The body is not closed system if it would be perfect close system then eating once a day or once per week would have the same effect spreading that over the day. The cells do not use calories. They use ATP, converted different pathways such as glucose, fatty acids, ketones and oxygen.

Calories are measured by burning them, so that means we are using two different measurements that may overlap but are not compatible.

In the Calories model would it be possible to explain why people with diabetics type 1, that don't use insulin stay thin even though they would eat massive amounts?

https://www.everydayhealth.com/eating-disorders/diabulimia/

Eating once a day indeed has nearly the same effect. Once a week is not possible due to physical limits of processing that volume of food.

It's easy to explain your example with diabetics: very simply insulin is what allow muscle to use glucose, but also what stop the body from using its fat reserves. From your link:

> Desperate to stop its cells from starving, her body had released hormones that, in turn, released byproducts called ketones that turned her blood acidic. If she had not been rushed to the emergency room, she would have died.

This is similar to the effect of a ketogenic diet, when you avoid eating carbs to avoid insulin secretion. Diabetics type 1 don't produce insulin, so they just skip insulin shoots to stay in that "mode" but it has obviously other serious health side-effects for them as discussed in that article.

I never said individuals were the same and converted calories with the same efficiency. Hence why there is a lot of variation in TDEE. But once you have figured the TDEE for an individual, calorie counting becomes very accurate. Just from the fitness community there is an overwhelming body of research and evidence: https://sci-fit.net/bulking-deficit-gaining/. If you are in calorie deficit, you lose weight. If you are in a surplus, you gain.

Eating once a day does not have the same effect on your body as spreading the food into multiple portions. And that has different effect then eating the same amount constantly.

If you will eat once a week, you will dispose of calories you did not absorbed. And you will be starwing by the end of the week, making you passive, weak and tired.

yup, Someone might even die because of refeeding syndrome.[0]

Continuing on your point the body is there not a closed system as defined as:

> In a closed system, no mass may be transferred in or out of the system boundaries. The system always contains the same amount of matter, but (sensible) heat and (boundary) work can be exchanged across the boundary of the system. Whether a system can exchange heat, work, or both is dependent on the property of its boundary. [1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_system

The question how can explain why people without insulin are able to stay thin, while eating massive amounts of calories with the CICO model. Because that case is breaking the model.

Since your stating that eating once a day is the same as eating once a day. Would you have any sources for that claim?

Did you know there is allot of research going into the effects of intermittent fasting[0]?

If you would search for OMAD (one meal a day) on google or reddit you would see that that statement does not hold. There are many changes because blood sugar will stay stable during the day. Nor will there be insulin spikes. There are health startups starting just for stable glucose levels and the health benefits by using continuous glucose monitors[1].

They already attracted many from the health and longevity communities. It's also possible not to use their product by just eating once a day.

[0]https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi... [1]https://www.levelshealth.com/

>The question how do we explain why people without insulin are able to stay thin, while eating massive amounts of calories with the CICO model. Because that case is breaking the model.

To my knowledge this doesn't break the CICO model. The disease (e.g. type 1 diabetes) reduces or eliminates production of insulin which triggers metabolism of glucose. Since you're metabolizing less (or no) glucose, you're not gaining as much energy and passing most all that out through waste.

If you have a disease you need to consider that your energy expenditure isn't inherently going to be the same as studies estimating from healthy individuals. This doesn't break the model, it just means your intake and expenditure are different than most healthy individuals. People with hypothyroidism have similar issues. Is the CICO model great for these people? If you account for such factors the underlying principles should hold true.

You just proved his point. If two people eat 10,000 calories and the one with type 1 diabetes is passing most of it as waste but the other person is storing that in the form of glucose and fat, then CICO is broken in that example. But like you say, account for such factors and the principles hold true; how do we know there aren't factors yet to be discovered?

