Weight Loss (CICO) Vs. Nutrition

megpie41
megpie41 Posts: 164 Member
edited November 20 in Food and Nutrition
Weight Loss (CICO) Vs. Nutrition...do people differentiate between the two? I 100% agree that if you consume less calories than you burn, you will lose weight (that's basic science). I guess I am of the school of thought that nutrition and weight loss should go hand in hand.

I read posts here where people are asking about sugar, carb, fat intake and 90% of the responses say it doesn't matter as long as you follow the CICO method. I could eat my calorie allotment in doughnuts and cookies, and I would probably lose weight...but I wouldn't be healthy.

It is my belief that weight loss should be a lifestyle change...not a diet. I don't want to spend the rest of my life counting calories. If you eat the right foods, weight gain really shouldn't be an issue because the foods we should be eating shouldn't be making us fat.

I'm generalizing here, but most of the standard Western diet is lacking in fiber and high in added sugar (I realize that most people here believe a high sugar diet makes no difference...I won't even bring up artificial sweeteners). Fiber makes you feel full, so a lack of it makes us keep eating.

I guess I'm confused as to why so many people want to lose weight, but they only do so by the CICO method. If you continue to eat the same foods that caused you to gain weight in the first place, but less of it, as soon as you stop counting calories you will gain it back. I for one don't want to count calories my whole life. Why not make a lifestyle change and eat healthier foods that will improve health (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc) and full of fiber that will fill you up and make you not want to eat as much, hence eliminating the calorie counting?

I know I'm in the vast minority here when I say that I believe added sugar and HFCS are making us fat. As a test, my boyfriend and I cut out all added sugar from our diets for 1 month. We didn't count calories or log our food...we just read every label and ate nothing with added sugar (most processed foods). Within 1 month he lost ~15 lbs and I lost ~8 lbs. We both are pretty healthy to begin with (only 10-15 lbs to lose each), so that amount of weight was significant.

CICO will allow you to lose weight, no doubt about that, but aren't health and nutrition important factors as well? If you agree or disagree with me, I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

Replies

  • GottaluvFood
    GottaluvFood Posts: 65 Member
    edited August 2017
    It not 'vs' at all. It is a matter of what the goal is. If someone says their only goal is weight loss, then cico is all that is needed. If someone says they want to get healthy AND lose weight then cico AND fruit/veggie counting are appropriate. (Just to over simplify for sake of brevity.) I've read multiple advisors saying "yes you can loose weight on just doughnuts & Hi-C, but...not...advisable". The loosing weight on just doughnuts with cico is to prove a point...nothing else. It is not a recommendation.

    On the other hand, one can be very overweight eating only healthy things. That would be me.

    My mom lost 40-50 pounds 5 times in my lifetime. She tried every diet method & every diet method worked. So, when I found myself 60 pounds over weight, I knew I had to loose it without dieting. I love my veggies & I love my fruit. I love whole-grain. I love fish. But, I'm a binge-eater...a zombie-eater. I need some discipline. I need "Mindful eating".

    I've learned somethings too. I need a minimum of 400 calories a meal & 100-200 calorie for my afternoon snack. This keeps me from panic-eating. Ya know, I'm so hungry I have to overeat. Don't get it. I'm not gonna starve, but that's me. So, I've learned my calorie minimums. I can eye my typical foods & tell it's calorie content. I don't have to weigh & measure every time, 'cuz I can eye it. Say I have dessert at someone's house. I'm not gonna measure or read labels. That seems rude. I will look for a similar dessert & log what I think it was, based upon the knowledge I've gained from logging & measuring since January.

    I monitor things per week, too. I make sure my sugar content is below most days of the week, not every day. So the close cake calorie count when I'm a house guest is enough to show me that I had dessert that day. I try not to have dessert every day. A few times a week.

    In short, it's still useful if not exact.
  • accidentalpancake
    accidentalpancake Posts: 484 Member
    edited August 2017
    In a nutshell, many people believe that labeling foods as good (healthy) or bad (unhealthy) would somehow reflect on those consuming those foods (themselves), which causes distress for them.

