Stokies and CICO die/blow hards


(Polly) #41

Just because careless usage of the English language doesn’t grate on you enough for you to bother pointing it out, don’t assume we are all the same.

I am glad that there is a huge diversity of personalities on this forum and encourage everyone to post what they feel like posting.

Ellenor was absolutely correct in her observation and I thought very polite in the way she delivered it.

@ellenor2000 please continue to feel free to post.

Those for whom English is a foreign language and those whose grammar is poor through lack of education can learn something from being corrected. Those who don’t give a shit about their poor English usage will not give a shit about having it pointed out.


(Bacon for the Win) #42

sence cleerly u dont no me frum a hole in the wall, let me tell u speling and gramer misteaks used to anoy the heck out of me. Is it realy wurth starting an arguement with strangers online? cleerly u too think so. have at it!


#43

I don’t know what disturbs me more, the fact that the words in this paragraph are so poorly spelled, or the fact that I understood EVERY word of it. :sweat_smile:


(Doug) #44

:+1: :question: :neutral_face:


(Peter) #45

If you don’t understand hormones, or don’t believe they exist, then the physics-based approach of CICO makes perfect sense.


(Elmo) #46

That’s not right, Peter. You’re eating physical matter. Regardless of exactly where it goes (mediated by hormones), it is going to go somewhere.


(Ellenor Bjornsdottir) #47

he means the result-as-method approach.


#48

CICO is a useless tautology. It is absolutely correct, yet explains nothing nor provides insight.

Q:Why did the vase fall?
A:Because gravity pulled it to the ground.

Q:Why did the Ammonium nitrate in Beirut explode?
A:It decomposed releasing a large amount of energy very quickly

If you answer other questions like this, you are thought of as a douchebag (and rightfully so,) but for some reason, CICO is totally acceptable as as explanation for obesity.


(Doug) #49

Great hoppin’ horny-toads; CICO getting the bad rap once again… :slightly_smiling_face:

It’s not supposed to. CICO says, “This is what’s happening.” It’s up to people to figure out the “whys” if they are in doubt, or what to do about it if things are not going as desired. Is it so bad to have this absolutely correct thing that doesn’t provide additional insight, and doesn’t claim to? CICO is just an accounting, it’s just a scientific observation, like the odometer on a vehicle.

Scientific observations need not provide “all the answers.” A vehicle’s odometer says the vehicle went 100 kilometers. It doesn’t tell us the reason for the trip, nor who was driving, nor what the previous owner’s preference in hot peppers were. That doesn’t mean the odometer is “useless.”

Some others criticize CICO not because of the above, but because they assert that by looking at only one part of it, certain necessarily correct conclusions should then be able to be made. This is naturally not the case, and they then claim that because of it, CICO is invalid. This is a strawman argument, because (obviously) both calories in and calories out must be considered.

If you want more explanation and insight, things need to get more conditional. For example, we can say that higher insulin levels can result in matter being stored rather than metabolized, making for weight gain. Likewise, we can make CICO conditional too, dealing with predictions of what can occur, CICO saying:

1.) If the ‘in’ is more than the ‘out,’ you will gain weight.
2.) If they are the same, your weight will stay the same.
3.) If the ‘in’ is less than the ‘out,’ you will lose weight.

CICO isn’t going to have all the answers, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless or wrong. For example, if we see the “out” being below the “in,” then while CICO may not directly give us all possible reasons why, we can infer that something like increased fat storage and/or lessened metabolism may be happening.

The ancient Greeks figured out that the earth was not flat, and they proved it pretty well. There was quite a bit of stuff they didn’t know, and that condition has persisted - there are still things we don’t know about gravity, for example. None of this means that the earth is flat.

:stuck_out_tongue: You can make up similar stuff for almost anything. If you want better answers, then the questions need to be different. With respect to dietary and physiological things, maybe CICO has the answer and maybe not. Its limits don’t mean it’s not correct up to those limits.

Well, there’s #1 - If the ‘in’ is more than the ‘out,’ you will gain weight. Does that not make sense?

To me, this has to be intuitive, i.e.

It makes a difference how your statement reads. If you had said, “for some reason, CICO is totally acceptable as the (or better yet, the only) explanation for obesity,” then I would disagree.


(Porcinus) #50

Really going ‘Old School.’

Matter is neither created nor destroyed during a chemical change.

