Why do people deny CICO ?

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Also, it's already been well covered that many people misunderstand what CICO is. This is not a new idea in the conversation, and I assume most agree.

A follow up question is why, after the misunderstanding is cleared up, do some continue to deny CICO. Why cling to ideas that make no sense and that would rob you of the understanding that you do have control?

Answered above, I believe.

Why do people make other poor choices?

Why do people borrow money to buy a car when it's cheaper to save up and then buy one?

Why do people buy $5 candy at the movies when they can buy the same box at Wal*Mart and bring it in?

Why do people eat junk food when fruits, vegetables and lean proteins are better for you?

Why does advertising work?

People want instant gratification and are bad at critical reasoning.

Half the population has below average intelligence. I'm not shocked at all that people deny CICO. People deny the earth is a sphere. People believe their political party is working in their best interests. People believe all sorts of things despite evidence to the contrary.

They fight for their ideas. If you disagree, the fight or flight response is often triggered, not the rational thought centers.

tbright1965 wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

tbright1965 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

If there is one thing I've learned from the MFP Debate forum, it's that there are a lot of people out there who aren't familiar with the concept of "debate". I guess it explains our current political climate (at least in the US) where if someone disagrees with you they are assumed to be evil, stupid, unpatriotic, criminal, and barely fit to live without a second thought.

Debate is healthy and actually necessary. Having your opinion challenged gives you the opportunity to ensure you fully understand the issue and determine how firmly you hold your opinion. And it opens the door to the idea that changing your mind when confronted with facts you weren't aware of is not necessarily a bad thing. Disagreeing with someone isn't rude, disrespectful, or an attack. It's a part of thoughtful conversation.

The demise of debate, compromise, and understanding of the scientific process are all leading us as a society down a dangerous path. This is my deep thought of the day, and it was brought to you by "Why Do People Deny CICO?". I really hope there are some ACV or starvation mode threads today, I need to lighten up a little here

I don't mind people debating what someone says. We run into problems when people either attribute something completely different, or debate based on faulty understanding.

I've seen many variations of, "I'm not saying CICO doesn't work, just it's not the complete picture."

Weight is a very course measure of health and fitness. It doesn't tell the whole story. But many seem to jump on that and suggest the person saying it is trying to say CICO doesn't work.

Odd, I didn't see that said at all. But there are those who will begin arguing that someone said just that, when they didn't.

Weight isn't meant to be a measure of health and fitness. Why are you suggesting that it is?

Because I've observed that people treat weight as an aspect of health and fitness. So I'm not sure I'm suggesting anything. Is it true or false that there are values presented that indicate healthy and unhealthy weights?

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

There are separate issues that correlate and interweave, but they are still separate. Your weight impacts your health and can impact your fitness, but it's still a separate issue.

I know that, you know that. However, the topic is WHY do people deny CICO? I've offered some explanations WHY they do that.

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

Similarly, the people who seem to have problems with CICO have trouble separating calories from food and nutrients.

Broccoli is a food. As a food, it has properties. Some of those properties can be quantified in certain ways. One way is as a measure of the nutrients it supplies. Another is as a measure of the energy it supplies. Those measures are not the same thing. They are not the same property.

Agreed. I'm certainly not suggesting otherwise.

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

Certain foods have certain properties for certain people that make them feel certain things physiologically. This is another property that could stem from the food having either fiber, fat, starch, protein, or whatever thing it is in a particular food that works to make a particular individual get a feeling of fullness of satiety. This is not a function of the food but a reaction that varies among individuals (yes, some people are perfectly satiated by snack cakes) to the particular components of the food and has nothing to do with invalidating CICO.

And yes, I'm rambling, because I really am tired of people taking things that aren't calories and conflating them with calories. You did it here with weight. You're conflating weight with things that aren't weight. Weight isn't meant to be those things in the first place.

I did it, or I am observing and commenting on what people do?

I'm conflating nothing. Or at least didn't mean to. After all, I think I was saying CICO doesn't cover all those things and doesn't do a good job in the short term. Never said it was false or useless.

My explanation of WHY people deny CICO was rooted in using it to measure things it wasn't meant to measure, or at least how the scale and CICO cannot account for other factors as suggested.

I can explain WHY people (remember, others) may not buy CICO without being in the camp of not buying it.

Just because I can place myself in their shoes and describe their motivations or what MAY be happening in a short time quantum doesn't mean I buy their arguments.

Okay, I feel you, you're trying to get into their heads, but you're muddying the waters.

Scale readings =/= CICO and this is made clear many times on the board. The argument that you seem to be making that CICO isn't useful in the short term doesn't really bear out. Any time someone asserts an argument about short term, it's immediately rebutted (just saw a thread about this today, in fact).

I had stomach flu a few times in the past. I didnt eat for days and barely drank fluids yet the scale said I gained 2 lbs. I have gained or lost 10 lbs in a month without changing my diet, but by taking birth control pills or thyroid meds. Some weight loss or gain is hormonal and defies the laws of CICO. But, for the most part it works.

