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CICO is not the whole equation

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  • jenilla1
    jenilla1 Posts: 11,118 Member
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    So much drama on this thread... :/
  • Annie_01
    Annie_01 Posts: 3,096 Member
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    jenilla1 wrote: »
    So much drama on this thread... :/

    LOL Yes...certain topics seem to bring out the "passion" in people. I have learned...mainly just read and respond infrequently.

    However there can be some things to learn if you pick your way through the drama. It has given me much to research and learn from in order to decide what is best for me. Actually in the end...both sides of the debate have given me the knowledge to formulate my own diet. It incorporates a little from both sides.

    But yea...it would be nice to be able to read both sides without all the drama. Oh well...maybe in another life...

  • DebSozo
    DebSozo Posts: 2,578 Member
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    @Annie_01 The topics that cause consistent controversy are rarely solved in the thread at hand and people are perpetually in disagreement over a handful of predictable subjects that pop up over and over, IMO.

    I do the same as you do and read both sides of the argument and try to sort it out for myself. If it does work, then it is awesome!

    But some individuals really think "one size fits all". However it is obvious that people are at different ages, fitness ranges, metabolic level, and health in different periods of life and will respond differently.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    It would be nice if CICO would explain "WHY" some animals consume more than they burn. Healthy animals do not become obese in nature.

    There are factors that we need to find that explains why some humans have lost the ability to eat intuitively and keep weight within a healthy range in their cases. I have finally learned in my case for long term maintenance without weighing food and counting calories for the most part is finding and eating the macro that physically removes all my food cravings without feeling 'deprived'. Hopefully most will not be old enough to sign up to start drawing Social Security (USA) as was my case.

    Over time my ideal eating macro took a curve in the road it seems and I did not make the curve and crashed my health.

    What is the 'right' macro will greatly vary from person to person I expect. My major clue was finding the macro that resolved my 40 years of IBS and pain along with greatly improved lab test results. Automatic weight loss is a positive side effect for finding my now 'current' eating macro.
  • nvmomketo
    nvmomketo Posts: 12,019 Member
    edited January 2017
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    VintageFeline wrote: »
    The thing I take issue with often from those who low carb (which, by the way, I have no issue with as a way of eating if it works for you, I certainly cut way back on carbs when cutting, it's just the easiest thing to ditch for me), is this assertion that great swathes of the worlds population have some sort of metabolic issue/medical issue that makes carbs bad for them. And I'm happy to be corrected with actual statistics but I'm just not sure that stacks up.

    http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2434682
    "Results In the overall 2011-2012 population, the unadjusted prevalence (using the hemoglobin A1c, FPG, or 2-hour PG definitions for diabetes and prediabetes) was 14.3% (95% CI, 12.2%-16.8%) for total diabetes, 9.1% (95% CI, 7.8%-10.6%) for diagnosed diabetes, 5.2% (95% CI, 4.0%-6.9%) for undiagnosed diabetes, and 38.0% (95% CI, 34.7%-41.3%) for prediabetes; among those with diabetes, 36.4% (95% CI, 30.5%-42.7%) were undiagnosed."

    That's just for insulin resistance expressed as prediabetes and T2D. It works out to 52.3% if I added that right. It could be high, but even if it is 5 or 10% high, it is still a pretty large group of people. That number does not include IR cases expressed as PCOS, NAFLD, Alzheimer's or CAD from metabolic disease. Those who could benefit from a LCHF diet is a sizeable amount.

    That's not to say it is the only way. Plenty of diabetics are able to normalize blood glucose by losing enough weight. That only works if your IR is weight related though; not always the case. For example, India has quite a high IR problem which is not weight related. It appears to be realted to NAFLD.

    I imagine the cases of cancer that directly benefit from a low carb diet is fairly small.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    VintageFeline wrote: »
    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    It would be nice if CICO would explain "WHY" some animals consume more than they burn. Healthy animals do not become obese in nature.

    Um. What? Any credible references that this is a thing?

    Please quote my entire post to get my point of view in more detail.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    If i lived out in the wilds of Africa and had to hunt and gather my food I'm sure i'd be stick thin, bringing down a wildebeest takes energy!

    As to the intuitive eating... I can stop eating when I'm satisfied, i know the difference between hunger/cravings/thirst and just eating for the hell of it. It's whether i choose to stop eating when i should, or do i eat that piece of cheesecake because it tastes so good. For me, it's intuitive eating V willpower.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    ILiftHeavyAcrylics wrote: »
    @GaleHawkins do you have any evidence that humans have "lost" the ability to eat intuitively and keep weight in a healthy range in the presence of abundant food? I wonder if we ever really had that ability or if food was just scarce and/or activity was higher before the modern age.

    Yeah, this is my reaction.

    Humans had no reason to select for an ability to intuitively eat -- over human history eating a particular number of calories per day that happens to be our TDEE was not helpful. Eating food when it was there was. So not surprising an environment of abundant food tends to result in humans wanting to eat more, whether they need to or not.

