Problems with CICO - article critiquing it, not dismissing it entirely.
Replies
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diannethegeek wrote: »Again, I think that it's important to be clear about this because it helps people to understand what's going on and having more information can guide people in how to adjust their weight management plan with less struggle.
CICO is not the same as calorie counting. And conflating the two, as has happened several times in this thread, is why these posts go round in circles.
CICO is science. It's a description of what's happening in your body.
Calorie counting is a method of observing and affecting CICO in order to get a desired outcome.
Calorie counting is a verb. It's a thing you can do or use. CICO is a noun. It's a thing that's happening.
So, let's get an analogy going. If I came into this thread and said that gravity doesn't work the same for everyone I suspect that I would get a whole bunch of woos and a whole bunch of posts trying to explain why I'm wrong. But aha! Some people fall faster than others. Some are more likely to trip. Cats always land on their feet! People use different types of gravimeters and some of them don't work as well as others. Some people have faulty gravimeters or no gravimeter at all. They don't experience gravity the same way that others do so gravity is not the same for everyone.
That's preposterous, of course. Gravity on earth exerts the same force on everyone, whether they can measure it properly or not. Likewise, the CICO equation works the same way in everyone. There are many variables in that equation that make people different, but the long, drawn out, complicated equation works the same for everyone.
The problem is not that CICO is faulty but that calorie counting can be faulty. CICO is what it is. CICO does what it does. And understanding the difference between CICO and calorie counting can help people to understand where to turn their attention and energy when their plan isn't working. You can change your calorie counting methodology. You cannot change how CICO works.
I understand the distinction, but I think this article is taking on both to a certain extent. It is saying not only that calorie counting is flawed, but that the idea of the calorie is flawed. It is saying that there is no such thing really as a calorie, that the 4-4-9 breakdown we use isn't accurate. That different carbs, protein, etc all have different energy levels associated with them and shouldn't be treated the same. That different bodies process energy differently so a calorie for one may not be the same as a calorie for another.
To me that goes beyond just questioning whether calorie counting can be accurate. It seems like it is taking to task using calorie as a unit of measurement at all.
to answer the bolded... that does not mean CICO isn't correct, as that means the CI or CO side of the equation could be different person to person. But, at no time is the energy absorbed for a calorie consumed greater than one calorie. If you don't absorb all the food, CI is less than you thought, or if it takes more energy to breakdown, that increases the CO, but doesn't change the fact that weight management still comes down to energy balance
As for the second part, they don't offer a better way to measure the energy balance in the body though, until that can be accomplished CICO is the best we have, and as we currently know it, Counting Calories and watching your weight confirms this (assuming you are tracking CI and CO accurately as you can)3 -
But my problem is that people are not clones.
I see this type of argument batted around here all the time. I am not sure why there is this need for people to be so different in the way their body works from the next person.
Your body requires energy to function. It doesn't matter if you are running a marathon or blinking an eye energy is being used. If you consume less food energy than your body requires to function your body MUST use the energy stores in your body to make up the difference.
I haven't seen anyone grow a solar panel on their back so in this very fundamental way... yes... we are very much clones.
The differences between us change the equations not the process. Worrying about them is majoring in the minors.17 -
diannethegeek wrote: »Again, I think that it's important to be clear about this because it helps people to understand what's going on and having more information can guide people in how to adjust their weight management plan with less struggle.
CICO is not the same as calorie counting. And conflating the two, as has happened several times in this thread, is why these posts go round in circles.
CICO is science. It's a description of what's happening in your body.
Calorie counting is a method of observing and affecting CICO in order to get a desired outcome.
Calorie counting is a verb. It's a thing you can do or use. CICO is a noun. It's a thing that's happening.
So, let's get an analogy going. If I came into this thread and said that gravity doesn't work the same for everyone I suspect that I would get a whole bunch of woos and a whole bunch of posts trying to explain why I'm wrong. But aha! Some people fall faster than others. Some are more likely to trip. Cats always land on their feet! People use different types of gravimeters and some of them don't work as well as others. Some people have faulty gravimeters or no gravimeter at all. They don't experience gravity the same way that others do so gravity is not the same for everyone.
That's preposterous, of course. Gravity on earth exerts the same force on everyone, whether they can measure it properly or not. Likewise, the CICO equation works the same way in everyone. There are many variables in that equation that make people different, but the long, drawn out, complicated equation works the same for everyone.