IzzyFlower2018 wrote: »

Caralarma wrote: »

So many people just don't grasp the concept of calories in calories out. They tell me that not all calories are equal and that you have to eat healthy to lose weight. I used to argue with these people but lately I just smile and nod. It's worked for me.. I eat basically anything I want and have lost 5 kg. I feel so many more people would be successful at weight loss if they just grasped this simple scientific concept. I'm hoping to reach my ultimate weight and then write a blog list about how I did it and prove all the CICO deniers wrong

Lots of reasons ... because no weight loss show says here is your 1200 calorie diet of junk and highly processed foods, because no professional athlete says they eat meals of 85% sugar/saturated fats, because their favorite celebrities tell them its the way to lose weight ... so people get confused and think they HAVE to eat healthy to lose weight or they have to exercise

Don't get me wrong I prefer to eat healthy meaning foods that balance my hormones, build muscle to fight fat, and give nutritional benefits. Plus me personally I just feel better, way more energy when I choose veggies over cookies. Same with exercise, drag myself to the gym but love it once I start and sleep so much better at night.
But none of this is needed for weigh loss. And I have days I eat badly for sure but still under maintenance because always CICO.

SO you are right... a Joule is 0.239006 small calories and 1 kilocalorie (food calorie) is the amount of energy needed to raise 1 gram of water 1°C. therefore a calorie burned is a calorie burned.

Am not sure what you mean by "I eat basically anything I want" but if you do end up eating an unhealthy ratio consistently ... 2:1 or 4:3 or heck 3:0 ... basically anything 50% plus of processed saturated sugar foods and write a blog please post pics with the blog and a daily accounting of how you feel ... I would love to know effects health wise ... and any long term issues (if any) once you continue that kind of diet with weight maintenance as well. If what you meant was you have sugar/fat/fried when you want it but its not the majority of your diet then just ignore this entire paragraph.

Again (endlessly again), we are not talking about nutrition and fitness (and I'd love to know where those ratios came from, because not science), we are talking about the energy balance required to gain, maintain or lose fat. The pseudo-scientific finger-wagging over what people may or may not be eating has nothing to do with how much they're eating. If you had just left it here "But none of this is needed for weigh loss. And I have days I eat badly for sure but still under maintenance because always CICO" you would have hit the nail on the head.

edited to fix quotes

CSARdiver wrote: »

tbright1965 wrote: »

CSARdiver wrote: »

tbright1965 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

I have no idea who you are arguing with. Because literally no one here said that you can explain day to day fluctuations with CICO. We tell people not to worry about day to day fluctuations because CICO will determine success long term. So I mean, yeah, I agree with you, and you seem to agree with OP, and the veteran posters who are constantly accused of being in a CICO cult.

Who is arguing?


The title of the topic is "Why do people deny CICO?"

Answers are given.

Somehow, that's an argument?

They deny CICO because it doesn't explain what is happening in a short time quantum.

CICO CAN work in the long term and still be unable to explain to people what is happening to them in the short term, correct?

It is not inconsistent for BOTH to be true.

Is the short term relevant? This is an issue many have as results are not immediate, hence why you will also find the cultist mantra on here as well "Have patience".

Probably depends on the person trying to lose weight.

We live in a "microwave" and disposable generation. We want results now. If our spouse doesn't make us happy, there must be something wrong with them, get rid of it.

If I'm only eating 1000 calories/day and not losing weight, there must be something wrong with the diet. For gosh sakes, I ate kale and broccoli yesterday, why didn't I lose 20 pounds? <- a slight exaggeration, but it's not too hard for any of us to imagine these people exist.

Some people just need more instant results and hand holding. Doesn't mean there is anything wrong with CICO. But it does explain why people abandon it, even when they are accurately measuring CI and CO. They give up too soon.

It also explains why certain fads take off. Someone who eats 300g of carbs/day and moves to a ketogenic diet and loses a metric butt-ton of water weight thinks they are doing something.

Can't sustain it. But it's hooked them.

CICO isn't always fast and sexy. It's the slow moving boat competing in a world of fast supercars. The problem is it's not sexy, so people get off the boat and hop into one of those sexy supercars and then find out they can't afford to maintain it.

I do reserve the right to be wrong

CSARdiver wrote: »

We are discussing biological processes with several variables at play. The primary concern for the majority is fat loss, which is not apparent in the short term, so why focus on this? It's largely water weight fluctuation and irrelevant in terms of fat loss.

See above, we want microwave results, not delivery weeks or months later.

CSARdiver wrote: »

Part of understanding the application of CICO in your life is that you will not be able to detect fat loss in the short term. I have access to a full metabolics lab and even with this I cannot detect fat or muscle mass change with any degree of confidence due to the degree of error in the instruments.

