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I found CICO very helpful in losing weight (from 120kg to 90kg). It was a relatively easy metric to track, and using it alone meant that I could still eat all

I found CICO very helpful in losing weight (from 120kg to 90kg). It was a relatively easy metric to track, and using it alone meant that I could still eat all the things I wanted, though I needed to balance what I wanted to eat with portion size. CICO also meant I started out slow, making small cuts. So it wasn't bad in the beginning. Over time I had to find ways to adapt so I wouldn't go feeling hungry (mostly increase protein and fiber ratio significantly), but I never needed big changes. On the flip side CICO also meant that if I messed up one day it wasn't so bad. It just moved the goal post one day or two further away. So it prevented me from feeling like there was no point and giving up, instead getting back into it the next day. By following CICO I had a very linear weight loss, which didn't feel like a restriction or such. I estimated my CO and aimed for roughly 0.5kg per week and that's almost exactly what I managed. Not being "prevented" from certain foods due to diet X was a big factor in making this bearable.

crdrost 3y ago
CICO is very nice if you put it into the proper context, which is, 1. The scale lies. Liar liar pants on fire it lies. (We could go into this in detail, my wife never seems convinced, but it is to my mind a basic fact of the physics of the system that the scale lies in multiple orthogonal ways.) 2. So you want multiple different probes into the same phenomenon so that you get a better insight into what is going on. 3. So, track calories as a second piece of data to try and check whether the scale is lying to you or not. 4. As part of that, they give you greater insight into the choices that you make. For instance you realize that it is functionally impossible to jog off a Krispy Kreme donut but very easy to replace half a meal with it. Or you discover that you can cut fruit juice for water with no dissatisfaction. Regrettably this is not peoples’ usual relationship with food and the scale, which is exemplified by the Cheat Day phenomenon. The calories are viewed not as a separate data stream but as a morality judgment, which is then turned off for brief periods because constant judgment is hard on us, and these periods contain a lot of very relevant data such that if you turn the metric off selectively for them, the metric is no longer useful.

crdrost 3y ago

CICO is very nice if you put it into the proper context, which is, 1. The scale lies. Liar liar pants on fire it lies. (We could go into this in detail, my wife never seems convinced, but it is to my mind a basic fact of the physics of the system that the scale lies in multiple orthogonal ways.) 2. So you want multiple different probes into the same phenomenon so that you get a better insight into what is going on. 3. So, track calories as a second piece of data to try and check whether the scale is lying to you or not. 4. As part of that, they give you greater insight into the choices that you make. For instance you realize that it is functionally impossible to jog off a Krispy Kreme donut but very easy to replace half a meal with it. Or you discover that you can cut fruit juice for water with no dissatisfaction. Regrettably this is not peoples’ usual relationship with food and the scale, which is exemplified by the Cheat Day phenomenon. The calories are viewed not as a separate data stream but as a morality judgment, which is then turned off for brief periods because constant judgment is hard on us, and these periods contain a lot of very relevant data such that if you turn the metric off selectively for them, the metric is no longer useful.