It is more than a simple "CICO" - why can't we just admit it?
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mactaffy428 wrote: »Why do people say that it is all down to CICO as if it is really that simple? Why does dieting not work, then, if all we have to do is shut our pie holes every in a while? Now, before anyone gets snarky, yes one needs to burn more than they eat, but saying that it is all " CICO" is very misleading. You take 2 different 200 pound women. Give them a month, have then do the same level if activity and eat the exact same food, and I guarantee they will not have the same weight loss. This leaves people frustrated.
It is so very hard to figure out what our CO" is as our bodies affect how we process the same foods. Tom might use more energy digesting his peanut butter sandwich than Hank, even though they ate the exact same amount. That's more "CO" for Tom. It's also hard to figure out our "CI"; since, by law, packaged foods are allowed to be "off" a certain amount on what the companies that is the nutritional balance, etc. All we can do is our best educated guess and that's just is not perfect enough to boil everything down to CICO.
It is so tiring to see people just boil complex biological functions down to a half-baked formula. Yes, what you eat does matter (and you may not even know it [your Big Mac may be your weekly treat but it could very well be someone else's poison]) and what you do does matter (exercise has been shown to to do so many things that affect this CICO over-used jargon).
I think a good answer here is, yes there can be a bit of variability, but in reality those two women are likely NOT really eating the exact same amount of food. What people eat and what they report that they eat can be very different, whether it's a conscious thing or not.6 -
I believe in CICO but there are so many other variables that it doesn't always reflect on the scale. I have inflammation issues and have weeks where I did everything right, weigh and measure every morsel, and don't lose or even gain. It doesn't mean the CICO formula is wrong, it just means there are outside factors influencing it and every body is different.5
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Calories are important, however, if you don't address the underlying issues ie: habits, medication, hormonal imbalance, lifestyle, the rate of recidivism skyrockets.
So telling someone who's obese and has been obese for any length of time to simply "eat less, move more" is ignorant.6 -
lightenup2016 wrote: »mactaffy428 wrote: »Why do people say that it is all down to CICO as if it is really that simple? Why does dieting not work, then, if all we have to do is shut our pie holes every in a while? Now, before anyone gets snarky, yes one needs to burn more than they eat, but saying that it is all " CICO" is very misleading. You take 2 different 200 pound women. Give them a month, have then do the same level if activity and eat the exact same food, and I guarantee they will not have the same weight loss. This leaves people frustrated.
It is so very hard to figure out what our CO" is as our bodies affect how we process the same foods. Tom might use more energy digesting his peanut butter sandwich than Hank, even though they ate the exact same amount. That's more "CO" for Tom. It's also hard to figure out our "CI"; since, by law, packaged foods are allowed to be "off" a certain amount on what the companies that is the nutritional balance, etc. All we can do is our best educated guess and that's just is not perfect enough to boil everything down to CICO.
It is so tiring to see people just boil complex biological functions down to a half-baked formula. Yes, what you eat does matter (and you may not even know it [your Big Mac may be your weekly treat but it could very well be someone else's poison]) and what you do does matter (exercise has been shown to to do so many things that affect this CICO over-used jargon).
I think a good answer here is, yes there can be a bit of variability, but in reality those two women are likely NOT really eating the exact same amount of food. What people eat and what they report that they eat can be very different, whether it's a conscious thing or not.
It's also true that you could have a tall 200 lb woman, 65 yrs old, and a short 200lb woman, 30 yrs old. Yes, they will lose weight at different rates.0 -
Just because you find it difficult to figure out calorie expenditure (it's actually very simple), doesn't mean that CICO doesn't work.11
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Hello_its_Dan wrote: »Calories are important, however, if you don't address the underlying issues ie: habits, medication, hormonal imbalance, lifestyle, the rate of recidivism skyrockets.
So telling someone who's obese and has been obese for any length of time to simply "eat less, move more" is ignorant.