    Some people have no issues with considering foods by their inherent nutritional values, and don't think that consuming them is a reflection of the individual.

    Not a discussion worth having here, as you'll end up with exactly what you got in your very first reply: a reductio ad absurdum response that puts words in your mouth claiming that nobody eats sugar (or whatever) all day, which was never the point.
  • mamadon
    mamadon Posts: 1,422 Member
    But see the thing is, most of us eat the same food we always have, including what some would define as junk. We just eat less of it. It's not necessarily true that people will gain weight if they stop counting calories. Some do yes, but it's not the food their eating but the amount of it. You mention that maybe if they filled up more on high fiber things, it would make them feel fuller and not eat as much. People over eat for a lot of reasons, not all of them are physical or due to hunger. Also, many people, including myself had significant improvement on our health simply because we lost a lot of weight, not because we were eating "healthier" foods. I for example, no longer needed high blood pressure pills.
    I am one of those people who continue to count calories after 3 years of maintenance. I know the calories of most things I eat, but it helps keep me in check and I kind of enjoy a numbers game. Some people can just keep track easily on their head.
    I guess my point is I don't believe you have to eat nothing but "healthy" foods to be successful long term. All things in moderation, including for me, sugar and processed foods at times.
  • TorStar80
    TorStar80 Posts: 252 Member
    I know what you are trying to say OP. I see many many comments from people, usually in response to a newbie poster who doesn't fully understand CICO where they will state it doesn't matter what you eat as long as it's calories in and calories out... then a newbie will say, well what if I eat ice cream all day as my calorie allotment and the experienced community will say, well as long as it's CICO you can do that BUT you will probably feel like crap and be starving because lower calorie foods you can eat a whole heck of a lot more of. What I'm saying is that I think most people recognize eating ice cream all day isnt good but they are simplifying it so the concept is understood. Imho.
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    I differentiate between the two because they aren't the same thing, but they also go hand in hand - it's very difficult to eat less for any visible weight loss to happen, without eating well. So it's not "versus", it's "but also".

    CICO is also not a method, it's the process of weight management. Calorie counting is a method, one of many, to control CICO.

    Should and should... for any lasting result, you have to keep doing what's causing the result. Diet or lifestyle change, whatever you call it, your changes in eating habits have to be permanent in order to keep you at goal weight.

    No foods makes you magically not regain. But some foods are more difficult to overeat. You still have to not overeat.

    Demonizing foods, food groups and nutients is generally a bad idea. Forbidden fruit does indeed taste the sweetest. No foods are toxic, fattening or morally bad. It's all about context, dosage and frequency. This is the main reason behind telling people they can eat anything they want and lose weight. It is not to encourage people to ignore nutrition. On the contrary. People who feel they can make their own decisions, freely, make overall better decisions, including food choices.
  • Meganthedogmom
    Meganthedogmom Posts: 1,639 Member
    To lose weight, you must eat in a calorie deficit.
    It is helpful to get to a calorie deficit while eating nutritiously.
    It's not an either/or thing. I mean I suppose for some people it is, but neither seems like a long-term sustainable thing (depriving yourself from all "unhealthy" foods forever, or eating nothing but sugar... in small amounts).
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,423 Member
    Weight management is CICO. If you lost weight you took in fewer calories or burned more calories. You did not lose just because you didn't eat doughnuts but because you reduced calorie intake. You can eat too many calories of chicken or beans just as you can with sugar.

    For health you should meet your body's nutritional needs. I haven't seen anyone say don't do this. I have seen people say you do not have to give up every food you love to lose weight. Usually they advocate moderation.
    People are usually advised to get enough protein and add more low calorie vegetables to their diets to bulk out their meals. Most people do change their lifestyle to reduce the amount of high calorie/low nutrition foods or drinks because they realize those are not filling.