– Antoine Lavoisier


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #51

CICO comes with a lot of baggage in addition to the simple energy balance truism. Hundreds of folks on this forum are walking wounded. And most of them weren’t wounded by refusing to count calories, weigh their food portions or exercise. ‘Eat less move more’ simplifies to absurdity the metabolic complexity of what’s going on. I criticize CICO, not because I think energy balance is irrelevant, but because all the other stuff that gets ignored can’t be summarized with a snappy little phrase.


(Kirk Wolak) #52

Well, it takes only ONE case of someone eating more and not gaining weight, or someone eating less and not losing weight to prove them wrong.

The thing they usually miss is “Studies Proved lowering calories, reduced metabolism!” Meaning CO is lowered over time… And the biggest loser PROVED permanent damage/reduction to the metabolisms, and regaining more weight with the “old” diet.

But I think Dr. Fung or Westman mentioned a case of a Tumor that caused a continuous release of insulin and the person kept gaining weight, when the tumor was removed, their weight started falling, ON THE SAME DIET.

Also, Westman (I believe) showed that changing the diet by removing FRUCTOSE and keeping people weight stable, allowed them to eat more calories without gaining weight.

Any of these, to a reasonable person, would make them second guess CICO… But not CICO-phants!


(Ideom) #53

When we get to that stage of realization, shouldn’t we admit that the science really isn’t wrong? The “CO” has been there all along - it’s plainly stated. It’s just that we need to pay attention to it.


(Kirk Wolak) #54

The problem for me is that CO is so complicated, it can only be measured, and NOT predicted.

If all you are trying to control is CI… Please explain when CO can vary widely, even in a single person, and lowing CI can lower CO… What’s the BENEFIT of “knowing” CICO?

CICO is nothing more than victim shaming: You ate too much, or moved too little. If that is REALLY the problem, why do they attack Keto for HELPING people eat less (CI).

Also, they leave out the Psychological Impact of constantly feeling hungry, and being hangry or irritable! When I used to work on controlling calories, I was QUITE irritable.

Going Keto fixed that. And it actually INCREASED my metabolism, had me feeling better so I felt like moving (mostly walking, but that’s 10,000 times better than sitting all the time)… And I wasn’t feeling totally deprived, and constantly fighting hunger. Which (as I have proved so many times), only lasts so long…

So, the science behind CICO isn’t wrong, per se. It’s stating it in such a way as to lead people astray!
Using science to get people to make poor decisions is what DRUG COMPANIES SELLING Statins do!

There is also science that says… Low Carb diets outperform most other diets, including low-fat diets.
And it explains how.

Finally, a good insulin hit turns off fat burning. The more metabolically deranged you are, the longer. Again, this gets back to WHAT YOU EAT matters… Completely ignored by the CICO folks.

The healthier you are, the more important CI becomes. The less weight you have to lose, the more important CI becomes. But swap 120 calories for a can of full fructose soda… And suddenly you are far more likely to end up obese.

So, in closing. CICO in what CONTEXT? (Maintaining Weight, or stating a fact? Avoiding T2D, or stating a Fact). Honestly, we’ve known about CICO forever… Why doesn’t it seem to help?

It’s messaging by the people selling you the can of fructose/sugar sweetened beverages!
I take it for what it appears to be.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #55

A couple more comments then I’m out:




(KCKO, KCFO) #56

Because it is often the app or the phone’s auto correction at work. You never know. I used to text someone who used Mo as his name in texting and every time autocorrect would change it to Monday. I had even added his name to the dictionary, but autocorrect is a strange beast. Be careful of it. And over look minor things please, life is too short.


(Ideom) #57

I do see what you mean. There’s no question that ‘shaming’ is usually counterproductive and that there is a problem with CICO, after all - it comes up for argument so often. :wink:

I think that in effect, CICO cannot win here - because of people’s differing perceptions. On the one hand it’s seen as a mere tautology, or that it’s ‘too simple’ - deficient in explanations, or that it has an imaginary equals sign in its midst, or that it foolishly lost its imaginary equals sign.

On the other hand the “CO is so complicated, it can only be measured, and NOT predicted.” Or the implication is that a physics-based approach does not make sense, or that since the human body isn’t a closed system, then some sort of ‘voodoo metabolic economy’ thermodynamic fantasy applies, when the truth is that the laws of conservation of matter and energy apply whether it’s a closed system or not.

“They” are people, and people often screw stuff up. CICO is data, and people may have reasons, both intentional and not, for interpreting it in erroneous ways. I’m a case of insulin resistance built up over a long time, and I too would testify to the effectiveness of ketogenic eating.

