'calories in-calories out' model might be flawed?
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tmdalton849 wrote: »Train4Foodz wrote: »So, in an ideal world. What would you like everybody to reply back to you with?
You've been given opinions based on scientific fact by various different people. You've admitted that you don't track either the exercise you do not the foods/drinks you consume.
My suggestion to you would be to track everything from this moment on. Be meticulous with weighing.. track steps, exercise and any other general activity.
At the end of the month, factor all of this data together and if you're still managing to loose weight and you're in a definate surplus of calories then it's time to write a book and start earning some serious money about the new way to defy the human make-up.
I definately agree with others in this conversation, I think maybe you're overestimatimg your eating/drinking habits or underestimating your exercise
i am not really that concerned about it. (:
You seem pretty happy about it though.
Don't you care if you're wrong?0 -
tmdalton849 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »You're either eating far less than you think or you're burning enough to be at a 400-ish deficit per day.
i really am not. i have been eating pretty much the same thing every day for over six months. i haven't exercised much at all either. i was at first, then stopped when grad school got crazy. just now finally added a bit back (a few low pace walks, 10 min of kettlebell once or twice a week) about two weeks ago. weight loss, as i said, has been slow but steady the whole time.
Either your calculations are wrong or you have a (possibly dangerous) medical condition. You can choose one of those, but "my body defies physics" is not an acceptable choice. It just doesn't work that way. In the absence of proper data, I'm going to say that your calculations are wrong, either for TDEE and/or your food intake.0 -
I don't mean to confuse the issue any further, but I have an honest question. Can we assume that all people can extract the same amount of calories from food? If I eat an apple, and a scientist with a bomb calorimeter has deduced that the apple contains 90 calories, can we assume that my GI tract will extract 90 calories, and yours will too?
Is there any way that one person's digestive system will only take 90%, or 80% or even only 60% of the calories from the food item and pass the rest out the back?
In this case CICO would still hold, but a portion of your Calories "Out" would be "out the chute" rather than worked off.0 -
You're defying the laws of physics and you aren't concerned? You're a medical marvel who should be studied for the good of all mankind. Can you even imagine how many obesity-related deaths could be avoided if scientists could learn the secret of how you lose weight despite taking in more calories than your body burns?tmdalton849 wrote: »Train4Foodz wrote: »So, in an ideal world. What would you like everybody to reply back to you with?
You've been given opinions based on scientific fact by various different people. You've admitted that you don't track either the exercise you do not the foods/drinks you consume.
My suggestion to you would be to track everything from this moment on. Be meticulous with weighing.. track steps, exercise and any other general activity.
At the end of the month, factor all of this data together and if you're still managing to loose weight and you're in a definate surplus of calories then it's time to write a book and start earning some serious money about the new way to defy the human make-up.
I definately agree with others in this conversation, I think maybe you're overestimatimg your eating/drinking habits or underestimating your exercise
i am not really that concerned about it. (:
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tmdalton849 wrote: »christinev297 wrote: »tmdalton849 wrote: »i am.
Can you share details?
Are you low carbing? Or normal macros?
What are your stats, height, weight, TDEE?
Sorry about all the questions, I'm just very curious
yes, very low carb. 5'4", 159#, what's TDEE?
no problem, happy to answer questions.
This wasn't really explained. TDEE is total daily energy expenditure (all calories out -- the calories you would need to replace to maintain weight). It's not a number you can look up somewhere, although you can get estimates and you can work out what yours is if you track your food and weight over time. Basically, if you are losing weight you are eating less than your TDEE.
The argument you are making isn't really that someone can lose without a deficit -- that's not possible -- but that the way you eat allows you to have a higher TDEE than people might expect, that you have a deficit on much higher calories than others of your height and weight.
If you think otherwise, I'll ask you how you know you don't have a deficit? Typically, whether someone has a deficit or not can be seen by whether they are losing. If you aren't losing, you don't have a deficit, and, on the other hand, if you are losing you do.
I also suspect that you aren't eating nearly the calories you think, at least not unless you can point to a log. It's pretty easy to be way off on calories -- I did it myself when I first started, and was eating much lower than I realized before I started tracking.
I've never seen anything credible showing a huge increase in metabolism beyond what a normal, healthy metabolism would be based on food choice, so that just seems unlikely vs. the incredibly common situation of someone being off on calorie estimates. But I'm glad it's working for you and you are happy.0 -
You know I think they forgot the MOST important difference. Our grandparents (or parents depending on how old you are) didn't have to exercise the kind of willpower we do. They didn't have easy access to the most godawful foods pumped up with government subsidized corn and sugar. They had a stay at home parent who taught them how to cook food (as opposed to my mom, for example, who worked 60 hrs a week and we ate out or out of a box a lot). And they learned healthy eating habits because someone simply demanded they comply with vegetable eating and didn't indulge them with crap all the time.
