4 ms·

Hormones, appetite, metabolic diseases are all orthogonal to CICO. These can have an effect on how many calories you burn or how many calories you crave but at

Hormones, appetite, metabolic diseases are all orthogonal to CICO. These can have an effect on how many calories you burn or how many calories you crave but at the end of the day, CICO is still law.

klyrs 4y ago
> CICO is still law. Calories are a measure chemical energy, not mass. Our digestive systems don't get anywhere near e=mc^2 in their efficiency. The conservation law is MIMO; calories are way more complicated. For example, people who extol CICO rarely take into account the fact that poop has a variable amount of chemical energy, which depends on a huge variety of factors including gut flora, hydration and fiber intake, or that most of our mass output is actually exhaled CO2.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  And yet Mark Haub[0] ate a diet of Twinkies (and other convenience store garbage food) to a caloric deficit and lost 27lbs in 10 weeks while all of his health metrics improved. Trying to be super precise about calories may be complicated, but nobody has to do that to reach a caloric deficit anyway so who cares. Eat less than you need by any reasonable ball park metric and you will lose weight, it's that simple. The hard part is that for some reason a large percentage of the population can't regulate their intake naturally because what they require for calories to be a healthy weight is misaligned with what they are compelled to consume. [0] http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Sure, let's agree that CICO is a decent rule of thumb, not a law. That's a fun anecdote, though.
- huntertwo 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics > The laws of thermodynamics define a group of physical quantities, such as temperature, energy, and entropy, that characterize thermodynamic systems in thermodynamic equilibrium. If you eat 2000 calories of food and burn 2000 calories (taking into account inefficiencies in the metabolic processes our bodies undertake to convert molecules to other molecules), there is no source of energy for you to accumulate fat, regardless of anything else. Your metabolic rate and the chemical energy of your excrement and the amount of co2 you exhale can be affected by a myriad of factors, hormonal included. But they just change the CO part of the equation, not the fact that CICO is law.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Problem being that calories aren't all made the same. Proteins takes more work to release their energy. Roughage like flax seed passes straight through. Even the amount you chew your food can move the needle. So, sure, if you're eating purely junk food like the sibling commenter mentions, you're probably hitting pretty close to the CICO limit. But caloric restriction is really hard to accomplish for some people, myself included, because it's physically painful. And then you look at something like how many miles you need to ride a bike just to match your basal metabolic rate, and people just give up. The CICO mantra is completely unhelpful. It doesn't capture the whole picture, and it sends people on a spiral to failure.
maxk42 4y ago
A calorie measures the heat released by setting the food on fire, which is not how your body metabolizes food. It's a proxy. You should be measuring the ATP yielded by eating food. For example, a molecule of glucose yields 32 ATP when metabolized, yet a molecule of DHA yields 136 molecules of ATP - nearly twice as many as predicted by the "calories" proxy. However, in the absence of oxaloacetic acid (as when the liver is using the majority of OAA for gluconeogenesis during intense exercise or when limiting carbohydrate consumption) your cells have to use a less efficient series of metabolic steps to produce energy and only end up yielding 22 ATP for DHA metabolism. I eat 3500 calories a day and don't exercise yet I'm losing about 2 pounds of fat per week. CICO was never law.
- huntertwo 4y ago
  > You should be measuring the ATP yielded by eating food. The closest practical approximation of this is the calorie measurement we assign to foods. Sure our metabolic processes are not equivalent to a calorimeter - but its easier to measure calories than to account for the specific metabolic process each gram of macronutrient you consume goes through. So for all practical purposes, and in the context of hormonal effects, energy in vs energy out ie CICO is still law.
  - maxk42 4y ago
    You clearly didn't read the rest of my comment.
- djmips 4y ago
  What are you eating at 3500 calories a day that allows gluconeogenesis without intense exercise. From your comment this seems to indicate you are limiting carbohydrates. What does your diet consist of?

Hormones, appetite, metabolic diseases are all orthogonal to CICO. These can have an effect on how many calories you burn or how many calories you crave but at the end of the day, CICO is still law.

klyrs 4y ago

> CICO is still law. Calories are a measure chemical energy, not mass. Our digestive systems don't get anywhere near e=mc^2 in their efficiency. The conservation law is MIMO; calories are way more complicated. For example, people who extol CICO rarely take into account the fact that poop has a variable amount of chemical energy, which depends on a huge variety of factors including gut flora, hydration and fiber intake, or that most of our mass output is actually exhaled CO2.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
And yet Mark Haub[0] ate a diet of Twinkies (and other convenience store garbage food) to a caloric deficit and lost 27lbs in 10 weeks while all of his health metrics improved. Trying to be super precise about calories may be complicated, but nobody has to do that to reach a caloric deficit anyway so who cares. Eat less than you need by any reasonable ball park metric and you will lose weight, it's that simple. The hard part is that for some reason a large percentage of the population can't regulate their intake naturally because what they require for calories to be a healthy weight is misaligned with what they are compelled to consume. [0] http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...
- klyrs 4y ago
  Sure, let's agree that CICO is a decent rule of thumb, not a law. That's a fun anecdote, though.
huntertwo 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics > The laws of thermodynamics define a group of physical quantities, such as temperature, energy, and entropy, that characterize thermodynamic systems in thermodynamic equilibrium. If you eat 2000 calories of food and burn 2000 calories (taking into account inefficiencies in the metabolic processes our bodies undertake to convert molecules to other molecules), there is no source of energy for you to accumulate fat, regardless of anything else. Your metabolic rate and the chemical energy of your excrement and the amount of co2 you exhale can be affected by a myriad of factors, hormonal included. But they just change the CO part of the equation, not the fact that CICO is law.
- klyrs 4y ago
  Problem being that calories aren't all made the same. Proteins takes more work to release their energy. Roughage like flax seed passes straight through. Even the amount you chew your food can move the needle. So, sure, if you're eating purely junk food like the sibling commenter mentions, you're probably hitting pretty close to the CICO limit. But caloric restriction is really hard to accomplish for some people, myself included, because it's physically painful. And then you look at something like how many miles you need to ride a bike just to match your basal metabolic rate, and people just give up. The CICO mantra is completely unhelpful. It doesn't capture the whole picture, and it sends people on a spiral to failure.

maxk42 4y ago

A calorie measures the heat released by setting the food on fire, which is not how your body metabolizes food. It's a proxy. You should be measuring the ATP yielded by eating food. For example, a molecule of glucose yields 32 ATP when metabolized, yet a molecule of DHA yields 136 molecules of ATP - nearly twice as many as predicted by the "calories" proxy. However, in the absence of oxaloacetic acid (as when the liver is using the majority of OAA for gluconeogenesis during intense exercise or when limiting carbohydrate consumption) your cells have to use a less efficient series of metabolic steps to produce energy and only end up yielding 22 ATP for DHA metabolism. I eat 3500 calories a day and don't exercise yet I'm losing about 2 pounds of fat per week. CICO was never law.

huntertwo 4y ago
> You should be measuring the ATP yielded by eating food. The closest practical approximation of this is the calorie measurement we assign to foods. Sure our metabolic processes are not equivalent to a calorimeter - but its easier to measure calories than to account for the specific metabolic process each gram of macronutrient you consume goes through. So for all practical purposes, and in the context of hormonal effects, energy in vs energy out ie CICO is still law.
- maxk42 4y ago
  You clearly didn't read the rest of my comment.
djmips 4y ago
What are you eating at 3500 calories a day that allows gluconeogenesis without intense exercise. From your comment this seems to indicate you are limiting carbohydrates. What does your diet consist of?