The problem is not that CICO is faulty but that calorie counting can be faulty. CICO is what it is. CICO does what it does. And understanding the difference between CICO and calorie counting can help people to understand where to turn their attention and energy when their plan isn't working. You can change your calorie counting methodology. You cannot change how CICO works.
I understand the distinction, but I think this article is taking on both to a certain extent. It is saying not only that calorie counting is flawed, but that the idea of the calorie is flawed. It is saying that there is no such thing really as a calorie, that the 4-4-9 breakdown we use isn't accurate. That different carbs, protein, etc all have different energy levels associated with them and shouldn't be treated the same. That different bodies process energy differently so a calorie for one may not be the same as a calorie for another.
To me that goes beyond just questioning whether calorie counting can be accurate. It seems like it is taking to task using calorie as a unit of measurement at all.
to answer the bolded... that does not mean CICO sin't correct, as that means the CI or CO side of the equation could be different person to person. But, at no time is the energy absorbed for a calorie consumed greater than one calorie. If you don't absorb all the food, CI is less than you thought, or if it takes more energy to breakdown, that increases the CO, but doesn't change the fact that weight managment still comes down to CICO
As for the second part, they don't offer a better way to measure the energy balance in the body though, until that can be accomplished CICO is the best we have, and as we currently know it, Counting Calories and watching your weight confirms this (assuming you are tracking CI and CO accurately as you can)
They aren't disputing the idea energy in vs energy out, but they do seem to be trying to say that calorie is not a proper measure of energy (it is titled "Death of the Calorie" after all). I am not defending their hypothesis. I don't agree with it. But I think the take that they're just questioning calorie counting is inaccurate. I think they are going after the very idea of the calorie, which I interpret as going after "C"I"C"O1 -
diannethegeek wrote: »Again, I think that it's important to be clear about this because it helps people to understand what's going on and having more information can guide people in how to adjust their weight management plan with less struggle.
CICO is not the same as calorie counting. And conflating the two, as has happened several times in this thread, is why these posts go round in circles.
CICO is science. It's a description of what's happening in your body.
Calorie counting is a method of observing and affecting CICO in order to get a desired outcome.
Calorie counting is a verb. It's a thing you can do or use. CICO is a noun. It's a thing that's happening.
So, let's get an analogy going. If I came into this thread and said that gravity doesn't work the same for everyone I suspect that I would get a whole bunch of woos and a whole bunch of posts trying to explain why I'm wrong. But aha! Some people fall faster than others. Some are more likely to trip. Cats always land on their feet! People use different types of gravimeters and some of them don't work as well as others. Some people have faulty gravimeters or no gravimeter at all. They don't experience gravity the same way that others do so gravity is not the same for everyone.
That's preposterous, of course. Gravity on earth exerts the same force on everyone, whether they can measure it properly or not. Likewise, the CICO equation works the same way in everyone. There are many variables in that equation that make people different, but the long, drawn out, complicated equation works the same for everyone.
The problem is not that CICO is faulty but that calorie counting can be faulty. CICO is what it is. CICO does what it does. And understanding the difference between CICO and calorie counting can help people to understand where to turn their attention and energy when their plan isn't working. You can change your calorie counting methodology. You cannot change how CICO works.
I understand the distinction, but I think this article is taking on both to a certain extent. It is saying not only that calorie counting is flawed, but that the idea of the calorie is flawed. It is saying that there is no such thing really as a calorie, that the 4-4-9 breakdown we use isn't accurate. That different carbs, protein, etc all have different energy levels associated with them and shouldn't be treated the same. That different bodies process energy differently so a calorie for one may not be the same as a calorie for another.