    Over history, this was normally regulated by scarcity, the need for lots of activity, and cultural traditions surrounding food and limiting eating times, none of which exist for most of us on MFP (or didn't unless we imposed them).

    I think some may be able to self-regulate without thinking about it (I have one cat who seems to, whereas my other one would be obese if I didn't regulate his food), but that the majority of humans don't is not surprising to me.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    VintageFeline wrote: »
    The thing I take issue with often from those who low carb (which, by the way, I have no issue with as a way of eating if it works for you, I certainly cut way back on carbs when cutting, it's just the easiest thing to ditch for me), is this assertion that great swathes of the worlds population have some sort of metabolic issue/medical issue that makes carbs bad for them. And I'm happy to be corrected with actual statistics but I'm just not sure that stacks up.

    Agree with this (including having no problem with low carb and finding cutting carbs a reasonable way to cut since for me they tend to be what I miss least beyond a certain amount of fat). Given that a huge number of healthy human diets are high carb or at least higher carb than the US, including most blue zone diets, and that populations in those areas have very low incidents of things like T2D, not high, let alone half the population or some such, the idea that half of humans or, really, any significant number of humans at all need to be on such a diet naturally for health reasons seems extremely far-fetched to me. If anything the evidence suggests to me that higher carb might be healthier (although I like moderate to low-ish better and see no reason to think it's bad for me so am not overly bothered by that).

    Now, could humans who have developed metabolic syndrome for reasons OTHER THAN simply eating high carb (being overweight, maybe diet, maybe some combination, maybe other factors like steroid use which is I believe a risk factor, so on) subsequently have reasons to lower carbs for health reasons? Sure, although for a lot of people who respond to just losing weight (probably a significant majority of the IR people in the western world and increasingly in developing countries) going low carb is probably not necessary for health reasons from what I've read and even increases/makes worse the reaction to carbs (although it might make actually losing the weight easier when it is happening if one is already IR).

    Getting to the point where one is metabolically healthy again -- can eat some potato without having problematic blood sugar -- would seem to be the real indication of remission or whatever and an ideal, but clearly if one can't do that choosing a diet that helps would be a great choice (and there are a variety of IR people on MFP who have done this in lots of ways, as I'm sure you know).

    But yeah, the idea that about 50% of people naturally need a low carb diet seems to be entirely inconsistent with the evidence.

  • Gallowmere1984
    Gallowmere1984 Posts: 6,626 Member
    edited January 2017
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    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    ILiftHeavyAcrylics wrote: »
    @GaleHawkins do you have any evidence that humans have "lost" the ability to eat intuitively and keep weight in a healthy range in the presence of abundant food? I wonder if we ever really had that ability or if food was just scarce and/or activity was higher before the modern age.

    Yeah, this is my reaction.

    Humans had no reason to select for an ability to intuitively eat -- over human history eating a particular number of calories per day that happens to be our TDEE was not helpful. Eating food when it was there was. So not surprising an environment of abundant food tends to result in humans wanting to eat more, whether they need to or not.

    Over history, this was normally regulated by scarcity, the need for lots of activity, and cultural traditions surrounding food and limiting eating times, none of which exist for most of us on MFP (or didn't unless we imposed them).

    I think some may be able to self-regulate without thinking about it (I have one cat who seems to, whereas my other one would be obese if I didn't regulate his food), but that the majority of humans don't is not surprising to me.

    Interestingly, it appears that areas that never would have historically had long "lean periods" (usually civilizations near the equator) and people from those areas have lower incidences of obesity. That seems to hold until the Western diet starts to move in anyway.

    The biggest issue would appear to be sugared drinks. No shock that adding several hundred pointless calories would screw with autoregulation of intake though. Hell, even Mexico wasn't that bad until the 90s, and they're right next door.

    All of it certainly jibes with an evolutionary need to fatten up for the winter (or lack there of) though.
  • CynthiasChoice
    CynthiasChoice Posts: 1,047 Member
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    I have some simple questions related to CICO:

    Do you believe metabolism can be altered by changing levels of vitamins or mineral balances in the body?
    Is metabolism affected by level of hydration?
    Is it affected by exposure to environmental toxins?
    Is it affected by the body's hormonal response to stress?

    There is research being done in all these areas, with some studies showing clear evidence that metabolism can be positively or negatively altered by our environment, level of hydration, and nutrition. We need more studies and more time to get a clearer picture. The science is still young.

    It should be the great hope of everyone using this site that there IS indeed more to the picture than CICO. Yes, we can control the calories in, but the calories out is still a bit of a puzzle. While we think we've got it all under control, nature will surprise us. Don't the nuances make life more interesting?


  • CynthiasChoice
    CynthiasChoice Posts: 1,047 Member
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    Yes, I understand your point. But if nutrition affects the speed of calories out, then a calorie of one food may not be equal to a calorie of another food.

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