I find this interpretation of “calories in” very uncharitable. We certainly don't argue over whether eating coal makes one fat. Coal has lots of calories, but we're interested in metabolically available ones. If type 1 diabetes people cannot metabolize glucose, then it doesn't count as in.

They do have glucose metabolism[0], but that is the issue with CICO model already you have to start making extra rules about what is digestable and what is not. Calories doesn't state that all. Offcourse it wouldn't because the Calories concept was made for steam engines in 1800's.[1] Not that is matter from when it is. But maybe it's time for new ideas that do explain that conundrum of those type 1 diabetics. The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity[2] does have explanation.

[0]https://www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/insulin-effects-o...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie

[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/

> extra rules about what is digestable and what is not. Calories doesn't state that all.

I wouldn't call those rules “extra”. After all, we're talking about human metabolism and what is digestible or not is central. The calories we're talking about under this topic has nothing to do with steam engines, except that both steam engines and humans take some input, called calories.

I don't see any conundrum with type 1 diabetes. They might have a different metabolism that counts differently which calories are in.

By the way, do you have a reference for this claim of yours [0]:

> people without insulin are able to stay thin, while eating massive amounts of calories

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34518288

So how do we calculate Calories In and Out according to you? Becausr it sounds like that we have to deal with real world that really complex digestion, hormones, gut biome. You just start adding and subtracting numbers.

At that moment CICO dies, because you won't be able to measure anything and just have black box which you give whatever number makes sense in the end.

Not that it matters because the cells in human body use ATP not calories. As such calories are at best a proxy for how much food.

But that is issue with CICO, it's like magic box and we only have to count IN, as much at what makes the calculation correct later on, also with OUT. That is not very scientific. Because we are unable to reproduce anything.

I have posted the article before, have you read it? https://www.everydayhealth.com/eating-disorders/diabulimia/

You have several misunderstandings of basic science.

"Calories" are simply a unit of energy. The energy released by the utilization of ATP can be measured in any unit of measure you like for energy. It won't change the fact that the unit can be calories.

This is like arguing about Celsius vs some other unit.

Likewise, the CICO model has been replicated over and over again in high quality studies that don't rely on self-reported intake. And this model and information are used by thousands of people every year to manipulate their bodyweight and composition at will in sports like bodybuilding or ones with weight classes.

Indeed, treating the body as a black box makes this even easier as tracking caloric intake and your bodyweight is sufficient to do this and apps like Macrofactor do all the math for you.

> "This idea of 'a calorie in and a calorie out' when it comes to weight loss is not only antiquated, it's just wrong,"[0] Link from havard.

You are under the incorrect understanding that human body is closed system. Food doesn't need to be digested and what is digested doesn't need to be stored in fat cells.

Question if you would eat all the food once a week would it have the same effect? Because in a closed system it would, you can fuel the car little by little each day or fill the whole tank. But after one week of fasting they body will respond much different, a person can even die of even trying that scenario [1]

Did anyone lose 5 kilo by switching to a light product?

But the issue at hand was why people without insulin can eat massive amounts of food but won't gain any weight? Can't explain that with CICO, you can with other models[2].

> "Calories" are simply a unit of energy. The energy released by the utilization of ATP can be measured in any unit of measure you like for energy. It won't change the fact that the unit can be calories.

This statement is not correct, Calories is burning food. While metabolism goes through absolutely complex system. Kerb cycle, where glucose, ketones, fatty-acids and oxygen are turned in ATP, Link is only 1 small part and doesn't even cover how food was digested before that, by the gut biom, stomach acids. [3]

Human metabolism is too complex to discuss here in the comments.

[0]https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome

[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle

I have a literal degree in biology and have been reading about physiology, health and fitness, and related topics for well over a decade.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

This is textbook level stuff and you clearly haven't read a single one. Your wiki level understanding is missing the forest for the chlorophyll.

Would it be possible to at least look at the sources and argue against them? A appeal to authority, and an Ad hominem won't help the discussion along.