To me that goes beyond just questioning whether calorie counting can be accurate. It seems like it is taking to task using calorie as a unit of measurement at all.
to answer the bolded... that does not mean CICO sin't correct, as that means the CI or CO side of the equation could be different person to person. But, at no time is the energy absorbed for a calorie consumed greater than one calorie. If you don't absorb all the food, CI is less than you thought, or if it takes more energy to breakdown, that increases the CO, but doesn't change the fact that weight managment still comes down to CICO
As for the second part, they don't offer a better way to measure the energy balance in the body though, until that can be accomplished CICO is the best we have, and as we currently know it, Counting Calories and watching your weight confirms this (assuming you are tracking CI and CO accurately as you can)
They aren't disputing the idea energy in vs energy out, but they do seem to be trying to say that calorie is not a proper measure of energy (it is titled "Death of the Calorie" after all). I am not defending their hypothesis. I don't agree with it. But I think the take that they're just questioning calorie counting is inaccurate. I think they are going after the very idea of the calorie, which I interpret as going after "C"I"C"O
I get that that is what they are saying, and that you don't agree. But if it isn't that, then what is it... and why does CICO, meet expectations (when meticulously tracking) with Fat/weight loss you would expect based on CICO, after accounting for metabolic differences?0 -
IMHO, people who expect a tool to work 100% right for everyone right out of the box tend to put down calorie counting. The formulas told me to eat 1600 cals, I did and it didn't work, ergo and heretofore calorie counting is a bad method. But there are plenty of successful folks here who say that the number the formula spit out didn't work for them, so they had to go through a little trial-and-error to figure out where they needed to be to achieve a deficit. I'm sure there are some people who are far more fidgety than most, who have internal variances like a super long intestine or digestive anomaly, a slight hormonal imbalance that won't show up on tests but drags down their TDEE a little, etc. The fact that you have to play around with the numbers, sometimes without knowing WHY you need to play around with the numbers, doesn't mean the tool is worthless.
And yes, the conflating of "calorie-counting" with CICO is frustrating. CICO just means your body can't store energy you don't feed it, and it must either burn or store the energy you do feed it. Calorie counting is a method of tracking CICO, and it can be more complicated for some people than others, and it can be psychologically wrong for some people. But no one tool is right for everyone.
ETA: I would bet dollars to donuts that people "who follow all the calorie counting rules and don't succeed" have either 1. Not given it enough time to see a long term trend 2. Are logging incorrectly or 3. Are expecting the formula to spit out the exact right number and are in the group of people who need to use some trial and error. Not to mention 4. A combo of those three reasons. But that's just my gut, nothing to back it up.14 -
Generally speaking and with the normal population (ie: people without a hormonal disorder and people not undergoing a stressful event), CICO hands down works for Fat Burning. What I want to say, is that under normal conditions CICO is pretty reliable. It's just when our bodies are "out of whack" that CICO rules do not work the same way.2
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So refreshing to see a new perspective on CICO. It doesn't really take adaptive thermogenesis into account, either. I enjoyed seeing this. Lets open discussions for how it doesn't work for everybody! Nice job!17
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monaraehill2 wrote: »So refreshing to see a new perspective on CICO. It doesn't really take adaptive thermogenesis into account, either. I enjoyed seeing this. Lets open discussions for how it doesn't work for everybody! Nice job!
I'm assuming you mean "calorie counting" rather than "CICO"?
Regardless, how does either CICO or calorie counting not take adaptive thermogenesis into account? AT lowers your TDEE, meaning instead of the typical number of calories a person of your size needs to be in a deficit, you will need to eat slightly less, and may require a little trial-and-error to find the right calorie goal. Right? So since your CO is slightly lower, your CI also needs to be slightly lower, because CICO.9 -
monaraehill2 wrote: »So refreshing to see a new perspective on CICO. It doesn't really take adaptive thermogenesis into account, either. I enjoyed seeing this. Lets open discussions for how it doesn't work for everybody! Nice job!
To the extent that adaptive thermogenesis exists (and it's often over-exaggerated), it is another aspect in both CICO and calorie counting. As @kimny72 said, some people simply take the number spit out to them by an equation as gospel, rather than using that as a starting point to see their own circumstances. There's no reason why someone with a lower CO can't use calorie counting as a weight control technique. They just need to take that into account while personally customizing.8 -
janejellyroll wrote: »"What we do know...suggests that counting calories is very crude and often misleading. Think of a burger... Take a bite and the saliva in your mouth starts to break it down, a process that continues when you swallow, transporting the morsel towards your stomach and beyond to be churned further. The digestive process transforms the protein, carbohydrates and fat in the burger into their basic compounds so that they are tiny enough to be absorbed into the bloodstream via the small intestine to fuel and repair the trillions of cells in the body. But the basic molecules from each macronutrient play very different roles within the body."
