Anyone else frustrated with the CICO mantra?

Well, offer us your solution.

CICO is simply a mathematical equation. There are no morals or psychological questions to be answered.

Actually the mantra is extremely informative and freeing.

It frees you from thinking that you can only lose weight by exercising hard and often till you puke. Exercise is good of course; but not absolutely necessary in order to lose weight.

It frees you from thinking that you can only lose weight by eating "healthy" or "clean". Both are good things to do, of course; but not *necessary* in order to lose weight.

It frees you from thinking that you can only lose weight by eating low fat.

It frees you from thinking you can only lose weight by eating low carb.

It frees you from thinking you can only lose weight by eating on a specific time schedule or engaging in fasting, frequent eating, eating a certain amount of grams of protein per meal, or eating or not eating a certain amount of meals a day while rubbing your belly in one direction and your head in another.

It frees you from thinking you can only lose weight by engaging in some structured named eating plan.

It frees you from thinking you can only lose weight by buying some special food or supplement.

It is actually incredible how freeing it can be for some people who are wired that way to see how much they're paying in terms of calories for some of the choices they make.

The mantra is important because it tells people that they can adjust and make changes to their intake and to their activity over time and still reach their caloric goals.

The mantra does not purport to and cannot purport to address that CICO values are sometimes difficult to determine in the midst of potentially multiple sources of measurement errors and in the middle of adaptive body responses.

The martra does not purport to and cannot purport to address incorrect goal setting choices for one's current state, especially when not accompanied by a willingness and ability to effectively adjust. And by adjust I don't just mean always cutting calories.

The mantra does not purport to and cannot purport to address mental health, family, or the many other life issues and dynamics that are always liable to trip up one's ability and willingness to self care.

You say it is common knowledge and obvious, but there is a lot of misleading information that ties weight loss to something other than calories (clean eating, carbs etc). I don't think we DO all know it

It is very hard to lose weight and change habits, no one is saying it is easy. The way I read CICO is not to say that it is easy, just to simplify things when many people and advice is too hyper-focused on minuet details like how much lemon is in their water.

I much prefer CICO to some fad diet. What I do think people sometimes get wrong is not understanding that there are some whose caloric needs and expenditures fall significantly outside the norm to where the expected numbers don’t necessarily work.

Also, hormones do play a role too. It is easy to chalk up gains due to hormonal issues as simply the person eating more or moving less but that’s not always the case. What about large amounts of water retention to the degree of 10% of their body weight? These things matter too.

PAV8888 wrote: »

Actually the mantra is extremely informative and freeing.

It frees you from...
...
...The mantra does not purport to and cannot purport to address mental health, family, or the many other life issues and dynamics that are always liable to trip up one's ability and willingness to self care.

viajera99 wrote: »

I would like to like this entire post once for every paragraph.

Seconded!

No, I am not frustrated with CICO. I find it freeing from all the garbage that makes losing weight a cluttered mess. And just for what it is worth, I have binge eating disorder; this is something that every professional will tell you you need therapy for, and it is heavily emotional, and there is an array of work that goes into fixing the issue. Now that is all true. But, BUT, by focusing on calories in, calories out, while I work on my binging issues as a separate health issue of it's own, I get to lose weight without having to examine my emotions whenever I eat. THAT is simplicity to me. It is exactly what I need.

Too many people believe or hope that there is some magic out there that will allow them to lose weight without having to do the work of paying close attention to what and how much they are eating. Look at all the posts about drugs, surgery, apple cider vinegar, etc. Many believe that a strict diet will do that, but don't understand that you can still eat too many calories on keto or IF or clean eating or being vegan. I would say that a lot of people really don't know that CICO is true. There are factors that will change how many calories you actually need but that can be figured out with time and careful tracking.

clairesimpson4 wrote: »

You hear it all the time on diet plans, from your doctor, etc. But it's apparent simplicity is both misleading and unhelpful.

Yes, CICO is true(ish, there are exceptions) But that's answering the wrong question. The question of why someone is overweight is, given that most dieters already know this, why do some people eat too much?

I'm a scientist and I hate this CICO mantra being thrown around like it's something we haven't heard before. Its unhelpful. We don't tell alcoholics that they are alcoholics because they drink too much booze. The answer to the obesity crisis lies in answering the real question.

There are probably dozens, maybe even thousands of different answers to that question, depending on how specific you want to be.

Some of us became overweight not because CICO is an inadequate explanation but because without careful logging, it's really hard to know when CI = CO, CI > CO, or CI < CO. I gained my excess weight at an average excess of less than 40 calories a day. Many days I was probably eating less than my CO. But on average, week in and week out, I was having 1/2 cup of skim milk or half an egg or half an ounce of part-skim cheese too much.

For terminology clarity, CICO is not calorie counting.

CICO is the calorie balance equation, an eating/bodyweight restatement of a basic principle of physics.

