I'll Say One Thing for CICO

(TJ Borden) #141

You may not feel the same way (which is good), but that is he core of CICO. All calories are created equal. It’s enrgy in, energy out; pizza or spinach, doesn’t matter.

(TJ Borden) #142

How do you know what you’re expending to calculate your deficit?

(Edith) #143

So, I am one of those people who has never been fat (except postpartum) but throughout my life, I have always been aware of how much food I put in my body, what type of food, and I exercised. This was definitely a CICO way of life:’pig out at a party, scale back the following day for example

Then I hit my 40s. I was still eating the same, watching my intake, and exercising. The weight started to creep up. So, I cut back on calories. There were little successes here and there, but in reality, the weight creep continued. I also think the cutting back on calories resulted in some vitamin deficiencies that particularly showed in my nail health of all places.

Before I started keto, I announced to my husband that I guess I was just going to have to accept the fact that I was going to be a chubby old lady just like the rest of the women in my family. And that pissed me off because I exercised and my mom and her mom certainly didn’t. :rage:

A year ago I started keto. Those 15 pounds of weight creep dropped off. Was it CICO? Maybe partly, I certainly ate less food when first getting adjusted. My theory for myself is that the modern foods damaged me over time so even though CICO worked for me for many years, it stopped working due to metabolic damage over those years.

I still have to watch how much I eat, but keto certainly makes it easy. I just can’t eat as much keto foods because they are so satisfying. I think keto makes it much easier for the body to self-regulate. The SAD removes that ability to self-regulate.

(Sarah Slancauskas) #144

The way I see this topic is pretty much perfectly encapsulated in this article. It’s a little bit long but it’s the most concise wY if describing a very complicated, convoluted system of processes.

(TJ Borden) #145

You are exactly correct. It’s important to be clear: caloric restriction IS necessary to lose weight. The problem is CICO uses restriction as a tool, and it’s not. Caloric restriction is a mechanism, and it’s triggered by hunger and satiety. The SAD diet screws with satiety and hunger BECAUSE the body treats calories differently (which already goes against CICO).

Becoming fat adapted (through a ketogenic woe) allows the stored fat to be used for energy and hunger triggers to supplement that. When your body has enough energy from storage and from the food you eat, satiety is triggered.

The two core flaws to the CICO approach are: (1) the idea that a person can dictate exactly what the body is going to expend in a day, and (2) that metabolism is relatively constant and isn’t affected by hormones, outside of our control.

#146

I think some of the issue in this discussion is this: CICO (at least the way it’s used on the forum) means that a very simple mathematical equation is all that is necessary to regulate weight. That’s it, that’s the entire formula: calories in versus calories out.

It doesn’t mean any of these: calories and hormones both matter; tracking calories helps some people lose weight; BL doesn’t apply to CICO because of x, x, and x; calories matter but so does food quality.

I think most people on here would agree that food quantity almost always correlates with size. Their rejection of CICO is not that calories don’t ever matter; it’s 1) that it’s not that simple for so many people and 2) it doesn’t take into account the pathways for long term health and weight management.

So, actually, I don’t think there’s much disagreement here.

(Adam Kirby) #147

I dunno, amidst all the cutesy graphics there’s a lot of stupid shit like this:

image
image.png759×150 10.8 KB

Let’s make no mistake here - the author of the site is a physique bro, and physique bros tend to be utterly obsessed with the perceived control of calories into and out of their body. I mean, this is his “most popular article”:

image
image.png866×180 15.2 KB

Mmkay, brah.

Listen, if you’re walking the path of this guy, a lean physique athlete, what he says might be applicable to you.

Also, I looked at his latest article on eggs and it’s still perpetrating the same of claptrap about LDL that Dave Feldman is obliterating. So I’m afraid I don’t have much faith in this guy’s grasp of biochemistry.

(TJ Borden) #148

There’s a lot of good information in there, but he misses a few key things.

First, he misses the fact the metabolisms aren’t static.

Second, the sugar chart he cites is bull shit science. The reduction in sugar wasn’t enough to change the obesity path. It’s the equivalent of someone getting lung cancer after cutting back from smoking 6 packs a day to 1 pack and saying “well obviously it wasn’t the cigarettes, because I cut back 5 packs a day and I still got cancer”.