But whether this article or the study it cites is realistic, I think we all know the truth. Yes, simply counting calories in calories out isn't good enough. You have to exercise, eat HEALTHY calories, and overall change your lifestyle to a healthy one. So is it total BS? Probably not, but that doesn't change anything for any of us.0 -
rankinsect wrote: »
I'd really like an explanation from somebody for this common chestnut that doesn't involve mass amounts of hand-waving and expecting it to just make sense because of toxins.People are exposed to pesticides, flame-retardants, preservatives, and other chemicals that mess with their hormones and cause them to put on fat.
Being poisoned requires the liver to clear it. The liver is the most energetic part of the body by weight (the human brain, though not that of other animals, is on par in calorie use). Giving it more work to do seems that it could only increase calorie burn, not reduce it.
The problem, I see it as, is a naturalistic fallacy. People think the natural state of the body is to make people normal weight, and that it happens by some mechanism beyond simple appetite. But gaining weight with more calories is actually the sign that a body is working properly. If you can eat excessive calories and not gain weight, you have some kind of illness.
The most probable biological mechanism would be epigenetic modification of some of the cells of the hypothalamus. Possibly the presence of environmental leptin receptor antagonists, but there you're talking about finding a chemical that is not only absorbed into the bloodstream from the environment, but also crosses the blood-brain barrier.
Even an obese person's body is attempting to downregulate their eating in response to a sufficiently high fat supply. Obese people have a high amount of leptin, one of the two hormones that regulates appetite, which in non-obese people causes them to feel less hungry. The major biochemical problem with obesity seems to be leptin resistance - the fat cells of the body produce elevated levels of leptin, but the hypothalamus doesn't reduce hunger and increase satiety in response to the leptin anymore. There are a few pathways known that influence the leptin response.
Part of this may be some signal (possibly in utero or as a very young infant) that primes the body to weather starvation - if your body expects future starvation to occur, reducing the effect of leptin is a good evolutionary trait, since it promotes a higher body fat % during times of surplus, to weather the times of scarcity. If your body, however, predicts a famine that never happens, obesity is the result of a weakened leptin response.
As to toxins - it would be possible for a toxin to damage a very specific set of cells in the brain. That's known to be a cause of some cases of Parkinsonian symptoms and hypothesized to be the root cause of all cases of Parkinson's disease - which is an unusual disease in that it has very obvious and stereotypical symptoms, and yet not one medical text predating the industrial revolution discusses it at all. I don't believe anyone has identified any damage to the hypothalamus (specifically, the arcuate nucleus), though, that is commonly seen in obesity.
I could understand it affecting appetite. I've seen people that want to claim that environmental toxins cause obesity in people regardless of intake. For example, this article lists it as if it could explain why people are at a higher BMI for the same intake and exercise as people in the 80s. That's the one I would love to hear someone actually defend with anything approaching a plausible mechanism.0 -
clgaram720 wrote: »You know I think they forgot the MOST important difference. Our grandparents (or parents depending on how old you are) didn't have to exercise the kind of willpower we do. They didn't have easy access to the most godawful foods pumped up with government subsidized corn and sugar. They had a stay at home parent who taught them how to cook food (as opposed to my mom, for example, who worked 60 hrs a week and we ate out or out of a box a lot). And they learned healthy eating habits because someone simply demanded they comply with vegetable eating and didn't indulge them with crap all the time.
But whether this article or the study it cites is realistic, I think we all know the truth. Yes, simply counting calories in calories out isn't good enough. You have to exercise, eat HEALTHY calories, and overall change your lifestyle to a healthy one. So is it total BS? Probably not, but that doesn't change anything for any of us.
This is a very idealized view of the past -- many of our grandparents and/or parents didn't have the luxury of having stay-at-home parents -- not all of us are descended from "Leave it to Beaver"-type families. Working class and minority mothers often worked outside of the home.
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No, counting calories is enough as long as you're eating anything even approaching a reasonable allocation among protein, carbs, and fat.clgaram720 wrote: »You know I think they forgot the MOST important difference. Our grandparents (or parents depending on how old you are) didn't have to exercise the kind of willpower we do. They didn't have easy access to the most godawful foods pumped up with government subsidized corn and sugar. They had a stay at home parent who taught them how to cook food (as opposed to my mom, for example, who worked 60 hrs a week and we ate out or out of a box a lot). And they learned healthy eating habits because someone simply demanded they comply with vegetable eating and didn't indulge them with crap all the time.
