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> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight I've asked on HN a couple times in the past for citations that suppor

• airbreather 4y ago
  https://www.totalwellbeingdiet.com/media/2266/18-00521-secrets-of-fat-loss_final-lr-singlepages.pdf https://www.totalwellbeingdiet.com/media/2266/18-00521-secre... https://www.publish.csiro.au/RD/RD20326 https://www.publish.csiro.au/RD/RD20326 The CSIRO has been researching for decades as to what the best bang for buck is with regards exercise.
  • dmix 4y ago
    There's no doubt exercise is essential here. There's just lots of people pushing the idea that diet / food restriction alone is sufficient for weight loss or that the goal of exercise is to "burn calories", suggesting the two are directly correlated.
    • roflc0ptic 4y ago
      I don't understand what you're saying: > people pushing the idea that diet / food restriction alone is sufficient for weight loss Diet/food restriction alone is strictly sufficient for weight loss: I'm pretty sure this is uncontroversially true, but it sounds like you're saying it isn't. Am I misunderstanding you?
    • jasode 4y ago
      >There's no doubt exercise is essential here. In the isolated context of losing weight, it doesn't seem like exercise is essential. Or to state in less absolute terms, exercise has less influence than diet choices for purposes of losing weight and maintaining it. In my case, I noticed that the pounds melted off when I stopped drinking sugary sodas and eating bread/snacks and switched to more vegetables with olive oil. In contrast , when I started exercising regularly, I actually gained more weight. The thing that messes up the simplistic idea of "exercise burns calories so with 2nd law of thermodynamics you lose weight" ... is the body's overwhelming desire to maintain homeostasis. (https://www.google.com/search?q=homeostasis https://www.google.com/search?q=homeostasis) Homeostasis means that more exercise can cause more hunger and thus bigger meals which offsets the exercise so no weight is lost. Likewise, deliberately eating less can cause the body to conserve energy and do less physical activity which re-balances the body to not lose any weight. For many folks, a long-term way to adjust the homeostasis is to change the diet from high-carb to low-carb and switch out the 400-calorie Starbucks frappuccinos and sugary sodas to green tea and 0-calorie sparkling water. These diet alterations have more chances of success than maintaining the discipline of burning 500+ calories a week via exercise. Exercise is essential for healthy heart and bone strength but there are counteracting factors when used as a tool to specifically lose weight.
• frognumber 4y ago
  If I cut my calorie intake by a moderate amount, I don't lose any fat. If I cut my calorie intake by an extreme amount, I start to lose fat. My hypothesis is that the equation that weight loss is related to calorie intake minus expenditure, but I think the conclusions one draws from it fail to take into account how much the body can control expenditure. My body seems to naturally drift up in fat weight, very slowly -- probably around a pound per year -- no matter how much I eat. If I cut calories a lot, I can lose fat. After that, my fat level drifts back up to the old target weight pretty quickly, and then up slowly again. I'm pretty sure if I plotted my fat from the time I became an adult, it would be a pretty straight line, with short-term dips and recoveries for diets. Losing weight sustainably would mean resetting that target somehow. I don't know how. Changing my diet and exercise levels don't seem to do much for fat levels (but do more for my general fitness and health).
  • snovv_crash 4y ago
    You probably subconsciously downregulate your physical activity when you reduce calories, due to lower energy levels. If you wear a fitness tracker and equate number of steps to high calories you should see a difference even with slight reductions in caloric intake. Even the amount of fidgeting you do during the day can change your base caloric expenditure.
    • wordpad25 4y ago
      another thing is to measure total calories intake and spending weekly. Daily metrics can vary wildly without affecting overall result.
      • asdff 4y ago
        Is spend even relevant to measure versus weight on the scale? Assuming you work out consistently?
