Is it CICO or not?
jogman
Posts: 16 Member
I tend to lurk more than post but I have a serious question. I have gotten a lot of help and info from the forum over the years. However, I continue to be confused when I read responses to individuals that “you need to be eating more” or “the last 10 pounds are the hardest” or general comments that would indicate the CICO formula doesn’t work. If one is in a deficit then they should be losing according to (Total deficit calories for the week/3500 for lbs lost in a week). It shouldn’t matter the deficit or if it is the very first lb (excluding water weight) or the very last. I get it might be tougher to be in a deficit when one approaches their maintenance goal due to less calories to eat but if you stay in the deficit - mathematically you should still lose by that formula. Am I missing something?
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Replies
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You are not missing anything, exactly. CICO works.
As you pointed out, the closer you get to maintanance the smaller the calorie amount you can eat and stay in deficit. The problem is your body needs a certain amount of nutrients to work right, so you cannot (should not, at least) shrink your calories indefinitely to keep the deficit high. Generally recommended, and used by MFP, is a minimum intake of 1200kcal for women and 1500kcal for men to ensure you get everything you need. - That means, though, that the deficit shrinks. So you lose less weight than in the past. AND you have to be extra careful with logging to not by mistake destroy what little deficit you have. Thus, losing the last few kilos can be harder for many people than earlier loss.
"You should be eating.more." again tends to be health advice, not weight loss advice. You should be eating more than 1000kcal a day to stay healthy, even if you are losing faster with a larger deficit, for example. - Or it may just be helpful for long term loss (not getting frustrated and giving up) to eat at a low deficit if that helps you stick to it. Things like that. (Plus there seems to be some merit to "maintenance breaks" helping with Weight loss in the long run, but I cannot remember enough about that right now to make any real claims.)
So yeah, CICO works, but health is more important than large deficits and fast weight loss.27 -
All of what was said above.
There are minimum calorie requirements to be healthy, and eating below those can cause problems.
The last 10lbs thing I can give you examples of, from me.
My maintenance calories when I was obese were 2, 223 calories a day. My maintenance now is more like 1800 - these are WITH me being fairly active. I have to eat less to lose now than I did to lose then, and even at that there's less deficit.
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1) As you said, when you only have a few lbs to lose, your TDEE is not nearly as large as if you had a lot to lose. If you keep your exercise habits the same, your deficit is smaller, so weight comes off slower.
2) Diet fatigue and portion distortion are common toward the end of your journey. You think you’ve got your healthy habits nailed, so maybe you’re not logging every single nibble, you’re not using your food scale all the time, your cheat meal turns into two or three meals... What you’re logging doesn’t reflect what you’re really eating.
3) A too-big deficit can cause some people to become less fidgety or more lethargic, so they end up burning fewer calories than expected.
4) If you eat in a deficit for an extended time, a small amount of adaptive thermogenesis can occur, so your burned calories will be less than a calculator would expect, slowing weight loss.
As for “eat more,” having a smaller deficit when you have less to lose helps preserve muscle mass, helps keep your energy levels reasonable, and ensures you don’t end up with nutrient deficiencies.7 -
Oh and also I wanted to add:
Losing very fast and CAUSE health problems of various sorts. Notably gallbladder issues, in particular, but also some other stuff. There si a point when your weight is more of a risk to your health than the fast loss, but that's something a doctor needs to determine and does not apply to most.3 -
To add to what's already been said - that last ten pounds is hard. The body does NOT like being in a calorie deficit when there isn't much body fat and will slow down every single body function to preserve energy.
Then - hunger. There is a lot of hunger in losing that last ten pounds even if you do it right. The body has a rock in its glove and will do everything possible to get you to eat when body fat percentages get low enough. Sure, some people try to hack the system and eat low cal anyway.
Such a bad idea on so many levels.5 -
It IS CICO.
CICO, and in particular the CO portion, is (somewhat) DYNAMIC, not static.