But whether this article or the study it cites is realistic, I think we all know the truth. Yes, simply counting calories in calories out isn't good enough. You have to exercise, eat HEALTHY calories, and overall change your lifestyle to a healthy one. So is it total BS? Probably not, but that doesn't change anything for any of us.0 -
clgaram720 wrote: »You know I think they forgot the MOST important difference. Our grandparents (or parents depending on how old you are) didn't have to exercise the kind of willpower we do. They didn't have easy access to the most godawful foods pumped up with government subsidized corn and sugar. They had a stay at home parent who taught them how to cook food (as opposed to my mom, for example, who worked 60 hrs a week and we ate out or out of a box a lot). And they learned healthy eating habits because someone simply demanded they comply with vegetable eating and didn't indulge them with crap all the time.
But whether this article or the study it cites is realistic, I think we all know the truth. Yes, simply counting calories in calories out isn't good enough. You have to exercise, eat HEALTHY calories, and overall change your lifestyle to a healthy one. So is it total BS? Probably not, but that doesn't change anything for any of us.
The bolded part is the BS. You don't have to exercise, or eat healthy calories, or change your lifestyle. If the goal is to lose weight, counting your calories to ensure a deficit is literally the only thing you need to do. This conversation is about CICO in regards to weigh management, not overall health and fitness. In that context, CICO is all that matters.0 -
Calories? I've never heard of healthy people having issues getting calories from food. Our bodies are pretty good at making sure we do. (Now, if you've had part of your intestines removed, weightloss surgery, etc. might affect this). Sure, there's some question of whether certain kinds of fiber should count as calories. And my understanding is under some circumstances you will eventually starve from lack of calories/fat if you only eat protein (as in, you can eat 2000 calories of protein and still starve to death, in theory). But that protein limit doesn't apply at rational, real-world levels of intake.TheopolisAmbroiseIII wrote: »I don't mean to confuse the issue any further, but I have an honest question. Can we assume that all people can extract the same amount of calories from food? If I eat an apple, and a scientist with a bomb calorimeter has deduced that the apple contains 90 calories, can we assume that my GI tract will extract 90 calories, and yours will too?
Is there any way that one person's digestive system will only take 90%, or 80% or even only 60% of the calories from the food item and pass the rest out the back?
In this case CICO would still hold, but a portion of your Calories "Out" would be "out the chute" rather than worked off.
What people typically don't absorb well is vitamins, minerals and other co-factors in our foods, is my understanding.
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That particular article is a mishmash of pseudoscientific ideas. I don't know if it's harder to lose weight today. Fewer people were overweight, but WW has been around a long time for a reason. Ask someone over 70 who was overweight how hard it was to lose weight as a young person - they probably won't say it was easy. People were more active generally. Food was both more expensive and less convenient so they ate less. My grandmother's wedding china from 1947 is 2 inches smaller than mine from 60 years later. Food had to be prepared, so there was a lot less snacking. More people smoked and drank, both of which can suppress appetite. Food costs make up a smaller portion of household spending now than at any other time in history.
That said, the CICO model isn't all that good either. We parrot one pound = 3500 calories like it's gospel, except that it was an oversimplification calculated in 1958. It works ok-ish for short term weight loss of a smaller amount of weight, but it's not terribly accurate for long term, larger loss. Even for shorter term loss, it's more like start with a 250-500 calorie cut and keep cutting until you actually lose. Then cut some more. I think we set people up to fail when we adhere to the idea that if you eat at X deficit, you will lose. How many times a day are posters beaten up about lying about weighing their food when they aren't losing?
This is new from NIH. It's probably more realistic. http://www.niddk.nih.gov/research-funding/at-niddk/labs-branches/LBM/integrative-physiology-section/research-behind-body-weight-planner/Pages/default.aspx0 -
The new body weight planner plans for metabolic adaptation, and isn't anything that isn't unknown.
The interesting thing about it?
Once your activity levels pass a certain threshold, the projected loss rate for that seems to be the same as any other weight loss calculator out there.
My numbers in that body weight planner and scoobysworkshop are exactly the same.
One of the big flaws in a lot of diet research is that it has been carried out using VLCD's and no activity for the study participants. Another flaw is often that those involved in that research aren't eating adequate protein and are losing lean muscle mass, which also contributes to metabolic slow down.
Basing conclusions on CICO over the long term for dieters in the general population who don't do those things isn't going to provide anything meaningful for us, and frankly, I don't take anything seriously from the research based on studies carried out this way.
