I think CICO works as long as you view 'diet' as part of your lifestyle rather than an activity.

CICO works perfectly well. It only causes pain because people are addicted to eating and lie to themselves about how much they actually eat.

Study after study has shown that people who claim to not be able to lose weight via diet simply do not have any idea how many calories they are actually eating.

Not just out, both directions can be tricky to measure. It is hard to say for certain how many potential kcal you're consuming are actually absorbed by the body. If you see whole corn kernels in the toilet, those kcal didn't count :)

But yes. CICO is and always has been absolutely true. People are just overly reductive in how they measure both sides, and then claim that CICO is garbage.

CICO is more of an upper bound, but people like to incorrectly use it as a lower bound. Meaning that it's true that you can't burn more calories than you eat, but you can certainly eat many more calories than you store as fat.

(Hell, CICO isn't even valid for something as "simple" as an electric vehicle. My EV's end-to-end efficiency is quite a bit different depending on whether I'm charging from 120V or 240V, the outside temperature at charging time, the outside temperature at driving time, and a handful other factors like state-of-charge. The human body is even more complicated.)

In a perfect world where you measure and control everything 100% CICO rules. However, in the real world, different types of food cause variation both on in and out. E.g. some foods promote feeling to satiety and some foods cause some people to overeat. Diet would also affect gut microbiome which affects hormones/mood etc... If you calculate CICO, then it will still be valid. But from the practical diet approach, CICO is oversimplification.

> You do have me intrigued, what are you general arguments against CICO?

Not the GP, but based on their abstinence-only sex comment I imagine the point being raised is that it's something that is technically true but not a practical guideline.

CICO is a true statement. But you're not going to be able to accurately measure CI and especially not CO. So why bother using that as your guideline on how to proceed? Instead it is known and understood that there are mechanisms for things such as improving CO efficiency, and it's much more practical to focus on that.

CICO is necessary but not sufficient. You also need some strategy for how to achieve CO > CI. Different strategies have vastly different implications in regards to willpower, health outcomes, suffering, time, cost, etc.

It's an oversimplification of how the body works to the point of not being useful. For example, if you eat 2500 kcal a day and maintain a steady weight of 150 lbs, it is not the case that if you change your diet to 2200 kcal you will consistently lose X pounds per week. You would more likely lose a bit, then plateau at some level that's hard to predict, because now your body adapted to an input of 2200 kcal a day. Add to this the complication that where those calories come from matters a lot, because when you increase your blood sugar, your body increases insulin which builds up body fat, but if you have eat a low-sugar/carb diet, that happens less. And if you eat sugary foods, you will tend to get hungry more quickly than eating protein-based foods. It's all so person-dependent and food-dependent that just saying "eat less calories and you'll lose weight" does not accurately describe most people's reality.

CICO is an oversimplification that generally assumes that "all calories are equal" on both sides of the equation. On the one side it assumes uniform density of energy in foods and is based on a lot of rough estimates from burning foods in ovens. On the other side, most of our concepts of how much calories we "burn" in a day or given activity and how we use those calories in the complex biology of our bodies is not very far divorced from "assume the body is an ideal spherical furnace" based a lot on CO2 exhaled and temperatures raised. It is a greatly over-simplifying model on both sides of the equation.

Of course, greatly over-simplified models are still useful. CICO as a useful first approximation of a diet still has its uses and its places where it is more useful than some alternative models.

I think food calories and the way we talk about them (like food "contains" them, always burning them) feel a lot to me like the last bastion of Phlogiston Theory in any of the sciences. Chemistry has moved away from the "Calorie" as an approved unit of measure for the more accurate/more reliable "Joule", but also to remove some ties to old Phlogiston baggage.

I think most people would laugh at this idea pushed to its current Physics extreme that food should be measured in Joules by Relativity's infamous E = mc^2 mass-to-energy conversion ratio and that we should assume that the human body is some efficiency percentage of an ideal spherical fusion reactor. Joules In/Joules Out, right?. Why does it sound more accurate to so many as a model when it is "heat particles"/Calories?

(Which again, isn't a call to entirely toss the model, it serves many as a first approximation well enough. But it seems past time to develop better, more targeted models.)

I think this is the most important and practical comment of the thread. Start with this as your "baseline position" and work from there.

People say it because there are all sorts of alternative theories, such as "setpoint theory" that say* that your weight is nothing to do with what you eat.