Would you bother reading the textbooks worth of information I've consumed first?

You aren't entitled to another person's time and effort when you've decided your googling is in any way comparable to literal years of study in environments where you actually get feedback on your understanding.

Would it be possible to explain with the CICO model how people without insulin can eat massive amounts without gaining weight?`

There is no reason for those Ad hominem attacks.

These aren't ad hominem attacks.

I explained to you that you have fundamental misunderstandings so vast in scope that it would take several hours to explain them to you. This criticism was rooted in years of education and research that can't be compressed into a single comment.

If you google things to confirm your worldview, you will get the evidence you wish.

If you wish to see how those who successfully manipulate their body composition at will down to the pound, you would look to those populations who do so like bodybuilders and strength athletes and those who compete in weight classes.

And if you wished to have the ability to discern when an argument is irrelevant or outright wrong, to understand the most basic elements of physiology and physics and chemistry, you would put in the time to read the textbooks which are explicitly designed to convey this information to you in a comprehensive way designed for understanding rather than relying on university PR pieces.

A model being difficult or tedious to quantify doesn't make it false. And, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

> But that is issue with CICO, it's like magic box and we only have to count IN, as much at what makes the calculation correct later on, also with OUT. That is not very scientific.

The whole physics is a magic box. We find qualities of materials after we measure them, because that's how the model is constructed.

Let's say that I have a model called mass in volume out (MIVO). It states that mass of a liquid predicts its volume. We measure how much volume a certain amount of water takes, vary the amount, see if the model works, and it does. But a MIVO-denier is not happy, because our measurements with water doesn't reproduce with mercury. Well, duh, because they have different densities. MIVO-denier is still not satisfied, because now they have to go through the tedious task of finding the density of the material they have to work with before being able to apply the model. Furthermore, they have to keep the temperature constant, not mix liquids, etc. Yet, MIVO works regardless of how difficult it is to quantify, measure, or use.

PS: Thanks for the reference. I had missed it.

> A model being difficult or tedious to quantify doesn't make it false. And, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Here is a link from Harvard saying to stop counting calories[0]. Here is another link from Havard[1] going over the contestants of the biggest loser and how they are doing now.

There is new model The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity[2] which has explanation that does explain the edge cases CICO is missing.

But calories are measuring food, and at the moment there is no better way to have overview of how much across different types of food. But CICO itself doesn't help with long term weight loss.

[0]https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting...

[1]https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/lessons-...

[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/

I understand that by quoting my reply on usefulness, you claim that “calories in, calories out” model is not useful. For the model to not be useful, one should prove that people gain weight while consuming a caloric deficit, or that people lose weight while consuming a caloric surplus.

I don't see how these references show that. They are irrelevant to our discussion. The first Harvard piece is bullshit, written for those feel-good types who don't want to put in the effort of losing weight. The second one has nothing to do with “calories in, calories out”. It just states some observation on contestants. The paper has “calories in, calories out” in the title, yet doesn't talk about the model at all. It talks about something else, called conventional model.

Nowhere in “calories in, calories out” I understand that it is easy to create deficit by eating junk food or that one can go back to their old lifestyle once they have lost weight. People fight with an imaginary enemy.

I think that I've explained my view as well as I could. Thanks for your participation.

Thank you, for at least reading the sources:) At this moment you'll be aware that are other ideas out there. To explain the link with biggest loser, the show used CICO model for the contestants to lose weight. And they did lose weight, So that would suggest CICO is working. But there was follow up and almost all contestants got their original weight back, and others could only eat 1200 calories in a day, that's unsustainable.

How does this proove the point? In the example given, the diabetic is expending more calories (through waste) than the non-diabetic... the model still holds valid. The diabetic has less net calories absorbed by their body.

>how do we know there aren't factors yet to be discovered?

