Refuting CICO platitudes

(Doug) #92

Agreed. One might as well consider ketogenic diets and forget about the “low carbohydrate” part. :wink:

If you actually have the quote or can tell us where he says it, that would help. Meanwhile, I cannot believe he says that CICO does not hold true; it obviously does. There are multiple cases with CICO. Presumptions that ignoring CO are proper or that CI necessarily determines CO are nonsensical. Bikman’s not going to do that.

Of course what goes in doesn’t have a straight relationship to the amounts that are stored versus used. CO is a variable. There’s nothing in there that “goes against CICO.” There are multiple cases with CICO - just think about it. If we’re talking about weight, people can stay the same, gain or lose.

Sounds good, no argument there. :slightly_smiling_face: Intake, storage, usage, waste - that’s it, right?

Okay - and same deal - intake, storage, usage, waste - that’s it.

No. There is always one CICO for a given person at a given time. Of course we can gain weight, lose or stay the same; CICO is variable, after all. Nobody is pretending that CICO predicts all the details of one’s metabolism; there obviously is not enough information given for that. CICO is a state, nothing more.

That’s a silly mishmash of half-truths, at best. “Eat less, move more” works just fine for lots of people. If you want to talk about the cases where it does not, fine, but how about stating things correctly, then?

Keto works just fine for lots of people, too. In both cases, if weight loss is desired, then configuring CICO so that CI < CO does the trick (eating ketogenically has been known to do this). Being logical and rational about things where external, objective truth applies isn’t a bad thing.

If ‘authorities’ or otherwise are wrong, then there’s no point in debating from their point of view. The argument is not that the gov’t, food processors/sellers, etc., always give perfect advice for everybody. Nobody is saying that in this thread.

I don’t see anyone claiming that “science” means, for example, that the gov’t is always right. But it darn sure means that CICO does apply.

Well, the premise was that it would be maintained. You’re talking about the directly opposite situation where it’s not maintained. Why shift the goalposts? It’s a very simple question, as with kib1 saying, “It’s taking the premise that a calorie deficit of 500 a day results in a loss of 50 pounds in a year.”

It’s not always a matter of eating less and moving more; agreed. But being rational and logical about the math and physics is not being “naive,” it’s being realistic and truthful.

(Michael) #93

It seems to me that people are talking over each other here. Doug has it down, but Doug is looking at the physics of CICO while most others are using BAD advice that confused people without understanding use to defend poor food choices by invoking CICO.

These are different things, the physics, and the way people misrepresent or misinterpret the concept of CICO. Continuallly bringing up Eat Less Move More is NOT CICO, it is bad advice from people Taking bad advice and blaming CICO is not appropriate. Saying CICO is valid but people who use those expressions are bastardizing the concept might be more appropriate.

#94

But we talked about these too… So it’s pretty clear that Doug and me both talk about the right CICO with its complexities, not the “if you eat N kcals when N is less than the estimated TDEE, you will lose fat, no matter what”. That is a stupid simplification and clearly wrong in many cases. But works for others.

Just like some people use some oversimplified wrong CICO definition, some people are against the importance in calories for some reason and thinks keto necessarily causes people losing fat when they have much to lose. Nope, that’s a very simple wrong thing just the same.

People should look at facts, experience and imagine that not everyone’s body works the same. It’s very common that people say general statements based their own (and many other people’s) experience but it’s not the full picture. And it feels especially wrong for people like me who can’t lose fat just because eating very low-carb but “eating less” works each and every time (if less is compared to my minimum maintenance calories at that time, not just what I had previously. when I maintained since years and started to eat way less, I didn’t lose any as I still ate too much, staying in my apparently quite big maintenance range. I had no idea about my TDEE and my maintenance range at that point so it was experimenting and trying to eat as little as comfortably possible for a while. I didn’t need to worry about eating too little).
I am very interested about people’s experiences regarding fat-loss, satiation and other things related to their woe and goals and those are all over the place so I never think very closed-mindedly about these. I can accept than we work in various amazing, sometimes unbelievable ways.