Even if you assume zero estimation errors.3 -
Because you're thinking of things in a vacuum. The body is the MOST COMPLEX biological machine. Now IF all things were EQUAL and day to day you can pinpoint exact calorie burns and intakes, then CICO formula should be perfect. Problem is, you CANNOT account for hormone shifts. Since everything in the body is a reactionary response to stimuli, say one had a very tough day at work and stress was high. Or someone got some exciting news. Each of those creates a different chemical response in the body WHICH affects things like your metabolic rate.I tend to lurk more than post but I have a serious question. I have gotten a lot of help and info from the forum over the years. However, I continue to be confused when I read responses to individuals that “you need to be eating more” or “the last 10 pounds are the hardest” or general comments that would indicate the CICO formula doesn’t work. If one is in a deficit then they should be losing according to (Total deficit calories for the week/3500 for lbs lost in a week). It shouldn’t matter the deficit or if it is the very first lb (excluding water weight) or the very last. I get it might be tougher to be in a deficit when one approaches their maintenance goal due to less calories to eat but if you stay in the deficit - mathematically you should still lose by that formula. Am I missing something?
It's why weight loss ISN'T linear. You can do the same thing, the same time, with the same rest, and exercise and diet, 2 weeks in a row and yield different results. Even if mathematically everything was perfect.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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No, you aren't missing anything. The issue with creating a deficit is that you can never be 100% accurate for various reasons (both biological and logging-related). You can be precise with your logging, and calculate your deviation from the usual formula to a reasonable degree; however, it's still not 100% and prone to change due to unnoticed changes in activity and other factors.
Now, taking the above into account and the fact that you need a minimum calorie amount for both health and sustainability, as you get smaller, the deficit you can reasonably create also gets smaller. Accuracy errors and deviations affect you more when you're closer to your goal weight simply because you don't have the luxury of a large deficit to swallow those errors (especially that some people tend to create a larger deficit than expected when they first start just by being aware of their intake and movement).
There is also the issue of water weight fluctuations. Even if you do lose fat at your desired pace, seeing it on the scale will not happen as consistently when you're smaller and trying to create a smaller deficit. It's much easier to see it when you're aiming for 2 pounds a week because by the end of the month, you'll see at least some sort of loss even if you're retaining water. When you're aiming for 0.5 a pound, it's not uncommon for that loss to look like a perpetual yoyo for a while.5 -
Water weight has no calories.
Stressing the body (with attempting faster fat loss than it wants) can increase cortisol, can increase water weight, can hide fat loss on the scale.
And CI does effect CO, and all the more so when closer to healthy weight.
Oh, and muscle mass loss doesn't hold to the 3500 per lb. Not that it's used as energy in any big way, but if extreme diet, then likely not building muscle back up that like all cells is torn down on regular basis.6 -
CICO is just the math for weight loss. There's a bigger picture that also needs to be considered -- overall health, nutrition, adherence, satiety, personal preferences, etc.
So it's not that CICO doesn't work or isn't the answer, it's that that sometimes CICO is too narrow a focus or oversimplified for what might be a larger conversation.3 -
That "last n pounds/kilos are the hardest" trope always grates me because it's nonsensical. My initial goal is at the upper end of a healthy BMI as I picked an arbitrary round number when I was 50 kg heavier. However now I am close to my goal I am considering losing another 10 kg. So technically I'm currently on the supposedly morr difficult "last n pounds/kg" whilst also possibly not being. It hasn't been any harder losing the weight I've lost this year vs the weight I lost last year. If anything it's been easier because I have learned so much in the four years I've been doing this that I feel like this year I am finally doing it exactly right, have listened to my body and upped my calories when appropriate (I've been intermittently much more active as I've been doing a lot of manual labour).3
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scarlett_k wrote: »That "last n pounds/kilos are the hardest" trope always grates me because it's nonsensical. My initial goal is at the upper end of a healthy BMI as I picked an arbitrary round number when I was 50 kg heavier. However now I am close to my goal I am considering losing another 10 kg. So technically I'm currently on the supposedly morr difficult "last n pounds/kg" whilst also possibly not being. It hasn't been any harder losing the weight I've lost this year vs the weight I lost last year. If anything it's been easier because I have learned so much in the four years I've been doing this that I feel like this year I am finally doing it exactly right, have listened to my body and upped my calories when appropriate (I've been intermittently much more active as I've been doing a lot of manual labour).
Sure, getting to the Top of a healthy weight BMI is not all that difficult.