* Or its proponents say it says

Bang on. Indeed, I remember Ramit Sethi (finance blogger) making the same point (https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/the-big-wins-manifesto...)

> As Clotaire Rapaille wrote in his terrific book, The Culture Code,

“Years ago, Tufts University invited me to lecture during a symposium on obesity.

Lecturer after lecturer offered solutions for America’s obesity problem, all of which revolved around education. Americans would be thinner if only they knew about good nutrition and the benefits of exercise, they told us. Slimming down the entire country was possible through an aggressive public awareness campaign.

When it was my turn to speak, I couldn’t help beginning with an observation.

“I think it is fascinating that the other speakers today have suggested that education is the answer to our country’s obesity problem,” I said. I slowly gestured around the room.

“If education is the answer, then why hasn’t it helped more of you?”

There were audible gasps in the auditorium when I said this, quite a few snickers, and five times as many sneers. Unsurprisingly, Tufts never invited me to lecture again.”

IIRC, liposuction, just like every invasive surgery increases risks and complications significantly.

Subjective beauty standards aside, there is objective health "standard", obesity is a source of so many health problems, for the individual and society.

They are not pushed by the media though. Men and women are attracted to what they are attracted to. We instinctively know if someone is attractive to us. Its easy to say person A is more attractive than person B. Thinner and more in shape people are more attractive than obese people. This is just a fact of life, no one is to blame for it.

There's a huge difference between accepting some natural amount of body fat, and also realizing that there is an absolutely astronomical obesity epidemic in most of the industrialized world. Accepting obesity is not a good idea - it's bad for physical health, it's bad for mental health, it's bad for the economy. It's just bad and something needs to be done about it.

There are few things more damaging in life than being overweight - as can be clearly seen in shorter lifespans. Obesity is roughly equal to smoking.

Bwa ha ha ha ha, no.

There are always excuses. Everything is too hard until you actually do it. Your argument is akin to being told that on average Women are shorter than men and then you say, well I know a tall woman.

There are exceptions but the vast majority of us can accomplish this, we just don't prioritize it. You get what you prioritize.

I've spent years at a healthy BMI when the pandemic was ongoing while getting no exercise. Didn't gain a pound. Weight is all diet. You don't need free time, energy, or money to fix it

Perhaps I should have said: "There are always solutions now" Of course these are new medications but they are widely available. I am not referring to history I am talking about the present. Would think that was relatively obvious, I may have been wrong, which, fair enough.

I'm on injectable testosterone, give myself a shot every week. Semaglutide (compounded not name brand) is relatively affordable. I spend $120 a month on it. If I did the work I could probably get it for cheaper.

Edit: I took a look, appears I can get it for ~$40 a month if I want.

Create a home gym if you're wealthy; buy a set of resistance bands (total cost: $30) and run if you're not (or just frugal and utilitarian). Wake up an hour or two earlier than when your kids do and do your cardio/lifting then.

It takes about two weeks to adjust to the decrease in sleep, but the well-being that exercise provides in my experience more than offsets it.

I'm not on GLP1 agonists or TRT. I eat primarily legumes, grain, and dairy. I don't go to the gym. I lift using $30 resistance bands and get my cardio from running and a rowing machine that I used my annual discretionary budget on. And I don't need the rowing machine. He's right.

Humans do homeostasis very well. If you stop exercising at all ("rest days"), your brain normalizes that and creates inertia against resuming exercise. Like all good habits, the point is to make it automatic and the default rather than a choice.

Once you start exercising and make it a non-negotiable daily habit, it becomes progressively harder to stop exercising than to start. Most people that fall out of exercise habits do so primarily because of injuries rather than the failure of the habit itself. You just have to prioritize it ahead of or even alongside other habits (e.g. exercise while watching TV, take the stairs) until it becomes automatic.

Are the people forced into taking statins, high blood pressure medications, etc. due to obesity related issues also “transhumanist”?

We all have to make our own choices but obesity is a choice and the repercussions and treatments are often far worse than the treatments I have selected to avoid it.

Note: You can get glp1 medication for $40 a month if you look for it

Respectfully, what are the long term side effects of being obese? Increased risk of cancer, heart disease, etc.

Mid 200s before, mid 800s now

You are 50, you have low testosterone. You should get tested and then get on trt. Don’t let them tell you that you have normal testosterone for a man your age, you don’t want the testosterone levels of a 50 year old, you want the levels of a 20 year old.

Get on testosterone and the weight will fall off.

Your choice. Best of luck.