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Why do people deny CICO ?
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Simply put, CICO ignores the mental and genetic and lifestyle aspects of weight loss (and any other variable you have to determine for yourself)
For those of you that don't know have issues with insulin or stress eating and counting calories works for you GOOD FOR YOU.
But let me say this, each person has to find what works for them. Yes fundamentally it's calories in calories out. But when you eat all your morning calories in the form of a honey bun you're likely not going to stay at your goal. Not all calories are equally satiating.
On top of that our calorie burn is not an exact science. No one truly knows exactly how much their body burns. If you have x amount of muscle you will burn more calories per minute than the guy sitting next to you that has less muscle.
Then there is body composition. My son's orthodontist is crazy skinny can eat like a maniac, and not put on the kind of muscle my husband or father can. My husband and I are the type of people who are either Fat or Fit but we are never skinny. Our kid is falling under the same umbrella. We have found that our fitness grove needs to focus on muscle building (which isn't easy) We can run, but it just doesn't do for us what lifting does.
Fitness is complex and frankly that is what the discussion is about.
People who make snarky comments like the OP drive me nuts because it's clear to me that they have never truly struggled with weight loss. I have battled my weight since I was 11 years old. I didn't understand back then that I was a very muscular little girl and I should protect that muscle.
CICO is just part of the equation. It's not that it's false, it's that it doesn't tell the whole story. Statements like the OP are incredibly tone deaf. Its like saying "Oh to have a home you just need a good foundation" Yes you need a good foundation but you also need a roof, and 4 walls. Then to do it better those 4 walls and that roof needs to be watertight....etc.
Like wise with LONG TERM fitness and weight management (the real issue here) you have to have a strategy that works for body in the LONG TERM. The result of that strategy is CICO. You don't start with CICO and hope that it all works out. Instead you start with a strategy that is flexible and works for you. That strategy should result in CICO being at a deficit. CICO by itself is a failed plan for most.5 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Important to differentiate between CICO and calorie counting.
You are totally right that CICO has to work-- it's just an energy balance statement. The complications are 1) there is no easy way to know accurately what your "calories out" are for any given day (despite advances in fitness watches, etc.) and 2) measuring your "calories in" requires significant effort.
So, while CICO is always the case, applying CICO (e.g., counting calories) doesn't work for a lot of people.
Although, it works for me, every time I adhere to it.
And, predictably, it stops working when I don't! 
The calories in food aren't exact either. I can eat tons of almonds that would in theory put me way over my calorie limit. BUT the truth is, the next day you can see those almond bits in my toilet and I end up losing weight. In theory if you go to family christmas dinner with all the pies and calorie rich food, you should be 5lbs+ heavier the day after. But that doesn't happen. My guess is that the amount of time it would take for your body to absorb those calories is longer than it would take for your body to push it out the poop shoot. But the excess goes to fat and if you did eat like that regularly then yes you gain massive amounts of weight.
Pure physics of your body and it's process states that your body can only absorb a certain amount of calories in a given time per pound of body weight.
A 200lb body will absorb more calories than a 150lb body on a given day because it needs those calories to function. However if the 150lb body routinely eats more than it's need, it will eventually become the 200lb body.2 -
Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Important to differentiate between CICO and calorie counting.
I agree calorie counting doesnt work for everyone - it is a method that doesnt suit everyone
CICO works for everyone and calorie deficit is universally neccesary to lose weight
but calorie counting is not.
An honest question - if you aren't counting the calories in, how are you accomplishing your goals in CICO?
Not the person you asked, but as a generality, consider the scope of time (decades, up to a century or so). Science has known that calories were key for body weight in quite specific terms for that amount of time, and it was popularized information by fairly early in the 20th century, IMU.
Even before that, in times when the average person was more connected to agriculture, people understood that if you were raising a hog (or whatever), how much and what you fed that hog affected its weight and body composition, though they didn't formally know about calories.
People used that knowledge to lose weight. Maybe they just cut back, maybe they specifically targeted cutting back high-calorie foods (since it was known which those were), maybe they used structured published meal plans, whatever - they were consciously applying CICO, the idea of calorie balance.
As an example, my dad did that in his 60s, around the 1980s - he just cut back, and ate more of lower calorie foods, less of high calorie foods, but without quantifying/estimating the details. He lost a bunch of weight, not sure how much, but an obvious multiple tens of pounds, probably 30-50, and stayed slim thereafter by watching the scale and cutting back if it crept you.