We don't and can't (by definition), that's part of the scientific process. Part of that process requires us to find evidence to the contrary or provide a viable testable competing argument. We don't just waive our hands in the air and claim magic gremlins are making people skinny or fat since there are likely limits to human understanding and knowledge, especially at any given specific point on time.

Most the evidence out there, that I'm aware of, vehemently supports the CICO model and it makes sense as a complex system resting up very well studied chemical and physical phenomena. The only thing broken seems to be a general understanding of the model being discussed.

The point is that when people say calories IN they normally refer to what you put in your mouth, not how much your body absorbs.

That is problem with CICO proponents start with scientific terms. But it always ends up with magic what does or does not count based and whatever the argument they are in. CICO models doesn't state anything they claim, but it in the end it's argument into nothing. Because human cells does not use calories it uses ATP through the kerb cycle. That whole process so bizarre complex, and then also based on so many confounded factors, that CICO is just too simplistic and it's almost impossible to lose weight and keep it off according to the model. Link to study about how the biggest losers contestants are doing after the show. Hint not well...

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/lessons-...

I'm afraid that is incorrect, type 1 diabetes still have glucose metabolism, with diabetes type 2 glucose metabolism could be impaired but with type 1 that is not the case.

What has changed is that without insulin glucose will stay in their blood damaging organs and veins.

Insulin signals to cells take up glucose and other nutrients, first organs like the liver, then the muscles.

More information in the link from healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/insulin-effects-o...

*a lot

You can’t break the “model” as it is basic thermodynamics.

If a diabetic is consuming many calories but also excreting many calories, that is still calories in and calories out.

Pooping out excess calories is not usually what people mean by “calories out” in CICO

Right, because excreted calories are typically consistently small for most people.

That’s not necessarily true for diabetics, so someone with that condition will have a different experience with it.

And the reason is only the missing of one hormone, and fat cells won't store energy. The opposite also true, there are people with too much insulin that will gain allot weight.

> Despite intensive research, the causes of the obesity epidemic remain incompletely understood and conventional calorie-restricted diets continue to lack long-term efficacy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/

“Get diabetes” is certainly a novel approach to a weight-loss plan, I’ll give you that.

That's the point it will not lead to weight gain. But according to CICO they should become fat, but they won't. And if this is possible by not having one hormone. That is quite a big discovery. The human body is way more complex then one hormone. And fat gain can be due to many reasons, another hormone could be cortisol, bad sleep, Obesogens[0].

If CICO does not factor in what is not stored or digested. Therefor it's a flawed model. Therefor it would be better to look at what is working, and wath was working before we got unto the low fat craze. In the 1950 up to 1980 bodybuilders where eating low carb high protein diets. Everyone was thin back then, just now we are returning to knowlegde.

But the thing is according to latest science obesity the focus is not on CICO anymore. Would be great if more people would be willing to conduct their own N=1 studies and try low carb dieet, keto, or intermittent fasting. It works the same way by keeping insulin low. It might do wonders.

[0]https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-are-obesogens

[1]https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting...

It’s not that simple, although it may seem that way for some people.

Twice I have been on very extreme calorie counting regimens for months at a time combined with substantial weight lifting and cardio.

Both times I have observed that if I reduce calories the first thing that happens is I start to feel colder in the same environments. My body adjusts to my new caloric intake by reducing my metabolic rate it seems.

I learned about the idea of a “set point” fifteen years ago and I believe it’s related to what I’ve observed.

I have friends who can do something as simple as cutting out a morning cappuccino and they lose weight as a result. If I do that, there is no measurable difference unless I cut much deeper and substantially increase activity at the same time. Then the weight comes off for a bit and then plateaus again, sometimes for weeks or until I make another adjustment.

One of the times I went through this weight loss regiment I had an air displacement plethysmograph near the end of the weight loss that concluded I had 178lbs lean body mass. I had likely bulked up a little through all the weightlifting I was doing but have always had a fair bit of muscle so you might expect my resting calorie burn to be very stable and for small adjustments in calories to not impact resting metabolic rate, but that’s not what I observed in practice.

