Actually barring some metabolic disorder, calories in calories out IS correct. Not only is it correct, I find that bodies are quite mechanical in that nature. I wrote about my experience losing weight and gaining abs a couple of years ago (complete with statistical analyses of what matters and what does not): http://blog.chewxy.com/2015/12/02/holy-crap-ive-got-abs/#350...

I've since maintained (and gained more visible abs :D ) with careful tracking on MyFitnessPal. I also find that if I do not track and weigh the food I eat (I get lazy and just "eyeball" the weight), I very rapidly get out of practice and put on weight. It turns out humans are terrible measuring tools.

And the best part is this doesn't only work for me. Everyone I know who has followed me into methodically measuring food (sample size of 6 friends, and a couple has PCOS and one has hypothyroidism but is taking pills) has had their data analysed by me and the results agree with one another - CICO IS true. I should really write up the analyses one fine day.

the "calories in, calories out" thing is not wrong at all. not "believing" in it is just like disregarding global warming or evolution.

of course it's not a simple addition. age, genetics and a lot of other factors come in.

what is dangerously wrong is thinking that changing your calorie intake is easy. it may be very difficult to gain or lose weight depending on which side you are, because changing the way you eat durably is freaking difficult.

I'm surprised no-one (including OP) is talking about the gut microbiome and how the variations in that can affect the absorption of calories. Twins can have very different results with the same "calories in / calories out" due to differences in the microbiome. This seems like a ripe opportunity.

It just changes the multiplier, the rule stays the same.

Depends how you measure "calories out". Are you measuring excreta or exercise or both?

> This "calories in, calories out" idea is dangerously wrong.

You don't see a lot of overweight people in famine prone areas. Calories out - calories in = your weight curve. That's the easy part for losing weight.

Sport does not burn a lot of calories. So it is better to cut on the intake. Which is the hard part: food can be a comfort drug which is easily available. Worse when your entourage is full of overweight people as crab mentality can set-in and they'll try to sabotage your weight loss.

This, unfortunately, is not true. Unfortunate cause I think great things would happen if it were that easy. It's also super simple to understand, which is at least part of why people cling to it so tightly.

There is a huge amount of scientific literature (see summaries by Gary taubes, for example) that show that calorie counting is not the whole picture when it comes to health or obesity. It's also definitely not a golden rule.

I'd really like to see people who eat less than what they use for the day every day and still gain body weight.

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic, but here is one reference: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-you-fa...

Reference which is about a future study. Do you have a link to its results?

Hey, sorry I do not, but it was the first thing I saw with Gary Taubes' name on it so I figured it would probably be good. He has a few books out, and other articles online, that I recommend looking up (that does, in fact, have examples of studies that indicate that factors other than calories play a very important role in weight control)

Relevant short video from the Documentary "FatHead" that talks a little bit about what Gary Taubes is talking about in his book. The effects of carb/sugar and the insulin response that causes fat storage. https://youtu.be/mNYlIcXynwE

Not to say it's not a useful diet method. Just that there are a lot of factors that go into "calories out"-- what calories are being used for energy and what are stored as fat. How fast are you burning calories? Hormones are a big part of that. You can see this very clearly in hyper/hypo thyroid patients.

Last time I checked hormones were around the 400 calories per day level. Which is less than 2 small hamburgers.

Hormones only can not explain the percentage of overweight people in western countries. 50% of the population does not have hormones fucked up enough to not lose weight.

People in famine prone areas are considerably more sicker and live shorter (even when they don't die from famine) then western overweight people. Being overweight is healthier then living there.

Also, famine makes you passive, tired and well, less bright. There is a reason why famine prone areas dont produce tech hubs and nobel prize winners.

But you don't see a lot of overweight people there. Even if they don't do anything so don't use a lot of energy I guess calories in are less than calories out so that's why they can't store any fat.

There are other health problems due to this "extreme diet" but being overweight is not one. So if you want to lose weight do like them and eat less than what your body needs.

This is mostly due to malnutrition and not calorie restriction as far as I know. Calorie restriction has many positive health effects. Even then, comparing overweight people to famine struck people is an unfair comparison, it's like comparing a morbidly obese person to someone who is just underweight.

