My experience: CICO vs. P90x vs. Whole30 vs. Keto vs. OMAD

Hypsibius wrote: »

Happy to say I've hit my target weight and I'm doing great! After realizing I was a solid 60-70+ pounds overweight, I tried a lot of different things the last few years to get back on track, with more yoyo-ing than I would like. But I've finally hit a balance the last year.

Here's what I've discovered. For real weight loss, a mixture of low-carb and intermittent fasting is the best long-term solution.

CICO + American Diet: Nobody is denying there is a basic scientific truth to CICO, but humans are not bomb calorimeters. The phrase "IIFYM" is mostly garbage (or was for me) and builds obsession around food/counting and guilt around food. You may lose weight, but if you're like me -- and you're forced into a sedentary lifestyle for months due to injury -- you'll just be hungry and tired all the time if there's too many carbs and processed foods in the diet.

p90x diet: Shed a ton of pounds on this diet and workout program. Couldn't eat enough whole foods to satiate myself. Ate three square meals a day with snacks and still lost weight. This was great for building a lot of foundation muscle, but was largely unsustainable in the long term.

Whole30: An excellent place to start if you're on a SAD/American diet and eating a lot of processed foods and carbohydrates. It'll help you to build a new experience around food and cooking, to always check labels for added sugar, to learn what's in your food. A very good starter diet if you're considering keto.

Mediterranian: A fun/delicious diet... but didn't help me to lose weight. Worked for maintenance and while training for a half-marathon where the added carbs were beneficial.

Keto: It's a magic diet. After trying IIFYM, workout programs, etc. -- after I had a disc injury in my back, it was clear I'd be stuck with limited movement for a few months, keto kept me on track. It's a lot of work, cooking/planning -- but very little tracking (I only counted carbs). The biggest thing on keto? Satiety. On every other diet I've tried I've experienced ravenous hunger.

OMAD/Intermittent fasting: Now that I'm at target weight, I've been doing this with a low-carb paleo diet with some allowances for maintenance. Keeping low carb helps to quell hunger, and intermittent fasting provides a great deal of control and health benefits. I highly recommend this paired with keto!

How has your experience been? Particularly others who are forced sedentary for long stretches?

I did CICO a few years ago to lose 20 lbs but it wasn't easy. Hunger here and there and rarely satisfied with the food intake etc. I've been a lifelong volume eater so I ate a lot of high volume/low cal vegetables and fruits to get me through. Of course, I gained back about 10-15 lbs in the next couple of years but my arthritis, which has bothered me for about 5 years, starting getting worse pretty rapidly, to the point where it went into my lower back for the first time last fall and I thought I was cooked at 57 and would have to retire early and live a crappy, painful life from then on. This was in spite of eating a "clean" diet, full of healthy fruits and vegetables, greek yogurt, real whole grains, no sugar beyond a little honey and maple syrup etc. Out of desperation and in an effort to remove all possible sources of inflammation I went the keto route and cut out all dairy at the same time, in addition to the usual cutting of all sugar and most carbs that comes with a keto diet. I figured this would be restrictive enough that I could introduce foods back one at a time to see if they were inflammatory, providing the keto worked to reduce inflammation.

It was nothing short of a revelation on many levels. Within 2 weeks 90% of my arthritic pain was gone and completely gone from my back and hands. Only slight pain from time to time in my left knee now but I'm also back to the gym and working out pretty hard so that's a part of it as well I'm sure. I didn't do it for weight loss so I was just eating to satiety and within a month I'd lost 12 or so pounds so I figured I better start counting my calories to ensure I ate enough to maintain my weight. I was down to 170 pretty quickly which is good on my 5'10" frame. The satiety or appetite control is nothing short of AMAZING! My struggle is no longer restricting calories but making sure I eat enough and don't lose more weight. For a guy who was a volume eater his entire life, who ate 5-6 times a day every day, who had to take food with him if he went off grid for more than 4 or 5 hours, not being hungry even after not eating for 18 hours is like being shown a secret that's been hidden from you your entire life.

