Fat loss on CICO?


(Genevieve Biggs) #1

Someone I’ve just introduced to Keto has still be limiting calories to about 1200/day, and asked why she wasn’t losing weight. I told her to eat more because CICO does not work on Keto. Which made me wonder:

What is the functionality of weightloss/fatloss on CICO? I know that people do lose weight on it, but how if they aren’t entering lypolisis and ketogenesis? My brain can’t comprehend anything not Keto anymore.

Thanks!


Tell me, once more it isn't about calories
How Does Our Body Lose Weight Without the Ketogenic Diet?
#2

I lost weight on CICO before keto several times. I was combining calorie restriction with 2-3 hour cardio sessions and getting a 500-1000 calorie deficit most days. I was tired, hungry, miserable, and all the weight came back when I would inevitably go off the “diet”. I’m sure my metabolism was royally screwed up from all the yo-yoing.

So it’s not that you can’t lose weight by CICO that makes it a bad idea, it’s that you end up making things worse in the long run. [And the fat is burned in conjunction with the carbs, which makes it a really slow process.]


(Ross Daniel) #3

If you read Gary Taube’s “Good Calories, Bad Calories” he runs through the extensive history in weight loss and obesity research. The gist is, which is shown in study after study with both animals and humans, your body is “deranged” in how in uses and stores energy. Hormones play a huge role. There are studies that show people on a starvation diet of something like 800 calories with macro ratios more like the SAD that lose a bit of weight but are miserable and even result in self mutilation in some of the studies, while another group eating closer to 2,000 but HFLC and they lose several times more weight and report not being hungry at all. This is shown over and over again throughout history, but is still largely ignored by the mainstream.

The argument that people like to use is the first law of thermodynamics and the conservation of energy, which is the basis for the CICO argument. The 30,000’ view is ultimately energy in and energy out. However, the problem is, the human body is not a closed system and variables are not indepent variables. This is to say that your body wants to be in homeostasis. So, if you have a derangement that affects how and where you store fat, if you simply reduce calories your body will respond by reducing your BMR to try and maintain your weight. Look at the article that @carolT posted above. This is why calorie reduction will “work” in the short term, but it will eventually snowball and your BMR will reduce far enough that you simply can’t stand to eat any less and then you get stuck, fall off the wagon and the weight comes back and since you temporarily slowed your BMR, often the weight comes back even more before you hit that level of homeostasis.

The opposite is true, if you are predisposed to being thin and try and gain a bunch of weight by eating in excess, your body will respond by increasing your BMR and your desire to burn more energy.

But like I said, hormones play a huge role, which is where the ketogenic and other low-carb diets come in. Insulin is the hormone most responsible for what your body does with its energy that you intake. So, when you reduce your insulin levels (by removing carbohydrates) but keep calories the same (by replacing the carbs with fat) your body is more or less forced into behaving “normally” because insulin isn’t there to bully your cells into storing that energy as fat. So, in the absence of excess insulin your body does the normal thing and increases your BMR when there is an excess of energy and vice versa.

Reduced calorie SAD won’t induce ketosis because the glucose levels and thus insulin levels are simply too high, so it will never work in the long term as a solution to weight loss unless the person is willing to be miserable and voraciously hungry all of the time.

I’m sure this was a gross oversimplification of how it all works, but it is how I’ve explained it to people who’ve asked me in the past and I think they were able to follow along, so I hope this helped!


Would you kindly help a newb out?
(Guardian of the bacon) #4

The theory behind CICO is that if energy consumed is lesser then energy expended you will lose weight no matter the source.


(Genevieve Biggs) #5

That does help, thank you. I guess I’m still wondering how people lose weight on CICO, if the BMR is changing, etc. for stability’s sake. Because I have lost weight on CICO, as other have, though it did not last long. But if your insulin is not going down because you’re still eating carbs, then how does anybody lose weight without reducing carbs? I even lost weight when I was vegan/vegetarian. How does that work?


(G. Andrew Duthie) #6

CICO doesn’t work, period. Yes, people lose weight over the short term. But caloric limitation reduces basal metabolic rate, and when you stop limiting calories, the weight comes back rapidly. Plus you feel like crap.

FWIW, there are many techniques that will work for losing weight in the short run. I had a period where I was just reducing portions, and measuring my food, and that moved the needle on weight significantly.

But the ONLY one that I’ve found that works consistently, and works to keep the weight off is Keto. And for me, at least, combined with IF and the occasional extended fast.