In my view - as someone who tried calorie counting when a person had to look up calories in a very limited book (in my case, 1970s) - calorie counting has only been a practical method since the apps became available. I admit that some people tried to do it earlier (via the books or mix-y matchy-y meal plan schemes), but it wasn't a very viable or practical long-term strategy, realistically.
I find it odd, here on MFP, that people sometimes seem to think that calorie counting and CICO are ultra-tightly linked (bidirectionally). (I'm not saying you're doing that. You just asked a question. I don't know what you think about the linkage, won't assume.)
(As an aside, there was even some dude on a thread here who asserted that people couldn't lose weight in the 1960s because they didn't know about calories yet . . . most people are much more well informed than that, I only digress to mention it because it was hilarious.)
People have used CICO, as a concept, to lose weight for many decades, at minimum. Calorie counting as a method has been relatively unusual, until recent times.1 -
If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.0 -
Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Important to differentiate between CICO and calorie counting.
I agree calorie counting doesnt work for everyone - it is a method that doesnt suit everyone
CICO works for everyone and calorie deficit is universally neccesary to lose weight
but calorie counting is not.
An honest question - if you aren't counting the calories in, how are you accomplishing your goals in CICO?
Not sure this question means general you or you specifically to me.
I didn't say I lost weight without counting calories. I did lose weight counting calories with MFP
But many people lose weight without doing so - my husband, for example,just stopped drinking sugar containing drinks and cut back on sweets and started exercising more.0 -
If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.2 -
snowflake954 wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.
Bulking and ripped, that is amazing. Cheers0 -
neanderthin wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.
Bulking and ripped, that is amazing. Cheers
Yeah--hard to believe, but I'm thinking that most of the research is probably done on overweight or obese individuals. Many people post that they know people that are thin and eat junk food, sweets,--whatever they want. I'm thinking that maybe people that are thin to begin with and eat correct amounts (naturally) for their daily calories, ARE able to eat whatever they want. The problem arises when they eat too much, which they don't. My husband is one. And yes, for a 69 yr old, he has a great bod--lots of muscle, no gut.
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Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Important to differentiate between CICO and calorie counting.
I agree calorie counting doesnt work for everyone - it is a method that doesnt suit everyone
CICO works for everyone and calorie deficit is universally neccesary to lose weight
but calorie counting is not.
An honest question - if you aren't counting the calories in, how are you accomplishing your goals in CICO?
To me, this is like asking if you aren't calculating your mass and the mass of every other body in the universe and your distance from all of those points and their relative vectors and accelerations, how are you accomplishing your goals in gravity?
There are no "goals" in CICO. It just is.3 -
If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Carbs are the one macronutrient that is not essential, in the sense that our bodies can manufacture it out of other types of intake when needed. (There are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids that we can only get from eating protein and fats respectively, and that are required for the body to function adequately.)
The implication is that carb intake is very flexible in humans. There's every indication that we can safely eat anything from none up to using up every calorie that we don't need in order to get adequate protein and fats. (Achieving zero carbs is fairly difficult in practice, though.)
IOW, the thing I bolded in your post is incorrect, IMU. That's not the only thing I think is incorrect. Or misleading. If you have research studies that support your contention, maybe post them.
P.S. I'm not a low carb eater. I'm a high-carb eater, typically over 225g of carbs daily, and that's as a non-large person (5'5").neanderthin wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.
Bulking and ripped, that is amazing. Cheers
It was this guy.
https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141807961&p=822484731#post822484731
He posted his diet on that bodybuilding.com thread, and there are photos of him there. Last I knew there were still some before and progress photos of him scattered around MFP, and he posted semi-often on other threads here for quite a while, so it's not likely to be some made-up thing IMO - too much self-consistent information over a long period of time.
He was very active, as I recall, in diverse ways, so a pretty high TDEE, and he did pay some attention to macros, but IIRC experimented at times with relatively lower protein than the usual bodybuilder recommendations, and absolutely did eat lots of what most people would consider junk food.
It was sort of like the bodybuilder equivalent of the Twinkie diet guy. It's pretty amusing.0 -
If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Carbs are the one macronutrient that is not essential, in the sense that our bodies can manufacture it out of other types of intake when needed. (There are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids that we can only get from eating protein and fats respectively, and that are required for the body to function adequately.)