    What you eat is personal preference.
  • CaliMomTeach
    CaliMomTeach Posts: 745 Member
    I think it's funny how people say that no foods are good or bad on here. I still eat foods that I know offer nothing of nutritional value, or very little, but I don't kid myself by thinking all foods are equal as far as how much they offer nutritionally. Of course the tomatoes and zucchini I ate last night offer more nutrition than french fries. Sugar intake is a problem for many people because it puts them in a huge calorie surplus and so many of us are prediabetic or diabetic in the U.S. It is freeing to realize you can lose (a lot) of weight just by calorie counting no matter what you choose to eat, but for me nutrition is important too. I think it may be that some of us choose to lose weight for mostly vanity reasons (wanting to look better/more attractive), while others have health reasons (high cholesterol, prediabetic). When I was younger, I don't think I would have been as concerned about the nutritional aspect. My recent weight loss would never have happened without a doctor saying she wanted to put me on medication. People probably assume a shared perspective when offering advice on here. If the person is primarily concerned with just dropping pounds, then he or she may say the only thing that matters is CICO. If the person is trying to lower his or her blood sugar through weight loss or just wants to feel healthier, then he or she might look at a bigger nutritional/physical activity picture. Having said all of that, I happily enjoy foods that are bad for me if I eat them in large, regular quantities. I choose to eat them less frequently and in smaller amounts. I know they are "bad" food choices for me and many people. That's why I limit them.
  • CaliMomTeach
    CaliMomTeach Posts: 745 Member
    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    Some great points have been raised by previous posters.

    I think the current culture surrounding weight loss in the media is fraught with so much misinformation that it's important to be very clear and precise with language surrounding our discussion of it on the forums. I don't think conflating nutrition and energy intake does anything but muddy the waters for new members. It's no better than what they can get from any fitness blog.

    I came into this round of weight loss vaguely knowing that you needed to eat less and move more but I didn't know the finer points of TDEE (in terms of it being specific to age/height) and calorie burns for exercise. Previous attempts at weight loss for me always included an element of chance and uncertainty because the method used removed an element of knowing exactly how they all worked and I didn't know enough about how weight loss generally worked.

    I also took in a lot of misinformation about nutrition over the years (restrict this or that food/macro or combination of foods - that's what's making you fat! It's not your fault!).

    When I started on MFP, I was a whole foods vegetarian, and not a bite of sugar every passed my lips, but I weighed 210 pounds. I had excellent nutrition, but I obviously ate too much.

    This is the problem with the argument in your post, OP. It doesn't necessarily lead to a healthy weight. It is entirely possible to overeat healthy foods. I had plenty of veggies, whole grains, legumes, eggs, and low fat dairy. And olive oil. I'm sure it was the olive oil that was a large part of what did me in. I had a heavy had with it. After all, it is a healthy fat! That's what all the experts told me.

    I've learned over the course of my weight loss (I'm still fiddling with vanity weight, I'm a perfectly healthy BMI now and have firmly established an exercise habit) that restricting foods like I used to is not a life-long sustainable solution for me. Every week or so, I buy myself a candy bar. Other than that, I still eat a low fat, mostly whole foods vegetarian diet with plenty of vegetables and fruit because I genuinely like those foods. But then again, someone else might not consider protein powder or gluten free Rice Krispies whole foods. I do.

    Balance in all things. CICO is king. Nutrition is about health, satiety, and dietary compliance. CICO is about weight loss. Since the two things govern different elements, they should never be conflated.

    Good point. You definitely can overeat healthy foods and gain weight!
  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,831 Member
    edited August 2017
    There are many factors to a healthy diet and the science defining a healthy diet is constantly under scrutiny. New knowledge is added to our understanding with each new study. Things we used to "know" were found to be naive and wrong as we developed new understandings through research.

    The "best" information of the past linked dietary cholesterol to serum cholesterol. "Don't eat eggs, they will raise your cholesterol." Subsequent research found there is very little link between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol. So we changed what we "knew" about healthy eating and adapted our diets accordingly. Change is the steady state of our understanding of human nutrition.

    Hubby and I "aim toward" a healthy diet. For us, that includes watching our sodium intake, eating several servings of vegetables every day, trying to keep saturated fat consumption within reason, keeping fiber intake up, trying to make potassium intake greater than sodium intake, getting sufficient omega3 fatty acids, etc. The list goes on. None of these aims is related to weight loss but they should have health benefits for us.

    For weight loss, the only thing that matters is consuming fewer calories than we expend.
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