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youve found an extremely bizarre edge case where CICO doesnt perfectly hold and you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle that if you ea

youve found an extremely bizarre edge case where CICO doesnt perfectly hold and you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle that if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat?

ravenstine 3y ago
It may be an extreme case, but it's no more an edge case than the millions who drop weight eating a vegan diet or a high fat diet. By definition, there is no edge case for the human body because nobody designed it. It developed with pressures to encourage it to handle foreign substances in different ways. There's no programmer who made the human but left out the part of efficiently metabolizing walnuts as a form of oversight. > you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle Yes, it completely defeats the general principle, and if it didn't then those insisting on CICO would reply with more than "how can you actually believe what I don't believe?" > if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat? If it was simple as that, then we wouldn't have glycogen stores because... why bother when anything not immediately oxidized turns to fat! If it's as simple as that, protein wouldn't ever be used to maintain lean mass but would be all converted to glucose and then into fat by the liver (not at all efficient). If it's as simple as that, then we would never shit. Don't believe me? I challenge you to collect your stool, dry it out, and light it on fire. Look – calories!
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  youre being pedantic about a 5-10% calorie spread here or there when 90% of people are overeating at a magnitude of 50-200%. everything you're talking about is insignificant for the average person.
  - xscott 3y ago
    You're being really sloppy with your numbers too. If someone ate 200% more than what they need on average, they'd be putting on 300 or 400 pounds per year. That's like a pound a day, and it's not what happens to most people. Even at 50% over eating, that's about 50 pounds per year, and people don't sustain that either. Instead, many people past a certain age seem to maintain a weight that's way too high (obese), but not still going up quickly. I think you should adjust your numbers to fit the facts and then reconsider which details are actually important.
    - anthonypasq 3y ago
      you dont just keep gaining weight into infinity if you eat 6000 calories a day instead of 2000. use your brain please
      - xscott 3y ago
        Heh, you're really unpleasant. Pick your BMR calculator of choice, but 6000 calories a day corresponds to about 850-1100 pounds. There are very few people that heavy. You should use your brain to learn some math, quit being a jack ass, admit when you're wrong, and learn from your mistakes instead of hiding them with insults.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    Uh... what are you talking about? Yeah, of course the inaccuracy of calories isn't important to the 90% whom... aren't counting calories or aren't dieting. Why you thought this was a valid point to make escapes me. 10 percent is not trivial if someone is trying to lose weight by counting calories while eating foods that are obesogenic. And yes, many people do this specifically because body fat comes down to a simple equation. Practically everyone I know whom has taken the calorie-counting approach has done so with the idea that they can still eat pasta and other crap. It's extremely common. Also, given that the calorie counts on packaged food can be off by as much as 20%, and that people at home are getting their TDEE from either calculators or fitness watches that estimate their TDEE, people doing CICO are at high risk for overeating and not losing body fat at a satisfactory rate. Moreover, if they're eating crap, they may be losing more weight in muscle than desired because the human body does not care about thermodynamics. Yes, if a meal contains 150-300 "calories" than is suggested then that's a setback, especially for those using CICO as a way to give themselves permission to keep eating obesogenic crap. Someone can drive a car while stepping on both the gas and the brakes at the same time... buy why? Unless a person is weighing their food, calories are an imperfect measure that only measure one thing, which is heat. Calories tell you nothing about how metabolized substrates are being delegated. Is it being used immediately, or stored in glycogen, or stored in fat, or pooped out? Who knows! Calories will never tell you that. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that we're trying to lose weight by eating no more than our BMR of 1650 calories per day and doing some exercise to put us into what some would call a "calorie deficit." If we divide 1650 calories into 3 meals, each meal would be around 550 calories. However, in the worst case that the calorie estimate for these meals is off by 20%, then each meal contains 110 extra calories, putting our calorie intake 330 calories over our target. Ok, that's fine. We'll just run those calories off at the gym, right? If we use a MET calculator, this would reveal that we'd have to run for around 35 minutes to actually oxidize enough food to produce 330 calories of heat. But what has actually happened here? Since glucose metabolism is prioritized, a significant amount of those calories won't have been produced by fat oxidation. If the food we're eating put our RQ at 1.0 or greater, such as if we're eating pasta and toquitoes, that puts us at greater risk of burning carbs but not fat. This isn't a bad thing per se, since some of those carbs might have been otherwise stored as fat. But after 35 minutes of intense running, how much have we really achieved if we are trying to lose body fat? Not much unless we run much longer than 35 minutes every day. Most people simply don't keep up this kind of routine for very long. On the other hand, perhaps we end up undereating, or we decide to eat even less than we were before. This can work because something's gotta give and fat mass will continually be accessed and used. However, we would likely be at risk for muscle loss. Without enough protein, muscle is difficult to hold on to. If we reach a point where our glycogen stores are chronically exhausted, then glucose has to come from somewhere, and if it's satisfied by exogenous carbohydrates then it's gotta come from breaking down muscle through gluconeogenesis. We'll lose weight in the long run, but at what cost? Even if protein is factored in to meals, it still may not be enough if we're not eating as many calories as we thought we were. If you think what I'm saying is trivial, then tell that to all the researchers you seem to think are wasting their time using calorimeters and metabolic carts. Some of us, rather than counting calories in perpetuity, choose non-obesogenic diets that make it extremely difficult to overeat but are satisfying and provide enough nutrients to maintain and build lean mass. Just because someone can count calories and lose weight doesn't mean that someone who doesn't count calories and consumes more "calories" than their TDEE will necessarily gain body fat. Again, nobody is saying that people can't lose weight counting calories. The issue is that it doesn't work well for everyone and there are alternatives that work in spite of it. It's only useful in the context that it leads you to undereating such that you're losing more mass than you're taking in, which may or may not actually happen.

