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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   32124 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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A blow to the CICO theory of obesity: Pre-fertilization-origin preservation of brown fat-mediated energy expenditure in humans

In mice, cold environments before pregnancy can "pre-program" fat-burning traits in offspring. Could the same be true for humans?

People conceived in colder months consistently had more active brown fat in adulthood

Cohort 4 explored energy use after eating (DIT). Again, those from the cold-fertilization group burned more calories post-meal. In Cohort 5, the DLW method showed these individuals had higher Total Energy Expenditure in daily life, even after adjusting for physical activity and body composition.

Cohort 2, which included adults of all ages, showed that cold-conceived individuals had lower body mass index, less visceral fat, and smaller waistlines. These benefits were linked to increased brown fat activity, as confirmed by structural equation modeling. Interestingly, in younger participants (Cohort 1: males aged 18–25), BMI differences were minimal, likely because they had not yet experienced age-related fat gain.

A deep dive into weather data found that lower outdoor temperatures and wider day-night temperature swings during the months before conception were the strongest predictors of adult brown fat activity.

I find this noteworthy for three reasons —

  • There’s possibly an easy and natural intervention for obesity. The Japanese neurotically dress for the weather, so how great will the effect be for those who accept the cold? “College woman walking to a party in winter wearing a short dress” was a joke when I went to school, but it was apparently pro-natal. Is it the fluctuation which is most significant? Does it need to be tied with the day-night cycle?

  • This is more evidence that humans are shockingly attuned to specific conditions they evolved in, which should be reverse-engineered to find more potentatial interventions for human flourishing. We are much more animal than we like to admit.

  • How many other “willpower problems” have less to do with willpower and more to do with 2nd and 3rd order effects which are hidden from us, or which compound invisibly? There are probably many more for obesity alone.

I remember the jokes always being about walking back from a party in the same dress at 5am, minus a sock and maybe underwear

“College woman walking to a party in winter wearing a short dress” was a joke when I went to school, but it was apparently pro-natal.

It would probably lead to more sex and less births. Afghanistan has high fertility and no short dresses and women sit home.

This is not a blow.

Losing weight through cold exposure is a well known trick. Cold exposure also leads to an increase in brown fat which can burn white fat for energy, making it easier to lose weight.

Which part of CICO do you think this is a blow to? There has always been some noise level of individual variability. This is inherent in basically all biology research. Sometimes, folks are able to probe a bit deeper into it, and we already have a variety of different ways to do so. Many of them are just too complicated to do most of the time for most people... and they're often usually relatively small effect sizes, anyway. Like, yes, can we slightly refine our estimate of one component of your CO if we take precise measurements of your individual organ sizes; is that a "blow" to CICO?

There are determinants unrelated to willpower and unrelated to personal lifestyle changes which cause obesity. This is one factor and there may be many others. Everyone who uses “CICO” in obesity discourse means that, by everyone attempting to modify one of these variables, we can sizably reduce waist sizes. What this study shows is that in two cohorts controlled for willpower, one will simply be fatter due to their parent’s cold exposure.

Unless willpower and lifestyle changes can be shown to significantly modulate obesity rates at a population-level, and in the long-term, in a way that isn’t merely survivorship bias or an outlier, then CICO is as useful, insightful, and interesting as saying “narcoleptics need to stay awake”, “insomniacs need to sleep”, and “a thirsty sailor adrift at sea must never drink salt water”. It acts as a brainworm that just derails actual discourse around obesity.

What this study shows is that in two cohorts controlled for willpower, one will simply be fatter due to their parent’s cold exposure.

That is not what this study shows. I'm not even sure how you would "control for willpower".

Unless willpower and lifestyle changes can be shown to significantly modulate obesity rates at a population-level, and in the long-term, in a way that isn’t merely survivorship bias or an outlier, then CICO is as useful, insightful, and interesting as saying “narcoleptics need to stay awake”...

This depends on what you're trying to do. For example, there are tons of athletes and bodybuilders who modulate their body weight through diet and lifestyle. Is this suddenly useless to them if some larger population behaves one way instead of another way?