Doesn't negate CICO. You're talking about psychological factors outside of physical factors (which is acknowledge may change CO but CICO still applies).9 -
People don't want to change, that's what it boils down to here. If you want it bad enough you will put less energy into your body than your body puts out and you will lose. People don't want it bad enough. They would rather say it's my medication, or genetics, or the baby weight, or I'm not taking fat blasting supplements etc and make excuses because eating less sucks. But finding a balance between feeling full on the food you eat and exercising to burn off more if you can is where it's at. If you don't exercise or can't then you have to eat less to get the same result. Simple CICO. It's getting people to really crack down hard on their accountability that is difficult. You can't stay in a deficit if you aren't aware of how much you are eating. Heavier people lose the easiest because they have so much excess and when you go from extreme overeating to normal overeating you still lose. Their larger body uses a lot more energy (CO) just to keep up normal functions as well as carry the larger weight around all day. All the day to day movement you do is like carrying around a backpack with the extra weight in it. When you lose the proverbial "backpack" and your body was used to carrying it, it doesn't have to work as hard anymore, so less output. Same CICO principle. It's just easy for larger people because their calories in were high to begin with, even a small cut results in losses. It's when they have to cut further from normal overeating to just eating enough to sustain themselves that they struggle. It's also where I am now, I lost weight to a finally heathy BMI and weight but trying to get leaner and the numbers must be accurate. If I add to much ketchup it can be enough calories to throw me out of my deficit, because my energy out (CO) is so much lower, because my body is smaller it doesn't have to work as hard or burn as much to carry around my smaller framev and to function normally (heart beating, breathing).
Point is when others see weightloss can, has and will continue to be done by many people throughout their lives they will either do it for themselves and stop making excuses or they will not change.11 -
I agree entirely. Though I am afraid this argument has been through the wringer more times than you can shake a stick at. The horse you are beating died long ago.6
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mactaffy428 wrote: »Why do people say that it is all down to CICO as if it is really that simple? Why does dieting not work, then, if all we have to do is shut our pie holes every in a while? Now, before anyone gets snarky, yes one needs to burn more than they eat, but saying that it is all " CICO" is very misleading. You take 2 different 200 pound women. Give them a month, have then do the same level if activity and eat the exact same food, and I guarantee they will not have the same weight loss. This leaves people frustrated.
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We say CICO because weight loss is about calories.
No one is saying that you don't have factors like age or medical conditions that impact your equation.
A 25 year old 5'10" 200 lb sedentary woman might eat 1,579 calories daily to lose 1 lb a week.
A 55 year old 5'1" 200 lb sedentary woman might eat 1,227 calories daily to lose 1 lb a week.
They could both lose 1 lb a week but yes they have differences they need to account for. It might take time to figure out the right calorie goal but weight loss is still CICO for each person.
If you want to lose weight then you will need to eat less calories or burn more calories than you are currently.
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If you figured it out that weight loss is not as simple as CICO like most people think, you've just won the lottery. There's no need for you to come in here and try to explain it to everyone. All you will get is angry people, try to prove you wrong like they're all experts. People don't want to admit that the weight loss isn't that simple. People don't want to give up their nasty junk food. People are deeply addicted to junk food and have overeating problems. Those people take care of their cars more than their bodies. They use the most efficient and expensive products such oil, gas, sea foam...etc to keep their cars work well. But when it comes to diet, all they want is weight loss. Health is none of their concern. Eating less is the most miserable way to lose weight.6
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^^^ So many strawmen.15
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If it was more than CICO, there would be a ton of obese starving African children.12
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nomorepuke wrote: »If you figured it out that weight loss is not as simple as CICO like most people think, you've just won the lottery. There's no need for you to come in here and try to explain it to everyone. All you will get is angry people, try to prove you wrong like they're all experts. People don't want to admit that the weight loss isn't that simple. People don't want to give up their nasty junk food. People are deeply addicted to junk food and have overeating problems. Those people take care of their cars more than their bodies. They use the most efficient and expensive products such oil, gas, sea foam...etc to keep their cars work well. But when it comes to diet, all they want is weight loss. Health is none of their concern. CICO is the most miserable way to lose weight.
So many strawmen & incoherent statements. Controlling CICO is by definition not overeating, pretty much everyone responding is concerned about their health and what they put into their bodies. You're just making stuff up because you can't understand a conditional statement without changing the subject.