  • sergiosgc 4y ago
    That was my exact personal diagnostic, until 2018. My weight very slowly drifted upward, but you start adding 0.5kg-1kg per year over a couple of decades, with a few dips here and there on dietary effort, and the result was a health disaster. My solution, and mine alone after trying oh so many different diets and strategies, went through regular aerobic exercise, at a rate of 3-4 hours per week. In my case it was swimming, because I like it; cycling or running would have had the same effect, I believe. It worked. I lost almost 30kg over about 2.5 years. Why did it work? I don't really know. I can tell you that basal expenditure certainly has gone up, as I had to get into shape to swim 4-5km a week. Of course, swimming a few km introduces some expenditure of its own. However, I had already tried gym and other sports, which should have the same effects, with far worse weight control outcomes. So, for me, regular aerobic sessions of longer than 45min did the trick. I don't know why, so I can't promise it will work for anyone else, but you might as well try it for a few months. Don't expect huge, rapid, losses in weight, just a very consistent downward trend.
• criley2 4y ago
  You are very right to question this! While the thermodynamics aren't assailable, it turns out that the calorie system is in fact quite fallable and bad! There's a lot of good material on why, I like this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJQxadvsmEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJQxadvsmEQ But simply put: - Our system for measuring how much "calorie" is in any given food is extremely problematic and unrelated to how the body captures energy - Our system for estimating how much "calorie" a human body uses is extremely problematic and error-ridden. - Our systemized ignorance towards the relationship in the body between energy storage and energy consumption, as well as all the factors influencing this system. The same advice or strategy simply doesn't work the same way for two people. But our advice and labels can't capture that. As we engineers know "garbage in, garbage out". Well, when all of the data in this system is garbage, it's no surprise that the function outputs garbage.
  • onionisafruit 4y ago
    Thank you for the recommendation. I watched it and it answered some questions I had.
  • syzarian 4y ago
    This does not dispute the fact that if the energy input into the system exceeds the energy expended then weight gain occurs and if the energy into the system is less than the energy expended then weight loss occurs. It may be hard to balance things in a healthy way and to achieve a desired result but the underlying physics is not a meme and not incorrect.
  • foobarian 4y ago
    The thing about the calorie system is that it's extremely simple and consistent. You could get into more advanced ways to count the calories that look at the type of food, and how body captures it, etc etc but that would be an even bigger mess than modern "dietary science." Currently the calorie count at least gives me an upper bound, and at least it's on the box and applies no matter who looks at it. How would you do better?
    • 4y ago
• tallytarik 4y ago
  You go so far as to refer to the parent’s comment as a “meme” and then seem to agree with it by saying “I'm sure that would still ultimately contribute to weight loss” You are also correct - caloric deficit is not very sustainable long term for a large number of people. There is ongoing study to figure out why — for example, why some people are much less able to stick to a diet, or have constant food cravings, and so on. That’s not at odds with what you’re questioning. The focus is on those areas because the requirement of a caloric deficit for weight loss is one of the most reliable observations we have so far.
  • asdff 4y ago
    I think there is a huge mental aspect with feelings of hunger that needs to be learned how to be dealt with. I used to work a pretty labor intensive job, and you would get hungry in the shift and would just have to tough it out with your stomach raging all day. After all of that experience, I can fast at will without it putting me out really (helpful during long days of airport traveling where the food is overpriced anyhow). That's nothing compared to what some people had to deal with e.g. surviving famines. That takes some serious mental fortitude, but I would imagine after that experience you'd be perfectly fine if dinner was served late. If you ever read Siddartha, there's this part where the protagonist learned how to fast with the Samanas in the forest, and not everyone knows how to deal with that sensation and accept it as just another sensation in life. On the other hand, I know people who get into this bizarre state if they are hungry, not long after whatever their normal mealtime might be sometimes. People joke around about being "hangry" but its a real thing for some people. I can see how if you haven't learned how to accept the sensation of hunger, and all you know with that feeling of hunger through your life is to immediately satiate that sensation, sticking to a caloric deficit would not be easy.