Above, you ask about the benefit of knowing CICO. I agree that CICO is not so “ultimately simple” as some people claim or allude to, but I also don’t think it’s “too complicated.” I feel that Dr. Fung has it right, that it’s essentially two ‘compartments’ - calories in can go either to metabolism and the ‘out’ side, or they can go into storage (fat.) Waste/nonabsorption isn’t enough to be concerned with for most people, and glucose/glycogen stores are tiny compared to the fat we can store.

It’s mostly just “either/or” (which of Fung’s compartments are we going to deal with) and insulin is the major switch between drawing from the fat store and not doing it. So:

I think it’s because at that point we actually know a lot. If we’re aware of the metabolic rate, we avoid the problems of the people who ignore the ‘out’ side and only think about the ‘in.’ While CICO doesn’t directly measure energy going into or coming from fat stores, it’s usually the only significant variable remaining, i.e. if the in and out are unequal, then we also know what’s going on as far as gaining fat or losing it.

Yeah, and that’s an example of what people do (advertising/misinterpreting/pretending), rather than proof that the science is somehow “wrong.”

No argument there. :slightly_smiling_face:

If Joe Blow is saying that it’s only the “in” that matters, then he is (obviously) wrong. But he’s not among “CICO folks,” he’s only looking at ‘calories in.’ People who pay attention to CICO aren’t the ones who make that common error. They are also the ones who realize that a slowing metabolism - possibly related to less calories in, and/or to high insulin diverting calories to fat storage - can be a problem, especially for weight loss.

Because people make fundamental, logical errors, about what CICO is. Or, they don’t pay attention to the whole thing. This is a fault of people, not a fault of the data.


(Kirk Wolak) #58

Here Here… They latch on to the simple explanation. Don’t look any deeper.
When I heard of the counter-examples… The tumors that led to massive weight gain. When removed, it reversed. Same diet was eaten and well-tracked. It’s COMPLICATED because it is a biological situation.

My wife and my friends wife… Neither have any problem with hunger/cravings/etc. They maintain their weight naturally and easily. Guess what we discovered. They are at 0.5 Ketones in the morning, even though they eat a SAD diet! Interesting side note. Under Stress… BOTH of them cannot eat! They lose their appetite. Under Stress, my glucose rockets up, even when fasting! Then the DROP b/c of the insulin hit, drives me to cravings…

And I do NOT believe EVERYONE should be doing a low carb/ketogenic diet… Only people that it HELPS. My same buddy struggles to gain weight. He is at 7% bodyfat… He has a TON of food allergies, like I do, and LOVES how he FEELS on Keto… He is PROOF that it is healthy. And he has PKD (Kidney Disease), as does his Ketogenic Brother… No issues with the disease getting worse!

Great Stuff!

Oh, one other point… At the 2019 LowCarb Denver… one of the presenters showed that mice can become overweight simply by powderizing their food. Eating the same amount. Because it spikes insulin more. Which reduces energy availability and stores more of it… To me, that was a HUGE Nail in the coffin of CICO [even the FORM/SHAPE of the CI can affect CO). He studied the AUC (Area Under the Curve) for the insulin response…


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #59

@IdesOfMarch Here’s a little thermodynamic voodoo for you to consider. How many calories does it take to maintain your body temp at 98.6°F ? How about in an air conditioned room at 68°F ? Walking briskly on a bright sunny day with an air temperature of 105°F ? Or moving from the shade of a big tree where the air temperature is 90°F to full sun where the air temperature is 115°F ? What’s the difference in caloric requirement to maintain 98.6°F at an ambient temp of 20°F compared to 85°F ? How many calories does it take my body to maintain 98.6°F under the same conditions? How many for obese Joe, overweight but not obese Jim, normal weight Jack and lean James? What if any of us happens to have stuffed up nasal passages the day we attempt to determine the numbers? To what degree of precision and confidence do you think you can determine these numbers? Do you think you’d get the same numbers if you did the required measurements on several successive days? Or do you think you’d have to calculate average caloric requirements for each specific situation?

Do you think it would be a practical possibility for any individual who does not have access to a metabolic lab to know how much energy they require to maintain their body temperature at 98.6°F under all the various scenarios above and many others that might be encountered during a typical day?

Just curious.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #60

By the way, Bikman has suggested that so-called ‘wasted ketones’ (acetone in the breath and acetoacetate in urine) might actually be a mechanism involved in maintenance of body temp at 98.6°F. Those ketones were synthesized from fatty acids and required heat in the process. So part of that heat gets vented. That would be another challenge to measure accurately.