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Good Inefficiency?
cstehansen
Posts: 1,984 Member
If you are keeping up with the Keto Summit, Dr. Richard Feinman has some very interesting things to say on the topic of CICO/the laws of thermodynamics. In layman terms, what jumped out was the idea that CICO doesn't work because of inefficiencies. Not all calories are as efficient.
If I understood him correctly, in essence, the introduction of insulin makes our use of calories much more efficient. Therefore every calorie eaten is more likely to either be used or stored. If someone wants to lose weight, efficiency of calorie use works against that person. A ketogenic diet makes the use of calories less efficient meaning fewer of the calories in are either burned or stored.
One of the key misunderstandings of the laws of thermodynamics is they stress inefficiency and any calculation done is theoretical as nothing is 100% efficient. Just think about the variances associated with a car. Two seemingly identical cars could get different gas mileage due to dirty fuel injectors, driving at different speeds, environmental factors such as inclines/declines or headwinds, etc.
Therefore saying CICO is not 100% accurate is not arguing against the laws of thermodynamics as some would say, but rather it is confirmation thereof.
He was part of day 5, so he is only available to hear through the end of today if you want to watch/listen. Fair warning, it is science heavy and he is definitely not going to win any awards for being a dynamic speaker. Still very good info if you want it.
If I understood him correctly, in essence, the introduction of insulin makes our use of calories much more efficient. Therefore every calorie eaten is more likely to either be used or stored. If someone wants to lose weight, efficiency of calorie use works against that person. A ketogenic diet makes the use of calories less efficient meaning fewer of the calories in are either burned or stored.
One of the key misunderstandings of the laws of thermodynamics is they stress inefficiency and any calculation done is theoretical as nothing is 100% efficient. Just think about the variances associated with a car. Two seemingly identical cars could get different gas mileage due to dirty fuel injectors, driving at different speeds, environmental factors such as inclines/declines or headwinds, etc.
Therefore saying CICO is not 100% accurate is not arguing against the laws of thermodynamics as some would say, but rather it is confirmation thereof.
He was part of day 5, so he is only available to hear through the end of today if you want to watch/listen. Fair warning, it is science heavy and he is definitely not going to win any awards for being a dynamic speaker. Still very good info if you want it.
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He lost me about five minutes into his talk, unfortunately (over my head). So thank you for your summary!
I've heard people say before that "a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie," so this ties right into that. And if I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that each of us comes with our own "inefficiencies" as far as our unique physiological make-ups are concerned. Makes perfect sense.2 -
cstehansen wrote: »A ketogenic diet makes the use of calories less efficient meaning fewer of the calories in are either burned or stored.
. . .
Therefore saying CICO is not 100% accurate is not arguing against the laws of thermodynamics as some would say, but rather it is confirmation thereof.
Saying CICO is not 100% accurate is arguing against the laws of thermodynamics. It is a scientific reality.
CICO says absolutely nothing, however, about efficiency of calorie use. Using calories more efficiently would decrease the CO side of the equation. (If your body is more efficient in using the calories, you are using fewer calories, and decreasing the CO (calories expended to get through the day). From the research I've done, there is (at best) a slight decrease in efficiency in eating ketogenic because it takes the body more energy to use fat calories than it does to use carbohydrate calories.
You can also affect the CI side. The CI side assumes that all of the calories taken in are actually really taken in- so if you alter the food to decrease the amount that can be used by the body, you lower the CI side. For example, if you make your potatoes into resistant starch, the CI for those potatoes will be lower than the tested (USDA) values because your body can't use what it can't digest. (Unfortunately, there's not enough testing yet to know what percentage of the calories can no longer be used . . .)
CICO is just the immutable scientific framework, within which a bunch of other stuff happens.0 -
The problem I have with CICO is the statement of "if you eat less you will lose weight". This is untrue for many of us. They don't tell you that you need to change the foods that represent the CI part. We can't fill our CI with chips, sweets, candy......and still expect to lose weight! This is the assumption of many nutritionally uneducated people! They think they can have cereal and fruit with skim milk for breakfast, and that's doing good for the CI. BUT, they turn around and are starving within two hours! Then they eat something to ward of the hangry response! Keeping up with their CI they run out of calories before supper time! Then suffer with the hangries until the end of the day when they can eat again!!
This is the problem, for me! I lived it, proving it didn't work!
