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That's almost certainly not what happened. While your body will get more efficient in starvation conditions it takes time and doesn't start instantly. There are

That's almost certainly not what happened. While your body will get more efficient in starvation conditions it takes time and doesn't start instantly. There are certain biases that people have with weight loss and eating that are very common and result in less results than you expect. There's a good chance your "probable" bmr was overestimating calorie burn. If you were basing calories burned in exercise from what a machine at the gym was telling you, it almost certainly overstated the calorie burn. Unless you meticulously weighed everything you put in your mouth you probably ate more calories than you think you did. Even if you did measure everything carefully and accurately, there's some degree of error in the nutrition data on packaging. The truth is that you probably didn't have a 1000 cal daily deficit for 2 months. That kind of deficit should drop your weight by about 15 lbs in that time. Even fairly extreme fluid fluctuations wouldn't cover that weight loss unless you started dehydrated and fairly overweight.

goostavos 5y ago
You're getting downvoted because, I assume, you didn't include the possibility of magic as a an explanation in your analysis. Rookie mistake in these threads. While it may superficially seem like yours was the best explanation for lack of weight loss -- that OP made a simple error and over-estimated his caloric deficit (and further didn't adjust the deficit when receiving data to the contrary)-- what you need to account for are the "other factors" which currently exceeds our understanding of biology and physics. Using these 'other factors' it's possible to do everything right, and still not lose weight (through no fault of your own).
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO. Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues. It's not at all improbable that BMR can be affected significantly by dieting in some individuals, a priori. It could also be affected by other lifestyle changes that happened together with the dieting, such as medication.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO. Not really, but that doesn't mean CICO is actionable. > Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues. That's not outside of CICO, since BMR is a central element of “calories out”. Of course, it is a reason CICO is not as simple as advocates make it out to be (and there are more problems like that on both the CI and CO sides.)
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Oops, you're right, CICO theoretically accounts for BMR differences and appetite differences.
    - kcplate 5y ago
      > at's not outside of CICO, since BMR is a central element of “calories out”. Of course, it is a reason CICO is not as simple as advocates make it out to be (and there are more problems like that on both the CI and CO sides.) That was basically my point. BMR can fluctuate making CICO a piss poor oversimplified explanation for weight loss. My example was real, it did happen to me. My calories in was meticulously recorded. Calories out is less accurate, but the calories burned in exercise were not dramatically inaccurate enough to explain the lack of progress. The only other factor outside my conscious control was BMR.
      - goostavos 5y ago
        > CICO a piss poor oversimplified explanation for weight loss Kinda reads like an embarrassing cope, tbh. Blaming mystical 'other factors' is stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. At the end of the day, CICO is all that matters. To deny this is to say that you have a metabolism not based on consuming external matter. Your lack of progress can entirely be explained by just making a plain, good old fashion error with your in/out expenditure. Something we all literally do. We don't need magic involved to explain it. Your body gave you data that you were wrong, but you ignored it, threw up your hands, and now blame "other factors." Want to lose weight? Use this One Weird Trick those dummy gym bros with no understanding of science have been using since forever. 1. Reduce your calories 2. monitor your weight 3. adjust 1. based on 2. Step 3 is the important bit you missed.
tsimionescu 5y ago
> That kind of deficit should drop your weight by about 15 lbs in that time. The fact that you think that there is a number like this shows you are using extremely old thinking about how even the CICO model works. There is no way to predict weight/gain loss amount based on calories across individuals. Also, even if there is some error in BMR, calorie burn rate, calorie intake, I very much doubt it was `-1000 calories +- 1000 calories`. Exercising is at most 2-300 calories per day. If you are making an effort to count calories, you will notice if you're eating an extra 200 calories of food. So let's say from these that they were at 1000 +- 200. Unless they got their BMR extremely wrong, then something else was happening. And after a month, even if they were at a ~200 calorie deficit, they should have still noticed clear fat loss.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > The fact that you think that there is a number like this shows you are using extremely old thinking about how even the CICO model works. There is no way to predict weight/gain loss amount based on calories across individuals. But that's one of the few numbers you can predict with pretty good accuracy. Figuring out diet, exercise, and BMR is the hard part. Expecting a pound of fat to go away per 3000 calories is the easy part.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > Figuring out diet, exercise, and BMR is the hard part. Expecting a pound of fat to go away per 3000 calories is the easy part. Well, here you've moved from "estimated deficit per day" to "exact total deficit". Sure, thermodynamics tells you with absolute certainty that if you've lost 1 pound of fat in 1 week, you've overall had 3000 Cal deficit in that month. But that doesn't mean you can say "if you know your BMR at time t, eat exactly this much and exercise exactly this much, you will definitely have a 3000 Cal deficit over 1 week". This would assume already that BMR doesn't vary with exercise and diet. It also assumes that food digestion doesn't vary with exercise and diet. Both of these are assumptions that we don't really know. And even if they are true for 1 week, they are almost certainly not true for 1 year.
- fredophile 5y ago
kcplate 5y ago
> The truth is that you probably didn't have a 1000 cal daily deficit for 2 months. Uh yes, this is pretty much exactly what I said. But left out from my original post was how my weight loss began again when my caloric intake increased. This was about at a 125lbs in to a ultimate 170lb loss. CICO doesn’t have a good explanation for plateaus in a long weight loss journey. It also doesn’t factor weight gain due to muscle build. My ultimate point being it’s not a simple math equation.