Unless and until I see long-range research carried out on people eating at a reasonable deficit who are engaged in physical activity, I won't apply its findings to my situation.0 -
TheopolisAmbroiseIII wrote: »I don't mean to confuse the issue any further, but I have an honest question. Can we assume that all people can extract the same amount of calories from food? If I eat an apple, and a scientist with a bomb calorimeter has deduced that the apple contains 90 calories, can we assume that my GI tract will extract 90 calories, and yours will too?
Is there any way that one person's digestive system will only take 90%, or 80% or even only 60% of the calories from the food item and pass the rest out the back?
In this case CICO would still hold, but a portion of your Calories "Out" would be "out the chute" rather than worked off.
It is a common misconception that the calorie counts on foods are just bomb calorimeter measurements - they aren't. Even when it was first started by Atwater, he was aware that fiber burns just fine in a calorimeter but that humans can't digest things like cellulose. Similarly, we use 4 kCal/gram as the amount of energy for protein, but a calorimeter would actually yield more like 5.7 kCal / gram - digesting and converting it into a useful form takes a certain amount of energy.
There are rare metabolic orders that would prevent digestion. This would potentially cause greater weight loss than predicted by standard formulas, but such orders are rare.
Not much is going to cause weight gain in excess of the predictions though - life has been working for 2 billion years to be as efficient as possible at converting molecules into usable energy, there isn't much left to wring out in terms of efficiency in the system.0 -
I lost 63 lbs on CICO 2 years ago. Now I can't lose anymore. I can tell you CICO does not work, I am proof.
*please do not look at my diary.0 -
i am not interested in proving anything. i know how much i eat, i know how much i expend. it doesn't really vary. i am eating at a deficit, and i am losing weight. (i average approximately 3000 calories per day, am not particularly active and don't exercise much. if you can conceive of a way that i could be burning in excess of that in order to have lost the weight i have, i guess you'd have your answer according to the cico theory).
some people do eat at a deficit, and they do not lose weight. there has to be something more to it.
though as i said, i am not particularly concerned with figuring it out or proving why or what it is.
just wanted to put out there that there are a variety of experiences and possibilities. carry on!
(:0 -
*not eating at s deficit. (:0
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This is false. It doesn't happen. Ever. (Over the longer term and barring day-to-day fluctuations.)tmdalton849 wrote: »i am not interested in proving anything. i know how much i eat, i know how much i expend. it doesn't really vary. i am eating at a deficit, and i am losing weight. (i average approximately 3000 calories per day, am not particularly active and don't exercise much. if you can conceive of a way that i could be burning in excess of that in order to have lost the weight i have, i guess you'd have your answer according to the cico theory).
some people do eat at a deficit, and they do not lose weight. there has to be something more to it.
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tmdalton849 wrote: »i am not interested in proving anything. i know how much i eat, i know how much i expend. it doesn't really vary. i am eating at a deficit, and i am losing weight. (i average approximately 3000 calories per day, am not particularly active and don't exercise much. if you can conceive of a way that i could be burning in excess of that in order to have lost the weight i have, i guess you'd have your answer according to the cico theory).
some people do eat at a deficit, and they do not lose weight. there has to be something more to it.
though as i said, i am not particularly concerned with figuring it out or proving why or what it is.
just wanted to put out there that there are a variety of experiences and possibilities. carry on!
(:
You can't prove it so you pretend you are not interested, baloney!0 -
tmdalton849 wrote: »i am not interested in proving anything. i know how much i eat, i know how much i expend. it doesn't really vary. i am eating at a deficit, and i am losing weight. (i average approximately 3000 calories per day, am not particularly active and don't exercise much. if you can conceive of a way that i could be burning in excess of that in order to have lost the weight i have, i guess you'd have your answer according to the cico theory).
some people do eat at a deficit, and they do not lose weight. there has to be something more to it.
though as i said, i am not particularly concerned with figuring it out or proving why or what it is.
just wanted to put out there that there are a variety of experiences and possibilities. carry on!
(:
You are wrong. You have no way to prove otherwise. You're not tracking your calories, you're not weighing your food, you're not acurately tracking exercise. You have absolutely no idea if you're eating in a deficit or not because you lack the data to make such a statement. I, however, absolutely do know that you're eating in a deficit. How do I know this? Because you're losing weight.
No one eats at a deficit and doesn't lose weight. It simply doesn't work that way. People may think they're eating at a deficit and not losing, but in actuality, they are eating at maintenance.
If you weren't interested in proving otherwise, you wouldn't keep coming back and posting.0
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