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Why do people deny CICO ?
Replies
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WinoGelato wrote: »Hmmm...I think what people are perhaps saying is that, of course, anyone who is calorie restricted will eventually lose weight. It’s just not a simple linear relationship. At 1200 calories/day, starting at the same weight, some will lose a lot of weight, and quickly, while others will lose less weight and slowly. Most women know the pain of going on a diet with their male partner, only to see them lose weight rapidly by cutting out desserts, while they struggle to lose weight on a restrictive low calorie diet. Hormones. Someone who was formerly obese, and has lost a significant amount of weight, will unfortunately have a lower resting metabolic rate. So yes, they can still lose weight by cutting calories, but they’ll have to cut their calories far more drastically than someone without a history of obesity who is on their first diet. It’s not always as simple as telling someone who’s struggling that they need to do a better job of weighing and measuring, because they ”should” be losing weight at the caloric intake they’re at.
What kind of a difference in rate of loss do you think two people starting at the same weight, both eating the same 1200 calories, would see? In your hypothetical example, do they have the same activity level and exercise routine as well? So what are the causes for the differences in the rate of loss? The example of husband and wife isn’t relevant because they likely wouldn’t be starting at the same weight and husband shouldn’t be cutting to 1200.
And at the same body weight, a man will commonly have more muscle in proportion to body fat than a woman. (There are exceptions; I'm talking averages.) This is an important factor in expected loss rate between them.7 -
So many people just don't grasp the concept of calories in calories out. They tell me that not all calories are equal and that you have to eat healthy to lose weight. I used to argue with these people but lately I just smile and nod. It's worked for me.. I eat basically anything I want and have lost 5 kg. I feel so many more people would be successful at weight loss if they just grasped this simple scientific concept. I'm hoping to reach my ultimate weight and then write a blog list about how I did it and prove all the CICO deniers wrong
In my experience when people say "not all calories are equal" they are basically refering to how different foods can have different levels of satiety for the same amount of calories. That is true...but they mistakenly think that somehow CICO is somehow in denial of that, which it isn't. Saying all calroies are equal is not the same thing as saying any random collection of foods makes a good diet.13 -
The point I was trying to make is that there are numerous variables that would affect how quickly people lose weight. People seem to misinterpret CICO as meaning everyone will lose weight at a similar rate if they restrict to a similar level, but of course they don’t. That’s why the insistence of some that slower weight loss is purely because of inaccurate measuring (because CICO) can be experienced as offensive and hurtful to some people. And it’s also just wrong. There are a multitude of factors that affect the amount of energy we extract from food, the extent of our insulin response to identical diets, our level of satiety following a meal, or our resting metabolic rate etc...These affect our CI (calories extracted from food) and CO (calories expended from identical amounts of activity). Which, in the absence of some pretty specialized testing, most of us don’t actually know with any precision.
I see patients quite frequently who are eating very little (600-800 calories), exercising excessively/obsessively (hours per day) and still not losing weight. They get there by following advice to cut calories and up their exercise when their weight loss plateaued. The answer in these cases is ALMOST always to eat more and exercise less. There’s a small initial weight gain followed by steady weight loss. Yes, they could theoretically eat even less and exercise even more and eventually they’d lose weight. But at great cost to their health. And why would you want to do it that way?
* Note the ALMOST. A thorough history is required before giving that advice.33 -
OK. The perspective of a former denier.
We want to lose weight yesterday. No matter how long it took for me to put it on, I want it gone yesterday after I start my diet.
And complete and utter lack of understanding on calories. “I had a heavy lunch so I am simply going to drink milk for dinner” with around 10 teaspoons of sugar in it. “I had a small snack. Just 20-30 chips and a small sugary drink”.
“I was good with my diet today. So I am going to eat this double scoop ice cream. It’s all liquid in the end”. The concept of “liquid has no calories” kills it for many people.