goostavos 5y ago

You're getting downvoted because, I assume, you didn't include the possibility of magic as a an explanation in your analysis. Rookie mistake in these threads. While it may superficially seem like yours was the best explanation for lack of weight loss -- that OP made a simple error and over-estimated his caloric deficit (and further didn't adjust the deficit when receiving data to the contrary)-- what you need to account for are the "other factors" which currently exceeds our understanding of biology and physics. Using these 'other factors' it's possible to do everything right, and still not lose weight (through no fault of your own).

tsimionescu 5y ago
There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO. Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues. It's not at all improbable that BMR can be affected significantly by dieting in some individuals, a priori. It could also be affected by other lifestyle changes that happened together with the dieting, such as medication.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO. Not really, but that doesn't mean CICO is actionable. > Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues. That's not outside of CICO, since BMR is a central element of “calories out”. Of course, it is a reason CICO is not as simple as advocates make it out to be (and there are more problems like that on both the CI and CO sides.)
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Oops, you're right, CICO theoretically accounts for BMR differences and appetite differences.
  - kcplate 5y ago
    > at's not outside of CICO, since BMR is a central element of “calories out”. Of course, it is a reason CICO is not as simple as advocates make it out to be (and there are more problems like that on both the CI and CO sides.) That was basically my point. BMR can fluctuate making CICO a piss poor oversimplified explanation for weight loss. My example was real, it did happen to me. My calories in was meticulously recorded. Calories out is less accurate, but the calories burned in exercise were not dramatically inaccurate enough to explain the lack of progress. The only other factor outside my conscious control was BMR.
    - goostavos 5y ago
      > CICO a piss poor oversimplified explanation for weight loss Kinda reads like an embarrassing cope, tbh. Blaming mystical 'other factors' is stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. At the end of the day, CICO is all that matters. To deny this is to say that you have a metabolism not based on consuming external matter. Your lack of progress can entirely be explained by just making a plain, good old fashion error with your in/out expenditure. Something we all literally do. We don't need magic involved to explain it. Your body gave you data that you were wrong, but you ignored it, threw up your hands, and now blame "other factors." Want to lose weight? Use this One Weird Trick those dummy gym bros with no understanding of science have been using since forever. 1. Reduce your calories 2. monitor your weight 3. adjust 1. based on 2. Step 3 is the important bit you missed.

tsimionescu 5y ago

> That kind of deficit should drop your weight by about 15 lbs in that time. The fact that you think that there is a number like this shows you are using extremely old thinking about how even the CICO model works. There is no way to predict weight/gain loss amount based on calories across individuals. Also, even if there is some error in BMR, calorie burn rate, calorie intake, I very much doubt it was `-1000 calories +- 1000 calories`. Exercising is at most 2-300 calories per day. If you are making an effort to count calories, you will notice if you're eating an extra 200 calories of food. So let's say from these that they were at 1000 +- 200. Unless they got their BMR extremely wrong, then something else was happening. And after a month, even if they were at a ~200 calorie deficit, they should have still noticed clear fat loss.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> The fact that you think that there is a number like this shows you are using extremely old thinking about how even the CICO model works. There is no way to predict weight/gain loss amount based on calories across individuals. But that's one of the few numbers you can predict with pretty good accuracy. Figuring out diet, exercise, and BMR is the hard part. Expecting a pound of fat to go away per 3000 calories is the easy part.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Figuring out diet, exercise, and BMR is the hard part. Expecting a pound of fat to go away per 3000 calories is the easy part. Well, here you've moved from "estimated deficit per day" to "exact total deficit". Sure, thermodynamics tells you with absolute certainty that if you've lost 1 pound of fat in 1 week, you've overall had 3000 Cal deficit in that month. But that doesn't mean you can say "if you know your BMR at time t, eat exactly this much and exercise exactly this much, you will definitely have a 3000 Cal deficit over 1 week". This would assume already that BMR doesn't vary with exercise and diet. It also assumes that food digestion doesn't vary with exercise and diet. Both of these are assumptions that we don't really know. And even if they are true for 1 week, they are almost certainly not true for 1 year.
fredophile 5y ago

kcplate 5y ago

> The truth is that you probably didn't have a 1000 cal daily deficit for 2 months. Uh yes, this is pretty much exactly what I said. But left out from my original post was how my weight loss began again when my caloric intake increased. This was about at a 125lbs in to a ultimate 170lb loss. CICO doesn’t have a good explanation for plateaus in a long weight loss journey. It also doesn’t factor weight gain due to muscle build. My ultimate point being it’s not a simple math equation.