And you have a better understanding. I can at least understand the science and math, even if my training is engineering, not biology or chemistry, or similar.

The only tool most "civilians" have to measure results is the scale. If the scale doesn't move, their tool doesn't reflect what is happening. So from that very limited perspective, it's not working in those short time periods.

Many don't stay with it and throw it away as we are want to do in this day and age.

I didn't have this understanding until coming to terms with my own bovine excrement. When I finally accepted that I was in control things started moving in the desired direction.

I've mentioned this in the past, but many weight management experts don't like calorie counting for the specific reasons you mention. I do not agree with this and see this as a bigotry of low expectations. You cannot manage finances without understanding the debits and credits and this is defined. Eating is far less defined and there are few immediate ramifications. There is nothing intuitive about eating. Your weight is an output of your behavior.

I've also noticed that there is a natural degree of sloppiness that us biologists have come to expect in systems, whereas chemists, engineers, physicists struggle with this as the accounting does not work out to the penny/pound.

Yes, exactly this!

kimny72 wrote: »

But CICO is JUST about weight loss/gain. It has absolutely nothing to do with health or fitness. No one here says CICO is the whole story for health or fitness, so what is the point in someone arguing that it's not?

Weight loss, health, and fitness are all different things. And there is no reason to assume that everyone cares about all three of them unless they specifically say they do.

I honestly don't understand how someone can spend enough time on the boards to have an opinion, and honestly say we only tell people CICO CICO CICO. We are constantly posting and having discussions about satiety, different options for meal timing, which macros some people find filling, etc. And when asked for examples of threads where this myopic CICO with no nuance is obvious, we never get one.

So I'm still falling back on - people who say CICO isn't the complete picture either don't understand what CICO is, have a need to evangelize about their diet whether it's topical or not, or haven't spent enough time here to have an accurate read of what goes on.

I'm one of those people who said 'CICO MAY not be the complete picture'.

What I was trying to say is not the CICO doesn't work at a base level - it does.

But that the weight-loss method of eating at a nutritionally reasonable deficit may not work the same for different people - even if you take, say, two people with the exact same stats and BMR and place them on a controlled diet. Before someone jumps on me, I'm not saying this is definitely the case - I'm not a scientist and I haven't conducted any studies on the subject, but neither have I seen any that disprove it - though there are studies on mice which were similar and that suggested that hormones and gut microbes may play a part, where one mouse would become obese and one wouldn't in spite of the same diet and activity.

Now, for the people that like to bring in the anorexic and starvation strawmen: obviously, if you stop eating full-stop; or, eat extremely minimal amounts, YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT, no doubt.
Unfortunately most of us can't just stop eating to lose weight. And that's where the rest of that 'picture' comes in. Trying to lose weight on what is a reasonable intake that still provides adequate nutrition and energy.
What if when two women of the same BMR eat a surplus of, say, 300 calories, one woman's BMR revs up by those 300 calories to burn the excess, keeping her at the same weight; while the other woman's BMR remains the same, and these 300 calories get deposited as fat?
Conversely, if they're both eating in a 300 calories deficit, one women's BMR may remain the same and burn these 300 calories to function; while the other's metabolic rate will downregulate by 300 calories and remain in maintenance?

Why is that not possible?

Again, I'm not talking about extremes like the Minessota study here. Yes, maybe if that second woman eats at a 1000 deficit for weeks she will eventually lose weight. But her deficit may always need to be much bigger than someone else's. Is that not a possibility?

There are also issues with insulin and other hormonal and metabolic pathways. The body doesn't just directly burn fat, it does so through a complex process. Since we talk about dying from starvation, does that mean an obese person could essentially sustain themselves with NO food for months while fueling their body through their fat reserves? Is it not possible for someone to die from starvation while still being overweight? Why or why not?

I'm not pushing 'woo' or being ornery here, honestly; I'm sincerely just throwing these questions out there because they're in my head, and because from what I've read and seen, science is just beginning to tap the iceberg of some these issues and doctors themselves admit that there is still a LOT they don't know about some of the biological processes around obesity. If it was proven that it simply came down solely to caloric restriction and nothing else, why would things like gut biomes or the role of leptin or insulin even be a field of research?

mph323 wrote: »

nooshi713 wrote: »

I had stomach flu a few times in the past. I didnt eat for days and barely drank fluids yet the scale said I gained 2 lbs. I have gained or lost 10 lbs in a month without changing my diet, but by taking birth control pills or thyroid meds. Some weight loss or gain is hormonal and defies the laws of CICO. But, for the most part it works.

No. Meds, illness, injury and other outside influences can alter the CO part of the equation or cause water retention, but nobody creates fat out of thin air - if you're eating at a deficit, you will lose weight.

But if those meds or hormonal issues are causing the body to function on 800 calories a day when someone without those issues and same weight and body composition would normally require 1300 to function, then someone could gain weight on 1200 calories a day. Thats not normal.