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Cals are NOT created equal. CICO isn't the whole story.
Replies
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VintageFeline wrote: »
Eh? This analogy doesn't work on any level. It's like saying what's better for the human body, a gallon of sugar or a gallon fuel? Not cupcakes vs bananas which are both foods safe for human consumption. Pure sugar water in your car and you'll kill it dead and vice versa with the human and fuel.
And does it matter that my body isn't a controlled lab environment? It is still utilising calories and doesn't distinguish the source purely from a fuel perspective, which is all a calorie is, a unit of measure for a fuel.
Your car may have been lab tested to do 55 miles to the gallon, doesn't mean that's what I'm going to get but all I need is to drive through a few tanks of fuel to know what the number is for me and how far a full tank will take me.
As a diabetic source of calories matter for you, it doesn't change how many you can consume.
All humans metabolize carbs, protein, and fat using completely different chemical processes. I'm just forced to be more aware of it than you are.16 -
[Citation needed]
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RogueRunner_1 wrote: »This topic is just annoying now. It's simple, calories in calories out will cause weight loss with a deficit. But common sense says certain foods are healthier for you than others. It's that simple. What's better for you, a banana or a cupcake? Easy enough. You can eat 1200 calories in cupcakes or 1200 in bananas. You'll lose weight, but common sense says your overall health is better with bananas.
What about Twinkies though?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.....is body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"
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rheddmobile wrote: »
All humans metabolize carbs, protein, and fat using completely different chemical processes. I'm just forced to be more aware of it than you are.
What? :huh:5 -
rheddmobile wrote: »
All humans metabolize carbs, protein, and fat using completely different chemical processes. I'm just forced to be more aware of it than you are.
Are you saying that each human ever to exist has a completely individual chemical process to metabolize macronutrients?11 -
rheddmobile wrote: »
All humans metabolize carbs, protein, and fat using completely different chemical processes. I'm just forced to be more aware of it than you are.
I am currently sitting in a room which has a poster saying "biochemical pathways" on top. It might not be totally up to date but in the end this is what there is to metabolize any nutrient in any organism. You can choose different sets of it, take the long or the short route, not metabolize something at all and rely on taking it up through food or other means. But doing so would most likely make you be defined as a different species of what you were before.
Yes, we have mutations and adaptions which change those processes. Some humans are not able to metabolize some nutrient the way they (as a "biologically standard reference human") should be able to. But most of it is exactly the same in every human. It is influenced by environmental factors (for example), but that does not make it a different process. It makes it a different way of reaching homeostasis.6 -
So please explain how that debunks that a gallon is a gallon? Or a calorie is a calorie? The MEASUREMENT is still the same.rheddmobile wrote: »
If you are a car, it matters enormously whether you have a gallon of fuel, or a gallon of sugar water. Both are gallons. But one will be translated into forward movement and the other will not.
The body does not use calories the same way a lab measures calories. I got to see this first hand when my diabetes was undiagnosed and I ate thousands of calories of sugary food per day and lost 25 lbs in a single month, due to my liver not responding to insulin. That's a single example of "calories in" being meaningless because of what's happening in the body. There are many.
As a diabetic I have a defective liver and pancreas, which means that I can easily see the difference between how carbs, protein, and fat are metabolized using a measuring device - but everyone alive has a liver and a pancreas, and metabolizes these foods by completely different processes.
No one has EVER SAID that carbs, fats, and protein are NOT absorbed and utilized differently from person to person. The debate is A CALORIE IS A CALORIE. And there's no debating 10 calories equals 10 calories in measurement of energy.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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rheddmobile wrote: »If you are a car, it matters enormously whether you have a gallon of fuel, or a gallon of sugar water. Both are gallons. But one will be translated into forward movement and the other will not.
The body does not use calories the same way a lab measures calories. I got to see this first hand when my diabetes was undiagnosed and I ate thousands of calories of sugary food per day and lost 25 lbs in a single month, due to my liver not responding to insulin. That's a single example of "calories in" being meaningless because of what's happening in the body. There are many.
As a diabetic I have a defective liver and pancreas, which means that I can easily see the difference between how carbs, protein, and fat are metabolized using a measuring device - but everyone alive has a liver and a pancreas, and metabolizes these foods by completely different processes.
