11 Comments

I've done various N=1s myself to prove/disprove CICO (as is usually told at least) and yeah, I call BS on CICO these days as what the data said vs what my scale and body showed was vastly different, so clearly there's more to it than that, at least for me on an individual level.

Try eating 10Kcal daily of junk food for a week, only to rapidly lose a ton of weight the next week, while still eating ad-lib, just ketogenic, and actually ending up weighing LESS than before the experiment, until it finally equalizes a few weeks later to what it previously was.

Likewise, when I eat a lot, as I do these days, my body burns hot like a furnace, to the point where I can bike comfortably in a tank top and short shorts in negative degree Celsius, and I am guessing that's part of the equation of why I can eat so much yet not become rapidly obese.

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Yea I think CICO doesn't mean what people think it means.. that's why it's always true but also never true ;) I am planning on publishing a post on this tomorrow. I hope to add something to the conversation there, let me know what you think.

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Looking forward to it! ^^

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One is often encouraged not to believe their own eyes if it doesn't line up with cookie cutter calorie math, as if it were even possible for the layperson to properly record either side of the equation. And the standard defense if CICO doesn't seem to work for you is "you must be doing it wrong". Could be. But it's also not as easy as it looks on paper, the body isn't a combustion engine.

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Yes CICO and "Food is delicious" aren't actionable, but I am not sure why you have to frame them as wrong or bad or be dismissive of the idea ("CICO bots"). Your diet proves both of these to be true and adds an actionable layer on top. You found a delicious (to you) food and used it to restrict caloric intake so you lost weight. This is great. Why do you have to frame it as going against the scientific consensus on this subject? That distracts from your actual findings.

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I did not use it to restrict caloric intake. I have a post on this coming up where I address why CICO doesn't need to be proven right, it's a tautology. It is nothing but an accounting entity.

In my opinion a lot of people shout CICO! at the top of their lungs and drown out any actual, practical, actionable diet advice or experimentation. So it's actively harmful.

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By my estimates you did consume what is below a stasis level of calories. Based on what I can see of what you ate, you consumed less than 2000 calories per day (and likely much fewer but i'll round up). For your size and being male thats enough to reduce your weight. Am I totally wrong on the calories consumed?

1/3 lb ground beef is about 500 calories

8 oz of heavy cream is 800

So that 1300 calories. The veggies and tomato sauce are negligible (maybe 100 cals). Are there significant sources I am missing?

Yes CICO is not actionable. I just object to the framing that this experiment goes against scientific consensus. Any qualified medical professional with dietary training (like a register dietician) will work with a patient to find a diet that works to sustain a reduction in calories while still being satiating. I will admit a doctor or RN isn't going to come up with this specific diet and they likely should experiment more with innovative diet (like this one!).

I look forward to the forth coming post.

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I put up the macros in this post:

https://exfatloss.substack.com/p/ex150-diet-macros-2294kcal-88-fat

Seems to be around 2,300kcal/day. Though since the cream is ad libitum it's not exactly those amounts. It is by definition below stasis because I am losing weight :)

My beef (ha!) is mainly with the sleight of hand that often happens in people's mind.

CICO person: CICO is true?

Me: Yes.

CICO person: AHA! So you restricted your calories!

Me: No.

CICO person: But you said CICO is true?!

Me: Yes but what you said doesn't follow. I can eat more calories than I did previously and yet INCREASE my deficit.

CICO person: Why do you hate science?!

:D

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So can't speak for the author directly, but I'm currently attempting a similar diet.

It's really easy to get lost in semantics, in a raw physics sense CICO is of course true, energy has to go somewhere. But the most common interpretation of that is "Eat Less, Move More" which the overwhelming amount of long term studies and anecdotal experience strongly implies doesn't work.

(If the standard advice worked long term, we wouldn't be having this conversation around weight loss)

Given what I've said above. I'd push back on the idea that restricting calories is why this diet is working. Restricting calories implies purposely not eating enough, like many other diets.

But as you can read in the blog it is not a low calorie diet, but preforms better than when he was purposely trying to create a deficit though restriction and exercise. How can that be possible ? The obvious answer is the diet is effecting energy out: likely though thermogenesis.

(Which DNP proves is a viable weight loss strategy, at least when using drugs)

Pure speculation, but the author mentioned he's been doing a lot of walking. So generally as you loose weight via cutting calories your body compensates and burns less calories exercising though leptin signalling (https://www.jci.org/articles/view/25977)

So if leptin isn't being decreased because calories are still high you can keep the higher energy expenditure even while weighing less. It's possible that energy expenditure walking is even higher than baseline.

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Exactly my experience, yes! Perfect summary.

CICO is true by definition. But it does not imply "Eat less, move more => fat loss."

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CICO also often implies a level of precision that is just not realistic. If you really want to be exact you'd have to measure all the inputs, knowing that human metabolism works differently than just burning the food and measuring the energy output, and then you'd have to measure all the outputs as well, e.g. the carbon you breathe out, the protein turnover and then very likely also everything that's excreted - after all if it's still possibly to extract energy from poop...

Just weighing everything and putting it into an app might give you an okay estimate of calories in, but your really have to weigh everything (so eating anything not prepared by yourself or someone trusted is out). Food labels are often inaccurate and as a natural product there is always variability (e.g. milk and cream is sold here with "at least X% fat", not the precise amount).

Then going to calories out, I've heard it said that fitness trackers are usually 40-60% off on that as well as measured against exercise in a lab environment - which also doesn't tell you which substrate the measured carbon is coming from.

Any reasonable caloric deficit would already be well within the margin of error and many of the involved variables can change quite a lot day to day.

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