Based on your description, I will venture a guess that you are not obese / grossly overweight. There is good evidence from various studies that obese/overweight people are not typically able to achieve this - usually their craving for food is far too powerful to just control simply by falling into a routine; or, the body sometimes finds other ways to adjust (the lipostat model).

This is really the problem with CICO - it is definitely correct in an abstract sense (weight doesn't come from thin air, and neither does food you eat magically disappear), but the factors controlling calories in and calories out are far more complex. Human behavior is far from being entirely rationally determined. Our choices (particularly in regards to food, exercise, and other basic needs) are to a great extent controlled by our metabolism, even though it often doesn't seem that way.

This probably explains why people rarely lose weight on the long term - you can allow yourself to be forced to eat less than your body thinks it needs for a while, and obviously you'll lose weight; but you will go right back up to your "normal" weight as soon as the forcing stops (program ends, willpower exhausted etc).

the type of food definitely matters. Carbs somehow 1) dont fill you up 2) spike your appetite. When I do low carb I feel so much less hungry on lower calories.

The deficit cant be too large, for me 500 is ok, but 1000 has me ravenous the next day.

Lots of obese people easily lose 2 pounds/week but as you get closer to a healthy weight it gets harder.

CICO was the first time I was able to actively lose weight in my entire life.

The general observation from most long-term clinical studies of obesity, as far as I understand, is that many types of diets work to reduce weight in the short term, but the weight almost invariably comes back after the intervention period ends (usually within 1 year or so after the initial weight loss). Conversely, people who are normal weight and are forced on a hyper-caloric diet for a limited time (say, a few weeks) will gain weight as expected, but will naturally lose it back over the next period without explicit effort.

This has generally been treated as a lifestyle issue, but another possibility gaining traction is that "obesity" is a disease in itself, one that tricks your organism is seeking to maintain excessive weight, by impacting your appetite, BMR, exercise habits etc; this will of course usually make people suffering from "obesity" (for lack of a better name) over-weight, but the weight can be controlled without curing the disease. Basically losing weight doesn't cure your "obesity", just like when you suffer of diabetes, controlling your diet keeps you healthy without curing your diabetes.

The possible causes of this "obesity" disease could well be diet related, and definitely refined sugars seem to be at least a major culprit.

Correct, temporary diets don't work. You have to change your lifestyle/diet permanently. This means after weight loss, you need to adhere to your new caloric intake baseline, which will be _lower_ than when you started. The more you lost, the lower it will be. This is hard, but not impossible to do. I can't speak for the obese because I was never there, but I was solidly overweight and proceeded to dump 40 lbs a decade ago, and never gained it back. Had I gone back to my pre loss diet it would have all come back.

NOTE: Before someone points it out, this is NOT incompatible with my parent comment. Going on a 500 cal/day cut and losing say 8 lbs will not lower your caloric baseline all that much, so temporary more or less works fine. If you use the same method to dump 40 lbs, you will need to readjust your baseline when done or you absolutely will gain it back as your caloric intake needs have been meaningfully reduced.

I have also done almost exactly this process, and it worked for years to regulate my weight. But then I hit a plateau (a high plateau, not a low one) where I was unable to drop weight no matter how low I cut my calories. I started at a range that I knew had worked in the past, and lowered it over the course of weeks, well past the point where I was miserable. I even tried more complicated things, like varying my intake, doing on weeks and off weeks, etc. Nothing worked.

I wasn't sure what was causing it, so I hypothesized that I was low on muscle mass, and took up weight training. Then I gained ten pounds.

I'm not sure what the upshot is here, but my guess is that this approach indiscriminately consumes lean muscle mass if you don't pair it with muscle-building exercises.

> But then I hit a plateau (a high plateau, not a low one) where I was unable to drop weight no matter how low I cut my calories.

Fat cells "remember" their metabolic environment when they were created--ie. they "remember" your weight and fight you when you try to reduce it. It's one of the problems with dieting to large weight losses.

It is somewhere around 3 years for a fat cell to die off and be replaced. You probably need to "hang out" at the plateau weight for a bit until the fat cells that remember you being heavier die off.

I thought you never lose fat cells, they only shrink? Got a citation for that assertion?

It's been a while. IIRC, it was from an article discussing the fact that radioactive fallout allows critical measurements of cellular lifetimes and that in about 25 years the fallout levels will be too low to do the experiments. I'll see if I can cough it up.

Sorry, medium link: https://prosetech.medium.com/what-nuclear-bombs-tell-us-abou...

> The carbon-14 fat-cell study also revealed that fat cells don’t last forever. Fat or thin, your body replaces roughly 10% of your fat cells every year. If you have more fat cells to begin with, you’ll have more fat cells to replace.

I can't seem to find the study talking about how fat cells remember the chemical environment when they are created.

Interesting, thanks for the links and info!

What I know from personal experience and learned a bit through knowledge osmosis (my better half studied ecotrophology/nutrition) is that many people underestimate how the body adapts to a "new normal" of caloric intake when this is well below basal metabolic rate/consumption.

On the other hand, the body also likes to get essential amino acids, if it does not get them from food, from the body's own muscle mass. This leads to a reduction of the own muscles and to a low basal metabolic rate.