Through it all, there is still the matter of application. As I stated previous, one of the main problems with he CICO approach is that is used calroric reduction as a tool, when it’s actually a mechanism.

When you’re not eating a SAD diet and allow the body’s systems to work they way they were designed (and worked for millions of years), hunger will signal when your body wants more energy input, and satiety will signal when your body is content with the enrgy is has available to use; both from what you’ve eaten, and from what’s available from storage.

(Sarah Slancauskas) #149

I didn’t say I agree with everything the author says. I’m saying that this particular article explains this specific topic well. I have the ability to take certain elements of a person’s view and agree without completely wedding myself to everything they come out with. On this he makes a good point. On others maybe not-but I didn’t post those articles, so…

(shane ) #150

I am sure the walk to the fridge, pulling out the pre-cut steak, pushing the button to turn the stove on and cooking it is also very similar to how our ancestors acquired and cooked their meat as well.

The hunting, cleaning, starting the fire etc by our ancestors was much more caloricaly demanding than what we do these days.

Which is why I think if you are not losing weight and you are truly stalled, adjusting your food or calories or whatever you want to call it, back is an answer to getting moving again in the right direction.

(Sarah Slancauskas) #151

Yeah, I think you’ve made some fair points there for me to consider. I’ll mull it over!

(Adam Kirby) #152

Would they not consume more food then? That’s how the cycle works, activity increases hunger which increases food consumption.

So tell me, why do we need to exercise strict control over our energy intake but not other things? Do you track your breaths per minute? Do you ever consciously under-breathe because earlier in the day you over-breathed?

What about water intake? What if you’ve haven’t drunk much water during the day but you’re not thirsty? Does strict water balance need to be consciously maintained?

I guess it doesn’t make sense to me, the idea that human beings alone have to consciously regulate their calorie intake when no other animal does, and absent eating crappy human “food” products every animal naturally maintains an appropriate body fat.

(TJ Borden) #153

What??? NO… if we don’t keep arguing how am I going to stay distracted from work? :grinning:

(Sarah Slancauskas) #154

:joy:
I’m always open to new ideas or changing my thoughts if it makes sense. I’m trying to get my head around it all; I’m not stubborn in that if I can see my thinking is flawed or needs adjusting I can listen and take on board new points of view.
Now get back to work!

(Jennifer Kleiman) #155

The rise of gym culture and explicit exercise suggests some people, at least, feel the need to exercise strict control over that as well. Go back 100 years and only professional athletes used gyms and then to hone their skill, not as a lifestyle element to keep healthy. Desk jobs and SAD haven’t made for a healthy way of life on either the CI or CO side.

(shane ) #156

And I have never met an animal addicted to cocaine either. Or for that matter, you must have never met a fat lap dog? If it naturally regulated it’s food, and you feed it huge helpings of dog food, why does it get fat. Why doesn’t the dog stop eating and naturally eat to satiation?

(Jane) #157

How do you explain a family I knew as a kid with 4 kids. Mom was a nutritionist by training so all kids ate a balanced diet and this was the 60’s so few overweight kids, real food from home-cooked meals, no fast food, few processed foods.

Three kids were normal weight - one was overweight, the mom was very frustrated and of course the pediatrician blamed her for “feeding him too much”. All 4 kids were active.

Same with my own 2 sons. Both ate the same things, similar activity levels - one rail thin the other had a weight problem starting at an early age. The lean one was much less active - the heavy one in sports and very active.

I was able to maintain my weight before my first son was born by being careful with my calories and exercising (like you do now Sarah). After kids - didn’t work anymore and I was SO FRUSTRATED because it was like someone threw a switch. My meals were the same - activity the same.

The older one (33 YO) is now doing OMAD with great success. Not low carb - just OMAD to keep his insulin response low.

(Adam Kirby) #158

Right, dog food, human-produced garbage on par with the standard American diet. AKA, not a species-appropriate diet for dogs. Same reason you can’t eat to satiation on the SAD.

Why did obese dogs not exist 100 years ago, when presumably they were fed all kinds of table scraps and nobody knew a thing about calories? :thinking:

(TJ Borden) #159

I’ll send you a YouTube link… :rofl:

(Jane) #160

Not cocaine… but have you ever heard of the “Drunk Monkeys from Borne” fermenting their own hooch?
:rofl: