A complete and total repudiation of all the people who bleat "calories in, calories out"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:The only thing CICO is good for is that it is a handy shortcut for identifying people who aren’t too bright.

It depends on how they are using it. If they follow it up with "duh, just eat less and exercise more" then yes.

Honestly, I’ve so rarely seen intelligent and perceptive conversation follow when people talk about CICO that I’m comfortable using it as a heuristic for stupidity. Occasionally CICO is used thoughtfully by research scientists but in everyday life, it’s a spot-on heuristic.

PP here. That's good to know! I now understand why people I largely agree with respond very negatively to me when I use the phrase.

Yeah, there isn’t a great history of that phrase being used in a cogent and intellectually rigorous manner. I would honestly avoid it. I tend to immediately associate the use of CICO in health-related conversation with scientific illiteracy.

You keep accusing anyone who uses CICO, even in limited ways, of scientific illiteracy. I have been on this board 2 years and the same topic appears every few months and people go on and on for 70-80 ages about the same things. The same insults are hurled. If CICO doesn’t work in certain situations for certain people, then why is there a whole forum (this one) devoted to diet and exercise? Real people are looking for support, ideas, experiences, tips, etc.

The answer evidently is to figure out a way to be employed studying obesity, make it as complicated as possible, convince people it’s all external factors, convince people it’s impossible to fix on their own, and motivate people with a lot of buying power to soak up drugs intended for people with type 2 diabetes so the supply is constrained and people that actually need those drugs cannot get them.

I think I got it right.

You are proving my point about your scientific illiteracy quite well. Thank you!

There is a difference between “illiteracy” and disagreement. Disagreement is a cornerstone of scientific advancement.

But you can be the queen of confirmation bias if it makes you feel better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, there are a few fitness professionals I follow on instagram who are really helpful in getting a handle on all this. Two are personal trainers who have gotten or are getting advanced degree specializing in obesity/weight loss, another is a personal trainer and I believe he has an advanced degree too but I am not sure.

They loathe the way people use the phrase calories in calories out. In separate IG posts they have all pointed out that saying "you need to focus on calories in calories out" is like a financial adviser saying "okay here is what you need to do: save more and spend less. You're welcome." Or a coach team saying "score more, don't let them score as many goals."

They have great fitness and nutrition advice, including weight loss advice for those who want it, but do a good job balancing weight loss goals and general health. And they drag people who give crap advice.


I don't love getting expert advice from instagram (I wish they had blogs) but they do include studies in their posts. Links:

Ben Carpenter
https://www.instagram.com/bdccarpenter/

Luke Hanna
https://www.instagram.com/lukehannanutrition

Sohee Lee
/https://www.instagram.com/soheefit/

So pretty similar to CICO in that the advice is actually correct, but some people need extra hand-holding to implement it for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, there are a few fitness professionals I follow on instagram who are really helpful in getting a handle on all this. Two are personal trainers who have gotten or are getting advanced degree specializing in obesity/weight loss, another is a personal trainer and I believe he has an advanced degree too but I am not sure.

They loathe the way people use the phrase calories in calories out. In separate IG posts they have all pointed out that saying "you need to focus on calories in calories out" is like a financial adviser saying "okay here is what you need to do: save more and spend less. You're welcome." Or a coach team saying "score more, don't let them score as many goals."

They have great fitness and nutrition advice, including weight loss advice for those who want it, but do a good job balancing weight loss goals and general health. And they drag people who give crap advice.


I don't love getting expert advice from instagram (I wish they had blogs) but they do include studies in their posts. Links:

Ben Carpenter
https://www.instagram.com/bdccarpenter/

Luke Hanna
https://www.instagram.com/lukehannanutrition

Sohee Lee
/https://www.instagram.com/soheefit/

Your examples are funny, because both are TRUE. To build wealth you DO need to spend less and save more. To win games, you DO need to score more than your opponent.

While these sayings are not prescribed instructions, they are all fundamentally true. The same is true with CICO and weight loss. If you are running a caloric deficit over time you will lose weight.

This topic is posted every few months by the same people appear to be desperate to convince random strangers that their weight issues are beyond their control as individuals. Look, I can accept the idea that today's food choices are less healthy than in the past and it is hard to eat healthy. But denying reality will not help. I hope that these chronic repeat posters are able to get their weight issues under control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, there are a few fitness professionals I follow on instagram who are really helpful in getting a handle on all this. Two are personal trainers who have gotten or are getting advanced degree specializing in obesity/weight loss, another is a personal trainer and I believe he has an advanced degree too but I am not sure.

They loathe the way people use the phrase calories in calories out. In separate IG posts they have all pointed out that saying "you need to focus on calories in calories out" is like a financial adviser saying "okay here is what you need to do: save more and spend less. You're welcome." Or a coach team saying "score more, don't let them score as many goals."

They have great fitness and nutrition advice, including weight loss advice for those who want it, but do a good job balancing weight loss goals and general health. And they drag people who give crap advice.


I don't love getting expert advice from instagram (I wish they had blogs) but they do include studies in their posts. Links:

Ben Carpenter
https://www.instagram.com/bdccarpenter/

Luke Hanna
https://www.instagram.com/lukehannanutrition

Sohee Lee
/https://www.instagram.com/soheefit/

So pretty similar to CICO in that the advice is actually correct, but some people need extra hand-holding to implement it for themselves.

Ah. So professional athletes are just having their hands held. Good to know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only thing CICO is good for is that it is a handy shortcut for identifying people who aren’t too bright.

It depends on how they are using it. If they follow it up with "duh, just eat less and exercise more" then yes.

Honestly, I’ve so rarely seen intelligent and perceptive conversation follow when people talk about CICO that I’m comfortable using it as a heuristic for stupidity. Occasionally CICO is used thoughtfully by research scientists but in everyday life, it’s a spot-on heuristic.

PP here. That's good to know! I now understand why people I largely agree with respond very negatively to me when I use the phrase.

Yeah, there isn’t a great history of that phrase being used in a cogent and intellectually rigorous manner. I would honestly avoid it. I tend to immediately associate the use of CICO in health-related conversation with scientific illiteracy.

You keep accusing anyone who uses CICO, even in limited ways, of scientific illiteracy. I have been on this board 2 years and the same topic appears every few months and people go on and on for 70-80 ages about the same things. The same insults are hurled. If CICO doesn’t work in certain situations for certain people, then why is there a whole forum (this one) devoted to diet and exercise? Real people are looking for support, ideas, experiences, tips, etc.

The answer evidently is to figure out a way to be employed studying obesity, make it as complicated as possible, convince people it’s all external factors, convince people it’s impossible to fix on their own, and motivate people with a lot of buying power to soak up drugs intended for people with type 2 diabetes so the supply is constrained and people that actually need those drugs cannot get them.

I think I got it right.

You are proving my point about your scientific illiteracy quite well. Thank you!

There is a difference between “illiteracy” and disagreement. Disagreement is a cornerstone of scientific advancement.

But you can be the queen of confirmation bias if it makes you feel better.

Scientific illiteracy is easy to recognize, especially by people who are scientifically literate. I’m sorry, but your “disagreement” is just ignorance. You probably “disagree” about the reality of climate change as well.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if the person obsessed with the idea of obesity as a "moral failing" who posts about it constantly is also the "skinny" obsessed poster who was outed as a troll recently. They are very similar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, there are a few fitness professionals I follow on instagram who are really helpful in getting a handle on all this. Two are personal trainers who have gotten or are getting advanced degree specializing in obesity/weight loss, another is a personal trainer and I believe he has an advanced degree too but I am not sure.

They loathe the way people use the phrase calories in calories out. In separate IG posts they have all pointed out that saying "you need to focus on calories in calories out" is like a financial adviser saying "okay here is what you need to do: save more and spend less. You're welcome." Or a coach team saying "score more, don't let them score as many goals."

They have great fitness and nutrition advice, including weight loss advice for those who want it, but do a good job balancing weight loss goals and general health. And they drag people who give crap advice.


I don't love getting expert advice from instagram (I wish they had blogs) but they do include studies in their posts. Links:

Ben Carpenter
https://www.instagram.com/bdccarpenter/

Luke Hanna
https://www.instagram.com/lukehannanutrition

Sohee Lee
/https://www.instagram.com/soheefit/

Your examples are funny, because both are TRUE. To build wealth you DO need to spend less and save more. To win games, you DO need to score more than your opponent.

While these sayings are not prescribed instructions, they are all fundamentally true. The same is true with CICO and weight loss. If you are running a caloric deficit over time you will lose weight.