The implication is that carb intake is very flexible in humans. There's every indication that we can safely eat anything from none up to using up every calorie that we don't need in order to get adequate protein and fats. (Achieving zero carbs is fairly difficult in practice, though.)
IOW, the thing I bolded in your post is incorrect, IMU. That's not the only thing I think is incorrect. Or misleading. If you have research studies that support your contention, maybe post them.
P.S. I'm not a low carb eater. I'm a high-carb eater, typically over 225g of carbs daily, and that's as a non-large person (5'5").neanderthin wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.
Bulking and ripped, that is amazing. Cheers
It was this guy.
https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141807961&p=822484731#post822484731
He posted his diet on that bodybuilding.com thread, and there are photos of him there. Last I knew there were still some before and progress photos of him scattered around MFP, and he posted semi-often on other threads here for quite a while, so it's not likely to be some made-up thing IMO - too much self-consistent information over a long period of time.
He was very active, as I recall, in diverse ways, so a pretty high TDEE, and he did pay some attention to macros, but IIRC experimented at times with relatively lower protein than the usual bodybuilder recommendations, and absolutely did eat lots of what most people would consider junk food.
It was sort of like the bodybuilder equivalent of the Twinkie diet guy. It's pretty amusing.
Thanks Ann. Ok, I did casually scan that thread but generally or mostly he was in deficit territory, and a pretty big deficit most of the time from what I saw. I guess I'm missing the point.0 -
neanderthin wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Carbs are the one macronutrient that is not essential, in the sense that our bodies can manufacture it out of other types of intake when needed. (There are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids that we can only get from eating protein and fats respectively, and that are required for the body to function adequately.)
The implication is that carb intake is very flexible in humans. There's every indication that we can safely eat anything from none up to using up every calorie that we don't need in order to get adequate protein and fats. (Achieving zero carbs is fairly difficult in practice, though.)
IOW, the thing I bolded in your post is incorrect, IMU. That's not the only thing I think is incorrect. Or misleading. If you have research studies that support your contention, maybe post them.
P.S. I'm not a low carb eater. I'm a high-carb eater, typically over 225g of carbs daily, and that's as a non-large person (5'5").neanderthin wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.
Bulking and ripped, that is amazing. Cheers
It was this guy.
https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141807961&p=822484731#post822484731
He posted his diet on that bodybuilding.com thread, and there are photos of him there. Last I knew there were still some before and progress photos of him scattered around MFP, and he posted semi-often on other threads here for quite a while, so it's not likely to be some made-up thing IMO - too much self-consistent information over a long period of time.
He was very active, as I recall, in diverse ways, so a pretty high TDEE, and he did pay some attention to macros, but IIRC experimented at times with relatively lower protein than the usual bodybuilder recommendations, and absolutely did eat lots of what most people would consider junk food.
It was sort of like the bodybuilder equivalent of the Twinkie diet guy. It's pretty amusing.
Thanks Ann. Ok, I did casually scan that thread but generally or mostly he was in deficit territory, and a pretty big deficit most of the time from what I saw. I guess I'm missing the point.
The point is that he got that body by eating junk and processed foods---what people are always saying isn't possible. They then said OK, but his health must suffer. Over at least 2 years he did this and had blood work done periodically. It was always perfect.
I would also like to say that he was the nicest guy. MFP is less without him.4 -
Excellent truths that deserves re-posting, and that I wish I had embraced 30 years ago:tmoneyag99 wrote: »Simply put, CICO ignores the mental and genetic and lifestyle aspects of weight loss (and any other variable you have to determine for yourself)
For those of you that don't know have issues with insulin or stress eating and counting calories works for you GOOD FOR YOU.
But let me say this, each person has to find what works for them. Yes fundamentally it's calories in calories out. But when you eat all your morning calories in the form of a honey bun you're likely not going to stay at your goal. Not all calories are equally satiating.
CICO is just part of the equation. It's not that it's false, it's that it doesn't tell the whole story.
Like wise with LONG TERM fitness and weight management (the real issue here) you have to have a strategy that works for body in the LONG TERM. The result of that strategy is CICO. You don't start with CICO and hope that it all works out. Instead you start with a strategy that is flexible and works for you. That strategy should result in CICO being at a deficit. CICO by itself is a failed plan for most.
I will print this out to give to my wife who is becoming very frustrated with her struggle to lose weight. Thank you!
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snowflake954 wrote: »neanderthin wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Carbs are the one macronutrient that is not essential, in the sense that our bodies can manufacture it out of other types of intake when needed. (There are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids that we can only get from eating protein and fats respectively, and that are required for the body to function adequately.)
The implication is that carb intake is very flexible in humans. There's every indication that we can safely eat anything from none up to using up every calorie that we don't need in order to get adequate protein and fats. (Achieving zero carbs is fairly difficult in practice, though.)
IOW, the thing I bolded in your post is incorrect, IMU. That's not the only thing I think is incorrect. Or misleading. If you have research studies that support your contention, maybe post them.
P.S. I'm not a low carb eater. I'm a high-carb eater, typically over 225g of carbs daily, and that's as a non-large person (5'5").neanderthin wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.
Bulking and ripped, that is amazing. Cheers
It was this guy.
https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141807961&p=822484731#post822484731
He posted his diet on that bodybuilding.com thread, and there are photos of him there. Last I knew there were still some before and progress photos of him scattered around MFP, and he posted semi-often on other threads here for quite a while, so it's not likely to be some made-up thing IMO - too much self-consistent information over a long period of time.
He was very active, as I recall, in diverse ways, so a pretty high TDEE, and he did pay some attention to macros, but IIRC experimented at times with relatively lower protein than the usual bodybuilder recommendations, and absolutely did eat lots of what most people would consider junk food.
It was sort of like the bodybuilder equivalent of the Twinkie diet guy. It's pretty amusing.
Thanks Ann. Ok, I did casually scan that thread but generally or mostly he was in deficit territory, and a pretty big deficit most of the time from what I saw. I guess I'm missing the point.
The point is that he got that body by eating junk and processed foods---what people are always saying isn't possible. They then said OK, but his health must suffer. Over at least 2 years he did this and had blood work done periodically. It was always perfect.
I would also like to say that he was the nicest guy. MFP is less without him.
Ah, ok. That's a completely different thing all together. I just took the comment of "bulking and ripped" verbatim and thought this person was adding body weight and simultaneously becoming ripped, and that's why I was curious.
Not sure what his controlled blood work was at the start (beginning blood work) of this cycle for him but I suspect it wasn't all that bad as compared to blood work if he was obese, never worked out and was sedentary blah, blah, blah. Regardless though any time a person aggressively loses weight, like he was doing regardless of what a persons macro's are, too a degree, will always show improvement, and yeah even if you eat what would be considered a diet with lots of junk food. This has been known for a very long time, decades from what I can tell in pretty much all studies but a lot of the time the focus (abstract) was on other aspects and not necessarily what they fed people.
If he ate the same foods, didn't workout and gained a lot of adipose tissue then that adipose would have resulted in what excess adipose does, and that is become the endocrine organ that it is, which develop adipokines and participate in the pathogenesis of obesity related processes including endothelial dysfunction, inflammation,
atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, and chronic kidney disease because that's what excess adipose does. And when we begin to lose weight all these effects reverse and blood work will always show improvements regardless of the food we're consuming. Cheers.
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IIRC, his starting point was as a somewhat overweight, probably not obese, slightly blobby looking average guy with normal musculature, more or less.neanderthin wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »neanderthin wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Carbs are the one macronutrient that is not essential, in the sense that our bodies can manufacture it out of other types of intake when needed. (There are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids that we can only get from eating protein and fats respectively, and that are required for the body to function adequately.)
The implication is that carb intake is very flexible in humans. There's every indication that we can safely eat anything from none up to using up every calorie that we don't need in order to get adequate protein and fats. (Achieving zero carbs is fairly difficult in practice, though.)
IOW, the thing I bolded in your post is incorrect, IMU. That's not the only thing I think is incorrect. Or misleading. If you have research studies that support your contention, maybe post them.