“I don’t want to weigh my food. I know this looks like 100 grams.”
The food I cook at home and the food I eat outside has the same number of calories. (I lost 4 kgs in 2 months by just stopping eating out. No other effort apart from this).
About the CO part of the equation. I folded laundry today. I ll add “housework- moderate intensity” for 60 minutes. Cool. That gives me 200 additional calories.
I do this for a week. At best I don’t see a change in the scale and then I proclaim “CICO is a lie”.
I did all of this. Did an online test “do I have hypothyroid”. The result was obviously yes. Went and got my thyroid tested. It was in perfect range. My last defense crumbled. I had a threshold weight in my head. I thought I cannot get below it. And then I moved my house. Got closer to my workplace. Started walking to work. Cooked at home. Got good rest. Result: I am 3kgs below the “threshold weight” I thought I cannot cross.
Somethings you just have to learn the hard way. Only then do you realize that it did not have to be so hard.
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That's why we always emphasize that maximum healthy weightloss rate is determined by height, weight, sex, activity level. A max rate of 1% of total body weight per week is an often thrown around rule of thumb. Percentage is a concept that's hard for many people to understand. Sometimes I link Wikipedia articles, but I don't think they're interested. The same goes for "maximum"; no amount of paraphrazing, like "up to" and "no more than", not even "maybe this much, if all these factors are present and constant, but most likely less, and decreasing as you lose weight" hits home.The point I was trying to make is that there are numerous variables that would affect how quickly people lose weight. People seem to misinterpret CICO as meaning everyone will lose weight at a similar rate if they restrict to a similar level, but of course they don’t.
We also make sure people are informed that fat loss can be masked by water weight fluctuations, so you need a least a few weeks of consistent weigh-ins, while sticking to a consistent diet/exercise, to see a true trend.That’s why the insistence of some that slower weight loss is purely because of inaccurate measuring (because CICO) can be experienced as offensive and hurtful to some people.
The technicalities might be correct, but they will have no real impact on the end result, and each person has to adjust for real life results anyway; any estimation is just a qualified guess. Satiety is not just individual, it's also subjective; it's not just physical, it's also psychological - some people enjoy feeling empty, others feel anxious.And it’s also just wrong. There are a multitude of factors that affect the amount of energy we extract from food, the extent of our insulin response to identical diets, our level of satiety following a meal, or our resting metabolic rate etc...These affect our CI (calories extracted from food) and CO (calories expended from identical amounts of activity). Which, in the absence of some pretty specialized testing, most of us don’t actually know with any precision.
Self-reported food intake and exercise will always be inaccurate, and overweight people tend to underestimate intake and overestimate exercise. Even patients in weightloss clinics find ways to cheat. People are desperate, yes, but desperation doesn't usually lead to rational behavior. Misinformation and superstition feeds the irrational behavior. Neutral, balanced information can be a gamechanger, but the person/patient has to be willing to change their attitude. Knowing is not the same as accepting as facts.I see patients quite frequently who are eating very little (600-800 calories), exercising excessively/obsessively (hours per day) and still not losing weight. They get there by following advice to cut calories and up their exercise when their weight loss plateaued. The answer in these cases is ALMOST always to eat more and exercise less. There’s a small initial weight gain followed by steady weight loss. Yes, they could theoretically eat even less and exercise even more and eventually they’d lose weight. But at great cost to their health. And why would you want to do it that way?
* Note the ALMOST. A thorough history is required before giving that advice.15 -
The point I was trying to make is that there are numerous variables that would affect how quickly people lose weight. People seem to misinterpret CICO as meaning everyone will lose weight at a similar rate if they restrict to a similar level, but of course they don’t. That’s why the insistence of some that slower weight loss is purely because of inaccurate measuring (because CICO) can be experienced as offensive and hurtful to some people. And it’s also just wrong. There are a multitude of factors that affect the amount of energy we extract from food, the extent of our insulin response to identical diets, our level of satiety following a meal, or our resting metabolic rate etc...These affect our CI (calories extracted from food) and CO (calories expended from identical amounts of activity). Which, in the absence of some pretty specialized testing, most of us don’t actually know with any precision.