Why does that suggest that counting calories is misleading?
Food is more than calories. That doesn't mean that "calorie" is a meaningless data point when it comes to food. I struggle to trust any food writing by people who are incapable of grasping that relatively simple concept.
I'm guessing it suggests calorie counting is misleading because of how CICO is used now.
Actually, it seems to be suggesting that calorie counting is misleading based on an approach that no one actually uses (not if they are sensible).
According to the article, calorie counting could give rise to inaccurate results if you (a) eat a not particularly varied diet (since you'd have to for the way things are off to be all in one direction), (b) be concerned with nothing but calories (not satiety, not nutrition -- common strawman, but not IMO how most real people do it), and (c) not adjust based on results.
Even if (a) and (b) were true, calorie counting would still work just fine if you only did (c).
And not only that, but even people for whom (a) and (b) are not true (most or all of us in this discussion), STILL likely will need to adjust based on results, because there are lots of other factors too. I lost FASTER than expected. I assumed it was because I was more active than my assumption going in, but maybe it was because I eat mostly whole foods, plenty of protein, and enjoy almonds. Maybe it was because I was trying to be so accurate I was overcounting things. Eh, whatever, it's irrelevant, and people who lose slower than expected can adjust too.
When people (like the article writer) don't get that, I can only shake my head.6 -
diannethegeek wrote: »Again, I think that it's important to be clear about this because it helps people to understand what's going on and having more information can guide people in how to adjust their weight management plan with less struggle.
CICO is not the same as calorie counting. And conflating the two, as has happened several times in this thread, is why these posts go round in circles.
CICO is science. It's a description of what's happening in your body.
Calorie counting is a method of observing and affecting CICO in order to get a desired outcome.
Calorie counting is a verb. It's a thing you can do or use. CICO is a noun. It's a thing that's happening.
So, let's get an analogy going. If I came into this thread and said that gravity doesn't work the same for everyone I suspect that I would get a whole bunch of woos and a whole bunch of posts trying to explain why I'm wrong. But aha! Some people fall faster than others. Some are more likely to trip. Cats always land on their feet! People use different types of gravimeters and some of them don't work as well as others. Some people have faulty gravimeters or no gravimeter at all. They don't experience gravity the same way that others do so gravity is not the same for everyone.
That's preposterous, of course. Gravity on earth exerts the same force on everyone, whether they can measure it properly or not. Likewise, the CICO equation works the same way in everyone. There are many variables in that equation that make people different, but the long, drawn out, complicated equation works the same for everyone.
The problem is not that CICO is faulty but that calorie counting can be faulty. CICO is what it is. CICO does what it does. And understanding the difference between CICO and calorie counting can help people to understand where to turn their attention and energy when their plan isn't working. You can change your calorie counting methodology. You cannot change how CICO works.
It's such a shame that people like the OP, or anyone else who latches onto concepts like this and whom are (imo) conflating Calorie Counting with CICO - never take the time to read and address your very well thought out and carefully worded explanation to see if this is something that maybe they were just a little confused about and that they do now understand the distinction.
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And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting, but I think it would be interesting to see more research. I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices. I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.3 -
When an article titles itself "Death of the Calorie" is not hard to get the impression that it thinks that the calorie or CICO is irrelevant. It's literally in the title.
Or... the title is a play on words vs. intending for people to take it literally. I.E., they are saying it is the "death" of the calorie as we currently know/knew it/worked it/assumed it worked/counted it/counted on it/etc./etc./etc. when it comes to human nutrition and dietetics, as there's new things on the block to consider/explore/research/rule in/rule out as possibly influencing/impacting those current dogmas. That's all. Not it's actually death or slide into obscurity, debunked and irrelevant.
I know that's the impression it created over here, anyways.
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grinning_chick wrote: »When an article titles itself "Death of the Calorie" is not hard to get the impression that it thinks that the calorie or CICO is irrelevant. It's literally in the title.
Or... the title is a play on words vs. intending for people to take it literally. I.E., they are saying it is the "death" of the calorie as we currently know/knew it/worked it/assumed it worked/counted it/counted on it/etc./etc./etc. when it comes to human nutrition and dietetics, as there's new things on the block to consider/explore/research/rule in/rule out as possibly influencing/impacting those current dogmas. That's all. Not it's actually death or slide into obscurity, debunked and irrelevant.