Calorie counting is a weight loss method that very directly uses the CICO principle as its main guide.

Calorie counting, like most other weight loss methods:

* Works better for some people, not as well for others, for a huge variety of reasons
* Has more complexities and nuances to successful utilization than it might appear at first glance

No, I'm not frustrated with the CICO "mantra".

Personally, I'm not frustrated with calorie counting, either, but I'm one of the people for whom it's been a useful, successful method, once I learned how to do it with reasonable effectiveness and efficiency.

Should I blame it that it doesn't work for everyone? Can you identify another method that does work for everyone, to lose weight, then maintain a healthy weight?

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Should I blame it that it doesn't work for everyone? Can you identify another method that does work for everyone, to lose weight, then maintain a healthy weight?

That's the million dollar question..."can you identify another method that does work for everyone, to lose weight, than maintain a healthy weight"

I really don't think you can name..only one. From personal experience I know long term keto followers that lost and are now maintaining, I know weight watcher friends who love their points, reached their goals and are maintaining, I know some that simply weighed/measured each day to keep within macros and are doing great ....everyone is different! (even though their actual "cico" didn't line up)

My question is..does there have to be just one way? Everyone's chemistry is different, lives are different, schedules are different. Some thrive on low-carb and lose/maintain...some thrive on 'points' and lose/maintain...others thrive on fasting and lose/maintain. Nobody is the same! I personally eat more calories now on IF than I did simply counting calories (and started at a lower weight where it should have been harder to lose) ...yet I'm losing more rapidly (and my doctor's blood tests etc are better than ever) Does that mean my way is the best way? Nope!! It means it works for me. It isn't ONLY cico...if I only count calories for a month...I lose less than if I do IF with the same or even more calories in. I've tried it. My personal metabolism reacts favorably to IF so...I rock it.

Yes, I also get frustrated with it. I get additionally frustrated with other people getting intensely pushy about it the moment you even remotely say there is something wrong with the dogmatic approach it has. I live with a scientist and she has many of the similar complaints that you have. She was also remarkably doubtful of my own methods when a few years ago I determined that CICO wasn't enough for me. I actually did more research on it than she did and I had to do a whole lot of my own homework and tests on my own body until I found something that actually did work for me. She later came to accept that I was right about my approach.

So as far as frustration goes, there is a personal frustration for both myself in that it didn't work for me. Additionally, when it didn't work, most people insisted that I was either doing it wrong or were adamant that I was lying about what I was writing down in my logs. The CICO community can be very supportive, but in this regard, remarkably toxic when it comes to people who have trouble with it. The latter frustration is on behalf of others. The frustration on behalf of others is compounded by other abusive perspectives on weight, such as hearing endless stories about women doing all that they could to get a diagnosis for their health problems and only being told that they should lose weight.

Scientifically speaking, weight loss approaches are pretty witchdoctor-y at this stage as it's actually not entirely well understood why we gain or lose weight, especially when it comes to differences between men, women, transgender folk and other genders who take HRT and have changes in their metabolism and chemical make-up. The latter two especially have next to no understanding, if any.

As far as treatment goes in medicine, most illnesses are diagnosed and prescribed a specific solution. When it comes to weight, it has one universal solution that is supposed to work for everybody and because of this, those who fall through the average do not get the proper help that they need. It does not make sense to me to think that one single solution is universal to all people. That is almost never the case for other health problems.

There is a graph posted in this thread that is a drastic oversimplification about the mathematics involved. Unfortunately, this simplistic outlook on the issue is only applicable to bodies which have healthy metabolisms to which counting calories is all that they need and ignores those who have other considerations to take in about their personal health queries. It also ignores aspects such as nutritional depletion in crops which have developed in places like the US over the decades, and this factors into malnutrition.

Calories are not nutrition. While there is a correlation between calorie-dense foods and low nutrition vs. calorie-depleted and higher nutrition and it's understandable to make note of fast foods in this instance, the point stands that conventional food has far less nutrition than it used to and this in itself causes malnutrition of a different kind than simply depending on fast food. If you are malnourished on a "healthy" diet, you're still going to feel inclined to eat more than what you probably need to. From the perspective of calories, there is only eating too much or too little in order to lose or gain weight and nutrition doesn't factor in. Nutrition should factor into food sciences when it comes to weight loss. To further back this up, let's consider the glycemic index. If you eat 2,000 calories of just table sugar, it isn't going to work. To think that only calories matter is drastically oversimplified. Our digestive system is not simply a black box that only observes inputs and outputs. Nutrients matter.

I can come up with more ways to talk about why calories are not the pinnacle of weight loss solutions.