If metabolic rate changes due to caloric restriction then this doesn’t negate the view that basic physics dictates that calories in minus calories out determines weight loss. It just means that a corresponding change to calories out can occur with caloric restriction. It is a physical reality that calories in minus calories out determines weight loss. It is also a reality that adhering to this might be very difficult for reasons you suggested.

If you want to increase muscle mass, why don’t you just keep lifting increasingly heavier weights?

If you want to lose weight, just keep eating increasingly less calories.

Because that trivializes the problem. There’s physiological pushback on many dimensions.

I suggest a better response to CICO is not that this isn’t true but that it is hard for a variety of reasons. One’s response to CICO ought not be to deny basic physics. There was a comment that it is basic physics that CICO is true and it got pushback. My post was to point out that the pushback against that comment were wrong in the sense of not actually disputing CICO.

The responses should have been of the form, “Absolutely but this is very hard for some people for the following reasons…”. That changes to one part of the equation can have unintended consequences that change the other part.

Here’s a quote from Kevin Hall, who does metabolic studies at Harvard:

>The problem is that CICO as the law of energy conservation is NOT a model of obesity. It's conflated with the straw-man "Conventional Model" described by Ludwig: independent, unregulated intake and expenditure implying that getting fat and treating obesity are all about willpower

It's not so much that I would dispute the physics, but I personally wonder about digestion. This strict cico model seems to make the assumption that every digestive system extracts the same amount of energy from the same foods, which I find unlikely but am certainly not an expert. If I eat a bunch of grass, I am pretty sure I'll probably get sick and have some unpleasant bowel movements but I won't draw many calories from the grass. Unlike a cow.

Personally though, I find it rather easy to maintain a particular weight. I just wear pants with the right waist size and if they feel tight I take it easy on eating for a day or two. I have had the same weight +/- 1.5kg for 20 years. Losing weight beyond my comfortable baseline is exceedingly difficult though.

That's not really how I interpret it at least. I think its assumed there is no one with a perfectly efficient digestive system, and that there is variance in efficiency based on a plethora of factors. However, that efficiency rate hardly matters. You are in effect a car. Some people are hybrids, super efficient perhaps, while others are SUVs guzzling gas to go the same distance. That being said one thing is true for all of these cars: if you put in 9 gallons instead of 10 gallons into the tank, you will go for less miles than if you put in 10 gallons. In other words, if you are being accurate about measuring your calories in (the gas) and you are measuring your weight (miles driven), you can adjust the input calories to effect your output weight. Exercise then is like driving in low gear with the engine at a high RPM; you are burning more calories in a given amount of time just like you'd be burning more gas in a given distance running at a higher RPM.

Nobody is contesting the physical reality of CICO; what they are contesting is that the "calories out" section of the diet is as easily controlled as previously thought.

I'm supposedly on a 1500 calorie deficit, eating ~1300-1500 calories a day and burning ~3000, according to my fitbit. But I'm only losing about 0.5lbs per week.

My conclusion is that I'm really only burning 2000 calories despite HIIT 3x/week, strength training 4x/week, and cardio 6x/week. If it weren't for all this training I would likely be gaining weight on what would otherwise be a reduced calorie diet for someone my size per every major TDEE calculation

>Nobody is contesting the physical reality of CICO; what they are contesting is that the "calories out" section of the diet is as easily controlled as previously thought.

I'm not so sure about that, I see a lot of claims otherwise on this article's thread which blows my mind a bit.

It's definitely an issue calculating and managing the calories out portion and for some people, it may not be an effective model to manage weight with diet and exercise, but I'm reading a lot of "this model is wrong" which is a little baffling to me.