I know that's the impression it created over here, anyways.
The OP of this thread also changed the thread title. It was just titled, "Problems With CICO." I see she modified it somewhat after a bunch of pushback.9 -
I 100% agree that the science of nutrition has many important open questions, and that's partly because research on real free-living humans is so difficult (we can't be locked in a metabolic chamber, yet live normal lives). There are many unknowns, and perhaps even more "unknown unknowns" (things we don't even know that we don't know, yet, like the role of the microbiome).
But I feel like the article is kind of missing the practical point in a variety of ways.
For one, it seems to be focused on how a laundry list of "known unknowns" (or "known semi-unknowns"), taken individually, make calorie-counting undoable: Things like poor calorie-labeling accuracy of individual foods, or deviations in absorption of calories/nutrients from different individual foods, or that different people's intestinal length differs. But a heap of bricks doesn't necessarily make a sturdy wall.
Trying to look at the situation wholistically and as a practical matter, I think the following are relevant:
* Most people's overall way of eating is stable over time (yes, many people tear it up when they "diet", but we tend toward some kind of routine that becomes habit over time; we don't just continuously keep doing different things . . . well, some of the people with weigh-loss difficulty maybe do, which is a whole other confounding discussion**. If we like cooked foods vs. raw ones, or highly-processed foods vs. simpler ones, or a lot of veggies vs. few, those things tend to persist in our habits.
* My own personal intestinal length doesn't change, and my body chemistry doesn't change much (if it does, it's typically going to happen gradually), I don't have a reliable method to create an intentionally weight-loss-beneficial microbiome revolution, my genetics don't change, adaptive thermogenesis is slow . . . i.e., many of the objections in the article apply across people, or perhaps even across a longish period of time, but they don't so much apply to one person in a short-run weeks-to-months time.
* Something like the law of large numbers sort of applies: Most of us eat a variety of foods whose calorie content we don't precisely know. But it's likely that that we're sometimes estimating over, and sometimes estimating under, with a tendency to arrive at a middling-correct long-term total. ("The law of large numbers" is about arriving at stable long-term results for the averages of randomized observations, more or less. I'm using it as an analogy here, not a literally exactly-mapping thing.)
* I'd like to believe most people aren't idiots: For example, I'd like to believe that if they find their way of eating unsatiating, they can figure out how to make adjustments. Specifically, for example, if highly processed foods don't make a satiating way of eating, they can discover grocery-store roasted chicken and baby carrots (or whatever).
The bottom line is that it's practical, and can be successful, for many/most people who approach calorie counting not as a conveyor belt you get on and ride to weight-loss success, but as a processs where you do a number of n=1 experiments to find your own formula for correct calorie levels in/out (don't just believe some dumb calculator or fitness tracker), your own best scenario for satiation and happiness (be it Lean Cuisine or multi-salad or keto or OMAD or . . . . etc., or even combinations). Test and adjust: Not so much a "believe science" proposition, as do an n=1 variant of it.
I'm routinely surprised - because I do believe there's a lot of individual variation - when I see people here who are data geeks say that once they got their personal formula dialed in, their carefully-logged results came absurdly close to what they would've predicted, over a long period of time.
Is it possible that some people simply have more deterministic (vs. unpredictable) internal systems than others? Maybe. I'm doubtful, though.
I think it's more about calorie counting being a really poor match for many people's strengths, challenges, psychological needs, and other such factors. And that's not a criticism of them, or of calorie counting. It's just one method.
** Thinking about it, it seems like quite a few of the people who I've seen be successful with MFP over the years I've been here are people who don't (ultimately) tear up their lifestyle in some some revolutionary way overnight, but rather figure out gradually how to make a new routine work for them. In practice, that gradualist approach seems likelier to create a stable data stream to extrapolate from, when it comes to estimating NEAT/TDEE, thus making calorie counting more practical and workable. On the flip side, it's near-universal IMO to see failure when people don't see dramatic weight loss results in 2 weeks, over-react to normal scale fluctuations, so whip from one diet strategy to another, pretty much maximizing inconsistencies that arise from the "known unknowns" that the linked article lists. Not universally true, of course, but I feel like there might be a semi-valid generality in there somewhere.
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And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting, but I think it would be interesting to see more research. I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices. I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.