This community loves Science (TM) and Rationalism (TM). Suppose you lived in a religious woo world, and everyone believed that the gods wanted you to eat raw meat and they determined whether or not you got sick. You discovered that, actually, the cooking process can improve digestion and kill pathogens. But you just couldn't convince other people to do it, for whatever reasons. Maybe there are folks out there claiming that it's just because they "lack willpower" to do it. Is your knowledge suddenly "useless" in the case where a bunch of people don't do it... but it would somehow magically become "useful" if a bunch of people started doing it?

You control for willpower by looking at a cohort conceived in colder months and comparing to a cohort conceived in warmer months. This is simple. As we know that the month of conception has no bearing on willpower, and the study did not find a correlation in regards to temperature of month at birth, which I suppose may somehow change one’s willpower (if you squint), the populations are controlled for willpower.

athletes and bodybuilders modulate their body weight through diet and lifestyle. Is this suddenly useless to them if some larger population behaves one way instead of another way?

A minority successfully do this, only in the short-term, and only by significantly modifying their social identity. It comes at an impractical expenditure of willpower for the population-level. You can probably get someone to not eat for three days with the offer of $100,000; you can get a competitive wrestler to stop eating when it’s required for his social reputation; and a particularly vain bodybuilder can probably bulk and cut when he has made his appearance his entire social value. But this has no effect on the longterm rate of obesity or the general population, because not everyone can turn their entire social identity into weightlifting (neither is this desirable). In fact, even those selected for willpower and who practice willpower in regards to weight during their athletic career are not protected against obesity. Studies show that weight cycling athletes are either at the same level of obesity risk as other athletes, or even a worse level of obesity risk than the general population. We also know that the yearly Ramadan practice of willpower does not affect longterm obesity. If willpower were a longterm determinant, we would see (1) Ramadan practitioners become less obese, (2) weight-cycling athletes are particularly protected against obesity compared to other athletes. Yet we don’t find this.

You can find people who have terrible willpower in regards to substances, energy drinks, candy, and yet don’t gain weight. Then you can find people who exhibit amazing willpower in all facets of life, and yet are fat.

Then you can find people who exhibit amazing willpower in all facets of life, and yet are fat.

Can you though, with any significant frequency? I find a remarkable degree of correlation between being overweight and most negative traits/life outcomes, in others as well as in myself.

Probably some Berkson's paradox going on.

Berkson's paradox

I could construct the argument:

"People smart enough to be in my social circles are more likely to be fat, but only because the ones that are both smart and fit are in higher status social circles."

But:

  1. I have vanishingly few fat friends
  2. I don't think that's a sufficient explanation in more generic settings
  3. I just don't think it's the case. I strongly believe it to be the case that in the overall population, obesity correlates negatively with positive life outcomes and traits.

My guess is you and most other's here are high enough status that y'all tend not to associate with dumb/low conscientious/high time preference, fat people.

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The only examples I can think of are "strongfats", i.e. weightlifter musclebro types that are optimizing for mass as opposed to musculature. Outside of them it's hard to picture anyone else who might fit here, and even strongfats aren't nearly as fat as the median body positivity activist

As we know that the month of conception has no bearing on willpower

Right, so that is not a control for willpower.

A minority successfully do this

Please address my food cooking hypothetical.

only in the short-term

This is not true. Many people do it year-round for many years.

only by significantly modifying their social identity

Please address my food cooking hypothetical. One might say that it would require a significant modification to the hypothetical religious/social identity. Does that mean that knowledge about cooking is "useless"?

this has no effect on the longterm rate of obesity or the general population, because not everyone can turn their entire social identity into weightlifting (neither is this desirable)

Please address my food cooking hypothetical. I don't particularly care if everyone "can" change their entire social identity or whether it is "desirable". I am speaking purely descriptively.

I will additionally note that I have not, a single time in this conversation, made any claims about willpower, except that your claimed control for willpower was not, in fact, a control for willpower. I have no idea if there is even such a thing as a "general willpower factor" or, if there was, it would correlate to any particular behaviors. It doesn't seem to factor in to a descriptive account of body weight chemistry, physics, or dynamics.