Brb THE necessary condition for losing weight is the most miserable way to do it. Uhhh...
You literally have no idea what us "angry people" are saying, you don't understand the term "CICO", and you conflate your misunderstandings with whatever half baked ideas you have about healthful eating.19 -
As so many others here tried to explain, weight loss is as simple as CICO. The rate of weight loss is a huge variable from person to person, depending on many other factors, but it all comes down to calories in vs calories out. The rate of loss is the variable for each individual.2
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nomorepuke wrote: »If you figured it out that weight loss is not as simple as CICO like most people think, you've just won the lottery. There's no need for you to come in here and try to explain it to everyone. All you will get is angry people, try to prove you wrong like they're all experts. People don't want to admit that the weight loss isn't that simple. People don't want to give up their nasty junk food. People are deeply addicted to junk food and have overeating problems. Those people take care of their cars more than their bodies. They use the most efficient and expensive products such oil, gas, sea foam...etc to keep their cars work well. But when it comes to diet, all they want is weight loss. Health is none of their concern. Eating less is the most miserable way to lose weight.
Eh? Aside from the strawmen, eating less is the ONLY way to lose weight, unless you're a magical mythical unicorn. And I'm not in the least bit miserable, in fact I bloody love seeing my body transform and don't deprive myself at all (unless we call no longer eating until painfully stuffed miserable).11 -
mactaffy428 wrote: »Why do people say that it is all down to CICO as if it is really that simple? Why does dieting not work, then, if all we have to do is shut our pie holes every in a while? Now, before anyone gets snarky, yes one needs to burn more than they eat, but saying that it is all " CICO" is very misleading. You take 2 different 200 pound women. Give them a month, have then do the same level if activity and eat the exact same food, and I guarantee they will not have the same weight loss. This leaves people frustrated.
It is so very hard to figure out what our CO" is as our bodies affect how we process the same foods. Tom might use more energy digesting his peanut butter sandwich than Hank, even though they ate the exact same amount. That's more "CO" for Tom. It's also hard to figure out our "CI"; since, by law, packaged foods are allowed to be "off" a certain amount on what the companies that is the nutritional balance, etc. All we can do is our best educated guess and that's just is not perfect enough to boil everything down to CICO.
It is so tiring to see people just boil complex biological functions down to a half-baked formula. Yes, what you eat does matter (and you may not even know it [your Big Mac may be your weekly treat but it could very well be someone else's poison]) and what you do does matter (exercise has been shown to to do so many things that affect this CICO over-used jargon).
"It is more than a simple "CICO" - why can't we just admit it?"-Because it's unnecessary.
Some people need to work in a laboratory and see that ideal calculations are not exactly the same in the real world. There's a margin of error for everything. For example, in the laboratories of my electronics courses, we calculate ideal values and obtain measured values. Sure, the voltages or currents are *supposed* to be a certain value, but when measured in real life, the numbers are NEVER perfect. Maybe the measuring devices are not entirely precise or the voltage supplies are off, etc, etc. However, they are close enough such that the theorems and laws learned are reliable for building and designing hardware.
Similarly, online calculators and fitness devices help calculate ideal numbers for weight loss and calorie burns. However, in real life, the numbers will vary from person to person and should be tweaked as necessary. Either way, the simple, underlying science behind it, CICO, is good enough to get results.
It's really not that hard to understand.3 -
the thing is, there isn't a simple answer, and you want a simple answer, and "CICO" sounds like its being presented as a simple answer.
CI and CO are estimates. They can never be anything more. Which makes CI<CO an estimation as well.
And that's okay. Because it's the guiding principle as you work to get more accurate understanding of your specific CI and CO. That basic statement underlies all successful weight loss.