Another point is how calories are measured. There are two ways. One is through a bomb calorimeter where they seal the food into a container, lower it into a pool of water, and then burn it and measure how long it takes to finish burning. The other method is a calculation by man named Atwater from the 19th century. While these methods provide us some insight into calories and how much energy food has, they are old and do not factor in other aspects of digestion. You can read more about it here: https://www.livescience.com/62808-how-calories-are-calculated.html

In the US and other countries, companies are required to label their products with nutritional facts as I am sure you are aware of. However, companies know that lower calorie labels sell better than higher ones, and as a result they bend their numbers in what ways they can. As a result of the above paragraph and this, calories are actually remarkably imprecise. But imprecise as they are, they are capable of giving us some guidance. However, the complaint that it is overdogmatized is legitimate.

On a personal note, I found other kinds of adjustment to my food intake which helped me in the past without needing to count calories, or calories were supplemented alongside what I did and they were far better than counting calories all by themselves. I had paths in life where I did not need to count calories at all because I adjusted my food accordingly to the guidelines of other techniques. The reason I am back to journaling was actually to start making sure I was eating enough, and balanced, rather than to restrict myself. I accept that the numbers that I have are imprecise, but put me somewhere near the ballpark of where I need to be, and that is what helps me for the time being until something better comes along.

Thank you for reading, I know this was a long post.

edited for clarification.

I really don't think everybody knows CICO at all. I didn't, until I learned it. There are a lot of threads here about apple cider vinegar and other nonsense. The weight loss industry is collectively making billions and it isn't by telling people they need to eat less than they use. To some degree that's because of people who don't know what to do to lose weight.

clairesimpson4 wrote: »

You hear it all the time on diet plans, from your doctor, etc. But it's apparent simplicity is both misleading and unhelpful.

Yes, CICO is true(ish, there are exceptions) But that's answering the wrong question. The question of why someone is overweight is, given that most dieters already know this, why do some people eat too much?

I'm a scientist and I hate this CICO mantra being thrown around like it's something we haven't heard before. Its unhelpful. We don't tell alcoholics that they are alcoholics because they drink too much booze. The answer to the obesity crisis lies in answering the real question.

At an individual level, there are almost as many specific answers to that question as there are overweight humans. And people talk about those reasons here frequently, and more importantly about how to get over, around, though or otherwise past their personal reasons for eating too much.

There are probably some population-level social-trends answers to that question, at a higher level of generality, too. Over in the Debate section of the community, you'll find a raft of threads talking about that, i.e., questions like what caused the "obesity epidemic" and what should we do about it.

At a super general level, the answer might be that natural selection honed humans mostly through times of relative food scarcity, and vigorous physical challenges; and now we lucky developed-world folks find ourselves mostly in times of sedentary lifestyles and relative food abundance.

All of those answers, and more, are valid at the right level of abstraction (and pointless at the wrong level of abstraction).

If I didn't want to hear about CICO (or calorie counting), the last place I'd choose to hang out is the online Community associated with a calorie counting app, especially one in which - as others have said - it's pretty routine for people to demonstrate via their posts that they don't, in fact, understand how calorie balance works, or that it's the important foundation of individual weight management (whether we count those calories or not).

I'm not sure why this thread isn't in Debate.

clairesimpson4 wrote: »

@cmriverside did you read my post? I don't deny that CICO is true. I'm saying it's unhelpful to keep saying it to people over and over because we all know it. I don't have a solution, it's not my area of expertise. But the answer isn't to shrug our shoulders and dismiss the idea that it really is more complicated than that. We need more research. But you're wrong about where the problem lies. I refer to my alcoholic example again - telling an alcoholic not to drink so much doesn't help the person quit.

As an aside, a lot of medications cause weight gain, most often by increasing appetite. The opposite is also true - Saxenda for example works for weight loss partially by decreasing appetite. Hunger is part of the problem. Humans aren't designed to ignore it. It's why most diets fail.

The issue ISN'T the mantra or any statement made that's actually true, but lies WITHIN the person who's overweight if they are WILLING to accept that it is CICO and that if they are WILLING to adhere to the formula, they'd lose weight. You can give all the right and correct information to anyone and sugar coat it anyway you want. But unless ACTION is taken, it falls on deaf ears anyway.


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Not really. That mantra is freeing. It means I simply ate more than I burned and the solution was to eat less than I burned. No moral judgement, no baggage, no rigid rules. It meant I was free to tackle my own overeating issues my own way as long as it resulted in eating fewer calories than I burned. People know the mantra, but knowing and understanding the implications are two different things. You can see it clearly by looking at how widespread dieting trends and magical solutions are, people getting bogged down by details and trying to enforce too many unsustainable (unnecessary) rules.

The thing about overeating triggers and reasons, it's slightly (or significantly) different for different people, so a generalized approach or answer to the overeating problem is more harmful than helpful because it does not take into account the individual. CICO is the only general rule that applies to all, regardless of reasons, experiences, and mental baggage. Knowing that, and only that, without any extra rules attached, frees individuals to think within their own situation and troubleshoot their own problems coming up with their own strategies.