Try that last 10-15 to put you at 20-21. Then report back.17 -
scarlett_k wrote: »That "last n pounds/kilos are the hardest" trope always grates me because it's nonsensical. My initial goal is at the upper end of a healthy BMI as I picked an arbitrary round number when I was 50 kg heavier. However now I am close to my goal I am considering losing another 10 kg. So technically I'm currently on the supposedly morr difficult "last n pounds/kg" whilst also possibly not being. It hasn't been any harder losing the weight I've lost this year vs the weight I lost last year. If anything it's been easier because I have learned so much in the four years I've been doing this that I feel like this year I am finally doing it exactly right, have listened to my body and upped my calories when appropriate (I've been intermittently much more active as I've been doing a lot of manual labour).
It's really not nonsense though. As you move to the lower end of your BMI, accuracy becomes more important because your deficit is likely to be very small. You're lighter, so you're burning fewer calories even with activity. The combination can make it harder. There's also some psychological factors at play -- sometimes people find it harder to have consistency when they're working on vanity pounds. It can be harder to limit portions to lose weight when you mentally know you're just doing it for looks and not health. There were days when I struggled not to conclude "I already met the goal of being at a healthy weight, why am I doing this?"
This doesn't mean that individuals always struggle with it, but as someone at the lower end of my BMI, I would say getting from overweight to normal weight was much easier than getting from normal weight to lower end of normal (but still worth it for me personally).11 -
I got to the top end of a healthy BMI with 0 issue or any major slow down in loss. That was me losing to 150lbs. I now weigh 143.
That last 7 has been a whole different world and it's taken me as long to lose that 7 as it did the first 25-30. And that's STILL at a BMI of about 23 so not middle of the range, yet.
It's not nonsensical to say that it gets harder, because it gets harder. You have a smaller deficit to work with, unless you want to cut your calories to SUPER low levels and if you cut your calories to super low levels you feel the energy drop off and hunger a lot more. You don't have room for 'rounding error' and 'estimates' or mistakes. You also have to stick through the slower loss without the big reward of a major scale pay off.8 -
ALSO those last pounds necessarily come at the end of a sustained weight loss program which means you've already been doing the thing a long time and, if you haven't been taking regular diet breaks, that comes with both psychological and physical repercussions.
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Yep.
I started at 220 pounds. Lost 65 of it pretty quickly, all-at-once in about eight months. That put me just under the top of my healthy BMI.
I thought the same thing scarlett_k did, like, "Well that wasn't really so hard." Because it wasn't.
I took a few months off and then got back at it to lose the last 20.
Took me a year. And I was hungry. So hungry. Even though I knew my calorie needs because I'd been logging food for over a year and doing consistent exercise, eating well yadda yadda. Small deficit, 250 calories per day.
Oh my, for me those last pounds were - and still are - the reason I won't go back up in weight. It was super hard for me.
So hungry.
Have I mentioned my hunger??
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I've done many a contest and HUNGER sucked. Getting down to my lowest (7% BF) was so hard and it usually was only a 10lbs drop. 12-16 weeks of dieting. After my 7th contest, I was done.cmriverside wrote: »Yep.
I started at 220 pounds. Lost 65 of it pretty quickly, all-at-once in about eight months. That put me just under the top of my healthy BMI.
I thought the same thing scarlett_k did, like, "Well that wasn't really so hard." Because it wasn't.
I took a few months off and then got back at it to lose the last 20.
Took me a year. And I was hungry. So hungry. Even though I knew my calorie needs because I'd been logging food for over a year and doing consistent exercise, eating well yadda yadda. Small deficit, 250 calories per day.
Oh my, for me those last pounds were - and still are - the reason I won't go back up in weight. It was super hard for me.
So hungry.
Have I mentioned my hunger??
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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I am legitimately stopping and assessing often right now, having very small goals. I am very half-hearted in things right now to make it as easy as I can, though come fall I may swap over to a real 2 week in deficit 2 weeks maintenance thing. I just don't know. There IS going to be a point for me where the effort is no longer worth it, and I kinda suspect that is going to be at a point before I weigh what is probably my ideal weight (which 10-15lbs away).
I'm actually okay with that, but acknowleding that I'm okay with that because HOLY CRAP HARDER is kind of important for other people who *aren't* okay with stopping earlier. Undermining them and the difficulty just isn't fair.
