CICO is absolutely true, that's a fact. All you have to do is look at the basic physics. If you reduce the mass of the Earth by 50% (without decreasing your distance from Earths center, a common trap people fall into when they're trying to lose weight), you will lose 50% of your weight.

Fad diets and "body mass" are, excuse my harsh language, B.S. Yes they can contribute to weight loss but they are going to let you lose 10 or 15 pounds tops. Reducing the weight of the Earth, on the other hand, can get you to lose essentially any amount of weight.

I love how you're committed to the bit now.

I truly find this thread so enjoyable. Just at my desk, smiling.

I've been coming to HN for the better part of a decade now, and this is already in my pantheon of Greatest Threads

Very glad I decided to come back to this thread and see what it turned into.

It's the same bit as the article itself, right?

Yes LOL

I know you know, I was trying to see if the other commenter does

What is an article ? Is that the top comment you see below the title when you open an HN post ?

What a mike drop comment.

I'm sorry, I went further down the thread, but it never got better than this.

I take full credit for encouraging this

The trick to giving up cigarattes is not lighting them, putting in your mouth and inhaling the smoke.

CICO certainly isnt false.

CICO is not false, and that is at most a +-10% variance. Food absorption is definitely is a part of Calories In. If you're worried that you're absorbing more or less calories versus other people, adjust your Calories In.

More likely, you are miscounting calories - a common mistake that people trying to lose weight make. For example, you'd be surprised how many calories are in that packet of creamy sauce that came with your fast food!

CICO is hard to stick to, because we are biologically wired to enjoy high calorie diets. As a result, lots of people have come up with justifications as to why it wasn't their fault that they failed to adhere to it.

The reality is that weight loss is simple. It's very difficult, especially if you're not willing to completely overhaul your diet and relationship with food as an American.

I would say that overhauling your diet/relationship with food is really not what it's about. It's about gathering the necessary energy, resources, etc. to start putting significant amounts of Earth's mass on an escape trajectory.

Don't eat breakfast and don't gorge on snacks before bedtime. That will be a huge benefit to most people that struggle. Now...getting the willpower to stick with it is another battle...

Well, if your going to help us all lose serious weight via CICO, I think having a big snack here and there is more than deserved.

After all, shooting any significant amount of the planet's crust into space is definitely hungry work...

Personally, I drink these 100 cal nutrition drinks for breakfast, or have a banana, and a sparkling water.

I've settled on

- Very lightweight breakfast (~100 cal)

- Light lunch (~700 cal)

- Heavy dinner (~1400 cal)

- Hard liquor only (tall single vodka/soda is my goto)

You'll notice that's over 2000~ a day. I also walk a lot, use an exercise bike instead of the couch when watching TV, and bicycle everywhere I can. On lazy days, I adjust downwards.

One thing I've done that's helped a lot is eating a low carb diet - I did keto, found it was incredible effective in losing weight, but kinda brutal. Instead, a low carb (non-ketosis) diet allows for some carbs but significantly reduces "empty calories".

> weight loss is simple. It's very difficult

Wait, which one is it? Simple or very difficult. Lol. I think you meant the calorie math is simple.

The opposite of simple is not difficult, it's complex. The opposite of difficult is not simple, it's easy.

Simplicity has to do with the effort needed to understand something, difficulty has to do with the effort needed to perform an action. It's not unusual that something that requires little effort to understand requires a great deal of effort to execute.

CICO is still true. While some foods can increase metabolism (the other reply suggested up to 10% - sounds reasonable to me), that is an increase in calories out. You can also increase metabolism by exercising, or some drugs.

What exactly does food have to do with CICO?

You're certainly not going to get very far at ejecting the earth's crust by burning food...

There's no reason why certain physically and calorifically dense foods (eg. Christmas pudding) couldn't necessarily be combined with oxidizers and fitted into solid rocket motors, which could then be used to launch significant chunks of the earth's crust out of its gravity well.

That’s not why I nicknamed my chili recipe Red Mercury.

There are different ways to measure calories. In a calorimeter you can measure all the calories in some stuff. In your body the amount of calories available to your body to digest is some amount less depending on what that stuff is. This can vary from foodstuff to foodstuff by (iirc) about 1-15%

So one could be more accurate and say Available CaloriesICO I guess

Unless you are an athlete or have some condition the simple CICO rule is accurate enough to be useful. Eat less, move more, and weight will be lost (or at least gains will slow).

None of this says anything about each person’s own life challenges that alter how difficult it is to do that.

I think that the energy density of rocket fuel is pretty easy to measure. If you're trying to do a food powered rocket it's true the energy measurements could get more complicated.

Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure modern calorimeters won't catch the energy available via nuclear reactions. What if our digestive tracts have evolved some as-of-yet undiscovered mechanism to tap into that energy, thereby invalidating all the "CICO" people's claims? Now that would be a real pickle.

Hark at Nibbler!

Wouldnt the undigested calories just get added into calories out?