#95

I agree. Why does this have to be a debate?

My understanding of weight gain and loss deepened enormously once I understood and was able to reconcile both of these points in my mind.

Regarding the CO part, I have come to believe that the body’s ability to regulate metabolism based on available energy also applies to people in ketosis. Most people lose weight at first (probably due to CICO), but at some point, metabolism adjusts so as to not keep wasting energy from ketones. The result is a stall or gaining back weight even when following the ketogenic WOE strictly. Well, that’s what happened to me.

(Doug) #96

Why isn’t everybody in the world really fat?

(Doug) #97

At some point, the body is (almost surely) going to try and conserve energy, or - as you note - it gets more efficient with ketones and burns less fat - whether from starvation-avoidance response or just because it’s gotten better with all the signalling, transport and usage of ketones. We tend to be fearfully good machines as far as efficiency, or at least it sure feels that way when we want to lose weight.

In general, we know that it tends to be harder to lose as we get leaner. If I have 100 lbs to lose, then the first 10 will usually be easier than the middle 10, and far easier than the last 10. From what I’ve seen, women have a harder time with stalls and a slowing-down of weight loss than men, on average.

When fasting, some of the same things apply. The lower one’s percentage of body fat is, the harder the average perceived effort tends to be, and a higher percentage of protein usage versus fat usage results.

As individuals, there is wide variability, and we have our own ‘curves’ (no pun intended) as far as the processes and procedures during weight loss. Some people struggle most of the way through; every kilogram or pound being a hard-fought battle. Others essentially go right down to their goal weight, or even below it, with little resistance or slowing. Most of us are somewhere between those extremes.

I remember a guy who hasn’t posted here for 4 years and 4 months.

That’s pretty lean - 6’4" 165 lbs or 1.93 meters 75 kg. I was surprised at the lack of struggle it seemed to have been for him, from the above and his other posts.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #98

That’s the question that intrigued Gary Taubes when he was writing Good Calories, Bad Calories. Even people who are morbidly obese don’t gain weight uncontrollably. And Taubes put the arithmetic in the book: to gain 20 lbs. (about 9 kg) in ten years requires eating no more than one extra bite of food a day. So why do some people never get fat no matter what or how much they eat, while others still get fat while starving themselves? Taubes quotes a researcher who was studying a particular strain of mice bred for obesity, to the effect that, "These animals don’t get fat from overeating; they get fat if they eat at all" (emphasis mine).

(Doug) #99

Paul, thank goodness for whatever metabolism-increasing mechanisms we have. I gained an average of 5 lbs a year, for a lot of years, when there were weeks where I had the intake to justify it, were we to only think about calories in. Didn’t have any trouble staying warm…

(Lynn Weber) #100

Totally agree!!

(KM) #101

I think where CICO fails us is obviously not in the physics equation, it’s the mechanics. You drive a Civic. You change the oil every three months, you drive like there’s an egg between your foot and the gas pedal, you religiously inflate and rotate the tires, you drive on asphalt. I drive a Civic. I haven’t changed the oil since I bought mine, I drive on sand and I like to pretend I’m Richard Petty. You get 42 mpg and I get 29. Same CI, same number of miles driven, you’ve still got a quarter tank of gas and I’m thumbin’ a ride to the gas station. (I did however have a lot more fun than you did😁).

If you break that down it may all come down to explicable little physics equations - friction, inefficient burn etc. - but the real world difference in performance makes your “mpg” almost meaningless to me and vice versa. The energy in a gallon of gas is merely one factor in how far I can go.

ETA:. Taking this back to human bodies, there are thousands of variables, including some we don’t really know well. To begin with we’re not all driving the same car, but even if we were, maybe you have an optimal hormone profile. Maybe I have extraordinary gut microbiome. You can’t sleep, I have excema. You got a new puppy, I lost an old companion. The shape of your femur requires more energy to move than mine, I chew my food more times. You fidget, I meditate. I’m “fat adapted”, you’re aerobically fit. How any of that affects our real world CO is an unfolding and pretty individual story. Maybe keto or some other tweak is like engaging a hybrid system we didn’t even know we had on board.