• tarsinge 4y ago
  This is not a meme but basic physics. This is how you do your cut and bulk cycles to lose and gain exactly a planned amount of weight. My base energy expenditure is relatively low at around 1800 kcal. If I eat 2000 kcal I will gain around 1 kg in 35 days (1 kg of fat is a 7000 kcal surplus), and similarly I could lose 1 by eating 1600 kcal. For finding sources look up "TDEE". Weight loss is complicated because of the added dimension of satiety. If I eat proteins, vegetables and fats without counting I'll be around my baseline. But with sugar and carbs it's impossible to not overshoot without being terribly hungry. Also with less insulin sensitivity found in obese/pre-diabetics people, ingested food can not be efficiently used and end up stored, leading to the vicious cycle of being tired and still hungry.
  • mister_mister 4y ago
    The body is not closed system if it would be perfect close system then eating once a day or once per week would have the same effect spreading that over the day. The cells do not use calories. They use ATP, converted different pathways such as glucose, fatty acids, ketones and oxygen. Calories are measured by burning them, so that means we are using two different measurements that may overlap but are not compatible. In the Calories model would it be possible to explain why people with diabetics type 1, that don't use insulin stay thin even though they would eat massive amounts? https://www.everydayhealth.com/eating-disorders/diabulimia/ https://www.everydayhealth.com/eating-disorders/diabulimia/
    • tarsinge 4y ago
      Eating once a day indeed has nearly the same effect. Once a week is not possible due to physical limits of processing that volume of food. It's easy to explain your example with diabetics: very simply insulin is what allow muscle to use glucose, but also what stop the body from using its fat reserves. From your link: > Desperate to stop its cells from starving, her body had released hormones that, in turn, released byproducts called ketones that turned her blood acidic. If she had not been rushed to the emergency room, she would have died. This is similar to the effect of a ketogenic diet, when you avoid eating carbs to avoid insulin secretion, forcing the body to convert the fat reserves to provide glucose for the cells. Diabetics type 1 don't produce insulin, so they just skip insulin shoots to stay in that "mode" but it has obviously other serious health side-effects for them as discussed in that article. Also individuals are not the same, there is a lot of variation in TDEE (genetics, health, weight, insulin sensitivity, metabolism, ...). But once you have figured the TDEE for an individual, calorie counting becomes very accurate. Just from the fitness community there is an overwhelming body of research and evidence: https://sci-fit.net/bulking-deficit-gaining/ https://sci-fit.net/bulking-deficit-gaining/. If you are in calorie deficit, you lose weight. If you are in a surplus, you gain.
• bliteben 4y ago
  Calories are a unit of energy. You are arguing against chemistry and physics. Im sure you could find inaccuracies in calorie counts for various foods. Additionally Im sure some foods are more filling and/or healthy at different calorie counts. Arguing that calories in doesn't matter is nearly on the level of Holocaust denialism, as the main picture evidence there is of the effects of calorie deficits.
  • mister_mister 4y ago
    They are unit of energy and that is correct. But they are not the unit of energy that cells use, they use ATP that is created from ketones, fatty-acids, glucose and oxygen[0] Measuring food through calories, which are derived from burning food is therefor quite old technology, it's from 1800 when steam engines where main way of powering the western world. As a thought example to push CICO model to it's end: For example we can't eat coal, but it's very calorie dense. According to CICO model we should be able to eat just little bit of coal, and drink tiny amount of fuel. So that would also suggest there is more to the story of nutrition then CICO. Mammals are not as simple as factory machines. For example CICO would suggest to lose weight to eat 500 calories less then normal, as average that would be 2500 for men. But if we would rephrase that: In order to lose weight eat 1/5 less then normal. Then that would have the same effect, that is issue with calories they tell a story about food but it's not the full story. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle
• Frost1x 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy Food (calories in) is just a form of energy your body is capable of utilizing. Fat is just a physical medium to store energy for use in your body. For your body to move and perform actions (live), you require energy. All things considered at this scale, if you expend more energy than you consume, you'll ultimately either die (due to lack of energy) or use other forms of energy in your body (e.g. fat). This is of course the 30,000 ft view and there's a lot of complex biology and chemistry going on but it's pretty straightforward if you believe the law of conservation of energy is correct and our bodies aren't doing some sort of nuclear physics to process energy and instead relying on various forms of chemical and physical energy. As you point out, it's not so cut and dry though in practice. There's a time component here and our bodies get quite clever. We build up efficiency of certain tasks over time requiring less energy usage. We resist building muscle because it requires more energy to maintain. Some food's energy density isn't perceived very well by our bodies and we remain more or less hungry irrelevant of potential calories making it more difficult to maintain a calorie deficit/diet based solely on our bodies senses. Many nutritional information products don't accurately measure calories of food, sometimes making it difficult to use as a base metric (theres a lot of errors in these measurements, especially by small food producers/providers). We also have incredible difficulty trying to estimate how many calories our body is actually expending because it's a fairly complex system (the "calories out" part of the equation) although there are some figures out there to help you estimate these within some general ranges depending on factors like age, diet, fitness, activity and so on--it's not perfect but it's something to work with quantitatively. The benefit of calorie counting though is that there are fairly basic physical and chemical principles at play that make it a useful tool in weight loss and management. Even if a bit variable (both the in and out) and sometimes inaccurately represented, it gives us something fairly quantitative to work with, measure, and change around to control our weight. We can measure it and change other variables in our lifestyles to, over time, manage weight. It works and the statement is valid but it's not simple to use by any means, there's a lot one needs to learn over time to better learn how to measure their in/out and overall body feeling based on these factors.
