If it's all CICO - why can't you outrun a bad diet?

I am going to get a lot of flack for this. I don't think its all calories in calories out. A calorie is a calorie. Not if your body processes and uses those calories differently. I can eat 200 calories of candy or 200 calories of chicken and my body will handle it differently. Especially as a woman with PCOS and metabolic syndrome, there IS such a thing as you are what you eat. I am finding this hard since I have a sweet tooth and losing weight with PCOS is 3x harder for me than most.

About 6 years ago I did Atkins and exercised 2x a day. Doctors were amazed at my weight loss vs fat and protein intake but cutting carbs helped me incredibly. Gave me a history of kidney stones, but in this case cholesterol, blood sugars all dropped with cutting carbs. So to me, a calorie is not a calorie or calories in calories out cut and dry blanket statements works for everyone sort of deal.

mom23nuts wrote: »

I am going to get a lot of flack for this. I don't think its all calories in calories out. A calorie is a calorie. Not if your body processes and uses those calories differently. I can eat 200 calories of candy or 200 calories of chicken and my body will handle it differently. Especially as a woman with PCOS and metabolic syndrome, there IS such a thing as you are what you eat. I am finding this hard since I have a sweet tooth and losing weight with PCOS is 3x harder for me than most.

About 6 years ago I did Atkins and exercised 2x a day. Doctors were amazed at my weight loss vs fat and protein intake but cutting carbs helped me incredibly. Gave me a history of kidney stones, but in this case cholesterol, blood sugars all dropped with cutting carbs. So to me, a calorie is not a calorie or calories in calories out cut and dry blanket statements works for everyone sort of deal.

but a unit of energy doesn't change. it really just is what it is.....if someone processes it differently because of some kind of medical issue, the difference is the person, not the calorie.

Of course you can "outrun" a bad diet. Do you think your body really cares if your fat grams come from a cheeseburger or salmon? one may have more nutrients, but fat is fat regardless of the food it comes from, your body doesn't care if you eat chicken nuggets or grilled chicken, it is still protein. (Sure one is fried and will have different macros). But the point is as long as you eat less than you burn, you WILL lose weight. Its science. And no my body doesn't care if my carbs come from sweet potatoes or waffles. A carb is a carb.

To expand on that - someone close to me who shall remain anonymous for my own protection since I am married to them (haha) complained they gained three pounds over the last few days and it must be because they "didn't get enough sleep". Since I want to not get a divorce I decided not to mention the literally 5000-6000 calories they consumed over the weekend in pure junk food - on top of their meals. That's not including whatever they snacked on I didn't see, I know there were crackers and booze. So probably closer to 8000-9000 calories, given the three pounds.
If they were an exercising type, they could exercise that off. Theoretically. BUT:
To exercise off what must be about a 9000 calorie excess and thus maintain (not lose), she would have to (given her age, height, weight, etc):
walk for nearly fifteen hours at a speed of 3 miles per hour, or;
Jump rope for 6 and a half hours, or;
Do nearly 13 hours of moderate intensity Pilates, or;
Jog at 8 mph for almost 5 hours

You get the idea.
In short, you'd have to be a sort of insane fitness maniac Olympic style athlete to pull off this kind of physical activity and indulge in these sort of overindulgences regularly without gaining weight. Most people overestimate how much their exercise burns off.

Of course if you are the kind of person who spends 3+ hours at the gym lifting weights every day, I guess you can eat whatever you like. Like the Mountain Who Moves, or the Rock. Although even they follow some very specific diets to maximize their performance.

jmbmilholland wrote: »

Tydeclare44 wrote: »

J72FIT wrote: »

CICO is not a way to lose weight, it is an energy equation. You are confusing CICO with counting calories...

Ok, you can pick apart grammar all day, or you can accept the point I'm attempting to make. Many people use CICO as a method to count calories, and do not understand the difference. Call it a mathematical equation, call it whatever you want, but please debate my main paoint rather than my grammar.