#102

Mpg has so many factors… It’s usually 60-70 for our tiny car but it depends on so many things (length of trips and weather being very big ones), I could talk about it for ages, I don’t drive a vehicle anymore but my hypermiler heart is still beating :wink:
A good hypermiler can do over 60 mpg with a Civic under the right conditions :slight_smile:

And indeed, the human body is even much more complicated. CICO still stands, we just can’t figure out our CO. I totally used calorie counting to lose at a time and it worked for me great, I even had an educated guess about my CO - but I never knew my BMR and people always talked about that and why we need to eat significantly above that. (It made me no sense as it would mean that one barely moving can’t lose fat as a deficit is impossible. It’s good as I have no idea about mine :slight_smile: At the moment, I don’t know my TDEE in average either as I don’t lose fat so can’t even calculate it inaccurately. And as I eat things where tracking is impossibly, I don’t know my CI either. It doesn’t keep me from using the for me very right “eat less” - it is “as little as comfortably possible”, actually. and it involves stuffing myself because that minimizes my food intake, things are interesting - method to lose fat but I can’t depend so much on numbers as they are MYSTERY. I still use them, I am merely aware that I can’t trust them much. Still, a tiny information. Inaccurate, sometimes very much so but still helpful to know if I ate 1300 or 4100 kcal according to guesstimation. And I like numbers. I could just ignore tracking and sometimes do but I am too curious about even the inaccurate numbers…)

(Doug) #103

In the modern world, I think it’s the basic efficiency of the human body and our circumstances that is the problem, as least as far as being too fat and wanting to be thinner. If we were engaged in increased physical activity - as was more normal 300+ years ago - just to live, vast numbers of us wouldn’t become obese or develop fatty liver, insulin resistance, etc., and start down the road to obesity and other generally disliked consequences.

In the here and now, if we could push a button or move a switch so that we are in “waste energy” mode, then fat loss would be so much easier.

Modern hunter-gatherers aren’t fat, per se. One big change for humanity as a whole was the development of agriculture ~12,000 years ago. Another big step - in the wrong direction for body composition - was the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1750. ‘Progress’ (undeniably) but with a cost.

Well said. :clap: We indeed are individuals with a wide possible variance in many areas.

Well, I feel compelled to say that it’s not that CICO is “failing,” but rather that we are failing CICO, if anything. :smile:

As relatively sound-minded adults, it’s up to us to figure things out. What’s the desire - to lose fat? Well, okay, then configure CICO so that happens. It’s not a mystery how it happens. If it’s really only ketogenic eating that on a sustainable basis makes it so we are making net withdrawals from our fat stores, so be it. That’s the case for me, and even though I probably suck at it more than most - because I don’t stay with the program enough - I don’t kid myself about it.

(Doug) #104

But if you are a fat Civic, then you want to do 10 MPG. :smirk:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #105

This may be an erroneous conclusion. The last time I saw statistics (from 2014, if memory serves), there were actually a few more million thin people in the U.S. with metabolic dysfunction (TOFI) than there were obese people with metabolic dysfunction. And there is a fair percentage of obese people who are metabolically healthy (MHO). So obesity or the absence of it is not the determining factor of metabolic health. It is not always the result of metabolic dysfunction, and metabolic dysfunction does not always result in obesity.

Another possible conclusion might be that if we were to return to the diet of 300 years ago, we might be healthier, whether of not we were as physically active as people were back then.

It’s worth remembering that the diet in the Colonies back then included far more meat and far fewer plant foods than today.

(Doug) #106

Paul, how can this be? Take out the obese that are okay on metabolism, and you’re saying the TOFIs outnumber all the rest of the obese? Let’s see the numbers.

Even if so, it wouldn’t necessarily negate what I said, i.e. that vast numbers of us wouldn’t become obese or develop fatty liver, etc.

