, and then your weight loss plan of eating less calories doesn’t work. So what should you do? Eat more calories (in fat with low insulin response), and the body will use them to repair everything in sight, and you will feel great!


(Doug) #10

One big advantage of a ketogenic diet is that it usually increases insulin sensitivity. When insulin resistance is a problem, the body will be in “energy storage” mode versus “using energy normally” mode more than if insulin levels were normal, even on the same amount of calories.

So, energy is diverted to storage, rather than to satisfy cellular energy needs, and some cells are deprived and we feel more hungry. We usually end up eating more at this point.


(karen) #11

I love this summary, but it kind of begs the question. :frowning: If you’re taking in the same number of calories but they’re from fat, then your body just has to work through a different kind of macro. Using your example, if you eat a fancy keto breakfast of bpc, three avocados, four eggs, a side of cheesy cauliflower swimming in butter and six rashers of bacon, you start the process of dealing with fat much sooner, but you have way more fat to deal with overall. Here comes lunch and your body hasn’t finished using up the fat, it gets shuttled right down to storage, right?

(I know, ‘eating to satiety’ you’d be unlikely to eat that much or want any lunch, but the point of a CICO argument has to assume the same number of calories in. If you assume you’ll eat fewer calories overall with keto than sweet carbs, then the answer is “well, less energy in so of course less energy out”, which basically supports the CICO theory.)


(Alec) #12

Yes, this. But the issue here is what conclusion does the CICO theory normally lead to without understanding the insulin hypothesis? It leads people (and the so-called experts) to assume calories out are fixed, and therefore they can lose weight by decreasing calories in and doing exercise.

As Jason Fung says a lot in his book: It. Just. Does. Not. Work.


(Jay AM) #13

But, your body isn’t going into emergency overdrive shut down everything until the fatty foods are dealt with. It converts them to useable energy, mitochondrial activity in the cells increases to utilize them. It’s much more tolerant of ketones in the blood in high amounts where glucose and alcohol aren’t tolerated that way. So, it simply processes them into BHB (the storage ketone mostly) and uses as needed. We never need alcohol or glucose.


(Monica Piccirillo) #14

Perfect comment! Total agreement!


(karen) #15

Now That is an awesome CICO argument. I don’t know if my mom knows mitochondria from midichlorians, but yeah! I mean, Somewhere along the line thermodynamics come into play, but if your body is somehow burning up that energy, if there’s a greater exchange of calories for some form of mass or energy or another, whether it’s more CO2 or water excreted, or heat or motion produced (even if that’s on a cellular or biochemical level), then we don’t “lose” mass/energy, we convert some calories into a different (“extra”) form of energy with fat than carbs. Even if our production of BHB is a more energy intensive process than converting and storing excess glucose, it would explain how we’re “honoring CICO” at the same time we’re also not keeping as much weight on a keto diet.


(Alec) #16

But keto is absolutely NOT this.

It is medium protein (you know the guidelines), and fat to satiety. Now, if your body does not do satiety well, you are probably right to count calories. But normally satiety is the best way to tell whether your body needs more or less calories.


(Jay AM) #17

I should also add that the body will remove at least some excess ketones through waste systems. But, it can do that with glucose sometimes too. I’m not sure what the upper limit is but, it seems like a last resort or we’d not have problems like high blood sugar.


(Karen) #18

Let me know how CICO works out for you. I might be interested. Please explain how it works. I think it might rain…(,polite smile)

K


(TJ Borden) #19

That’s exactly what keto ISN’T.

What part of:

  • 20 grams or less of net carbs
  • moderate protein scaled to lean body mass
  • fat to satiety

Suggests all you the fat and protein you can eat?

Satiety isn’t the same thing as stuffing as much as you can down your gullet. I started keto at nearly 500lbs, so I KNOW that style of eating very well, and satiety kicks in long before the 5th trip to the buffet.


(Joy) #20

I’m still pondering the most effective explanations for all things keto, but along this line of CICO, I’m thinking some of the words involved might be:

Food is turned into nutrients, energy, and chemical messengers for use throughout the entirety of one’s body. Most of us remain unaware of the nutritive and hormonal triggers for storage and release of energy. A study of keto goes a long way in explaining the orchestration of this complex system.