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The flippety flip side of it is that once I got to 20-21 BMI it hasn't really been too hard to stay here. I'm really happy with how I look and I get to eat all my favorite foods (not every day, but ya know...) as long as I stay active.8
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cmriverside wrote: »The flippety flip side of it is that once I got to 20-21 BMI it hasn't really been too hard to stay here. I'm really happy with how I look and I get to eat all my favorite foods (not every day, but ya know...) as long as I stay active.
That seems like the golden ticket right there!!!3 -
This has been an informative thread.3
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wunderkindking wrote: »ALSO those last pounds necessarily come at the end of a sustained weight loss program which means you've already been doing the thing a long time and, if you haven't been taking regular diet breaks, that comes with both psychological and physical repercussions.
For me it also is that my goal may be 120, but I like how I look at 125-130 just fine, so my motivation isn't what it was when I was 170.8 -
wunderkindking wrote: »ALSO those last pounds necessarily come at the end of a sustained weight loss program which means you've already been doing the thing a long time and, if you haven't been taking regular diet breaks, that comes with both psychological and physical repercussions.
For me it also is that my goal may be 120, but I like how I look at 125-130 just fine, so my motivation isn't what it was when I was 170.
This is also part of it. I don't look fantastic naked or anything but I'm utterly content with how I look (and so much more confident) hovering around 140. Combine that with lack of clear additional health benefits and it is SUPER hard to care.7 -
wunderkindking wrote: »ALSO those last pounds necessarily come at the end of a sustained weight loss program which means you've already been doing the thing a long time and, if you haven't been taking regular diet breaks, that comes with both psychological and physical repercussions.
For me it also is that my goal may be 120, but I like how I look at 125-130 just fine, so my motivation isn't what it was when I was 170.
That's exactly how it was for me. I was practically maintaining under the pretense of a diet break for a few months before I decided I was done with weight loss and I'm fine with my current weight. I ended up not losing "the last 10 pounds". That's also an option for those who can't be bothered.8 -
FWIW, I didn't find it hard to lose the last pounds down to BMI 20-21. I absolutely lost them *slower*, because I intentionally slowed my loss rate by increasing my calorie goal. I overshot my intended goal weight (BMI 20), and hit BMI 19.3, actually, then tweaked it back up again.
Like so many things about weight loss, I think it's going to be very individual whether the last pounds are *harder* to lose, or not. It's just opinion, but I think it's smarter to make the last pounds a much *slower* loss. Having solid logging practices probably makes slow loss happen more reliably, and water weight fluctuations can make things look weird for weeks at a time along the way when losing slowly, IME. Maybe that's "hard"?
I can't say that maintaining BMI 20-21 was hard, but I did let my weight drift up to around BMI 23-ish over about 4 years, then drifted it back down again intentionally over 12-15 months to the 20-21 BMI zone again. That was virtually painless. But along the way even my weight trending app thought I was gaining/maintaining for multi-weeks sometimes, when I was pretty sure I was losing slowly. Eventually, the expected loss showed up on the scale. 🤷♀️7 -
janejellyroll wrote: »scarlett_k wrote: »That "last n pounds/kilos are the hardest" trope always grates me because it's nonsensical. My initial goal is at the upper end of a healthy BMI as I picked an arbitrary round number when I was 50 kg heavier. However now I am close to my goal I am considering losing another 10 kg. So technically I'm currently on the supposedly morr difficult "last n pounds/kg" whilst also possibly not being. It hasn't been any harder losing the weight I've lost this year vs the weight I lost last year. If anything it's been easier because I have learned so much in the four years I've been doing this that I feel like this year I am finally doing it exactly right, have listened to my body and upped my calories when appropriate (I've been intermittently much more active as I've been doing a lot of manual labour).
It's really not nonsense though. As you move to the lower end of your BMI, accuracy becomes more important because your deficit is likely to be very small. You're lighter, so you're burning fewer calories even with activity. The combination can make it harder. There's also some psychological factors at play -- sometimes people find it harder to have consistency when they're working on vanity pounds. It can be harder to limit portions to lose weight when you mentally know you're just doing it for looks and not health. There were days when I struggled not to conclude "I already met the goal of being at a healthy weight, why am I doing this?"
This doesn't mean that individuals always struggle with it, but as someone at the lower end of my BMI, I would say getting from overweight to normal weight was much easier than getting from normal weight to lower end of normal (but still worth it for me personally).
See that makes more sense although I guess it remains for me to experience and eat my words (how many calories would that be?