This topic is posted every few months by the same people appear to be desperate to convince random strangers that their weight issues are beyond their control as individuals. Look, I can accept the idea that today's food choices are less healthy than in the past and it is hard to eat healthy. But denying reality will not help. I hope that these chronic repeat posters are able to get their weight issues under control.

Wow, the point flew right over your head. They agree that CICO is accurate, just that it’s useless to the point of being insulting. Can you imagine a financial advisor starting and ending the meeting with “save more spend less?” What is even the point of saying that?

Why do you assume the people saying this are justifying their habits? Those fitness professionals I linked to are ridiculously fit and make their living encouraging others to do the same. I am not perfect but I wear a size 2 and do not have weight issues. I wrote that comment because those fitness professionals are a great resource for those who want information about weight loss and health that is actually useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, there are a few fitness professionals I follow on instagram who are really helpful in getting a handle on all this. Two are personal trainers who have gotten or are getting advanced degree specializing in obesity/weight loss, another is a personal trainer and I believe he has an advanced degree too but I am not sure.

They loathe the way people use the phrase calories in calories out. In separate IG posts they have all pointed out that saying "you need to focus on calories in calories out" is like a financial adviser saying "okay here is what you need to do: save more and spend less. You're welcome." Or a coach team saying "score more, don't let them score as many goals."

They have great fitness and nutrition advice, including weight loss advice for those who want it, but do a good job balancing weight loss goals and general health. And they drag people who give crap advice.


I don't love getting expert advice from instagram (I wish they had blogs) but they do include studies in their posts. Links:

Ben Carpenter
https://www.instagram.com/bdccarpenter/

Luke Hanna
https://www.instagram.com/lukehannanutrition

Sohee Lee
/https://www.instagram.com/soheefit/

Your examples are funny, because both are TRUE. To build wealth you DO need to spend less and save more. To win games, you DO need to score more than your opponent.

While these sayings are not prescribed instructions, they are all fundamentally true. The same is true with CICO and weight loss. If you are running a caloric deficit over time you will lose weight.

This topic is posted every few months by the same people appear to be desperate to convince random strangers that their weight issues are beyond their control as individuals. Look, I can accept the idea that today's food choices are less healthy than in the past and it is hard to eat healthy. But denying reality will not help. I hope that these chronic repeat posters are able to get their weight issues under control.

I don’t have weight issues and I think you are miserably unhappy person who is desperately clinging to wildly outdated pop culture beliefs about weight to manage your own overwhelming insecurity and misery. There are probably better ways to deal with your psychological pain, you know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The top obesity researchers in the world:

The three-day meeting was infused with an implicit understanding of what obesity is not: a personal failing. No presenter argued that humans collectively lost willpower around the 1980s, when obesity rates took off, first in high-income countries‌, then in much of the rest of the world. Not a single scientist said our genes changed in that short time. Laziness, gluttony‌‌ and sloth were not referred to as obesity’s helpers. In stark contrast to a prevailing societal view of obesity, which assumes people have full control over their body size, they didn’t blame individuals for their condition, the same way we don’t blame people suffering from undernutrition challenges, like stunting and wasting.

The researchers instead referred to obesity as a complex, chronic condition, and they were meeting to get to the bottom of why humans have, collectively, grown larger over the past half century. To that end, they shared a range of mechanisms that might explain the global obesity surge. And their theories, however diverse, made one thing obvious: As long as we treat obesity as a personal responsibility issue, its prevalence is unlikely to decline.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/obesity-cause.html

But who wants to be THAT research who says that first?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, there are a few fitness professionals I follow on instagram who are really helpful in getting a handle on all this. Two are personal trainers who have gotten or are getting advanced degree specializing in obesity/weight loss, another is a personal trainer and I believe he has an advanced degree too but I am not sure.

They loathe the way people use the phrase calories in calories out. In separate IG posts they have all pointed out that saying "you need to focus on calories in calories out" is like a financial adviser saying "okay here is what you need to do: save more and spend less. You're welcome." Or a coach team saying "score more, don't let them score as many goals."

They have great fitness and nutrition advice, including weight loss advice for those who want it, but do a good job balancing weight loss goals and general health. And they drag people who give crap advice.


I don't love getting expert advice from instagram (I wish they had blogs) but they do include studies in their posts. Links:

Ben Carpenter
https://www.instagram.com/bdccarpenter/

Luke Hanna
https://www.instagram.com/lukehannanutrition

Sohee Lee
/https://www.instagram.com/soheefit/

So pretty similar to CICO in that the advice is actually correct, but some people need extra hand-holding to implement it for themselves.