P.S. I'm not a low carb eater. I'm a high-carb eater, typically over 225g of carbs daily, and that's as a non-large person (5'5").neanderthin wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »If the goal is quick weight loss, then CI/CO is important to know. However, if a person is getting calories from calorie dense foods, then that person will obviously be eating a smaller bulk of food. This affects satiation, how full you feel after a given meal, and satiety, how full you remain between meals. What is surprising to me is that studies have found that those who eat a low fat diet have higher satiation than those who eat low carb diets. That is to say that if your diet is low fat (which generally means mostly plant based), you will want to eat less (those on a low fat diet ate 500-700 fewer calories per day) and you will enjoy your food as much as those who eat low carb diets (participants reported no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between meals). More importantly, the study shows that while both those on a low fat and those on a low carb diet lost weight, the people on the low fat diet lost more body fat than the people on the low carb diet.
There are other studies that demonstrate that there are some combination of nutrients and salt which are able to cause dysregulated eating. These foods have been deemed "hyperpalatable foods" and they are artificially rewarding and they are able to bypass our brains' satiation signals. This means that you crave these foods which makes them harder to resist and once you do indulge, you are very likely to overindulge. Getting your calories from hyperpalatable foods greatly increases the risk that you will have a setback in your diet.
And then there are the long term consequences of eating non-nutritious foods. Our bodies are amazing at being able to tolerate poor nutrition for a while. A low carb diet is probably not going to be harmful to you if you are on it for a few months (although, given that you'll lose mostly muscle and water weight, it isn't nearly as helpful as we have been led to believe). However, you will probably end up dying much too early from one of the diseases that kill most people in developed nations, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a disease of the mind.
The fact is that it does matter where you get your calories. While you can be successful strictly at losing weight in the short run by eating fewer calories than you burn, you will probably find that you are losing weight that you would prefer to keep and keeping weight that you would prefer to lose. And in the long run, eating an unhealthy diet can have disastrous consequences on your health.
Once there was a long beautiful thread running by a guy who decided to bulk eating fast and processed food as an experiment. He had blood work done periodically--always perfect. Even he was astonished. He posted progress pics that were amazing. He was ripped. His thread was pointed out every time someone did a post like yours. The denial was ferocious, so the thread was taken down. Things are not as you think.
Bulking and ripped, that is amazing. Cheers
It was this guy.
https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141807961&p=822484731#post822484731
He posted his diet on that bodybuilding.com thread, and there are photos of him there. Last I knew there were still some before and progress photos of him scattered around MFP, and he posted semi-often on other threads here for quite a while, so it's not likely to be some made-up thing IMO - too much self-consistent information over a long period of time.
He was very active, as I recall, in diverse ways, so a pretty high TDEE, and he did pay some attention to macros, but IIRC experimented at times with relatively lower protein than the usual bodybuilder recommendations, and absolutely did eat lots of what most people would consider junk food.
It was sort of like the bodybuilder equivalent of the Twinkie diet guy. It's pretty amusing.
Thanks Ann. Ok, I did casually scan that thread but generally or mostly he was in deficit territory, and a pretty big deficit most of the time from what I saw. I guess I'm missing the point.
The point is that he got that body by eating junk and processed foods---what people are always saying isn't possible. They then said OK, but his health must suffer. Over at least 2 years he did this and had blood work done periodically. It was always perfect.
I would also like to say that he was the nicest guy. MFP is less without him.
Ah, ok. That's a completely different thing all together. I just took the comment of "bulking and ripped" verbatim and thought this person was adding body weight and simultaneously becoming ripped, and that's why I was curious.
Not sure what his controlled blood work was at the start (beginning blood work) of this cycle for him but I suspect it wasn't all that bad as compared to blood work if he was obese, never worked out and was sedentary blah, blah, blah. Regardless though any time a person aggressively loses weight, like he was doing regardless of what a persons macro's are, too a degree, will always show improvement, and yeah even if you eat what would be considered a diet with lots of junk food. This has been known for a very long time, decades from what I can tell in pretty much all studies but a lot of the time the focus (abstract) was on other aspects and not necessarily what they fed people.
If he ate the same foods, didn't workout and gained a lot of adipose tissue then that adipose would have resulted in what excess adipose does, and that is become the endocrine organ that it is, which develop adipokines and participate in the pathogenesis of obesity related processes including endothelial dysfunction, inflammation,
atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, and chronic kidney disease because that's what excess adipose does. And when we begin to lose weight all these effects reverse and blood work will always show improvements regardless of the food we're consuming. Cheers.
He decided to challenge some of the dietary shibboleths, keep eating a lot of the highly processed foods he liked, get generally OK-ish nutrition, lowball protein compared to common bodybuilding guidelines, run a good strength/fitness program, and see what happened. Yes, when losing weight, he was running a deficit - often a big one.
