Reducing sugar isn't just about reducing calories. More sugar means more gut imbalance, and that can cause some serious problems. It's not always easy to connect the dots, and not many people really get to know or understand the messages their own bodies are sending them. And doctors DNGAF about nutrition or diet, not really at least - they just treat symptoms with pharmaceuticals but a real cure for some ailments means a serious change in eating habits, and one of the best changes to promote health is reducing sugar intake.
Also, I'm not sure what you're communicating with the point about nuts. Are you saying that a person will gain weight? Lose weight? Lose nothing? Depending on what you were implying, you might actually be proving the author's point.
By the way, I actually have done many experiments eating various monodiets, including nuts. The worst was walnuts. I love walnuts, but the end result was horrendous. I almost certainly would have lost weight because so much of the fats were not being absorbed (ALA is poorly metabolized) and passing through. On the other hand, fresh raw peanut butter (with a little salt) was not only satiating but well tolerated.
My experience reflects exactly why people object to CICO. Nobody is saying that two different substances can emit the same amount of heat measured in calories when burned in a bomb calorimeter. The root objection is that the body will treat different substances the same way. It's wildly untrue that you can just eat anything and predict a health outcome with 3rd grade arithmetic. CICO doesn't explain why I could sustain a diet solely of peanut butter (no sugar added) but couldn't eat a diet only of walnuts, to the point where the "calories" were coming out in my shit having not been oxidized.
> you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle
Yes, it completely defeats the general principle, and if it didn't then those insisting on CICO would reply with more than "how can you actually believe what I don't believe?"
> if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat?
If it was simple as that, then we wouldn't have glycogen stores because... why bother when anything not immediately oxidized turns to fat! If it's as simple as that, protein wouldn't ever be used to maintain lean mass but would be all converted to glucose and then into fat by the liver (not at all efficient). If it's as simple as that, then we would never shit. Don't believe me? I challenge you to collect your stool, dry it out, and light it on fire. Look – calories!
Instead, many people past a certain age seem to maintain a weight that's way too high (obese), but not still going up quickly. I think you should adjust your numbers to fit the facts and then reconsider which details are actually important.
You should use your brain to learn some math, quit being a jack ass, admit when you're wrong, and learn from your mistakes instead of hiding them with insults.
10 percent is not trivial if someone is trying to lose weight by counting calories while eating foods that are obesogenic. And yes, many people do this specifically because body fat comes down to a simple equation. Practically everyone I know whom has taken the calorie-counting approach has done so with the idea that they can still eat pasta and other crap. It's extremely common. Also, given that the calorie counts on packaged food can be off by as much as 20%, and that people at home are getting their TDEE from either calculators or fitness watches that estimate their TDEE, people doing CICO are at high risk for overeating and not losing body fat at a satisfactory rate. Moreover, if they're eating crap, they may be losing more weight in muscle than desired because the human body does not care about thermodynamics.
Yes, if a meal contains 150-300 "calories" than is suggested then that's a setback, especially for those using CICO as a way to give themselves permission to keep eating obesogenic crap. Someone can drive a car while stepping on both the gas and the brakes at the same time... buy why? Unless a person is weighing their food, calories are an imperfect measure that only measure one thing, which is heat. Calories tell you nothing about how metabolized substrates are being delegated. Is it being used immediately, or stored in glycogen, or stored in fat, or pooped out? Who knows! Calories will never tell you that.
For the sake of argument, let's pretend that we're trying to lose weight by eating no more than our BMR of 1650 calories per day and doing some exercise to put us into what some would call a "calorie deficit."
If we divide 1650 calories into 3 meals, each meal would be around 550 calories. However, in the worst case that the calorie estimate for these meals is off by 20%, then each meal contains 110 extra calories, putting our calorie intake 330 calories over our target.
Ok, that's fine. We'll just run those calories off at the gym, right? If we use a MET calculator, this would reveal that we'd have to run for around 35 minutes to actually oxidize enough food to produce 330 calories of heat. But what has actually happened here? Since glucose metabolism is prioritized, a significant amount of those calories won't have been produced by fat oxidation. If the food we're eating put our RQ at 1.0 or greater, such as if we're eating pasta and toquitoes, that puts us at greater risk of burning carbs but not fat. This isn't a bad thing per se, since some of those carbs might have been otherwise stored as fat. But after 35 minutes of intense running, how much have we really achieved if we are trying to lose body fat? Not much unless we run much longer than 35 minutes every day. Most people simply don't keep up this kind of routine for very long.
On the other hand, perhaps we end up undereating, or we decide to eat even less than we were before. This can work because something's gotta give and fat mass will continually be accessed and used. However, we would likely be at risk for muscle loss. Without enough protein, muscle is difficult to hold on to. If we reach a point where our glycogen stores are chronically exhausted, then glucose has to come from somewhere, and if it's satisfied by exogenous carbohydrates then it's gotta come from breaking down muscle through gluconeogenesis. We'll lose weight in the long run, but at what cost? Even if protein is factored in to meals, it still may not be enough if we're not eating as many calories as we thought we were.
If you think what I'm saying is trivial, then tell that to all the researchers you seem to think are wasting their time using calorimeters and metabolic carts.
Some of us, rather than counting calories in perpetuity, choose non-obesogenic diets that make it extremely difficult to overeat but are satisfying and provide enough nutrients to maintain and build lean mass. Just because someone can count calories and lose weight doesn't mean that someone who doesn't count calories and consumes more "calories" than their TDEE will necessarily gain body fat.
Again, nobody is saying that people can't lose weight counting calories. The issue is that it doesn't work well for everyone and there are alternatives that work in spite of it. It's only useful in the context that it leads you to undereating such that you're losing more mass than you're taking in, which may or may not actually happen.
worrying about protein absorption and glycogen stores is so far off the mark on what is important to someone trying to lose weight that you are actively harming them by making them think this is some sort of complicated problem, when it is not.
> you are actively harming them by making them think this is some sort of complicated problem
Take a hike, dude.
You can disagree all you want, but there's no good reason for you to to be this rude. So far, you haven't shown the slightest indication that you know enough about the subject to assert that I'm "actively" harming anyone. You really have a nerve to say that when your responses are so devoid of substance. If you can't handle civil conversations that aren't to your liking, you are free to not participate.
I suspect most people don't snack on nuts, but carb rich sugary-salty snacks, which keeps your insulin levels high.
High insulin levels means you can't burn fat.
Nuts are calorie dense, since they're mostly made of fat and eating them makes it easy to gain weight.
Density would not matter if its a hard limit