ravenstine 3y ago

It may be an extreme case, but it's no more an edge case than the millions who drop weight eating a vegan diet or a high fat diet. By definition, there is no edge case for the human body because nobody designed it. It developed with pressures to encourage it to handle foreign substances in different ways. There's no programmer who made the human but left out the part of efficiently metabolizing walnuts as a form of oversight. > you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle Yes, it completely defeats the general principle, and if it didn't then those insisting on CICO would reply with more than "how can you actually believe what I don't believe?" > if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat? If it was simple as that, then we wouldn't have glycogen stores because... why bother when anything not immediately oxidized turns to fat! If it's as simple as that, protein wouldn't ever be used to maintain lean mass but would be all converted to glucose and then into fat by the liver (not at all efficient). If it's as simple as that, then we would never shit. Don't believe me? I challenge you to collect your stool, dry it out, and light it on fire. Look – calories!

anthonypasq 3y ago
youre being pedantic about a 5-10% calorie spread here or there when 90% of people are overeating at a magnitude of 50-200%. everything you're talking about is insignificant for the average person.
- xscott 3y ago
  You're being really sloppy with your numbers too. If someone ate 200% more than what they need on average, they'd be putting on 300 or 400 pounds per year. That's like a pound a day, and it's not what happens to most people. Even at 50% over eating, that's about 50 pounds per year, and people don't sustain that either. Instead, many people past a certain age seem to maintain a weight that's way too high (obese), but not still going up quickly. I think you should adjust your numbers to fit the facts and then reconsider which details are actually important.
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    you dont just keep gaining weight into infinity if you eat 6000 calories a day instead of 2000. use your brain please
    - xscott 3y ago
      Heh, you're really unpleasant. Pick your BMR calculator of choice, but 6000 calories a day corresponds to about 850-1100 pounds. There are very few people that heavy. You should use your brain to learn some math, quit being a jack ass, admit when you're wrong, and learn from your mistakes instead of hiding them with insults.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Uh... what are you talking about? Yeah, of course the inaccuracy of calories isn't important to the 90% whom... aren't counting calories or aren't dieting. Why you thought this was a valid point to make escapes me. 10 percent is not trivial if someone is trying to lose weight by counting calories while eating foods that are obesogenic. And yes, many people do this specifically because body fat comes down to a simple equation. Practically everyone I know whom has taken the calorie-counting approach has done so with the idea that they can still eat pasta and other crap. It's extremely common. Also, given that the calorie counts on packaged food can be off by as much as 20%, and that people at home are getting their TDEE from either calculators or fitness watches that estimate their TDEE, people doing CICO are at high risk for overeating and not losing body fat at a satisfactory rate. Moreover, if they're eating crap, they may be losing more weight in muscle than desired because the human body does not care about thermodynamics. Yes, if a meal contains 150-300 "calories" than is suggested then that's a setback, especially for those using CICO as a way to give themselves permission to keep eating obesogenic crap. Someone can drive a car while stepping on both the gas and the brakes at the same time... buy why? Unless a person is weighing their food, calories are an imperfect measure that only measure one thing, which is heat. Calories tell you nothing about how metabolized substrates are being delegated. Is it being used immediately, or stored in glycogen, or stored in fat, or pooped out? Who knows! Calories will never tell you that. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that we're trying to lose weight by eating no more than our BMR of 1650 calories per day and doing some exercise to put us into what some would call a "calorie deficit." If we divide 1650 calories into 3 meals, each meal would be around 550 calories. However, in the worst case that the calorie estimate for these meals is off by 20%, then each meal contains 110 extra calories, putting our calorie intake 330 calories over our target. Ok, that's fine. We'll just run those calories off at the gym, right? If we use a MET calculator, this would reveal that we'd have to run for around 35 minutes to actually oxidize enough food to produce 330 calories of heat. But what has actually happened here? Since glucose metabolism is prioritized, a significant amount of those calories won't have been produced by fat oxidation. If the food we're eating put our RQ at 1.0 or greater, such as if we're eating pasta and toquitoes, that puts us at greater risk of burning carbs but not fat. This isn't a bad thing per se, since some of those carbs might have been otherwise stored as fat. But after 35 minutes of intense running, how much have we really achieved if we are trying to lose body fat? Not much unless we run much longer than 35 minutes every day. Most people simply don't keep up this kind of routine for very long. On the other hand, perhaps we end up undereating, or we decide to eat even less than we were before. This can work because something's gotta give and fat mass will continually be accessed and used. However, we would likely be at risk for muscle loss. Without enough protein, muscle is difficult to hold on to. If we reach a point where our glycogen stores are chronically exhausted, then glucose has to come from somewhere, and if it's satisfied by exogenous carbohydrates then it's gotta come from breaking down muscle through gluconeogenesis. We'll lose weight in the long run, but at what cost? Even if protein is factored in to meals, it still may not be enough if we're not eating as many calories as we thought we were. If you think what I'm saying is trivial, then tell that to all the researchers you seem to think are wasting their time using calorimeters and metabolic carts. Some of us, rather than counting calories in perpetuity, choose non-obesogenic diets that make it extremely difficult to overeat but are satisfying and provide enough nutrients to maintain and build lean mass. Just because someone can count calories and lose weight doesn't mean that someone who doesn't count calories and consumes more "calories" than their TDEE will necessarily gain body fat. Again, nobody is saying that people can't lose weight counting calories. The issue is that it doesn't work well for everyone and there are alternatives that work in spite of it. It's only useful in the context that it leads you to undereating such that you're losing more mass than you're taking in, which may or may not actually happen.