Is it possible the caloric measurements are off? Absolutely, we may not even be considering all metabolic pathways, but hopefully a lot of its getting covered. CICO should be used as anchor points to help you guide your diet and find what works for you because everyone is a little different. Don't like a lot of vegetables, coffee make you sleepy and lazy? Hate cardio but love weight lifting or vice versa?

Try something else, but CICO can help you make a better grounded basis of comparison here to find what mixture works best for your body to manage weight and get or keep the body composition you desire. Does the model simply not work for your lifestyle? Try something else! But is it wrong? Eh, I don't think so.

CICO while thermodynamically true, is not _that_ useful because no one really control CI nor CO …

Both your calories in numbers and calories out are subject to extreme estimation error.

Also body composition changes can make “weight loss” difficult as you replace fat with muscle. You can also get a gross estimate of muscle/water/fat mass to see those changes (or go get a very accurate measurement a few times in a facility equipped for such things).

This is generally the correct answer.

Online TDEE calculators almost always overestimate expenditure, as do smartwatches. On the intake side, people lie to themselves constantly. First, they generally don't actually weigh their portions. In the rare event they really are weighing their food, they'll "accidentally" load up 4.3oz of something, then input it into their tracker as 4oz. Then they'll neglect to log their sauces and condiments, because it's "only" 20kcal for a tablespoon. These discrepancies add up.

Invariably, these ridiculous claims come down to people being liars, not just to others, but to themselves.

I did a strict 1400 calorie per day diet for a few months in college. Zero cheating. Also kicked up aerobic activity a ton.

Losses were at like 5-10% the rate they "should have" been. Totally worthless.

Meanwhile weight lifting has always worked for me a large multiple as well as it "should", for weight loss, if you go by calculators that try to figure how many calories an activity burns.

I reckon that in both cases those two approaches must be having large (and opposite) effects on my resting metabolic rate.

Aerobic activity is not all the same either. Some people run for a mile and think that's good, they are maybe burning only 300 calories doing that though. They hike for 4 miles and its another couple hundred, or its blown with the granola bars. If you bike for an hour at less than 10mph you are burning like 300 calories, but if you bike for an hour at like 16-20mph then you are burning like 1000 calories.

Unlikely you'll be burning 1000kCal at 16-20mph unless you're going up a steady incline and keeping that speed (i.e. high power). That is a bit of an exaggeration. The remainder of your point stands - cycling is a great way to burn a lot of calories.

You'd have to be pushing 250-300 watts an hour to burn that much, but people do burn that much in an hours time if you look around a few bike forums. If you have time to do a long and leisurely ride, 3 hours or so, the length of the new Avatar movie, you'd probably knock out at least 1000 calories imo. Whats nice about a road bike in particular for caloric burning, at least in my experience, is that it makes you want to push the bike and go as fast as you can and keep snapping up through your gears and catch up to the cars (passing them even when they hit traffic or you are descending).

At 25% efficiency (on the high side), 1000kCal is about 1050kJ, which is just shy of 300W. Most adults can't sustain 300W for an hour. In addition, reasonable riding conditions (flat, low to moderate winds) will get you moving faster than 20mph at 300W. Most adults are definitely not burning 1000kcal riding a bike for an hour and even fewer are doing that rate of calorie burn for longer than an hour. I regularly have >1000kcal rides, but I have yet to hit 1000kcal for a single hour at my highest intensity. I can do close to 300W for 20 minutes after which time the power drops off rapidly. Larger cyclists that are trained can absolutely sustain 300W for an hour, but won't do this without a significant training effort.

I don't mean to imply that you won't burn a lot of calories cycling, quite the opposite, I think it is one of the easiest and gentlest ways to do so. You are however overstating what most non-elite cyclists can regularly accomplish in terms of calorie burn per hour.

Source: I have averaged 450hrs/yr for last 3 years and closely monitor my data.

What people do believe is that you can neatly tabulate calories in and calories out.