But I'm *not* a car, and my human body *will* convert food to energy whatever the source.8 -
jaimeolive wrote: »
This is just one example that shows its not all CICO, you cant really truly know your CI... are you counting calories consumed, absorbed or utilized??
This really sounds like theresejesu. You guys didn't make a couple tweaks, did you?12 -
janejellyroll wrote: »
Are you saying that each human ever to exist has a completely individual chemical process to metabolize macronutrients?
I think she's saying that we all metabolize carbs differently than we do fat and fat differently than we do protein, etc., that the body digests and uses the components of the meal differently depending on what it is.
For example, someone who is insulin resistent (or no longer has the ability to produce insulin) will have trouble dealing with carbs once they are broken down into sugars if the glycogen stores are full, because insulin is used to shuttle them into cells and to store them (as fat, but that's not that significant). What this means is that severe T2D can actually cause weight loss if undiagnosed (but it's dangerous).
I don't think this has anything to do with the claim that a calorie is a calorie, but of course macros matter to some extent (and foods are not the same). As I said before, no one is claiming otherwise. You need micronutrients, a certain level of protein (made up of all the essential amino acids) and your essential fatty acids, etc.
But yes a physical condition can mean that there are difficulties metabolising some foods (just as someone with Crohns or IBS might have issues with fiber or someone with an allergy or celiac with have issues with certain foods, a problem with the liver, gallbladder, or kidneys may affect what good food choices are. I'd say this is a separate subject, as no one says "a calorie is a calorie" means we all would do equally well on identical diets.4 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »
I think she's saying that we all metabolize carbs differently than we do fat and fat differently than we do protein, etc., that the body digests and uses the components of the meal differently depending on what it is.
For example, someone who is insulin resistent (or no longer has the ability to produce insulin) will have trouble dealing with carbs once they are broken down into sugars if the glycogen stores are full, because insulin is used to shuttle them into cells and to store them (as fat, but that's not that significant). What this means is that severe T2D can actually cause weight loss if undiagnosed (but it's dangerous).
I don't think this has anything to do with the claim that a calorie is a calorie, but of course macros matter to some extent (and foods are not the same). As I said before, no one is claiming otherwise. You need micronutrients, a certain level of protein (made up of all the essential amino acids) and your essential fatty acids, etc.
But yes a physical condition can mean that there are difficulties metabolising some foods (just as someone with Crohns or IBS might have issues with fiber or someone with an allergy or celiac with have issues with certain foods, a problem with the liver, gallbladder, or kidneys may affect what good food choices are. I'd say this is a separate subject, as no one says "a calorie is a calorie" means we all would do equally well on identical diets.
Oh, that makes much more sense. Thank you.1 -
See this thread and associated link for a wonderful explanation:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10576091/energy-equation-the-best-article-ive-ever-read#latest5 -
You can't truly know your CI or CO - that doesn't invalidate them or the fact that you need your CI (actual energy utilized by your body from what you consumed) to be lower than your CO (actual energy expended by your body) in order to lose weight. The minutiae don't need to be known in order for the big picture to work. Track what you think your CI and CO are over time, troubleshoot unexpected variances, and make adjustments based upon your personal results. Voila! You now know your personal CICO well enough to lose, maintain, or gain weight as desired.
All of this... and I copied one of my comments from the CICO Math Equation thread I linked on Page 1...
The other thing that I see frequently, especially lately, is this idea that there are these subtleties like Thermic Effect of Food that contribute significantly to, or even invalidate the basic principle of CICO. People also get hung up on this idea that if they can't calculate it to the tenth of a calorie, then the whole equation must be bunk. They don't get the idea of "majoring in the minors" and that ALL of it is an estimate. There are ways to improve precision and accuracy, but the basic estimates are reliable enough for virtually all weight management goals. Like you said, that there are some variables that might need to be dialed in doesn't invalidate the entire concept.
I always wonder about the motivation of the people who want to pick apart CICO and suggest that the inability to both sides of the equation to a decimal point makes the whole thing bunk. Is it that they've been unsuccessful in achieving their weight management goals, so therefore there must be something wrong with the equation?9 -
jaimeolive wrote: »
This is just one example that shows its not all CICO, you cant really truly know your CI... are you counting calories consumed, absorbed or utilized??