Hello! Ex-Atkins, new to KETO! Intro & questions
Lazy keto and weight loss
(Ross Daniel) #7

Well, you are simply “outrunning” your metabolism the way I look at it. So if you just reduce calories, but not the types of calories/macro balance, you are consuming less energy therefore you body tries to reach homeostasis by reducing your BMR. This doesn’t happen instantly and thus you can get ahead of it and cause your body to reduce weight, but while eating SAD and/or high carb, it is a poorly tuned loop and has a lot of what we call overshoot in controls engineering.

The weight you’d lose is not all necessarily fat weight either, your body will remove proteins as well to make up the difference. Things like your hair won’t grow as well/fast, nails, skin, if you go too low in calories you get other problems like women having no period, that sort of thing. You body has many ways it can reduce the amount of energy it requires.The ketogenic diet is known to be protein sparing, this is due in part to the fact that while not consuming many carbs and having lower insulin level our bodies properly utilize the fuel source: fat. Fat doesn’t cause that metabolic derangement.

Keto allows you to keep your BMR up, so in turn you burn more energy.


(Guardian of the bacon) #8

You can lose weight to a point on any diet. Most can lose some weight until they come up against their personal insulin base limit. Where that insulin set point is will depend a lot on how IR you are.

From what I have learned the only effective methods of moving the needle on your IR is to restrict carbs and to fast.


(Terri) #9

This is a great synopsis @rodan5150! Thank you for sharing it here.


(Ross Daniel) #10

Leptin also plays a role in this, it is sort of the “negative feedback” mechanism that your adipose tissue is supposed to excrete to let your body know you’re at the weight you need to be. Any derangement in your leptin sensitivity along with your insulin sensitivity like @jfricke mentioned above, will cause you to have weight issues. That whole control loop needs to be tuned and working well, but carbs like to get in there and gum up the works…


(Scott Shillady) #11

I think this blog post by :richard: explains the keto myth supperbly
What my dog taught me about CICO


#12

CICO does work, the problem is, you have to eat less and less to maintain the same deficit because you BMR keeps going down. Also, you are not addressing the metabolic and hormonal reasons that you are over weight.


(betsy.rome) #13

But if you eat keto to plan - 20 carbs or less, protein scaled to lean body mass - but eat too much fat (“to satiety”), it can stall you or make you gain, yes? Or will it rev the metabolism? Some folks have little to no functional stopping-mechanism to tell us when we hit satiety till it’s too late. (did I really eat all that?)


(G. Andrew Duthie) #14

To Sateity and “too much fat” are contradictory. Absent underlying issues that negatively affect hunger signaling, you should be sated before “too much” arrives. If there are issues relating to hunger signaling, those may require addressing separate from the question of macros, etc. and I would recommend working with your doctor or finding a decent endocrinologist if the issue is hormonal.


(Richard Morris) #15

I believe the reason why biggest loser dieters all yoyo’ed was because they are all probably hyperinsulinaemic. It’s highly unlikely that humans can get to be 300+ lbs without being insulin resistant. So these people make enough insulin to inhibit lipolysis if they eat carbs and protein.

What they do is they eat hypocaloric amounts of carbs and protein (low fat of course), and they increase their apparent exercise. This is the precise of Calories in: Calories out.

But they can’t use much stored energy (because they are hyperinsulinaemic and eating things that make them make even more insulin) and they have less energy coming in, and they are doing more apparent exercise … so what happens?

Well the law of thermodynamics is a thing … so their bodies drastically reduce essential services (BMR plummets). And when that threatens survival, only then does their insulin drop a little and they can burn a little more body fat. But the underlying cause - the fact that they make a LOT of insulin for the same response as a normal person does not change.

What happens as soon as they slow down on the restriction, they start putting weight on again back up to meet their level of insulin resistance and because their MBR is now in the toilet there is a good chance they over correct and end up weighing more.

The answer is we need to lower insulin, and our bodies will do the rest because they are a significantly better calorie counters than we ever will be. We lower insulin by eating less foods that require insulin to be made (carbs and protein), spending less time eating (intermittent and extended fasting), building muscle (lifting) and then using it (HIIT) as a way to clear insulin, and using drugs that reduce insulin resistance (metformin, Berberine).


"exercise doesn't help with weight loss"
Eat before or after exercising?
(Genevieve Biggs) #16

Wow! Lots of good replies here. Thanks everyone. Very helpful.


#17

@Genevieve, any of the CICO diets work…temporarily. That’s the key word…temporarily. And then the body readjusts the level of metabolism rate, or other hormonal changes occur, or the person can no longer keep up with the draconian CICO regimen.


(Ross Daniel) #18

Great way to put it @richard!


(betsy.rome) #19

Thank you Richard, as always, boiling it down to the essential bits.


(Guardian of the bacon) #20

I’m not leaving this page until my likes are refreshed. TOO important not to like this post. Supposedly I only have 2 minutes left.