Tabulating calories in and weight out is a lot easier, especially if you eat healthy and simple foods.

I can't stand this "it's just physics" talking point when it comes to calories and weight loss. Why don't you try consuming exactly as many calories of gasoline as your body burns each day and then tell me whether you lose or gain any weight?

Basic physics 100% tells you you won't gain weight in that case.

Are you certain that humans can properly digest gasoline and make use of its calories?

I'm sure that they can't. That's why they won't gain any weight with such diet.

So you're saying that the type of calories you consume makes a difference, not just the amount???

I'm just saying that whatever calories you consume you won't have more net gain of weight than contained calories you consume minus calories you burn.

Regardless of whether calories are completely indigestible or totally digestible the above still holds.

I think the assumption with trying to be healthy and track your calories is you are eating a healthy and balanced diet, and not things like potato chips, candy, or gasoline all day. Then with healthier food choices a consistent value for you in your life, you don't have to worry about that Starbucks drink that's 600 calories because you just wouldn't be drinking those things with this new mindset. Then it doesn't even matter your metabolic rate either; if your diet is consistently healthy and you are measuring calories and your weight on the scale, then you can dial back caloric intake and see results on that scale.

All I know is that if I gorge myself on only eggs and fatty ribeye steaks for weeks on end, then I’ll lose fat, gain muscle, and look good naked. Burn if I eat carbs and drink beer then I gain belly fat and look terrible naked. I never count calories.

Drinks, not just booze, are sleepers for caloric intake. A can of coke or a small bottle of gatorade are 130 calories. Then you have some people who literally hate the taste of water for some reason, so every drink they take of a liquid comes with calories. Just switching to water alone for a person like that could cut out hundreds of calories right there with no other changes to diet or lifestyle.

> This is not a meme but basic physics.

The issue is: How are we defining calories IN?

Consider the extreme example of having a parasitic worm living in your digestive system. Is IN == [food passing mouth] or is IN == [food not being ingested by worm(s)]?

Now consider "normal" digestive flora. How are we defining IN here?

you're technically right, but just nitpicking. Of course you could count the calories in fibers and that wouldn't make you fat, as your body can't process that. But most people do not eat fiber for 90% of their meals

> you're technically right, but just nitpicking

I was hinting at something bigger than just a nitpick. I'm hypothesizing that gut flora interfere with macronutrient ingestion in a statistically significant way.

Microorganisms exist which produce glucose from materials that, if ingested by a human, would be emitted as waste.

What if colonies of these microorganisms were present in the human gut and unevenly distributed in the population?

People often switch from more processed grains to whole grains specifically to increase their fiber intake and reduce the processable calories they're ingesting. I don't think it's nitpicking at all, this is the most basic stuff you need to think about when doing dieting - CICO is naive at best.

yeah, foods with more fiber will also make you less hungry, which in turn makes you eat less calories...

CICO is a great approach for the general population, and works great even amongst professionals that have weight management as their career (bodybuilders).

Basic physics says a human can live on a cup of gasoline a day.

Sure you can! You just need to figure a way to digest it. Ask chemistry.

All of that doesn't matter. Calories in just serves as a reference point for you to see how much you are actually eating. Then you can make changes to calories in, and see results on the scale. Sure everyone is at different efficiencies, that doesn't matter though. You are basically putting in less gas in the tank; that's going to make a hybrid and a gas hog both go for less miles than what a full tank would do.

You're not addressing the following in your analogy which can have a significant impact on CICO if IN==passes_mouth.

1. Having a hole in your gas tank (parasite(s) e.g. a tapeworm)

2. Having a modification to your fuel tank to convert ethanol into octane (non-parasitic digestive microorganisms a.k.a. "gut flora")

Who generated the heat that you measured in the calorimeter?

Gut biome bacteria consumed an amount of those calories. How many? It varies from person to person.