Ah. So professional athletes are just having their hands held. Good to know.

Aren’t you the one arguing that people need extra help to stay fit?

[Anonymous]

I have lost weight, and for me, the biggest thing I have learned is that CICO is better thought of as an effect than a cause. I eat less/better and move more when I have higher self-esteem, when I get enough sleep, when I have healthy relationships, and when I am managing my stress well. I didn't (and do not) weigh myself or count calories, and I didn't try to lose weight. I didn't change my lifestyle, not really. I changed my conception of myself.

I think that if you just try to lose weight by eating less and moving more you might be putting the cart before the horse. That's not true for everybody, but I think it is for a lot of people.

[Anonymous]

I’ve read two people here who said they don’t weigh themselves, like it’s a bad thing. I weigh myself every day. As soon as it goes up a bit I cut back. It’s so much better than suddenly realizing you’ve gained 25 pounds and now you have to lose all that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve read two people here who said they don’t weigh themselves, like it’s a bad thing. I weigh myself every day. As soon as it goes up a bit I cut back. It’s so much better than suddenly realizing you’ve gained 25 pounds and now you have to lose all that.

Good for you. But It is a bad thing for some people. It’s a bad thing for me. My mind doesn’t handle it well. If I have gained weight, I try to change things but then I am thinking so much about food I wind up eating more, it messes with my self esteem, that makes me eat more, and then I gain even more weight. If I have lost weight, I tend to think “oh wow I lost weight even though I ate donuts, I guess donuts are fine for me.” And then I gain wright because I’m eating more donuts, and thinking more about food.

You could say “well just don’t be like that.” But i am like that. That is what *my* brain does. Every time I’ve tried to lose weight I gain weight. If I don’t try to lose weight, I make healthier choices because I’m focusing instead on how those choices make me feel.

And I can’t imagine gaining 25 lbs without noticing it (I weighed 125 at a recent doctors visit), but no, if you gain 25 lbs you actually don’t *have* to lose it. There is no rule that says you cannot gain weight. People should go for the easiest, most realistic path to health and for many that is not going to include weight loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems one big issue is physical hunger (as opposed to an emotional desire to eat, which is also a problem), and I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about that. That’s why semaglutides are so successful. As someone upthread described, eating 1800 calories for an obese person might feel like eating 700 calories for you. Yes, possible, but incredibly difficult to do day after day without intervention.

The people who bleat on about CICO hate the existence and shocking success of the semaglutides because those provide hard evidence that obesity is not a moral failing. If a medication can immediately and profoundly remove the desire to overeat, it means overeating is a medical problem, not an issue of willpower, and the anti-fat moralists lose their platform. That’s why they don’t want to talk about the semaglutides.

A lot of people want a second piece of pie…

Should we all be on meds for that? Many of us know what “enough” is and then are able to say no to continuous eating. Even if we want a second helping or a triple scoop ice cream cone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, there are a few fitness professionals I follow on instagram who are really helpful in getting a handle on all this. Two are personal trainers who have gotten or are getting advanced degree specializing in obesity/weight loss, another is a personal trainer and I believe he has an advanced degree too but I am not sure.

They loathe the way people use the phrase calories in calories out. In separate IG posts they have all pointed out that saying "you need to focus on calories in calories out" is like a financial adviser saying "okay here is what you need to do: save more and spend less. You're welcome." Or a coach team saying "score more, don't let them score as many goals."

They have great fitness and nutrition advice, including weight loss advice for those who want it, but do a good job balancing weight loss goals and general health. And they drag people who give crap advice.


I don't love getting expert advice from instagram (I wish they had blogs) but they do include studies in their posts. Links:

Ben Carpenter
https://www.instagram.com/bdccarpenter/

Luke Hanna
https://www.instagram.com/lukehannanutrition

Sohee Lee
/https://www.instagram.com/soheefit/

So pretty similar to CICO in that the advice is actually correct, but some people need extra hand-holding to implement it for themselves.

Ah. So professional athletes are just having their hands held. Good to know.

Aren’t you the one arguing that people need extra help to stay fit?

I don't call requiring professional help "hand-holding." My husband was not having his hand held by his oncologists. What a terrible, sneering phrase.