Well now I feel pretty stupid wasting five years of my life on a calorie-counting site losing weight and maintaining the lose. Might as well take my eyeballs somewhere else, I guess.4 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting, but I think it would be interesting to see more research. I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices. I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.
Well now I feel pretty stupid wasting five years of my life on a calorie-counting site losing weight and maintaining the lose. Might as well take my eyeballs somewhere else, I guess.
That's an odd interpretation of what I actually said, but okay. Good luck to you and your eyeballs.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting, but I think it would be interesting to see more research. I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices. I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.
Well now I feel pretty stupid wasting five years of my life on a calorie-counting site losing weight and maintaining the lose. Might as well take my eyeballs somewhere else, I guess.
That's an odd interpretation of what I actually said, but okay. Good luck to you and your eyeballs.
If that's not how you meant it, I'm sorry, but it sounded as though, despite the disclaimer, you were discounting the value of my knowing what foods satiate me if there's no research showing a biological process to back that up, and discounting even the possibility of it being sufficient to make choices about macro splits and what to eat based on personal preference.
After decades of trying diets based on all kinds of theories about how your body deals with different foods (bananas, cabbage, grapefruit...), I finally found a way to determine what my maintenance level is based on data, then track my daily energy intake against that. I'm glad I didn't discover the forums until after the first 20 lbs of weight loss showed me that just tracking what I was eating so I knew I was in a deficit could work. If I'd been seeing threads touting articles that said calories are dead and there's no point in counting them, and posts saying that people's bodies work differently and different foods are processed differently so CICO isn't completely valid, I might have wondered how all this weighing and finding good database entries could possibly be worth it, when even the people using the site a lot longer than me were saying that.
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I read this whole thing a few days ago. Interesting but the conclusion I came to was that while there may be warts, no one has anything more reliable. Stick to it, do the best you can with imperfect data, track your own numbers and adjust as necessary.
I agree with this. I found the excerpts from the article fascinating, but in the absence of an alternative method that works as well as CICO has worked for me, I will carry on as usual.
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And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
Yes, there might well be something to why some people find one way of eating more sating or satisfying and some prefer another way. But this still means "personal preference" and means that you should discount those who say that there is One True Way to eat, which is what people are arguing against when they say "personal preference."
(I also think the author overgeneralizes and/or distorts in some cases, and find the OP's suggestion that this stuff is new and unusual to discuss odd, as every bit of it I've seen argued on MFP.)I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting
I don't see how it does at all.
Even if certain ways of eating make a difference on an individual basis, that has 0 to do with calorie counting or CICO, since (1) they get factored into CICO, and (2) when calorie counting you must pay attention to results and adjust. I find bread unsatisfying. If a ate a bunch of bread it would be harder for me (and I don't like bread that much). Therefore, I rarely eat bread. But it would be foolish and obnoxious for me to take my personal experience and say "don't eat bread, it's bad for dieting." Personal preference!
Also, lets say that I only get 75% of the calories from potatoes if I chill them first. Does that mean CICO does not work? No, it has 0 relevance to that, as what we are saying is the calories in change (same if I don't digest something, although that doesn't seem all that good). If the 75% of calories are 100% as filling and satisfying as the non chilled potatoes, and therefore lower my cals and I need my cals lowered, then maybe that this trick exists is a useful thing to know, but it seems like pointless hackery for most people.I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices.
Even if all of it is true ALL of us could lose weight just counting cals, so I don't think that's a reason to think it's not true. I even think some of the factors COULD have made it easier for me (despite the fact I didn't do them to try to hack the system, but simply paid attention to what way of eating made me feel good and satisfied on my calories and to my own personal preference (which has long been whole food and largely veg based). I think some of the stuff is distorted or exaggerated or stated in a misleading way because I've read about them elsewhere. I think the claim that any of this has a thing to do with the effectiveness of just calorie counting is just wrong.I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.
Not really, unless there's some benefit to choosing the foods you get the least calories from vs. stated calories, which there isn't. And it's not like we will ever know how to choose such foods since all are different. Seems like the better question is (1) what foods allow us to have a satisfying and sating diet on the calories we should consume to lose weight at a healthy rate (or maintain or gain, depending on goals), (2) FOR HEALTH, what's a healthy diet; and (3) what way of eating promotes our activity goals (since exercise is healthy too).5 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting, but I think it would be interesting to see more research. I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices. I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.