Of course it's more complicated than this, but in terms of a general rule calories in/out is pretty darn accurate. Saying it is 'dangerously wrong', is dangerously wrong.

It's true, but in an unhelpful way. We've been telling fat people to eat fewer calories for many years, and we're not seeing fewer fat people.

It reduces a complex problem into a simplistic slogan that's then used by many people to hate and judge fat people. "You're fat, just eat less stupid fatty".

It ignores gut microbiome. Here's a story about a bug that makes it harder to gain weight: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22458428 and another bit of research about people who are obese: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05...

It ignores "satiety". It ignores all the psycho-social stuff going on around food.

It ignores changed metabolic pathways (one of the reasons people who take antipsychotic medications are overweight is because of the changes to their metabolism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC487012/)

> we're not seeing fewer fat people

Yeah, because they mostly don't do it.

The things you're focusing on are _mostly_ micro and not macro, for 99.999% of obese individuals, CICO would help them lose weight. There are exceptions to every rule tho.

> CICO would help them lose weight

The whole point is that it doesn't help them lose weight because it's unsustainable. Fat people can't manage to do that for more than a few weeks.

The rigid focus on the least useful fact (CICO) means that you're failing to give any useful, usable, information.

>Fat people can't manage to do that for more than a few weeks.

That's the problem. Lack of self control. Generally a result of psychological issues such as comfort eating or straight up food addiction. Doesn't change the fact that if those people were disciplined enough, they could still become healthy.

No, that is the basis of weight loss. Focus should be on introducing better eating habits (better as in lower calories and better macronutrient composition), education and finding the reason behind their overeating habits since it's usually psychological one.

Fact: fat people eat too much. Another fact: eating less when overweight can be very difficult.

Yet another fact: altering the composition of calories, more protein and fewer carbs, seems to help overweight people eat less and/or burn more calories.

You're right, it does seem unhelpful (just eat/smoke/<insert vice> less!).

What is the proposed alternative though? Most people need a general rule they can follow to help them (read: can't afford a nutritionist/doctor). If it's a willpower issue, then we need to solve that, but just saying "Oh eating less won't help me" is just as bad.

We've been telling people lots of things and haven't seen [insert expected improvement from awareness campaign].

The matter of fact is that telling people about things they do wrong tends to not be very effective in general. It's not an indictment of a particular topic.

Can you expand on how the idea is wrong? Because it's not.

"Dangerously wrong" may be incorrect, but it tends to ignore things like thermic effects of food sources, intake vs. absorption, nutrient timing, and efficient gut microbes.

Every time someone on Reddit posts their weight loss progress pictures, people ask how they did it.

They ALWAYS say they did through calorie restriction.

Alternative physics.

Either thermodynamics is wrong, or you are undisciplined. Which do you think is more likely?

How much calories your body extracts from food and subsequently stores is not a constant. The thermodynamics argument basically ignores how human body works, but hey, it is simple.

No one is saying calorie intake should be constant.

Imagine we study you for a year. We put you in a box, we control your food intake; we strictly monitor the amount of exercise you get.

The first six months you stay the weight you are now. We then introduce a single change: we put you on antipsychotic medication. Nothing else changes: you're eating the same type of food and in the same quantities.

You will gain weight.

Is that because thermodynamics is broken? No.

Is it because you're "undisciplined"? No.

Is it because the antipsychotic medication is full of delicious calories? No.

It's because your carbohydrate pathwathway has been altered, and you now process carbs differently to how you used to.

So your calories out is modified. Not sure what you're trying to disprove.

Don't worry about carbohydrate pathways, if you gain weight, then adapt your food intake (or excercise).

Bodybuilders and martial artists do this all the time.

Dopamine antagonists shift patterns toward favoring fat storage over muscle building/maintenance. They don't just reduce the amount of calories burned, they screw up the low-level regulatory mechanisms. AFAIK you basically have to starve yourself to bring blood sugar down to normal levels, and of course that's unsustainable.

The fact that your body can change the number of calories it burn disproves nothing. For example, the more weight you lose the fewer calories you burn, thus your calorie intake must lower to sustain the same deficit.