According to conventional wisdom, my BP, cholesterol, energy levels, bowel movements and just about everything else should be a catastrophe but the opposite is true. BP in the ideal range, all blood markers where they should be, bowel movements perfect etc. Energy levels are perfectly steady all throughout the day whether I'm eating or not. I now have no desire to go back to a normal carb-heavy diet ever again. I don't know if this could work for everyone, probably not, but for me, it's the best thing, without a doubt.

JohnnyPenso wrote: »

Hypsibius wrote: »

Happy to say I've hit my target weight and I'm doing great! After realizing I was a solid 60-70+ pounds overweight, I tried a lot of different things the last few years to get back on track, with more yoyo-ing than I would like. But I've finally hit a balance the last year.

Here's what I've discovered. For real weight loss, a mixture of low-carb and intermittent fasting is the best long-term solution.

CICO + American Diet: Nobody is denying there is a basic scientific truth to CICO, but humans are not bomb calorimeters. The phrase "IIFYM" is mostly garbage (or was for me) and builds obsession around food/counting and guilt around food. You may lose weight, but if you're like me -- and you're forced into a sedentary lifestyle for months due to injury -- you'll just be hungry and tired all the time if there's too many carbs and processed foods in the diet.

p90x diet: Shed a ton of pounds on this diet and workout program. Couldn't eat enough whole foods to satiate myself. Ate three square meals a day with snacks and still lost weight. This was great for building a lot of foundation muscle, but was largely unsustainable in the long term.

Whole30: An excellent place to start if you're on a SAD/American diet and eating a lot of processed foods and carbohydrates. It'll help you to build a new experience around food and cooking, to always check labels for added sugar, to learn what's in your food. A very good starter diet if you're considering keto.

Mediterranian: A fun/delicious diet... but didn't help me to lose weight. Worked for maintenance and while training for a half-marathon where the added carbs were beneficial.

Keto: It's a magic diet. After trying IIFYM, workout programs, etc. -- after I had a disc injury in my back, it was clear I'd be stuck with limited movement for a few months, keto kept me on track. It's a lot of work, cooking/planning -- but very little tracking (I only counted carbs). The biggest thing on keto? Satiety. On every other diet I've tried I've experienced ravenous hunger.

OMAD/Intermittent fasting: Now that I'm at target weight, I've been doing this with a low-carb paleo diet with some allowances for maintenance. Keeping low carb helps to quell hunger, and intermittent fasting provides a great deal of control and health benefits. I highly recommend this paired with keto!

How has your experience been? Particularly others who are forced sedentary for long stretches?

I did CICO a few years ago to lose 20 lbs but it wasn't easy.

Again, you don’t DO CICO. It isn’t a diet or a way of eating and it isn’t synonymous with calorie counting. It’s a representation of the energy balance that is always in play, for all of us.

JohnnyPenso wrote: »

Hypsibius wrote: »

Happy to say I've hit my target weight and I'm doing great! After realizing I was a solid 60-70+ pounds overweight, I tried a lot of different things the last few years to get back on track, with more yoyo-ing than I would like. But I've finally hit a balance the last year.

Here's what I've discovered. For real weight loss, a mixture of low-carb and intermittent fasting is the best long-term solution.

CICO + American Diet: Nobody is denying there is a basic scientific truth to CICO, but humans are not bomb calorimeters. The phrase "IIFYM" is mostly garbage (or was for me) and builds obsession around food/counting and guilt around food. You may lose weight, but if you're like me -- and you're forced into a sedentary lifestyle for months due to injury -- you'll just be hungry and tired all the time if there's too many carbs and processed foods in the diet.

p90x diet: Shed a ton of pounds on this diet and workout program. Couldn't eat enough whole foods to satiate myself. Ate three square meals a day with snacks and still lost weight. This was great for building a lot of foundation muscle, but was largely unsustainable in the long term.

Whole30: An excellent place to start if you're on a SAD/American diet and eating a lot of processed foods and carbohydrates. It'll help you to build a new experience around food and cooking, to always check labels for added sugar, to learn what's in your food. A very good starter diet if you're considering keto.

