4 ms·

I'm not sure how I could have made that any clearer. I included (show correlation) specifically for that very reason.

• scarface74 7y ago
  But not causation and still didn’t explain whether that could be explained by the standard CICO equation.
  • berdon 7y ago
    You might try clicking the link I provided. The Wikipedia page details the virus and provides links to other sources one of which was conducted on chickens where they measure input/output and still saw positive weight gain.
    • scarface74 7y ago
      So exactly how do you explain mass just coming out of nowhere?
      • bscphil 7y ago
        I think all berdon is trying to say by "not simple physics" is that even though CICO is true, it's not helpful to people trying to lose weight because there are many other conditions (e.g. a virus) that can affect the body's metabolism - to a limited extent. This particular virus seems to make you fatter even on a precise calorie controlled diet, which implies it must reduce your metabolism. For the record I disagree with this - I think CICO is a helpful way to think about weight loss, because it implies that if you aren't losing weight on a calorie controlled diet, you simply haven't cut enough. (Though serious problems might be indicative of some medical condition, in which case you should consult a doctor to see if it can be alleviated to make CICO easier.)
        • partialrecall 7y ago
          CO may be difficult for a person to manipulate, and raising CI to put on weight may be physically difficult, expensive, or ineffective. However, reducing CI takes willpower but will make you lose weight. If you reduce it enough. Somebody may have a CO so low that the reduction in CI required to lose weight might require medical supervision (e.g. to prevent malnutrition.) That's probably not the case for most people though; certainly not people like myself. If I mustered the willpower to eat less, I would doubtlessly lose weight. If I were to fall for some of the new-age mumble jumble about weight being some innate genetic trait like iris color, I'd think myself helpless. If I were such a person, being informed of CICO would doubtlessly improve my life.
          • bscphil 7y ago
            > However, reducing CI takes willpower but will make you lose weight. If you reduce it enough. Somebody may have a CO so low that the reduction in CI required to lose weight might require medical supervision (e.g. to prevent malnutrition.) That's probably not the case for most people though; certainly not people like myself. Yes, this is exactly my point. I'm simply giving a measured defense of what berdon has been saying further up this thread: CO is not a known constant and may vary based on certain medical conditions. Because of this, CICO can sometimes (I think berdon would say frequently) be unhelpful advice to someone trying to lose weight, because they struggle with cutting CI far enough to lose weight, which may be due to a person's health and biological makeup.
            • partialrecall 7y ago
              Then I think berdon's concerns are misprioritized. It's very rare for the necessary reduction in CI to require medical supervision. The overwhelming majority of obese people in America are eating more than is reasonable to eat, and a reduction in consumption would improve their lives considerably with no real risk of malnutrition occurring. By focusing on obscure edge-cases, all we're really doing is to make it easier for people in the common case to rationalize away their situation. That's very common. There are more voluntary overeaters who claim they have an involuntary obesity-inducing disorder than there are people who actually have such disorders. I've got a whole family full of them. A big bowl of ice cream after every meal is a choice, not a genetic condition.
  • Dylan16807 7y ago
    CICO is a copout. Calories in is relatively simple. Calories out is hideously complex. When people describe weird things that metabolism does, real or fake, they're things that shift the Calories Out numbers way beyond the simple results you get from body composition and exercise level. There are so many separate ways for calories to go "out", too. So it gets used in this unfair double-standard way, where managing weight is "just CICO", as if it's a handful of inputs into a one-line equation, but if someone argues against that, saying it's more complex, then the natural response is "well actually CICO includes every single complication you've mentioned, so you're wrong to object".
    • scarface74 7y ago
      It is just CICO, whether you won the genetic lottery that makes the calculation simpler or not doesn't mean it's any less of a cop out than saying that it would be simpler for me to be a great basketball player if I were 6 foot 8 instead of 5 foot 5.
      • Dylan16807 7y ago
        Something can be both true and used in a misleading manner. To use your same metaphor, there are people going around speaking as if height and total hours of training are the only things that matter for basketball skill.
        • AstralStorm 7y ago
          Understand that there are necessary and sufficient conditions. A sufficient condition for obesity is too high chronic caloric intake. A necessary condition is retention of this surplus. Some people will feel correctly full when they overeat high calorie foods, others only if volume is too big, yet others have the distended stomach where even that does not work. Some have hormonal deficit that makes them retain more (e.g. hypothyroidism) or counters satiety signaling. Others have very wasteful metabolism or digestion where less is retained. Some really do highly strenuous activities that just demand more energy. Ultimately you set a caloric target with a carefully constructed diet and watch the long term weight slope over months. That's the science of it. Even high fat ad lib diets ultimately resulted in caloric input restriction, stronger than other diets they tried. (see Cambridge study)