Its simple to say, but not simple in practice. It requires experimenting with your own diet and activity to figure out what's going on. That can be hard, and everyone wants easy. Everyone wants thought-free, work-free answers. THey're willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for promises of thought-free, work-free answers. But if any of those easy answers actually worked for most people, no one would be overweight.5 -
nomorepuke wrote: »If you figured it out that weight loss is not as simple as CICO like most people think, you've just won the lottery. There's no need for you to come in here and try to explain it to everyone. All you will get is angry people, try to prove you wrong like they're all experts. People don't want to admit that the weight loss is that simple. People don't want to give up their nasty junk food. People are deeply addicted to junk food and have overeating problems. Those people take care of their cars more than their bodies. They use the most efficient and expensive products such oil, gas, sea foam...etc to keep their cars work well. But when it comes to diet, all they want is weight loss. Health is none of their concern. CICO is the most miserable way to lose weight.
The reason I decided to lose the extra weight was because I had been diagnosed as a prediabetic. I've lost several family members to type 2, and am now watching my only living grandmother slowly die, in excruciating pain, from complications to her type 2. So yes, better health was the only reason why I decided to lose weight. And I did, by understanding how weight loss actually works (CICO). I wasn't miserable during my weight loss phase, because I continued to eat all the foods I liked, I just learned how to eat them in the correct calorie amounts. I lost around 50lbs and improved all my health markers, including normalizing the high glucose number.
I'm now several years in maintenance and I'm the only one in my family who's reversed the progression of pre-diabetes. I'm in great health by every marker my doctor uses and I have a bmi of just under 21. I continue to focus on my calorie intake and I still eat all the foods I like. This is a realistic and sustainable method for me, for the next 45+ years.
If you'd like to compare blood work panels /health markers I'd be happy to do that with you.14 -
Threads like this always perplex me because I can't decide if people are intentionally misinterpreting statements like "weight loss comes down to CICO" as "ignore health and nutrition and eat nothing but donuts and Doritos" or if people are coming into this with a preconceived belief that everything has to be a certain "diet" and so they believe those who talk about CICO being the driving force for all weight loss must mean that they are prescribing a way of eating?
OP you are right that there are some variable complexities that may come into play for certain individuals. Things like underlying medical conditions may influence the CO side of the equation. Even these complexities though, don't invalidate the concept. It just means that certain people have to be more diligent or tweak that side of the equation, but the fact remains that those individuals still need to consume less calories than they burn in order to lose weight. And for the vast majority of people, it really is that simple, and being precise down to the decimal place of what. someone burns isn't necessary. All that is required is consistency and monitoring over time, making adjustments as actual results occur. Being directionally correct is good enough for almost everyone in the population.
I find that trying to imply that it is more complex than CICO because some of these "majoring in the minor" details just feeds into people's beliefs that weight loss is too hard for them, or they are destined to fail, or there is some other factor prohibiting them from being successful. If most people took the time to understand the basic energy balance of CICO, and some time logging their calories in and estimating their calories out - I think a lot more people would be successful not only at losing the weight, but at keeping it off.18 -
VintageFeline wrote: »nomorepuke wrote: »If you figured it out that weight loss is not as simple as CICO like most people think, you've just won the lottery. There's no need for you to come in here and try to explain it to everyone. All you will get is angry people, try to prove you wrong like they're all experts. People don't want to admit that the weight loss isn't that simple. People don't want to give up their nasty junk food. People are deeply addicted to junk food and have overeating problems. Those people take care of their cars more than their bodies. They use the most efficient and expensive products such oil, gas, sea foam...etc to keep their cars work well. But when it comes to diet, all they want is weight loss. Health is none of their concern. Eating less is the most miserable way to lose weight.
Eh? Aside from the strawmen, eating less is the ONLY way to lose weight, unless your magical mythical unicorn. And I'm not in the least bit miserable, in fact I bloody love seeing my body transform and don't deprive myself at all (unless we call no longer eating until painfully stuffed miserable).
I feel very sorry for you. I've lost 21lbs in little over a month by eating more. I don't count calories because I stop when I'm full. Simply, I had gained weight because of not being able to eat. All I ate was fast/frozen/processed junk on the go.
Majority of the people think like you. Thus, weight loss is one of the most lucrative industries. They want you to think that way. They want you to yo-yo. They don't want you to get educated on how nutrition works in your system.
Look at the most attractive thread in here "Serial Starters" !!!!0
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