I see patients quite frequently who are eating very little (600-800 calories), exercising excessively/obsessively (hours per day) and still not losing weight. They get there by following advice to cut calories and up their exercise when their weight loss plateaued. The answer in these cases is ALMOST always to eat more and exercise less. There’s a small initial weight gain followed by steady weight loss. Yes, they could theoretically eat even less and exercise even more and eventually they’d lose weight. But at great cost to their health. And why would you want to do it that way?
* Note the ALMOST. A thorough history is required before giving that advice.
That completely ignores the CO part of CICO.13 -
The point I was trying to make is that there are numerous variables that would affect how quickly people lose weight. People seem to misinterpret CICO as meaning everyone will lose weight at a similar rate if they restrict to a similar level, but of course they don’t. That’s why the insistence of some that slower weight loss is purely because of inaccurate measuring (because CICO) can be experienced as offensive and hurtful to some people. And it’s also just wrong. There are a multitude of factors that affect the amount of energy we extract from food, the extent of our insulin response to identical diets, our level of satiety following a meal, or our resting metabolic rate etc...These affect our CI (calories extracted from food) and CO (calories expended from identical amounts of activity). Which, in the absence of some pretty specialized testing, most of us don’t actually know with any precision.
I see patients quite frequently who are eating very little (600-800 calories), exercising excessively/obsessively (hours per day) and still not losing weight. They get there by following advice to cut calories and up their exercise when their weight loss plateaued. The answer in these cases is ALMOST always to eat more and exercise less. There’s a small initial weight gain followed by steady weight loss. Yes, they could theoretically eat even less and exercise even more and eventually they’d lose weight. But at great cost to their health. And why would you want to do it that way?
* Note the ALMOST. A thorough history is required before giving that advice.
But how significantly do you think those variables impact the rate of loss, and what percentage of individuals do you think are actually impacted by what you describe?
Because I find posts like this - providing exceptions and reasons why someone might not lose exactly 1 lb/week if they cut 500 cals from their diet but instead might lose 0.8 lb/week to be introducing unnecessary noise to a simple equation which works in principle for everyone. The fact is that all of the numbers, both CI and CO, are estimates and subject to some individual variability. But if a person is consistent, uses their own real world data, and adjusts accordingly - the principle of CICO still holds.
Introducing why something might not work precisely for everyone who tries, and providing all kinds of examples of people with medical conditions, damaged metabolism, etc - when that doesn’t apply to the vast majority of people - is just going to result in some people thinking they’d be better off not trying, assuming they are one of your exception cases rather than one of the countless individuals who just needs to focus on better logging and be more patient to see results. You’re validating people’s common belief that weight loss is hard and complex and difficult to control and that’s the opposite of what the OP, and so many others on these boards are saying. When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras or unicorns.
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Because it isn't always true..but CICO folks take on a superiority complex. They're like born again christians who think they're the only ones going to heaven. When in reality.. all sorts of good people are going to heaven. And..for me - calorie counting never worked.. i've lost almost all my weight Since jan. 1 not counting a single calorie and eating way more then when i did. Different approaches work for different people.
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elisa123gal wrote: »Because it isn't always true..but CICO folks take on a superiority complex. They're like born again christians who think they're the only ones going to heaven. When in reality.. all sorts of good people are going to heaven. And..for me - calorie counting never worked.. i've lost almost all my weight Since jan. 1 not counting a single calorie and eating way more then when i did. Different approaches work for different people.
So you’re one of the people who doesn’t understand what CICO means... it doesn’t mean calorie counting. It is simply an energy balance. If you lost weight since Jan 1st that’s great - but it was because you were in a calorie deficit. CICO applies whether you are losing, maintaining, or gaining weight.