I estimate both my calories absorbed and my calories burned. I then adjust my intake/output based on my actual results. Works fantastically well.15 -
What would be interesting is for you to provide some research that shows 'sticking to whole foods' aids body composition goals.joemac1988 wrote: ». Will your body composition be as optimal as if your macros were correct and you stuck to whole foods? NO.
P.S. If you disagree, your argument is with scientific research, not me.
This should be interesting
Without it, the issue IS with you for making unsubstantiated claims.
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jaimeolive wrote: »
This is just one example that shows its not all CICO, you cant really truly know your CI... are you counting calories consumed, absorbed or utilized??
Sorry to shatter your worldview but using that logic, nothing can be "truly known". Cause numbers in the real world rarely ever have a nice cutoff point. Gravity isn't 9.81 m/s², it's rounded to that because, get this, for the purposes it's used for that's sufficient.14 -
Another great video on when weight management/fitness information is appropriate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYlbzuLVr5M
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This reminds me of math class in high school where we had to factor polynomials and I was still hung up on 'solving' for X and Y, like we did in earlier grades. Somehow, I had to learn to solve the equations without actually figuring out what X and Y were...
At least with CICO, I have something I can ballpark.6 -
Another great video on when weight management/fitness information is appropriate:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYlbzuLVr5M
I've seen his shirtless torso on so many youtube thumbnails that I knew it was an Athlean-X video without even watching it. lol6 -
Another great video on when weight management/fitness information is appropriate:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYlbzuLVr5M
I've discovered this guy a few days ago. As far as I've seen so far, he's really great.
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For most of my adult life I've been resistant to the CICO. However, 2 months ago I started on MFP, and have been logging everyday. (I have not been weighing my food). I was also told years ago by my previous doctor that it would be nearly impossible to lose weight after age 40, so I needed to lose it before. I'd gone on diets before and lost, by eating low carb, juice fasting, or something else (not CICO) but only once did I keep it off for an extended time--for six years--because I continued to eat the same way (basically low carb with most meals being vegetables and meat). When I steered from that the weight can back. But I digress. I've lost 13.5 lbs. since I started 2 months ago, and I was hoping to lose 2 lbs. a week, but I'm happy with this so far and CICO seems to be working and none of the "impossibilities" are affecting it. I'm eating pretty well, whole foods, but not deprived and have some carbs too. I've in better shape because I increased my exercise too. In October I will get a scale and start weighing my food--as I have 100 lbs. to lose, and to lose the 2 per week, I need to be more accurate. MFP helped me to see that what I was eating was much beyond the calorie intake that I should have.
I think the diet/weight loss/exercise industry benefits from people NOT believing in CICO because if it actually works then they don't have as many customers! I feel like what I'm doing now on MFP is easy and doable. Tracking calories was NOT easy before the internet and apps like this. If I have to log for the rest of my life to lose the weight and then maintain, I'll do it, because it is a lot easier than guessing and trying different diets that really do not get to the bottom of the problem which is eating too much.24 -
lucerorojo wrote: »For most of my adult life I've been resistant to the CICO. However, 2 months ago I started on MFP, and have been logging everyday. (I have not been weighing my food). I was also told years ago by my previous doctor that it would be nearly impossible to lose weight after age 40, so I needed to lose it before. I'd gone on diets before and lost, by eating low carb, juice fasting, or something else (not CICO) but only once did I keep it off for an extended time--for six years--because I continued to eat the same way (basically low carb with most meals being vegetables and meat). When I steered from that the weight can back. But I digress. I've lost 13.5 lbs. since I started 2 months ago, and I was hoping to lose 2 lbs. a week, but I'm happy with this so far and CICO seems to be working and none of the "impossibilities" are affecting it. I'm eating pretty well, whole foods, but not deprived and have some carbs too. I've in better shape because I increased my exercise too. In October I will get a scale and start weighing my food--as I have 100 lbs. to lose, and to lose the 2 per week, I need to be more accurate. MFP helped me to see that what I was eating was much beyond the calorie intake that I should have.