  • watwut 4y ago
    Linking conservation of energy is just non argument. It has nothing to do with anything, because our bodies are not simple theoretical machine.
• VerminOctopus1 4y ago
  Absolutely ridiculous to call this a “meme”. It is the most basic fact about how to lose weight. Stop eating altogether and see what happens (spoilers: you’ll lose weight as your body devours itself because your body needs calories to operate)
  • watwut 4y ago
    > Stop eating altogether and see what happens (spoilers: you’ll lose weight as your body devours itself because your body needs calories to operate) You might just die before you loose all that weight. Moreover, you have high chance to develop long term health issues.
    • scotty79 4y ago
      You might die all the time for any reason. If the issue is lack of some specific vitamins or minerals you may correct it before you die without starting to eat again.
• tvrg 4y ago
  I have the same question: People often calculate with calories as if it is really simple math. But - honest question - does my body really have to suck up every calorie or could it excrete some calories in the toilet and also vary that amount depending on my caloric intake? For example, I have read somewhere that you urinate superfluous proteins - which also have calories. Also, if I'm hungry I get cold. I might put on another layer. So my "base energy expenditure" could vary with the amount of calories I eat, right?
  • Frost1x 4y ago
    Your body isn't 100% efficient, some energy will be lost so assuming you have a perfect measurement of intake and expenditure, you're not completely sure how much of the intake your body has consumed. There are some estimates of these things. One thing you can do though is if you understand how your body metabolizes certain foods, you can measure the upper bound of energy consumed. With accurate measurement you can say that your body couldn't possibly have gained more energy from this given food than this amount. You can then use that upper bound figure to try and guide your expenditure. If you make sure your expenditure meets that upper bound and still creates a deficit, you know the deficit is at least that amount, likely more since 100% energy conversion isn't feasible. External factors certainly come into play like environment. You're not a completely closed system as you point out based solely on food. You may sit in a cold office shivering throughout the day or in a hot room sweating, these factors will effect your energy expenditure (and even intake) differently just to maintain your existence.
  • User23 4y ago
    Metabolic ward studies have proven that the body will excrete excess protein via the kidneys. Theoretically a glycogenesis to lipogenesis pathway might conceivably exist, but under controlled conditions it observably doesn’t. Something similar will happen with excess ethanol consumption. Your body will preferentially use ethanol for immediate energy needs, but there is no pathway to store it as fat. However any fat or carbohydrates in the diet will immediately undergo lipogenesis while the ethanol is metabolized. The end result is that it’s physiologically impossible to gain body fat on a diet of lean protein and wine or spirits. However that’s a rather unhealthy diet otherwise so I wouldn’t recommend going all in on the piss out the protein plan. It’s good to know though that if you’re taking an alcohol cheat day then stay away from beer and mixed drinks as well as fat and carbs all day and until the next morning. Instead eat something like lean chicken or fish with near zero calorie vegetables like lettuce or cucumbers or what have you.
