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The reason people always go back to CICO is because it’s almost always the root cause, barring some extreme edge cases. Yet people won’t acknowledge it has anyt

by bumby 4y ago

The reason people always go back to CICO is because it’s almost always the root cause, barring some extreme edge cases. Yet people won’t acknowledge it has anything to do with it. People get distracted by other claims. “It’s seed oils!” No, it’s because seed oils are used in ultra-processed food that have a ton of calories. “Its the hormonal effect of carbohydrates!” No, it’s because carb-rich foods are extremely easy to overeat. “It’s because we evolved to only eat plants!” No, it’s because animal products are calorie dense by comparison. If you eat less calories than you metabolize you will lose weight, yet people get fixated on all kinds of heuristics of that point. Eating kosher is a rough heuristic for avoiding food poisoning. It doesnt make germ theory useless, it distracts from a more rooted understanding. I do agree that making the behavioral changes to lose weight is much more complicated. But we have to first agree on the cause. The reason why people constantly hammer on it is because so many people don’t accept that idea. To extend one of your examples, it would be like trying to convince someone how to get out of debt, but they refuse to believe their debt problem has anything to do with their spending habits and instead constantly point to things like the predatory nature of credit cards. Those can all be proximate causes, but at the end of the day they are in debt because they spend more than they earn and they’ll never fix the issue if they refuse to acknowledge that simple fact. The govt can pay off their loans and they’ll still be in debt if they don’t shore up their ledger.

weightloser81 4y ago
CICO is literally not the root cause. In the strict sense it can't be since it's simply a thermodynamic equation applied to body weight. Equations are not causes. If you mean "overeating" then that's also not the reason. It's like saying that being sad is the root cause of depression. If your analysis of obesity doesn't factor in hormons then it's not going to get you any working solutions. Which is exactly what we observe in the public health sphere since the 1970ies. > Debt Nobody is contesting that. What you say is true but it's also just a very obvious and unhelpful restatement of the problem. I play soccer, badly. When better players give me feedback there is two kinds. One boils down to simply a restatement of the goals of the game: pass better, don't miss the goal, get the ball. I hope you agree that if you really think about it such exhortation are silly. What I actually need is advice that tells me HOW to achieve this. It's the same for debt, weight loss etc. Not to forget that Ketoers and Low Carbers starting with Attkins where and are viciously attacked by the CICO mainstream. When people here say stuff like "well get your deficit anyway you want" than this shows the influence that losing to LC for the last two decades had on the CICO faction. It wasn't like this when I started my keto journey. Back then they said it can't work because fat has the highest energy density and will make your heart explode.
- bumby 4y ago
  >If your analysis of obesity doesn't factor in hormons then it's not going to get you any working solutions. Nobody is debating that there are systematic effects. I mentioned ghrelin before, I'm obviously not ignoring the effect of hormones. But that effect is to rebalance CICO. In some ways it's behavioral, like when ghrelin impacts you satiety. In other ways, it's a thermodynamic effect like how eating protein takes more energy to metabolize than the same number of calories of simple carbohydrates. But it all still boils down to the balance of calories in to calories out. I still maintain that's what keto is doing for you. It's giving you an easier set of heuristics to balance CICO. But at the end of the day, it's still CICO and the same principle applies to a variety of dietary choices. So keto isn't some holy grail body hack; it's just a simplified model for reducing the complexity of human metabolism to rules that ultimately reduce calories. >Back then they said it can't work because fat has the highest energy density and will make your heart explode. Yes, fat has the highest energy density but it's not the density that matters unless you factor in mass of fat consumed. You can still have less calories while eating fat. If you can show that someone can have a long-term weight loss eating more calories than they burn (outside of hormone therapy) with something like a keto diet, that would be a reasonable counterpoint. It seems to me what you're saying is "Yes, CICO is correct but hard to implement. Keto is a way to implement it." I can partially agree, but it doesn't make an understanding of CICO unhelpful. Keto can help rebalance CICO. However, it can also be used to increase caloric intake by drinking cups of olive oil. It's still keto, but it won't lead to weight loss because it's undermined the more fundamental principle. That makes the context of CICO important. Put differently, can you lose weight by running against CICO principles and following keto? I'd say no. Can you lose weight running against keto principles and following CICO? I'd say yes. They aren't mutually exclusive, but that makes CICO a more fundamentally important principle. It feels like we are discussing two different aspects. I'm talking about the overall strategy of rebalancing CICO. You're talking about the tactical methods to do so. The latter doesn't negate the former.
  - hnfong 4y ago
    > doesn't make an understanding of CICO unhelpful A naïve person might see CICO and immediately conclude that the most direct way to weight loss is to eat less and exercise more -- which can work except that the body reacts to this change by making you more hungry and conserving more energy. Now you get into the realm where systematic effects dominate: how do you reduce hunger? how do you coax the body to burn more fuel? At this stage, what you eat, how you eat it, and when you eat it becomes much more important than strictly controlling the calories -- because while it's possible to do so, it's also impractical to do so consciously in many cases. At this point, any practical solution still needs to comply with the laws of physics (i.e. CICO), but that's kind of like insisting that a person needs to understand the laws of quantum mechanics to play basketball.