The results were stellar.
If you skim the first page of the thread I linked from the other site, you'll see one or two people question what the heck he's doing. He gives really calm, polite answers in line with the general philosophy I summarized above.
People told him he couldn't lose weight eating junk, couldn't improve health eating junk, couldn't improve physique eating junk and moderate protein with a deficit, wouldn't succeed with the big deficits, etc.
But he did. Much sputtering ensued from the halls of orthorexia. He remained calm, polite, open, clear. It was hilarious. Good guy, interesting content.
Yes, I think reaching a healthy weight, actually fairly decent overall nutrition even though junk-sourced, and a stellar exercise program were behind the health improvements. On the nutritional front, perhaps the high TDEE let him get away with less nutrient-dense food choices, but still end up OK. I suspect being young, generally in OK health, and male helped.
I miss him generally, and the specific thread that was deleted especially. Basically, its theme was "CICO works, even with junk food".
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Yeah Ann I don't see what all the hubbub was about. What he did, makes perfect sense, but I think a person needs a little more than the basics in nutrition to understand that, just a guess though. I would imagine there must have been a few people that agreed with him, again just a guess. Anyway I was on bodybuiling.com years ago or at least I think it was that site or it might have been livestrong when they had an active forum and remembering arguing with people that you could add muscle in a deficit, and if I'm not mistaking I had the same argument here back my early years here around 2012, but I'm not too sure I'd have to go through all my posts. I believe I was talking with janejellyroll about it and we both thought it was possible, but my memory might not be 100% on that fact. It really is funny that science takes a while to be unpacked by the media and people in general before it catches on and a new theory becomes the new truth etc etc....Cheers0
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I count calories yes and I need that number to know I am eating less or more overall. I have a GI and Thyroid chronic disease and chronic lack of sleep due to caring for a son with special needs. I read the first page of comments and those first few comments were pretty supportive of CICO as a clear and absolute way of losing weight.
It has not worked for me that way. At least not in the way that all sort of online calculators, charts, databases, and HRM's would have led me to believe.
I have lost about 45lbs this time around by counting calories, most days I eat 1200 - 1700 calories. My "CICO calculations" say that after I add the burned calories I should be losing about 3lbs a week. I am a very careful and diligent logger. When the same food shows up with multiple results on the database I choose the higher calorie calculation. I walk at least 30 mins most days which I dont add as part of my burned calories and yet I am only losing about 1.7 lbs a week. If I eat more my weight loss rate is less so for me calorie counting is beneficial but CICO remains an illusion given the complexities others have mentioned and more specifically my own situation. Someone else also mentioned that the reason for counting calories is to find balance and I'll use this expression to help others understand why CICO is not working for them but why they should still log.
My way to long term success has been fasting (OMAD more specifically), calories counting and incorporating exercise. Eating better foods has been a game changer for me. I totally avoid refined sugars either in drinks or snacks and I have documented well the physical, emotional and mental changes and toll of eating junk even if within one's CICO calculations.
If you can eat junk all the time and make it work with CICO, then *thumbs up* to you, however there are plenty of people who could benefit from knowing that CICO is not the panacea some try to sell it as.
Even if we were to assume that CICO is an exact, simple and easy science for those in three normal distributions of all the people in the US, not to mention the world, that still leaves almost (1,000,000) one million people for who CICO doensn't work. I have no idea what the case may be I'm just presenting an scenario in which statistically something may be true for almost everyone (99.7%), even a minuscule percentage is a large number if the sample size is huge too (as in the entirety of the US population). But here we often find ourselves trying to model our long term goals and criticizing others for not following our way 'cause one guy did it once or for a short period of time.
I know that most people have their minds set on what they already know, just posting here for those who may need context as to why CICO calculations haven't worked for them and hopefully they feel less frustrated and less of an idiot for not being able to crack the right way of doing CICO. For some of us there's no right way. The calculations will just not work and that's OK, calorie counting is still a good tool in this journey.0 -
The question of whether CICO applies, and whether someone falls close to the mean in calorie needs, are two different questions. (It also is important to distinguish CICO, the calorie balance concept, from calorie counting, the weight management method.)