Once I changed WHAT I eat that kept hangries away it became easy to do the CICO because I wasn't starving! This is when CICO became easy, and effective.
Until people are educated properly about nutrition it won't work! This is where the "CICO doesn't work" attitude comes in, imo!5 -
This reminds me of the pod cast someone posted a few weeks ago. There was a discussion about calorimeters and their clunkiness in the real world, and a discussion about how when they tested specific foods, like different kinds of nuts, the actual energy varied greatly.
And, you know me CICO, fine, but blood sugar, satiety, and generally not working against my body make it all so much easier.
And yes, as a menopausal woman I KNOW my body doesn't respond to carbs, or even food the way it used to. Period. Full stop.2 -
Frankly I'm astonished that the prevalent view in nutrition assumes that the "energy required to raise water by 1°C" is somehow precisely the same as the complex biochemistry the body does when eating food, also called metabolism:https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/content/dam/sigma-aldrich/docs/Sigma/General_Information/metabolic_pathways_poster.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwjmzsuFhrrPAhUKhiwKHcGcBBAQFggmMAQ&usg=AFQjCNEiHD0X_9OYjw79Oi35kpVOibl82A&sig2=TIimZlG74nWr4w_9w4eIeg
(sorry I can't seem to insert an image on my cell
sometimes I can't understand the simplest things!)
AND... even in manufactured foods there's a discrepancy up to 10% in "calories" than the label says. So how exact is the CI part of CICO, really? In that Gastropod episode that @Ralf Lott posted almonds were up to 20% less calories in the test subjects!!
There's also the CO part. Some possible effect of a better microbiome could be that it/they eat more of the carbs in the form of Resistant Starch (RS). ... and it's an emerging field with lots of caveats.
Then there's ability for glucose disposal. I suspect that those who are able to eat very high carb levels without gaining massively also have very good glucose disposal. In a TV program in my country 2 persons were drinking 4 liters of Coca Cola / day on top of their diet...with BG in normal ranges! But after cutting out the soda for 1 month, they only lost 2kg each! maybe they ate more, idk, but it's fascinating. If I drank same amount of soda per day I'm head diving right back to pre diabetes symptoms. So there's obviously highly individual responses and effects of a high carb intake.1 -
I'm not sure I have the person correct and I can't check it right now. But one of the Low Carb Cruise lectures or it may have even been from the Capetown LCHF Convention... and I think it was Zoe Harcomb ??? Not even sure if I have her last name right. Lol! Sorry, I swear I recall the rest much better!
Anyway, she was an Australian woman speaking about how flawed the idea of simply counting calories to eat less and move more for weight loss is. Her examples were both spot on and hilarious st the same time. I will have to check and see if I can figure out which lecture it was and bring a post back.
Alright. Here ya go
http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/14622/1124-zoe-harcombe-2015-cape-town-south-africa-lchf-convention-lecture/0 -
cstehansen wrote: »One of the key misunderstandings of the laws of thermodynamics is they stress inefficiency and any calculation done is theoretical as nothing is 100% efficient. Just think about the variances associated with a car. Two seemingly identical cars could get different gas mileage due to dirty fuel injectors, driving at different speeds, environmental factors such as inclines/declines or headwinds, etc.
Therefore saying CICO is not 100% accurate is not arguing against the laws of thermodynamics as some would say, but rather it is confirmation thereof.
This definition is from Wikipedia: "The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed"
The emphasis is mine.
I think the biggest misunderstanding is that people ignore the part that a person is not an isolated system. Your body constantly interacts with the environment. You gain heat and lose heat, depending on the temperature outside. You breathe. You pee and poop. You eat. Even eating the same food, the temperature it is at affects the total amount of energy entering your body.
I am not an isolated or closed system. And neither is anybody else.2 -
Frankly I'm astonished that the prevalent view in nutrition assumes that the "energy required to raise water by 1°C" is somehow precisely the same as the complex biochemistry the body does when eating food, also called metabolism
We are not bomb calorimeters. We are not bomb calorimeters. We are not bomb calorimeters....3 -
Dragonwolf wrote: »Frankly I'm astonished that the prevalent view in nutrition assumes that the "energy required to raise water by 1°C" is somehow precisely the same as the complex biochemistry the body does when eating food, also called metabolism
We are not bomb calorimeters. We are not bomb calorimeters. We are not bomb calorimeters....
We are, however, da bomb.2
This discussion has been closed.