Well, I didn’t say it was. :slightly_smiling_face: You’re talking about a blanket, unqualified statement.

Agreed, but there too that doesn’t argue against increased activity - as was certainly the case, on average, back then - having the beneficial effects as described.

#107

Activity changes surely played a big role though I mostly blame the new, worse, easily accessible, easily overeating triggering treats (and snacking all the time, people ate breakfast and worked until lunchtime back then, didn’t go out to the office donut room or whatever people do. I just drank coffee sometimes. with milk powder and sugar… but usually plain tea. never was the snacking type, I could quite seriously overeat in 2-3 meals just fine, thank you very much). Well, both. But these are still just 2 factors and there are many. Even the mental state of modern people are different. Some things got better, some got worse.
And it matters that while (some kind of) meat is pretty cheap now (I need to be very careful about my food costs so I depend on meat a lot. I just can’t afford plants, not like I wanted. gluten is the only thing cheaper than meat if I think about it. of course everything considered, first of all satiating effect but nutrients are quite important too), it was a luxury for masses hundreds of years ago. Some people had to live on grains or whatnot (no idea how they survived. surely they ate other things, cought a fish or two here and there but it wasn’t so serious). The rich people who ate meat every day, well they weren’t the norm, to put it lightly. Even my anchestors 100 years ago and they weren’t very poor, didn’t eat much meat. They had it, sure and other animal products too (most like other animal products amount wise I suppose) but they ate huge amounts of grains and sugar (even before sugar became a common thing, they ate natural sugar in fruits. not in nearly as huge amounts as modern people though). You didn’t butcher a chicken every day as a not poor, not rich peasant… And the sausages and hams had to last all year too and a whole family ate them… Of course, poor families had no pigs.

Possibly even being outside in the cold helped with not getting obese :wink: But I really think activity and the habit of eating normal (if HCHF) food 3 times a day and that’s it was the biggest reason. Well, surely there were lots of chubby peasant women after their youth but that’s not necessarily unhealthy yet especially with a more active lifestyle…

(KM) #108

Funny how we all have our resistance spots. Just finished reading Chatterjee’s How To Make Disease Disappear. (Not quite as flaky as it sounds, his argument is that most chronic disease is a more like symptoms, a manifestation of dysfunctional lifestyle choices.)

I read happily through three of his four pillars and all the advice pertaining to diet, sleep and stress management. Got to the section on exercise and suddenly lost the will to live. :flushed:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #109

Total population of U.S. at the time (2014, if I recall correctly): 240,000,000

Thirty percent (30%) are obese: 72,000,000 obese
Of these 30%, 80% are metabolically ill: 57,600,000 metabolically ill
Of these 30%, 20% are metabolically healthy (MHO): 14,400,000 healthy

Seventy percent are normal weight: 168,000,000
Of these 70%, 40% are metabolically ill (TOFI): 67,200,000 metabolically ill
Of these 70%, 60% are metabolically healthy: 100,800,000 healthy

Thin but metabolically ill (TOFI): 67,200,00 > obese and metabolically ill: 57,600,000 by about 10,000,000

Figures were cited in a lecture by Robert Lustig.

As I wrote earlier, obesity per se therefore does not appear to be the actual problem, since it is possible to be obese and otherwise healthy, or thin and sick.

I think researchers have been confused by how strongly obesity seems to correlate with metabolic disease and therefore decided that it caused the metabolic disease.

Instead, it would appear that obesity is part of metabolic disease (in many people, at least) but is not the whole story. Just as not everyone who is metabolically dysfunctional becomes a diabetic or develops cardiovascular disease, hypertension, or Alzheimer’s disease (to name a few).

(Doug) #110

Holy Moly! Thank you, Paul - that is astounding. 40% of normal weight people are metabolically ill…:open_mouth:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #111

Yep. Sad, isn’t it?

(And quite likely from the SAD, come to think of it. :scream: I don’t know how serious he is, but Dr. Lustig has stated that we shouldn’t call it “metabolic dysfunction,” but rather “processed food disease.”)