CICO applies. Consume less energy than the body expends, lose weight. But that can happen at a calorie level close to what the so-called calculators (or fitness trackers) estimate, or it can occur further away from it, and in a small number of cases, very far from that population average number. That is not "CICO doesn't apply". That is "a particular individual is far from average".
In my particular case, based on approaching 8 years of reasonably meticulous calorie counting, my needs are off most of the "calculator" estimates by around 25-30%. (That's quite a few calories.) The same is true for the estimate from my good brand/model fitness tracker, a brand/model that is reasonably close for many people here, according to their reports. But once I figured out what my personal individualized calorie needs were, I could calorie count successfully, using that personal-results number as the base rather than the inaccurate (for me) estimate from from the "calculators" or my fitness tracker. I'm not average. I don't fully know why.
There are a few cases where calorie counting won't be practical for particular individuals, probably, perhaps things like some of the cycling thyroid conditions where a person shifts unpredictably from hypo to hyper and back. Those are quite unusual things. Yes, probably it's a good-sized number of people world wide in absolute numeric terms, but a very small fraction of the population, so not a probable explanation for individuals (possible, not probable).
Even for those people, for whom counting is impractical because of unpredictably shifting TDEE, CICO applies. Their gain or loss will depend on the balance between their calorie intake and expenditure at the time. It's just that it's exceptionally hard to estimate/calculate.5 -
I read the first page of comments and those first few comments were pretty supportive of CICO as a clear and absolute way of losing weight.
CICO is not a way of losing weight- it is a scientific reality.
Counting calories is a way of losing weight - a method that some people use - probably most people on MFP since it is a calorie counting based site.
as I said before, important to differentiate between CICO and calorie counting.5 -
I count calories yes and I need that number to know I am eating less or more overall. I have a GI and Thyroid chronic disease and chronic lack of sleep due to caring for a son with special needs. I read the first page of comments and those first few comments were pretty supportive of CICO as a clear and absolute way of losing weight.
It has not worked for me that way. At least not in the way that all sort of online calculators, charts, databases, and HRM's would have led me to believe.
I have lost about 45lbs this time around by counting calories, most days I eat 1200 - 1700 calories. My "CICO calculations" say that after I add the burned calories I should be losing about 3lbs a week. I am a very careful and diligent logger. When the same food shows up with multiple results on the database I choose the higher calorie calculation. I walk at least 30 mins most days which I dont add as part of my burned calories and yet I am only losing about 1.7 lbs a week. If I eat more my weight loss rate is less so for me calorie counting is beneficial but CICO remains an illusion given the complexities others have mentioned and more specifically my own situation. Someone else also mentioned that the reason for counting calories is to find balance and I'll use this expression to help others understand why CICO is not working for them but why they should still log.
My way to long term success has been fasting (OMAD more specifically), calories counting and incorporating exercise. Eating better foods has been a game changer for me. I totally avoid refined sugars either in drinks or snacks and I have documented well the physical, emotional and mental changes and toll of eating junk even if within one's CICO calculations.
If you can eat junk all the time and make it work with CICO, then *thumbs up* to you, however there are plenty of people who could benefit from knowing that CICO is not the panacea some try to sell it as.
Even if we were to assume that CICO is an exact, simple and easy science for those in three normal distributions of all the people in the US, not to mention the world, that still leaves almost (1,000,000) one million people for who CICO doensn't work. I have no idea what the case may be I'm just presenting an scenario in which statistically something may be true for almost everyone (99.7%), even a minuscule percentage is a large number if the sample size is huge too (as in the entirety of the US population). But here we often find ourselves trying to model our long term goals and criticizing others for not following our way 'cause one guy did it once or for a short period of time.
I know that most people have their minds set on what they already know, just posting here for those who may need context as to why CICO calculations haven't worked for them and hopefully they feel less frustrated and less of an idiot for not being able to crack the right way of doing CICO. For some of us there's no right way. The calculations will just not work and that's OK, calorie counting is still a good tool in this journey.
Well CICO is NOT a diet. Whenever you eat or drink something it's CI. Whenever it leaves your body it's CO. Everybody living does it everyday.
You are recounting your experience (1) and say a great many people have your problem, whereas telling about a guy who ate whatever and lost weight is just (1) person. I would like to suggest that there are many people like him. You don't hear about it because they are successful and don't complain. The people that are frustrated post and seem like many more.
Everyone can lose weight. They just have to find the way (there are many).
Good luck reaching your goals.5
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