Edit: to expand on that, "calories in, calories out" is a classic motte and bailey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy). Here the motte is "it's easy for anyone to lose weight, just input a few numbers in a few apps". The bailey is "calories in, calories out is scientifically true". I've never seen advocates of calories in, calories out offering a more precise way to measure the consumption of calories than a TDEE calculator that you can find online, where you usually input your weight, height, age and sex. The "calories in" part is easier to deal with, as if you measure everything you put in your mouth, you have the upper bound of the calories you can absorb. Still, the calories out are hard to measure reliably, especially in people that already have a slower metabolism than others (which makes it easier for them to gain weight in the first place).
There's also the distinction that "calorie intake" is often meant as "what you put into your mouth" but is actually "what you actually absorb".
You don't have to, precise calorie counting is a strawman argument against CICO. All the fat people I've ever known, which is most of my family and many of my friends, all eat way too much. I ate too much too, ever since I was a kid. Huge portion sizes and constantly grazing throughout the day without set meal times were the norm for me and those around me. After hearing CICO repeated often, I recognized these behaviors in myself and corrected them. I didn't need to count calories for any of it. Where I would once buy a pizza and devour it over the course of an evening, I now save half for lunch the next day. Anybody can do that if they choose to. By eating less, I've lost about 75 lbs in 5 years.
> precise calorie counting is a strawman argument against CICO
Precise calorie counting is what most people talking about CICO promote though. And not to "get an intuition for how much calories are in food", what you hear most often is "calculate your TDEE, eat 500 calories under".
There are all kinds of coping mechanisms people use to excuse themselves and stay fat. "I don't eat more than normal, I'm just a genetic anomaly who absorbs more nutrients from food than everybody else.." Well assuming that wasn't BS, the answer is still to eat less. Or "CICO is just a thought terminating cliche"; if I had fallen for that BS, I'd still be fat. I'm glad I saw through those lies.
Do you have trouble falling asleep while hungry?
That, in the mouth of some super-aggressive willpower, self-help, libertarian, laissez faire entrepreneur type, of course becomes an attack on weakness, but everything out of their mouths is going to stink of social darwinism. But I think it contains hope - it's not a curse or a punishment, it's a physical process.
Is it going to explain 20 pounds of bodyfat? Absolutely not. But "calories in, calories out" isn't backed up by the science.
Now, you can get more specific than that and say "well this medical condition makes you more hungry" or "this medical condition means you can't get as much energy as you should from eating". But fundamentally, a condition like say PCOS isn't magic. It doesn't make you absorb food better, otherwise we would have already evolved to use that absorption process.
Having said all that: yes, no two people are exactly the same, we're not bunsen burners, etc. But the reason you're[1] fat is because you eat too much.
[1]: general you, not you specifically
While I don't know about the first half of this sentence (though I have my suspicions!) it's pretty obvious the second half is false. You're saying that we all have to process food identically because evolution has selected the optimal result in humans. But evolution does not product perfectly consistent results. In fact it relies on producing inconsistent results! Because sometimes small flaws turn out to actually be a benefit and get selected, that's how evolation works. So the fact that humans are a result of evolution does not prevent different people from having different abilities to absorb nutrients.
> But the reason you're[1] fat is because you eat too much.
You went to the trouble of mentioning CICO and then totally forgot about CO! Obviously you could extend this sentence to "... and/or you don't do enough exercise" but, similar to the previous point, there are likely to naturally be variation in calorie outputs. In fact "running hot" might seem like a weakness but could be a perfectly valid evolutionary strategy, presuming it gave some other benefit (like sharper mind or stronger body, better for obtaining more food). It's quite possible for both strategies to be baked into one set of genes, perhaps selected by activity in childhood.
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It's self evident that CICO is true. It's just completely worthless for providing any insight. Very much a thought-terminating cliché as originally described.
I dunno, I think you might be surprised by how many people genuinely do not seem to understand it. It's valuable to them if they are willing to listen, problem is a lot of the time they really aren't, hence their problem.
This is technically true but a but specious. Obviously you shouldn't eat as much as Michael Phelps if you don't train like Michael Phelps. But it's probably a lot more actionable for you to eat fewer calories than for you to start training like an Olympic athlete.
It's really not. As I said above, people are not identical. Yes, evolution doesn't produce perfectly consistent results. However, absorbing nutrients is the direct foundation for the only thing that matters in the process of evolution: reproduction. You can't reproduce if you die from lack of nutrients. Given how much of humanity's existence has been staving off starvation and famine, any improvements would be heavily selected for, and would quickly spread.
As an extreme example, if you could survive on an apple per day, the next famine that rolled around would leave you pretty free to repopulate with your superdigestive genes, since most everyone else would be dead.
> You went to the trouble of mentioning CICO and then totally forgot about CO!
I don't really understand the point you're trying to make in this paragraph. Even if some people "run hot" or they have some magic gut that lets them survive on an apple per day or whatever, it's still a fundamental truth that if they're fat, they're eating too much. Yes, someone can exercise more or whatever to change their output, but the reason they're currently fat is because they're currently eating too much.
> It's self evident that CICO is true. It's just completely worthless for providing any insight. Very much a thought-terminating cliché as originally described.
Yes, no, and no. As described above, there really are people that think "I eat just an apple a day and I can't lose weight!". CICO is a baseline for saying "no, that's impossible". It's not a thought-terminating cliché, it's making sure that everybody is on the same page of accepting basic science.
If that was true, shouldn't we have evolved to hibernate at some point?
> You can't reproduce if you die from lack of nutrients.
You also can't reproduce if you can't run fast when a wolf is hunting you. Those muscles are going to take some energy even while not running away from a wolf. I think you're trying to reduce evolution and reproduction to a single variable, which is a mistake.
This is itself a thought terminating cliche. Has anyone actually checked?
Within a pretty tight margin, calories in minus calories out DOES predict weight gain. The real question is why someone feels the need to eat more calories than they burn even when they already have ample stores of calories, and what they or others can do to change this. And THAT is a much more interesting question.
Thermic effect of food, for instance, seems to be the phenomenon where the metabolism increases after a meal. Metabolism is calories-out. So thermic effect of food isn't a refutation of CICO, just a complication. CICO is still the primary mechanism of weight control.
The main actual counterexample to CICO is water retention.
You are correct that water weight can cause spikes in weight measurement, but this is just a contributor to weight as a noisy measurement, not an example that it is not helpful.
Additionally, from the link:
> Bennett explains that exceptions are made to the use of phrases, that would otherwise be considered thought-terminating if they are used in addition to evidence or strong claims.
I'm happy to continue to discuss this with you, but I would ask that you please refrain from name calling.
Anecdotally, I've seen tons of people fight through different fad diets with no success. They spend tons of time talking about ways to trick their metabolisms, naturalistic arguments about what to eat and not eat, etc. Perhaps they would be more successful if they stopped over-thinking and focussed purely on reducing their portion sizes and increasing their exercise. Again anecdotally, it seems like usually exercise is emphasized along with diet at first, but quickly gets dropped. Within a couple weeks, the fad diet is forgotten as well.
Weight loss methods include a lot of pseudo science and I think it's important to keep in mind that whatever low fat or low carb or paleo diet you try is ultimately only going to succeed if you lower your calorie intake or raise your calorie expenditure.
Obviously there are some exceptions to that rule if you aren't accounting for changes in calorie absorption or bmr, but everything I've seen or read seems to show that those variations are miniscule.
As a diet, you could plan out what you want to weigh over time, and then before each meal calculate how far below that goal you are and limit your consumption to the difference.
(Yes, weight loss is substantially through exhaled CO2)