Well now I feel pretty stupid wasting five years of my life on a calorie-counting site losing weight and maintaining the lose. Might as well take my eyeballs somewhere else, I guess.
Heh!lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting, but I think it would be interesting to see more research. I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices. I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.
Well now I feel pretty stupid wasting five years of my life on a calorie-counting site losing weight and maintaining the lose. Might as well take my eyeballs somewhere else, I guess.
That's an odd interpretation of what I actually said, but okay. Good luck to you and your eyeballs.
If that's not how you meant it, I'm sorry, but it sounded as though, despite the disclaimer, you were discounting the value of my knowing what foods satiate me if there's no research showing a biological process to back that up, and discounting even the possibility of it being sufficient to make choices about macro splits and what to eat based on personal preference.
After decades of trying diets based on all kinds of theories about how your body deals with different foods (bananas, cabbage, grapefruit...), I finally found a way to determine what my maintenance level is based on data, then track my daily energy intake against that. I'm glad I didn't discover the forums until after the first 20 lbs of weight loss showed me that just tracking what I was eating so I knew I was in a deficit could work. If I'd been seeing threads touting articles that said calories are dead and there's no point in counting them, and posts saying that people's bodies work differently and different foods are processed differently so CICO isn't completely valid, I might have wondered how all this weighing and finding good database entries could possibly be worth it, when even the people using the site a lot longer than me were saying that.
I found this really well said. It's what I was trying to get at in my much longer post just above.3 -
I read this whole thing a few days ago. Interesting but the conclusion I came to was that while there may be warts, no one has anything more reliable. Stick to it, do the best you can with imperfect data, track your own numbers and adjust as necessary.
"Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" Winston Churchill
"Indeed it has been said that counting calories is the worst form of weight control except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" Anonymous MFP User15 -
Solution: don’t read articles.
Most of them are BS and anyone can get them published.1 -
janejellyroll wrote: »"What we do know...suggests that counting calories is very crude and often misleading. Think of a burger... Take a bite and the saliva in your mouth starts to break it down, a process that continues when you swallow, transporting the morsel towards your stomach and beyond to be churned further. The digestive process transforms the protein, carbohydrates and fat in the burger into their basic compounds so that they are tiny enough to be absorbed into the bloodstream via the small intestine to fuel and repair the trillions of cells in the body. But the basic molecules from each macronutrient play very different roles within the body."
Why does that suggest that counting calories is misleading?
Food is more than calories. That doesn't mean that "calorie" is a meaningless data point when it comes to food. I struggle to trust any food writing by people who are incapable of grasping that relatively simple concept.
I'm guessing it suggests calorie counting is misleading because of how CICO is used now.
Actually, it seems to be suggesting that calorie counting is misleading based on an approach that no one actually uses (not if they are sensible).
According to the article, calorie counting could give rise to inaccurate results if you (a) eat a not particularly varied diet (since you'd have to for the way things are off to be all in one direction), (b) be concerned with nothing but calories (not satiety, not nutrition -- common strawman, but not IMO how most real people do it), and (c) not adjust based on results.
Even if (a) and (b) were true, calorie counting would still work just fine if you only did (c).
And not only that, but even people for whom (a) and (b) are not true (most or all of us in this discussion), STILL likely will need to adjust based on results, because there are lots of other factors too. I lost FASTER than expected. I assumed it was because I was more active than my assumption going in, but maybe it was because I eat mostly whole foods, plenty of protein, and enjoy almonds. Maybe it was because I was trying to be so accurate I was overcounting things. Eh, whatever, it's irrelevant, and people who lose slower than expected can adjust too.
When people (like the article writer) don't get that, I can only shake my head.
This is a really good point. When we adjust, we usually aren't sure *what* we're adjusting for. But it's enough that we adjust.
I eat all my Fitbit adjustments. I assume it's because it's accurate, but what if my Fitbit isn't accurate and I just think it is because I eat more fiber than the average person and so I'm absorbing fewer calories? In the end, it doesn't matter because I'm seeing the results I want. If I wasn't, I'd make an adjustment to address that.4 -
A lot of good points and reading on this thread. Many intelligent folks here interpreting and explaining. Thank you all.