I cannot judge whether one of the reasons is true, that would be the job of a good (!) nutritionist. Unfortunately, at least in Germany, the term is not protected and anyone, regardless of education, knowledge or experience may call himself so. Here there are really (especially on social networks) really many false claims.

The most likely possibility is that you were simply underestimating your calorie consumption. A lot of people forget to count the creamer in their coffee, the candies from the office break room, the little tastes while cooking dinner. Unless you have a severe metabolic disorder your body will only burn lean muscle mass as a last resort when you have exhausted glycogen stores and can't sustain the energy demand from fat alone. Some weight training is always a good idea, though.

I explicitly overshot the goal by more than 500 calories. Yes, there are always mistakes in estimation, but that isn't what was happening. Remember, I've done this before successfully.

A catabolic state induced by caloric deficit will absolutely consume lean muscle mass regardless of the availability of fat reserves. Muscle stimulus (via weight training, for example) and sufficient dietary protein can prevent this. But if you're just dieting without specifically controlling this, you will lose muscle along with the fat.

I've only used this to go up/down +-10 lbs seasonally (although I did permanently drop 40lbs on a one time calorie restriction diet about a decade ago, but not exactly this method). One thing to keep in mind (you probably thought of this already) is your calorie burn goes down as you lose weight. So a 160lbs person takes in less calories to maintain even weight than a 200lbs person, thus you may need to reassess baseline for longer cuts. Beyond that, no idea, and yes, everyone is individual.

I will say the whole time I have used this I have trained with weights extensively (5 days/week standard 3x sets per exercise body building routine). I do not know how much or little this plays into it, but definitely helps with the fat/muscle ratio (obviously).

I don’t see how the weight change is relevant in this. Muscle weighs more than fat, so your strength training caused you to build up some muscle, making you heavier. The valuable metric to track would be what % of your body is fat mass vs. muscle mass

For how long were you in a deficit before plateuing? There are some adaptations the body will make with regards to the thyroid that'll drastically lower your BMR

> Now, to lose weight simple subtract 500 calories per day from what you eat

I appreciate you are trying to be helpful. But most of what you said assumes a certain level or privilege (resources time/money/ableness) that the vast majority of people don't have. People working long hour jobs, or double jobs, or balancing kids/parent responsibilities. Often fast food is the only obvious option, and people aren't buying it until well into the throws of a low blood sugar event.

This coupled with metabolic/genetic differences can really muck up any given diet. What works of you doesn't just not work for everyone, it isn't even possible for everyone to follow.

That said, I know you are being helpful - my words or more to help those that might read them and be saying: "I did all that and it didn't work!"

> assumes a certain level or privilege (resources time/money/ableness) that the vast majority of people don't have

Unless you're talking about extremes (e.g. non first-world country, homeless, or disabled people etc) I'm going to call BS on this.

Everyone eats, and everyone has 24 hours in a day.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia you can buy a 800g can of tomatoes for $1.50, a 185g can of tuna for $1.60 and 1kg of rice for $1.40.

You could cook that up on a stove (with just a couple portions of rice) in about 30min, giving you two nutritious meals for (I'm going to be generous) let's say about $4. That's $2 per meal. 3 meals a day gives you a total of $42 for food per week.

So are you telling me that fast food costs less than $50 per week, that 23 hours isn't enough time left in the day to do everything else, or am I missing something here?

We once, out of pure interest calculated based on nutritional value, the cost of eating on different diets. We took the average discount market shopping cart, a conscious version, the same for a regular (so more pricy) supermarket and did a comparison with ecological as well as regional food sourcing.

Based on nutritional value (taking into account to fulfill the base needs as well as potentially overshooting on salt, fat, sugar and other things like Vitamin A just to name an example) we found that industrial food is always the more expensive solution.

Yes you can feed people on a very cheap industrial diet but they will miss essential nutrients as well as overshoot on salt, sugar, and others to detrimental health effects.

If you want a balanced diet mostly locally and seasonally produce (with added stuff like olive oil and such) cooked by yourself was way more cost efficient per nutritional value.

The problem is, that it takes time to learn this, especially to learn this from experience. Also time to relearn how food really tastes without added aroma and stuff. Time to learn how to cook efficiently and with variation. And so on. We don't learn this anymore. Not from our parents, nor otherwise. But the advertising tells us how easy it is to just open a fully ready meal, pop it in the microwave and be done in 3 minutes.

Instead of enjoying the quality of preparing food together as a family/couple. Spending time, experiencing the smell of fresh cut food, herbs and so on. We nowadays equivalent cooking to a chore.

I meant resource in the form of time/money/education/motivation.

If it were as simple as you say, then why (in Australia) is your minimum wage so high? So 2 hours of work on minimum wage can cover a week of food? And you are calling BS on what I said? Okay.

Fair point, and and definitely some truth to that. I almost added "This works for me, your mileage may vary" disclaimer.

I will say that what I said above is _relative_, so if you go out for fast food "more than you should" than that becomes your baseline. Anything can be a baseline, even if not a healthy one.

I also know at least one person who has tried it and swears up and down it just doesn't work for them.

> Often fast food is the only obvious option

Ironically fast food often has some of the most easily available calories and macronutrient ratio. Working out the calories and macro for a home-made meal can be much more time-consuming

Sure fast food is convenient if you have little time, but people have survived poverty and mental health issues long before it.