• jokethrowaway 4y ago
  Calories are a good enough metric. There are exceptions: It's hard to calculate how much energy your body will spend to digest food burning energy in the process. Eg. nuts are high calories but also increase the amount of energy you're burning. If you worry about macros (eg. hitting your proteins) you can get even better results by building muscle (which increases your metabolism and make you burn more fat) and avoiding a bunch of health issues likely linked to eating modern processed crap. That said, the phrase: > without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight is correct and not a meme. It's just that your expenditure is hard to track and can be influenced by a lot of factors. What I found that works wonders is to: - 1. keep your diet and fitness regimen as constant as possible, no matter what it is - 2. swap food with lower calories and higher protein intake, while trying to avoid processed food - 3. increase exercise without adding food - 4. measure your weight every morning at the same time - 5. do that until you stop gaining weight and your weight is constant for a few weeks - 6. reduce calories by doing step 2 or 3 again until you start losing a bit of weight - 7. keep doing it until you hit your target weight I did this to lose weight years ago and it worked well. The main advantage is you don't have to worry about counting calories. Last year instead I just went carnivore (admittedly, I did it to sort out other health issues, the weight loss was a welcome side benefit) and I found myself feeling full (thanks to the higher fat intake) and eating a sensible amount of meat, which helped me lose 10kgs over ~10 weeks. I'm sure not eating carbs (ketosis) also played a role.
• shlant 4y ago
  > I've asked on HN a couple times in the past for citations that support this meme and haven't yet found a good source on this I have a hard time believing this. Here is the first link from googling "cico weight loss studies": https://legionathletics.com/cico-diet/ https://legionathletics.com/cico-diet/ it's only a "meme" to those that have been convinced by people who are trying to sell you a specific diet/lifestyle (most commonly fasting or low carb)
• edanm 4y ago
  > I've asked on HN a couple times in the past for citations that support this meme and haven't yet found a good source on this. This is not a "meme", it is almost universally accepted science by nutrition scientists at this point. This includes both theoretical reasons, as well as actual, legit studies with human subjects. > Calories seems to be the catchall metric pushed around, but it seems to be as much about what you eat, not just eating less. Not sure what you mean by "it" when you say "it seems to be as much about what you eat." > Whether calories is the thing that matters is the question. Matters for what? If you mean in the strict sense that you are able to control someone's total food intake, then yes, you can induce any amount of weight loss you want by limiting their caloric intake. If you mean "matters" in terms of getting real people in the real world to actually lose weight? That's a much more complicated question, because the number one variable that controls the amount and duration of weight loss is how long you stick with the diet. Any "diet" that causes a caloric deficit will cause weight loss. Some do this by directly counting calories and targeting a lower number. Some do this by causing you to eat foods that make you fuller, thereby making you limit the amount of calories without thinking about it. You can even take medication that just cause you to not be hungry, which is the most effective in some sense. The thing is, most diets are hard to stick to, or at least most people don't stick to diets. I personally counted calories as I found it the "easiest" in some sense (though I also had to learn a lot about how to eat in a more satiating way so not to be hungry.) I used that to lose a lot of weight. I've now regained a lot of that weight, partly planned (as part of a bulk), partly unplanned (I got injured so stopped training, and then decided to focus less on weight control and eat more, knowing that I would gain weight in an unplanned fashion.)
• yamtaddle 4y ago
  > I've asked on HN a couple times in the past for citations that support this meme and haven't yet found a good source on this. I think I finally figured out why I hate CICO so much: it's usually presented in a motte-and-bailey style. It's used to dismiss more-complex advice or observations and presented as if it's all you need to look at to model weight loss and gain to a useful level, then when it's pointed out that the terms are so vague, hard to actually measure, and don't address the effects of feedback loops on metabolism, that it's like trying to model the behavior of aircraft with gravity but without lift, and therefore damn near useless, the fallback is "well it's still technically true, blah blah blah". Sure, it's technically true, it's just... not very useful on its own, and constantly bringing it up as if it's all that matters is grating.