On the path to becoming healthier and losing weight, educating yourself, and knowing what your body responds to best, is part of the process. Calorie counting works very efficiently.1 -
I am a bit careful with shop bought food items since I am not sure how precise their calorie calculations are. Recently I have also picked up a term called "food stacking" on MFP. It took me some time to find / get further information and - at least for me - there seems to be something I can learn from. I used to be an amazing "food stacker" which made calorie counting / recording a bit difficult. Over time I have simplified the numbers of ingredients in my meals which gives me much more clarity on what / how much I am eating and makes my MFP recording of food that much easier.1
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I'm not clicking the woo button, but that's woo. Woo doesn't have to be completely balderdash, it could be something that is true, but spun in a way that isn't true, or something that is true on the surface but has nothing to do with the point being made. Too tired to rip it apart point by point, but yeah, it's woo.
I just really wish the writer was here to ask them: what method do you propose that is more precise than calories? Counting calories is the most precise method we know. If there are issues with accuracy, the values can be safely shifted to accommodate thanks to that precision (janejellyroll's example earlier). With any other method, if something is not working you're either "doing it wrong" or need to try this and that until you get lucky and something shifts the results. Alternatively, you also have the option of quitting and blaming your metabolism.5 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »I'm not clicking the woo button, but that's woo. Woo doesn't have to be completely balderdash, it could be something that is true, but spun in a way that isn't true, or something that is true on the surface but has nothing to do with the point being made. Too tired to rip it apart point by point, but yeah, it's woo.
I just really wish the writer was here to ask them: what method do you propose that is more precise than calories? Counting calories is the most precise method we know. If there are issues with accuracy, the values can be safely shifted to accommodate thanks to that precision (janejellyroll's example earlier). With any other method, if something is not working you're either "doing it wrong" or need to try this and that until you get lucky and something shifts the results. Alternatively, you also have the option of quitting and blaming your metabolism.
exactly. It's woo. I'll click it again for you.
(YES I KNOW. No one needs to point out to me that double clicking woo erases a woo. I'm all about the woo.)3 -
And that's gonna be it from me. Like I said, I was just putting this up for folks to check out, research more if they want to, and maybe it might help some folks if they are struggling with weight loss with the CICO model without adding in more data points, or maybe it'll not be of use at all. Responded a bit but it seems like this is already hitting activity levels I just don't have the energy to keep up with.
So enjoy the debate, and hope that some of ya'll may find this useful or interesting.
@shaumom, I appreciate the share. I found the article interesting. I feel like it relate well to a lot of advice we see on the forums, particularly around what and how to eat. We have a lot of posts about things like macro breakdown, what foods to eat, what foods lead to satiety - and invariably people will say it comes down to personal preference. I think the author's suggestions about people burning calories at different rates, and processing certain foods differently, along with things like gut bacteria, might get more into the why of those personal preferences. Why some people feel full with carbs, and others are hungry 15 minutes later. Why one person feels good after eating a certain food, and another feels sluggish.
I don't think this completely discounts CICO or calorie counting, but I think it would be interesting to see more research. I think the immediate reaction from many people would be "it's not true because I lost weight just counting calories," but even that is anecdotal because there is no comparable situation where all the factors were the same except food choices. I think it's possible that there could be more to weight loss regarding individual food choices than just improving dietary adherence.
The science behind how we feel full is not really that helpful unless there is some inexpensive test that can be created to pinpoint it. Considering the variables involved that test is never likely going to happen or be anything but expensive if it can be created. There is an option to figure it out though. It is called experimenting. It is something that is suggested here at MFP all the time. All you need to to is try a way of eating and make notes about how you feel.
The science might be interesting for pure intellectual curiosity or to sell advertising in a clickbait article but there is nothing that can be implemented. This makes it useless to the dieter who just wants results. It is an unnecessary rabbit hole for people already hung up on the minutia of weight loss while ignoring the true process of creating a deficit.
I am not even sure how you connected your first paragraph with your second. Nothing in your first paragraph has anything remotely to do with a basic energy equation so why would you say it doesn't completely discount it?5 -
I've lost 60 pounds by logging my food, my naturopath was thrilled! Then he changed my diet to remove grains, dairy and soy and I lost 5 more pounds that I was battling to get off but I still believe in food logging because it keeps you accountable to yourself !2
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