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elisa123gal wrote: »Because it isn't always true..but CICO folks take on a superiority complex. They're like born again christians who think they're the only ones going to heaven. When in reality.. all sorts of good people are going to heaven. And..for me - calorie counting never worked.. i've lost almost all my weight Since jan. 1 not counting a single calorie and eating way more then when i did. Different approaches work for different people.
So calorie counting didn't work but you are eating more than ever. That makes sense
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elisa123gal wrote: »Because it isn't always true..but CICO folks take on a superiority complex. They're like born again christians who think they're the only ones going to heaven. When in reality.. all sorts of good people are going to heaven. And..for me - calorie counting never worked.. i've lost almost all my weight Since jan. 1 not counting a single calorie and eating way more then when i did. Different approaches work for different people.
Nah. It's more like they're people who've discovered that the world is actually round, not flat. Because it's been proven by science. And yet, flat-earthers still exist who deny the facts.40 -
It is around digestion.
I think the other argument you some times get against all calories being equal is that their is suppose to be a slight difference in additional calories consumed from digestion of a protein, fat, and carb.
"Protein takes the most energy to digest (20-30% of total calories in protein eaten go to digesting it). Next is carbohydrates (5-10%) and then fats (0-3%). Thus, if you eat 100 calories from protein, your body uses 20-30 of those calories to digest and absorb the protein."
Certainly, the CICO model is weak in that it doesn't factor in appetite. Your ability to stick to CICO is influenced by what you eat.
actually the energy to digest the fodd falls in the calories out side of the CI CO, so digestion of a balanced diet is already included in your maintenance calories. IF you eat a higher protein diet you may increase your cals out by a few dozen a day, this would slightly increase your TDEE.4 -
Lost 120 pounds here since July of 2017. (5'11" 300 lbs down to 180 as of today). Did it by counting calories and having significant calorie deficits each day. For myself, eating primarily "quality food" was essential, because this lifestyle change became a sustainable under these circumstances. Quality food to me means food that:
1) tastes good
2) I get a big plate or bowl of it for only a couple hundred calories
3) Contains protein and/or fiber
I need to eat a lot of bites to feel full and satisfied! My diet needs to revolve around this fact.
I do agree that you could apply the "calorie in, calorie out" rule to any food, and it could work. An extreme example would be to eat only pizza throughout the day. If each slice has 200 calories, and I wanted to be at 1400 calories for my daily allocation, I could have 7 pieces throughout the day. I would still lose a lot of weight. HOWEVER, I would be miserable, because I never would feel satisfied after eating only 1 piece of pizza. What would happen if I tried this: I would eat 4 pieces by noon, then have 3 left for the rest of the day, and would be frustrated, and ultimately fail.
Here's an example of doing it the right way for myself with "quality food."
Today I had 1 cup of egg whites (123 calories, 25 grams of protein) and toast (two pieces = 90 calories total, 6 grams protein, 5 grams fiber). Salt and pepper on the egg whites, spray butter (0 calories) on the toast. For lunch I will have 4 oz of skinless, boneless chicken breast (171 calories, 35 grams protein) and California Medley Frozen Steamed Vegetables from Aldi (120 calories, 12 grams protein, 8 grams fiber). Mix the veggies & shredded chicken together - sriracha is my topping.
Between the two meals, 504 calories. I will work out on my lunch break (1 hour of cardio, 1,000 calories), and have a huge deficit by the time I come home for dinner. This is what I have been doing since July 2017 just about every day, and it worked very well. I will consume 1800 calories by the end of the day if I eat a lot. If I have a light or medium dinner, 1300-1500 calories total.
I found a video online which explained it very well: You can either be a cook or a baker when it comes to managing your diet. A cook does ballpark calculations, and prefers to go more by guidelines. A baker prefers to measure every thing, and be extremely precise. I am a baker when it comes to my diet. I love to weigh and measure everything. You can get a great digital scale off Amazon for $10. I have a bunch of them. (One for work, one for home, one I travel with, one at my parents, etc).