Mediterranian: A fun/delicious diet... but didn't help me to lose weight. Worked for maintenance and while training for a half-marathon where the added carbs were beneficial.

Keto: It's a magic diet. After trying IIFYM, workout programs, etc. -- after I had a disc injury in my back, it was clear I'd be stuck with limited movement for a few months, keto kept me on track. It's a lot of work, cooking/planning -- but very little tracking (I only counted carbs). The biggest thing on keto? Satiety. On every other diet I've tried I've experienced ravenous hunger.

OMAD/Intermittent fasting: Now that I'm at target weight, I've been doing this with a low-carb paleo diet with some allowances for maintenance. Keeping low carb helps to quell hunger, and intermittent fasting provides a great deal of control and health benefits. I highly recommend this paired with keto!

How has your experience been? Particularly others who are forced sedentary for long stretches?

I did CICO a few years ago to lose 20 lbs but it wasn't easy. Hunger here and there and rarely satisfied with the food intake etc.

As others have said, CICO is not a way of dieting. Perhaps you mean calorie counting, but of course when one calorie counts one can do any diet. I've done a variety, and always paid attention to what is filling for me.

I've been a lifelong volume eater so I ate a lot of high volume/low cal vegetables and fruits to get me through. Of course, I gained back about 10-15 lbs in the next couple of years but my arthritis, which has bothered me for about 5 years, starting getting worse pretty rapidly, to the point where it went into my lower back for the first time last fall and I thought I was cooked at 57 and would have to retire early and live a crappy, painful life from then on. This was in spite of eating a "clean" diet, full of healthy fruits and vegetables, greek yogurt, real whole grains, no sugar beyond a little honey and maple syrup etc. Out of desperation and in an effort to remove all possible sources of inflammation I went the keto route and cut out all dairy at the same time, in addition to the usual cutting of all sugar and most carbs that comes with a keto diet. I figured this would be restrictive enough that I could introduce foods back one at a time to see if they were inflammatory, providing the keto worked to reduce inflammation.

It was nothing short of a revelation on many levels. Within 2 weeks 90% of my arthritic pain was gone and completely gone from my back and hands. Only slight pain from time to time in my left knee now but I'm also back to the gym and working out pretty hard so that's a part of it as well I'm sure. I didn't do it for weight loss so I was just eating to satiety and within a month I'd lost 12 or so pounds so I figured I better start counting my calories to ensure I ate enough to maintain my weight. I was down to 170 pretty quickly which is good on my 5'10" frame. The satiety or appetite control is nothing short of AMAZING! My struggle is no longer restricting calories but making sure I eat enough and don't lose more weight. For a guy who was a volume eater his entire life, who ate 5-6 times a day every day, who had to take food with him if he went off grid for more than 4 or 5 hours, not being hungry even after not eating for 18 hours is like being shown a secret that's been hidden from you your entire life.

According to conventional wisdom, my BP, cholesterol, energy levels, bowel movements and just about everything else should be a catastrophe but the opposite is true. BP in the ideal range, all blood markers where they should be, bowel movements perfect etc. Energy levels are perfectly steady all throughout the day whether I'm eating or not. I now have no desire to go back to a normal carb-heavy diet ever again. I don't know if this could work for everyone, probably not, but for me, it's the best thing, without a doubt.

Glad this works for you, but fruits and veg are not generally considered "inflammatory foods," and for me eating a diet high in them, and high in beans and lentils, and lower in meat and sat fat, has been great. I feel best on such a diet.

I've tried keto and saw nothing beneficial for me about it (and I had no appetite issues on the way I was eating pre keto). Could be good for others, shrug. But if one tries to evangelize keto as best for all, I will call that as untrue. The vast majority of traditional human diets, including those with the best health results, are not low carb, and even where diets are necessarily very low carb, there seem to be adaptations to make sure people are not in ketosis consistently. So the faddish claim that it's better for health to be in ketosis strikes me as wrong, and I think the micros, potassium, and fiber from high veg and fruit and bean/lentil diets is likely better for most (although there are exceptions).