So calories in = calories out, but we don't know how many were used by the person, how many by the gut flora, and how many were excreted do to inability to metabolize. Ergo, hardly basic physics.

Reductionism is only useful if you know how to apply it.

You don't need to know all of these things if you are measuring input (calories in) and your output (weight on the scale every week). It hardly matters then how efficient your gut is. These are all relative values. Of course 2000 calories will look different for different people. What matters is if you have an understanding of how much calories you are putting into your system, you can now make changes and measure a response, like cutting down some calories and seeing how that affects your weight over a few weeks or months. You don't need to know all of these rates to do that.

I agree with that, as do most people. What I object to is that calories-in-calories-out is the ONLY thing at play, and people claiming "simple physics" are working against any deeper understanding of the issues. I think this side of the argument is "Just eat less and you won't be fat. Duh." What they don't understand is that if a body has a hormonal anomaly, it might need to 5000 kcal/day just meet the 1500kc/day basic metabolic rate because the other 2500 kcal is being metabolized into fat by a broken endocrine system. If they drop down to 1500 kcal/day, only 300kc of that is going towards keeping the body running. It is completely out of their control how the calories are used due to their bodies, so CIn=COut is meaningless. The obesity epidemic is not completely about eating too much (which is part of it), but is about the environmental factors impacting how bodies actually work. If it was just Cin/Cout, gastric bypass would solve the problem, but that is not available to people that are suffering such hormonal disruptions because they would just die or be eating nonstop.

More is more and less is less.

If this wasn't the case, you'd have discovered a solution to famine.

And gastric bypasses are one of the most effective interventions available for people with such disorderd eating that lifestyle changes can't stick.

Again, black and white thinking doesn't solve the problem. It just alienates people, and sometimes worse.

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

It is an objective fact that caloric surpluses and deficits are fundamental to manipulating bodyweight.

Any solution will be about getting people to maintain a surplus or deficit long enough to reach their goal weight.

There are many ways to communicate that to people, but pretending or trying to convince others that it isn't true is factually incorrect and literally counter-productive to their goals.

You keep saying less is less more is more. That's a truism which is completely orthogonal to the point, yet you seem to be hung up on it to the exclusion of everything else every other commenter has said to you. Consider that just for a moment.

No its not. CICO, it's that simple. I'll get down voted by the fanatics that say it's more complicated, but it's not. Eat less and exercise more and you will loose weight. A gastric bypass is just a extreme form of this. You cannot avoid the laws of physics.

There's a reason your being down-voted, and its not a hive mind, or a conspiracy, or a personal grudge against you. That's simply what it is like to be "wrong". Saying what you said is just playing the victim card.

I'm not a victim don't worry. I have no interest in being right -- though that you think I'm playing a victim card plays into all the people that deny CICO.

But it's ok. I loose weight by exercising and eating less. Like the climate change denialists, you can lead people down the dark path if you like.

Me I'll stick with me 3kg loss of weight every month and celebrate.

It's because people are talking about all sorts of irrelevant stuff that has no effect on what one has to do to manipulate their weight.

It's missing the forest for the chlorophyll.

How do one manage to eat exactly the amount of calories one consumes ? Based on the calories in/out weight gain theory a little error of 50 calories/day would lead to 50*365=18250 extra calories/year ie 18250/9000=~2kg of fat. 20kg in 10 years ! Eat an apple a day and you’ll be massively obese in few years.

Just use a sensible buffer or add in some extra cardio.

It just has to average out in the long term.

No one eats the exact same thing everyday.

And you can eat less or more throughout the year.

You've never had a holiday feast?

That’s my point. Regarding people that maintain the same weight, I highly doubt they eat on average the _exact_ amount needed. There must be physiological adjustments that are broken in some people.

That's not necessary at all.

People who maintain the same weight simply eat their maintenance calories on average over the long term.

That's just how averages work.

I feel like you have some kinda fundamental misunderstanding of something to not understand this, but I don't know what it could be.