He is not arguing grammar; he is arguing physics, and schooling you, because you don't understand the first law of thermodynamics, specifically, the law of conservation of energy, of which CICO is an exemplar. When people argue against CICO because they or their mom failed with their own flawed calorie counting methodology, it's about as intelligent as arguing against the concept of gravity: "Gravity doesn't work because when I jump in the air, my scale goes to 0." No, gravity vs. kinetic energy is a mathematical equation, also an exemplar of the law of conservation of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it just changes forms. A calorie is one measure of one unit of that energy (I believe potential energy) which when introduced to another living system gets stored as more potential energy (fat) or expended as thermal, mechanical or kinetic energy.

It is.

A fact.

Of the Universe.

As we know it.

Like gravity.

Well, no.

CICO has an assumption that metabolic paths are consistent, that inefficiencies in energy absorption are negligible and that the thermal effect of food is not a major contributor.

While gravity is a pretty constant force as we experience it and conservation of energy is relatively immutable (excluding the new dark matter theories which would indeed include equations on the expansion of the space in my stomach) CICO is and will remain an estimated time-dependent physiological estimation.

As such, the effects of macros, the Atwater constants, the physiological effects of disease, non-energy related factors (such as water sheathing, bloating, etc).

What Tydeclare may be trying to argue (outside of the misuse of the term) is that a variety of other factors influence weight loss.

A calorie is not necessarily a calorie. A calorie is a thermochemical unit (not potential energy) and does not correspond exactly to the units we use for food those are big calories or kcals (commonly miswritten as Cals) and are losely linked to the energy determined by Atwater to protein, carbs and fats (and alcohol).

An easy way to show that conservation of energy doesn't exactly pertain to food we eat is to take a banana. A green banana will have less metabolic energy as a ripe banana (total energy of the banana isn't changing, if we were to measure is via a bomb calorimeter); the idea that CICO represents an exact equation or a conservation of energy equation is a false overlay of biological energy homeostasis, it's good enough, but it hardly reaches the level of rigour of gravitational mass equations.

EvgeniZyntx wrote: »

jmbmilholland wrote: »

Tydeclare44 wrote: »

J72FIT wrote: »

CICO is not a way to lose weight, it is an energy equation. You are confusing CICO with counting calories...

Ok, you can pick apart grammar all day, or you can accept the point I'm attempting to make. Many people use CICO as a method to count calories, and do not understand the difference. Call it a mathematical equation, call it whatever you want, but please debate my main paoint rather than my grammar.

He is not arguing grammar; he is arguing physics, and schooling you, because you don't understand the first law of thermodynamics, specifically, the law of conservation of energy, of which CICO is an exemplar. When people argue against CICO because they or their mom failed with their own flawed calorie counting methodology, it's about as intelligent as arguing against the concept of gravity: "Gravity doesn't work because when I jump in the air, my scale goes to 0." No, gravity vs. kinetic energy is a mathematical equation, also an exemplar of the law of conservation of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it just changes forms. A calorie is one measure of one unit of that energy (I believe potential energy) which when introduced to another living system gets stored as more potential energy (fat) or expended as thermal, mechanical or kinetic energy.

It is.

A fact.

Of the Universe.

As we know it.

Like gravity.

Well, no.

CICO has an assumption that metabolic paths are consistent, that inefficiencies in energy absorption are negligible and that the thermal effect of food is not a major contributor.

While gravity is a pretty constant force as we experience it and conservation of energy is relatively immutable (excluding the new dark matter theories which would indeed include equations on the expansion of the space in my stomach) CICO is and will remain an estimated time-dependent physiological estimation.

As such, the effects of macros, the Atwater constants, the physiological effects of disease, non-energy related factors (such as water sheathing, bloating, etc).

What Tydeclare may be trying to argue (outside of the misuse of the term) is that a variety of other factors influence weight loss.

A calorie is not necessarily a calorie. A calorie is a thermochemical unit (not potential energy) and does not correspond exactly to the units we use for food those are big calories or kcals (commonly miswritten as Cals) and are losely linked to the energy determined by Atwater to protein, carbs and fats (and alcohol).

