5 ms·
the funny thing is people (including on HN) have spent years arguing that the human body is a blast calorimeter and that everyone absorbs the same amount of ene
by paulmd 3y ago
the funny thing is people (including on HN) have spent years arguing that the human body is a blast calorimeter and that everyone absorbs the same amount of energy from the same amount of food and therefore CICO is the only thing that matters or can help.
and oh look here's the protein which controls how much you absorb from it.
CICO is the only actionable advice for an individual (at least in the absence of such drugs) but there are still major questions about things like endocrine disruptors etc. The rise of obesity is far too broad-spectrum (even in feral cat colonies or lab rat populations that shouldn't be affected) to really be attributable to just "people have desk jobs". Lots of people have desk jobs all over the world and obesity is not evenly distributed, and the story has always been that "exercise doesn't matter, what you eat controls your weight" so things like biking vs driving should have a relatively small effect.
But people wanted to turn it into a moral hazard, and they did. Fat people have always been a socially-acceptable target to punch down on. "I'm actually helping them, you see".
- hollerith 3y agoYou misunderstand the details, but your overall point is correct, IMO.
- elevatedastalt 3y agoCICO looks like dumb advice ONLY if you think it to mean that you should be literally summing the nutritional labels of the foods you consume and whatever calorie estimates your smartwatch shows you and treat it as gospel. Both the CI and CO numbers can have very large error margins, however, the fact that their difference, if leading to a caloric deficit, will cause weight-loss is irrefutable truth. If you do a diet for 14 days and have no change in weight, it just means you need to reduce consumption more. CICO isn't unfair because it's incorrect. It's unfair because for some people following CICO comes trivially, while for others it's literally the hardest thing they will ever do in their lives. And that's why I do sympathize with people who find it hard to lose weight. You are fighting against your most primal instincts (the desire to eat). But that doesn't mean CICO is incorrect.
- xk_id 3y agooh thank god someone else put in the effort to type this, so I didn't have to. yes, this view is 100% correct.
- thefz 3y agoCICO is thermodynamics. People argue against it because it means that to lose weight, you either burn more or, drum roll, get in less. There is really no way out of physics, argue all you want.
- xboxnolifes 3y agoDynamic bounds doesn't mean no boundary. Maybe we viewed different communities, but I rarely came across people who thought calorie counting was 100% accurate. Human bodies are complex systems. But, calories in is still an upper bound, and calories out is still roughly accurate when tracking exercise. The big contention is the middle part.