TLDR; You should find what works for you - whether you're a cook or a baker - and rock with that.10 -
terryritter1 wrote: »
Oh, I've read more than my share and anyone else's share of biochemistry. My masters degree is in Human Nutrition and Advanced Metabolism, and I've been practicing in the health and wellness community for the past 20 years, so I'm pretty sure I don't fall under the category you stated.
There are a whole host of factors that influence how calories are stored and which are more effectively digested. So, yeah, if you could know all that, I guess you can do a CICO...but you can't. It's not the concept that's amiss, but the practicality of arguing it. No one can tell me what their CI is...or their CO for that matter. But, again, if it gets you to create a deficit, that serves the purpose.
The two bolded bits are at complete odds with each other.
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elisa123gal wrote: »Because it isn't always true..but CICO folks take on a superiority complex. They're like born again christians who think they're the only ones going to heaven. When in reality.. all sorts of good people are going to heaven. And..for me - calorie counting never worked.. i've lost almost all my weight Since jan. 1 not counting a single calorie and eating way more then when i did. Different approaches work for different people.
You do not have to count calories to lose fat; you DO need to consume less than it requires to maintain. If you're eating more than you ever have and still losing my guess is you're more active also. I eat more now than when I was 240lbs and (still losing) but nonetheless you can meet your diet half way with activity. The fact that you don't track calories makes your statement pretty irrelevant because you don't actually KNOW if you are eating more or not.16 -
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elisa123gal wrote: »Because it isn't always true..but CICO folks take on a superiority complex. They're like born again christians who think they're the only ones going to heaven. When in reality.. all sorts of good people are going to heaven. And..for me - calorie counting never worked.. i've lost almost all my weight Since jan. 1 not counting a single calorie and eating way more then when i did. Different approaches work for different people.
Nah. It's more like they're people who've discovered that the world is actually round, not flat. Because it's been proven by science. And yet, flat-earthers still exist who deny the facts.
Prepare to be proven wrong on all counts by photographic evidence.
Not only does this image show that the Earth is indeed flat, but also that CICO is *kitten* because that turtle is taking in a virtually endless number of calories, burning none, and isn't gaining weight, which clearly means his glycemic index is such that it compensates.
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I think maybe I should have worded my post differently. I'll use myself as an example: I used to count calories religiously and log everything but after a while I realised I just kind of knew naturally when I had reached my limit and actually stopped counting. Most of my weight was actually lost when I started listening to my body and only ate small portions. I'm very lucky that I have a small appetite so I guess that had made it easier but my point is... I'm able to do this because I understand that how much you eat is more important than what you eat. If it wasn't for MFP I wouldn't have even known this and I would have thought portion sizes make no difference if u aren't eating rabbit food. I have also learned that forcing oneself to eat breakfast is nonsense. If you don't want breakfast.. Don't eat it! Eat when hungry and try include mostly nutritious foods. I can promise you that most people really don't understand CICO and this actually causes them to binge. I never ever binge because I don't deprive myself but I have a friend who is a health freak during the week and goes crazy on weekends.. But justifies it as being a cheat day. Her overall weekly calorie intake is therefore probably more than mine.
I think everyone should do what works for them but be mindful of how important portion sizes are and stop demonizing specific food groups.8 -
Because if they acknowledged the fact of CICO then cognitive dissonance would eventually force them to admit that their failures to reach their goals are no one's fault but their own.
CICO forces you to be accountable for your activity, exercise and diet.
Most people would rather blame something else instead of taking responsibility for their choices and actions.8 -
I really don't know why.
No matter what weight loss program you follow, or how it is sold and packaged, it is ALWAYS eating less calories than your body burns ALWAYS!6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA9AdlhB18o
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