An easy way to show that conservation of energy doesn't exactly pertain to food we eat is to take a banana. A green banana will have less metabolic energy as a ripe banana (total energy of the banana isn't changing, if we were to measure is via a bomb calorimeter); the idea that CICO represents an exact equation or a conservation of energy equation is a false overlay of biological energy homeostasis, it's good enough, but it hardly reaches the level of rigour of gravitational mass equations.

Who says CICO has the assumption that metabolic paths are consistent? Just because MFP used the principle as a basis for its calorie-counting methodology doesn't mean that we think we are operating in an isolated system, which is what that would be.

And surely in the bolded section you are not stating that the laws of thermodynamic don't apply to food? Everything you wrote deals with the entirely-theoretical "isolated system" aspect of the laws of thermodynamics; of course it is exceedingly difficult to quantify the quirks and inefficiencies in a "real world" system, especially biological systems which simply can't be measured with the precision that we can measure simple mechanical non-biological systems. The energy of the banana can be impacted by thousands of immeasurable things, including the breed of the banana, the soil upon which it was raised, how much sun it got, whether it was green or ripe, and whether you puked up some, half or all of it because an hour after you ate it you regrettably discovered you had a stomach flu. Naturally none of this can be measured by human calibrations, but just because humans (even the most brilliant of scientists) are too clumsy and ignorant to measure it doesn't mean a precise amount of energy isn't converted.

My gravity calculation example is also prone to inefficiences in the system, from the reliability of the scale to whether you were wearing your heavy boots or the wind was blowing or the floor was uneven, all of which is easier and more obvious for our chimpanzee minds to comprehend and crudely measure. I am sure a physicist could detail more subtle and fancier inefficiencies in the system. It's just an easier energy conversion process overall to imagine and calculate.

We operate in the real world, but it doesn't prevent both from being exemplars of a law of thermodynamics. We just can't measure it accurately, but it still exists despite our lack of abilities.

Tydeclare44 wrote: »

Well, there's two sides to this argument IMO.

One, if all that matters is pure weight loss (fat and muscle), then CICO is mathmatically correct. Eg. The biggest loser. They eat low calories and have a high output trough exercise and drop a tremendous amount of weight.

There are 500 threads about the NYT article, including one in this section. I still don't get why people think it has anything to do with CICO.

However, if you follow these contestants for a few years after the competition, most have regained a substantial amount of weight. In fact, some now weight more than they did before they started the biggest loser. When looking at their TDEE post-show, even if they eat to maitenence for a person at their weight, they are burning far less calories than their counterparts from their constant low-calorie diets. Thus, their metabolism gets shot from years of calorie restriction, and therefore they would have to, a you say, exercise off 3000 calories a day (which is absolutely mindboggling). Some of this can be attributed to the muscle loss caused by chronic low calorie dietng (More muscle=higher TDEE).

Dumb overly aggressive diets result in more muscle loss and reduction in metabolism than other methods, and pretty much all diets involving significant weight loss result in some muscle loss (though not as much) and commonly some metabolic adaptation, although there seem to be ways to avoid it.

This doesn't contradict CICO at all. It simply affects CO.

Also, no of course they don't have to exercise off 3000 calories unless they eat something like 4500 calories.

Muscle also has less of an effect on TDEE than we all wish.

IF is as reliant on calorie restriction as any other diet. Maybe my TDEE is 2200 so I eat 1700 to lose 1 lb per week. If I do 5-2 IF, I eat 2200 on 5 days and 500 calories on the others. Nearly the same deficit. With something like 16-8 it's even more clear, as it works if the narrow eating window means I naturally restrict calories to 1700 or have an easier time doing so.

J72FIT wrote: »

ForecasterJason wrote: »

kmbrooks15 wrote: »

You could outrun it, but it may not be healthy to do so. Eating 1500 calories of crap and burning 2000 calories will still cause weight loss, but you will likely be unhealthy because of the lack of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients necessary.

Exactly.

What exactly constitutes 1500 calories of crap? Sounds subjective. Sounds extreme. Possibly a useless example...

When I say 1500 calories of crap, I mean nothing but junk food or processed foods. You could eat 1500 calories of that stuff and still lose weight, but it's not going to bring the benefits that 1500 calories of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and lean protein are going to bring you.