) but that is not the thing that I see repeated over and over on these forums. It's always just "the last n pounds are the hardest" or words to that effect. Which *is* nonsense without any additional information. How anyone is supposed to extrapolate these details when people just repeat the same thing without any context is beyond me. People don't say "the last 10 pounds are the hardest. Oh no not THOSE last 10 lbs, the OTHER 10lbs after you've reached your goal and decide to lose more, duh". 5 -
scarlett_k wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »scarlett_k wrote: »That "last n pounds/kilos are the hardest" trope always grates me because it's nonsensical. My initial goal is at the upper end of a healthy BMI as I picked an arbitrary round number when I was 50 kg heavier. However now I am close to my goal I am considering losing another 10 kg. So technically I'm currently on the supposedly morr difficult "last n pounds/kg" whilst also possibly not being. It hasn't been any harder losing the weight I've lost this year vs the weight I lost last year. If anything it's been easier because I have learned so much in the four years I've been doing this that I feel like this year I am finally doing it exactly right, have listened to my body and upped my calories when appropriate (I've been intermittently much more active as I've been doing a lot of manual labour).
It's really not nonsense though. As you move to the lower end of your BMI, accuracy becomes more important because your deficit is likely to be very small. You're lighter, so you're burning fewer calories even with activity. The combination can make it harder. There's also some psychological factors at play -- sometimes people find it harder to have consistency when they're working on vanity pounds. It can be harder to limit portions to lose weight when you mentally know you're just doing it for looks and not health. There were days when I struggled not to conclude "I already met the goal of being at a healthy weight, why am I doing this?"
This doesn't mean that individuals always struggle with it, but as someone at the lower end of my BMI, I would say getting from overweight to normal weight was much easier than getting from normal weight to lower end of normal (but still worth it for me personally).
See that makes more sense although I guess it remains for me to experience and eat my words (how many calories would that be?) but that is not the thing that I see repeated over and over on these forums. It's always just "the last n pounds are the hardest" or words to that effect. Which *is* nonsense without any additional information. How anyone is supposed to extrapolate these details when people just repeat the same thing without any context is beyond me. People don't say "the last 10 pounds are the hardest. Oh no not THOSE last 10 lbs, the OTHER 10lbs after you've reached your goal and decide to lose more, duh".
No, I agree . . . without the context it doesn't make much sense. Obviously your body doesn't know which are the actual LAST TEN POUNDS and make it harder.6 -
I'm one of those weird ones who did lose weight slowly going from a BMI of 23 to 21.7, but lost it pretty quickly going from 21.7 to 20.2. I slowly and deliberately lost about 8 pounds at an average rate of .5 lbs per week. I was up a few pounds (water weight), and then lost 12 pounds in about 6 weeks while on an elimination diet for food sensitivity. Granted, a good chunk was water weight/inflammation lost, but my CICO wasn't too different than what it was before starting. I may have been doing more "extra" snacking that was unaccounted for, but nowhere near the amount that would account for that rate of loss at that BMI. I have gone down at least a size, but because of the more rapid weight loss I know I lost a bit of muscle, which bums me out.0
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For me, the last 10 lbs. were not intentional. I lost about 30 lbs before I started on mfp (from 177 to 135). I mostly just wanted to maintain that loss, but was happy to lose a few more if possible. I started running just to see if I could and with the added exercise got down to 131. I maintained there, more or less for a couple of years. Then I began marathon training and my mileage went from 20 mpw to 40+. I lost another 10 lbs. I got used to that weight and have maintained it for several years. In order to do that though, I still have to maintain a high level of activity. When I'm traveling and not running 5+ miles a day, I always gain a few lbs. So, long story short, if you want to lose the last few lbs. one way to do it is to increase your activity level, provided you are willing and able to maintain that higher level. Otherwise you'll just regain the weight when you stop exercising.4
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This has been a very interesting discussion to read. What it sounds to me if I understand correctly is that your body will help answer where your weight should be. So if you start getting hungry more often, not just before meals, that’s a possible indicator that %BF is about where your body wants it, give or take, and then is a good time to consider the switch to maintenance?
Sorry for intruding, but I’ve been wondering if I have 1 or -1 or 5 or 7 pounds left to lose, so I’m very interested in this topic. Haven’t been hungry yet, probably sitting around high 20’s or a bit less in BF%, female, so that’d make sense.
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