by bumby 4y ago

weightloser81 4y ago

CICO is literally not the root cause. In the strict sense it can't be since it's simply a thermodynamic equation applied to body weight. Equations are not causes. If you mean "overeating" then that's also not the reason. It's like saying that being sad is the root cause of depression. If your analysis of obesity doesn't factor in hormons then it's not going to get you any working solutions. Which is exactly what we observe in the public health sphere since the 1970ies. > Debt Nobody is contesting that. What you say is true but it's also just a very obvious and unhelpful restatement of the problem. I play soccer, badly. When better players give me feedback there is two kinds. One boils down to simply a restatement of the goals of the game: pass better, don't miss the goal, get the ball. I hope you agree that if you really think about it such exhortation are silly. What I actually need is advice that tells me HOW to achieve this. It's the same for debt, weight loss etc. Not to forget that Ketoers and Low Carbers starting with Attkins where and are viciously attacked by the CICO mainstream. When people here say stuff like "well get your deficit anyway you want" than this shows the influence that losing to LC for the last two decades had on the CICO faction. It wasn't like this when I started my keto journey. Back then they said it can't work because fat has the highest energy density and will make your heart explode.

bumby 4y ago
>If your analysis of obesity doesn't factor in hormons then it's not going to get you any working solutions. Nobody is debating that there are systematic effects. I mentioned ghrelin before, I'm obviously not ignoring the effect of hormones. But that effect is to rebalance CICO. In some ways it's behavioral, like when ghrelin impacts you satiety. In other ways, it's a thermodynamic effect like how eating protein takes more energy to metabolize than the same number of calories of simple carbohydrates. But it all still boils down to the balance of calories in to calories out. I still maintain that's what keto is doing for you. It's giving you an easier set of heuristics to balance CICO. But at the end of the day, it's still CICO and the same principle applies to a variety of dietary choices. So keto isn't some holy grail body hack; it's just a simplified model for reducing the complexity of human metabolism to rules that ultimately reduce calories. >Back then they said it can't work because fat has the highest energy density and will make your heart explode. Yes, fat has the highest energy density but it's not the density that matters unless you factor in mass of fat consumed. You can still have less calories while eating fat. If you can show that someone can have a long-term weight loss eating more calories than they burn (outside of hormone therapy) with something like a keto diet, that would be a reasonable counterpoint. It seems to me what you're saying is "Yes, CICO is correct but hard to implement. Keto is a way to implement it." I can partially agree, but it doesn't make an understanding of CICO unhelpful. Keto can help rebalance CICO. However, it can also be used to increase caloric intake by drinking cups of olive oil. It's still keto, but it won't lead to weight loss because it's undermined the more fundamental principle. That makes the context of CICO important. Put differently, can you lose weight by running against CICO principles and following keto? I'd say no. Can you lose weight running against keto principles and following CICO? I'd say yes. They aren't mutually exclusive, but that makes CICO a more fundamentally important principle. It feels like we are discussing two different aspects. I'm talking about the overall strategy of rebalancing CICO. You're talking about the tactical methods to do so. The latter doesn't negate the former.
- hnfong 4y ago
  > doesn't make an understanding of CICO unhelpful A naïve person might see CICO and immediately conclude that the most direct way to weight loss is to eat less and exercise more -- which can work except that the body reacts to this change by making you more hungry and conserving more energy. Now you get into the realm where systematic effects dominate: how do you reduce hunger? how do you coax the body to burn more fuel? At this stage, what you eat, how you eat it, and when you eat it becomes much more important than strictly controlling the calories -- because while it's possible to do so, it's also impractical to do so consciously in many cases. At this point, any practical solution still needs to comply with the laws of physics (i.e. CICO), but that's kind of like insisting that a person needs to understand the laws of quantum mechanics to play basketball.