Comment by ninkendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ninkendo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> It doesn't take long for the basal rate to fall to whatever your intake is because the system evolved to naturally have a lot of room to spare

All this is accounted for in this sentence of my post:

> your base metabolic rate also changes as your weight does, so re-baselining by continually measuring caloric intake and your weight to recalibrate is always going to be necessary

If you’re actually measuring yourself at the scale to get the ground truth of your actual metabolic rate, and you’re doing this every single day, then there isn’t a single thing that can change this: UCP1 adaptations, fat viruses, leptin changes, hormones, stress… all of this is covered by the actual weight on the scale. If I ate X calories and gained Y lbs, I need to adjust my calories by Z, no matter the reason I gained those pounds.

You can argue that such a diet is too hard, and that for some people the adjustment to your calories is going to leave you essentially starving, but it doesn’t change the truth of the matter that it will work if you do it right. Now, whether it’s worth it for people, and whether the process is going to leave you utterly miserable or even extremely unhealthy as a result, I’m making no claim on.

Uhh... Isn't the whole thing pointless because of your last sentence?

No, I’m saying I’m making no claim on that because I very much don’t want to get into the (very) subjective and context-dependent argument about whether a diet is a good idea for someone or not. My claim is much narrower: CICO works if you follow it. Whether it’s right for you, I can’t say.

(For my part, CICO worked amazingly well for me, and I was able to follow it without much trouble. But that’s just me.)

Empirically it's really quite rare that eating less than your caloric expenditure is going to make you unhealthy for obese people. It's a rare caveat, not ground for blanket dismissal.

Feeling hungry or being unhappy with such a diet is more common, but it's generally also fixable, and it doesn't defeat the point either.

Now, whether it’s worth it for people, and whether the process is going to leave you utterly miserable or even extremely unhealthy as a result, I’m making no claim on.

then CICO is not practical for weight loss. the "CO" becomes so small that you're screwed

The cope.

What normal human reduces its CO so that you wont lose weight? Are you talking about someone in a coma?

You will lose weight, in fact if you cut to 0 for long enough you are guaranteed to lose all soft tissue weight. Can I recommend you the “0 calories till you die” diet? The issue is that:

- many people can cut from a diet of 2200 calories per day to 1800 calories per day and pretty quickly and sustainably lose weight. This kind of calorie reduction is very manageable, and anyone who has lost weight this way starts saying “it’s just CICO man, so easy, just do it”

- meanwhile, in order to lose weight, some (probably not huge but very real) amount of people who maintain at 2200 calories need to drop to 1000 calories per day, or even lower, consistently, for months, in order to lose weight at a 0.5 lb/wk. This is miserable, not sustainable, and probably a net negative on your life (damage not worth the weight loss) unless you are morbidly obese.

The people in category 1 yell “you’re just coping, it’s not hard, just CICO” at group 2. Meanwhile they have never had to reduce calories in that way and have no idea how unsustainable it is. They are so sure their experience is universal, that they usually utterly deny the other groups existence, and smugly go about the world assuming people struggling with weight are just weak.

I get what you are saying. And you put forward a nice argument. The problem is that the ANTI-CICO-Crowd takes the stance that "CICO WONT WORK BECAUSE MY CO IS REDUCED HAH TAKE THAT CICO-FUCKTARDS"

Which is stupid.

If you want to loose weight and maintain a reasonable BMI during the long run you need 2 things.

1) A healthy diet, if you are in America this requires a bit of planning, if you live in Europe its easier. Limit the portion size (and if you are fat you don't know what a normal portion size is, look to you skinnier friends for inspiration).

2) Get your heart rate up a couple of times a week. If you are fat this might be the _walk_ to the store. If you are just weak weight training is great. And for 99% you most likely should aim to increase the amount of condition training, brisk walks, joggins, biking, chopping wood whatever.

Diet and exercise are indeed the keys to weight loss.

By focusing exclusively on CICO, one dismisses the fact that people dislike feeling hungry. To say it's simply an issue of willpower dismisses the importance role of hormones in driving behavior. When it comes to weight loss, some people are dominated by their hormonal responses, while others have more regulated responses.

I think I've found a good analogy: advocating CICO as primary strategy to lose weight is like saying all you need to do to complete a road track is to drive forward and stay on the track. The track shape analogizes to the unique dynamics of a person's hormonal feedback loops. Completing the race analogizes to hitting a weight loss goal, while going for fastest lap time is like a doing a 30-day weight loss challenge.

There's roughly 8 billion unique tracks in the world. Some tracks may be a drag strip, others may be Nurburgring-style circuits, and an unlucky few get the Baja 1000. Virtually everyone rides a normal car with gas, brakes, and a steering wheel, though performance characteristics do vary. At all times, you are the only driver on the track. Completing a drag strip track is trivial: just drive straight. Some tracks (like a NASCAR circuit) have banked turns which allow for high speeds with minimal focus on turning or braking. Many tracks, however, require different strategies. As an example, you MUST brake at turns on the Nurburgring because failure to break WILL cause you to leave the track, potentially causing a spinout or even a crash. If a racer aims for a specific lap time, they'll need to maintain a minimum average speed across the lap, which requires learning optimal driving, turning, and braking strategies specific to that course.

I think you can mine this analogy for more insight, but the primary point is: CICO is in all weight loss strategies, but because of personal hormone dynamics, not all weight loss strategies can be CICO.

If CICO isn't practical, what is? If you're someone whose base metabolic rate plummets so much when dieting that you have to basically starve just to lose weight, you're probably screwed no matter what. Why single out CICO as not being practical for these people?

it works until you run against the limit where it's not possible to cut more calories but are still overweight. I think this is mediated by genes. Even willpower is genetic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com