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Notes -
The fact that CO is difficult to accurately assess in the real world - even moreso than CI, which is itself very difficult to accurately assess - isn't some epicycle of CICO, it's just a component of it. CICO does always give you predictable results, as long as your predictions are based on actual fact, i.e. the simple fact that you can't accurately assess CO in the real world.
In practice, the vast majority of CICO is directed at weight loss, which means simply making CI < CO. This can be accomplished consistently even without accurate measurements of either, by making them accurate enough such that the error bars don't overlap. That is, you can get a somewhat reasonable estimate for upper bound of CI by taking the nutrition label of every food you eat and then doubling it. And you can get a somewhat reasonable estimate for lower bound of CO by calculating your BMR and adding on half of what those caloric expenditure tables for exercise or your fitness band or smartwatch or your stationary bike says. Make the upper bound estimate of CI lower than the lower bound estimate of CO, then you can have fairly high confidence that you've gotten actual CI lower than CO.
For weight gain, the fact that the body has ways of physically refusing to take in more food or causing the food to pass through without nutrition being extracted makes things trickier, I believe, but that's an area that I've not had the privilege of needing to explore.
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