I think the diet/weight loss/exercise industry benefits from people NOT believing in CICO because if it actually works then they don't have as many customers! I feel like what I'm doing now on MFP is easy and doable. Tracking calories was NOT easy before the internet and apps like this. If I have to log for the rest of my life to lose the weight and then maintain, I'll do it, because it is a lot easier than guessing and trying different diets that really do not get to the bottom of the problem which is eating too much.
Fantastic! Best of luck to you as you continue to progress toward your goals!!1 -
All calories are created 'equal'. Reasoning behind my seemingly confident reply-
A calorie is a measurement, not a nutrient - to say that all calories aren't created equal is to say that all miles aren't created equal due to terrain.
Certain foods will have a different effect on you and can have positive or adverse effects on your health but, if (without exercise) you need 1800 calories to maintain your 'weight' - you consume 1800 calories (without complicating matters with exercise) you will neither gain nor loose 'weight'.
The science is all there if you choose to read credible studies and physiological science - however, should you choose to read an article from somebody whom is stating their opinions or personal experience. That can't be considered credible science.
CICO is the whole equation when it comes to weight loss/maintenance/gain. Personal physiological needs however vary dramatically from person to person.4 -
lucerorojo wrote: »For most of my adult life I've been resistant to the CICO. However, 2 months ago I started on MFP, and have been logging everyday. (I have not been weighing my food). I was also told years ago by my previous doctor that it would be nearly impossible to lose weight after age 40, so I needed to lose it before. I'd gone on diets before and lost, by eating low carb, juice fasting, or something else (not CICO) but only once did I keep it off for an extended time--for six years--because I continued to eat the same way (basically low carb with most meals being vegetables and meat). When I steered from that the weight can back. But I digress. I've lost 13.5 lbs. since I started 2 months ago, and I was hoping to lose 2 lbs. a week, but I'm happy with this so far and CICO seems to be working and none of the "impossibilities" are affecting it. I'm eating pretty well, whole foods, but not deprived and have some carbs too. I've in better shape because I increased my exercise too. In October I will get a scale and start weighing my food--as I have 100 lbs. to lose, and to lose the 2 per week, I need to be more accurate. MFP helped me to see that what I was eating was much beyond the calorie intake that I should have.
I think the diet/weight loss/exercise industry benefits from people NOT believing in CICO because if it actually works then they don't have as many customers! I feel like what I'm doing now on MFP is easy and doable. Tracking calories was NOT easy before the internet and apps like this. If I have to log for the rest of my life to lose the weight and then maintain, I'll do it, because it is a lot easier than guessing and trying different diets that really do not get to the bottom of the problem which is eating too much.
CICO IS NOT CALORIE COUNTING!
Replace every instance of CICO above with "counting calories" and this makes sense.8 -
Yes, I see your point "CICO is not calorie counting." However, the way it is presented in the media is that it is the same thing. And people don't like to count calories, so the CICO is thrown out with the bath water too.3
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lucerorojo wrote: »Yes, I see your point "CICO is not calorie counting." However, the way it is presented in the media is that it is the same thing. And people don't like to count calories, so the CICO is thrown out with the bath water too.
Sadly...the media gets a lot of things wrong...6 -
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rheddmobile wrote: »
All humans metabolize carbs, protein, and fat using completely different chemical processes. I'm just forced to be more aware of it than you are.
"Completely"? LOL.
Some of us have medical conditions, and those make a difference. (Each condition makes a different difference.) Who has said otherwise?2 -
Carlos_421 wrote: »
I've seen his shirtless torso on so many youtube thumbnails that I knew it was an Athlean-X video without even watching it. lol
I started a GoFundMe to buy Jeff a shirt and sent the link to him.
For only 5 cents a day you can sponsor and clothe a guy like Jeff. No one should live life shirtless.14 -
peckchris3267 wrote: »The best diet for rapid weight loss is the raw chicken diet. No matter how much you eat you are guaranteed to lose a lot of weight.
i have heard of raw beef liver, heart, kidney, as well as raw eggs but i don't think people could get clean raw chicken that easy for just weight loss. but for the most part your not guaranteed anything with any diet even weight loss, and eating only raw chicken is a little too restrictive.6
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