Different months of conception have different genetic effects on a future child. It does not have different effects on willpower. One large group in month A has the same willpower as one large group in month B. There is no reason to think otherwise. So we assume the same willpower. But the genetic effects are correlated with different adult obesity rates. Did you read the study? If you think that the month of conception can alter even willpower, then we are essentially redefining willpower and are all the way back to where we started — in needing cultural / societal changes which genetically change people’s willpower.

one might say that it would require a significant modification to the hypothetical religious/social identity

A cooking change is a one time change. You’re asking for half the humans on earth to fundamentally rewire their identity so that their primary value in life is their body; and this is implying that bodybuilders aren’t preselected for the epigenetic expressions not associated with obesity. This is an insane proposal.

Does that mean that knowledge about cooking is "useless"?

Bodybuilders — the sliver of successful ones who actually succeed in modifying their body longterm without drugs, so 0.01% of the population or less — maintain their social identity through, essentially, thousands of hours of identity maintenance a year, changing what they think about, who they look up to, what they value. A world of bodybuilders would destruct, as no one would care about civic or institutional participation. So this proposal is not serious. We could make everyone become Buddhist ascetics whose new overriding value in life is not eating. This is is similarly possible, but not a serious proposal.

Anyway, please see my weight-cycling studying x3.

So we assume the same willpower.

That is not a control on willpower. It's not saying anything about willpower. I've said nothing about willpower. It is not apparent how willpower is supposed to come into anything or what straw man you think you're arguing against.

A cooking change is a one time change.

No. You have to cook your meat every single time you eat it. Every single meal, every single day, for the rest of your life. You’re asking for half the humans on earth to fundamentally rewire their identity so that their primary value in life is their body; will you very clearly state that you think that this means that knowledge about cooking is "useless" if all of those humans on earth don't do it, but magically becomes "useful" if they do?

this is implying that bodybuilders aren’t preselected for the epigenetic expressions not associated with obesity

I never said any such thing.

That is not a control on willpower. It's not saying anything about willpower. I've said nothing about willpower. It is not apparent how willpower is supposed to come into anything or what straw man you think you're arguing against.

It's apparent from the pro-CICO arguments here that the usual conclusion is "CICO is obviously right, people just don't have the willpower to follow it." The argument path here is so well-beaten that a 4x4 could drive down it in high-range mode.

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It might be helpful if you wrote clearly what you’re trying to articulate. I will clarify that I am not interested in quibbling on the literalist definition of CICO that forgets how it is used in discussions. I am simply interested in how can we practically solve the obesity crisis, which is important. I’m asserting that CICO — telling people to focus on their calories and exercise — is not a practical framework, and there’s a study suggesting that a viable framework may be looking at holistic environmental determinants.

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These people are legitimately claiming that being conceived April 16th through October 16th means you have a slower metabolism because it was warmer out and that did something epigeneticly to you. And it is to the extent, per Fig 2.2b, that people born in the cold half of the year burn 1650 cal /day vs 1550 cal/day for people born in the warm temperature half of the year.

From the study:

Preconception exposure to low outdoor temperature and temperature gap affects offspring’s metabolic phenotype, promoting higher EE in humans. Our findings propose a conceptional theory, named PfOHaD. This concept suggests that environmental factors, such as temperature exposure before conception, can programme physiological traits in offspring, potentially influencing their health outcomes across generations.

Is there any evidence, outside of this study, that being conceived April 16th through October 16th (or in warmer months / areas / seasons in general) will lower your metabolism at all, much less 100 cal/day?

All else equal, the same person conceived in Nigeria will have a slower metabolism than if they were conceived in Norway?

I find this noteworthy for three reasons —

I don't think you should find this noteworthy, I think you should find it not true. "You burn an extra 100 calories if conceived in winter because epigenetics" is a very strong claim with very scant evidence.

if that variation is true, why don't we see it in life expectancy and althetic records?

if that variation is true, why don't we see it in life expectancy and althetic records?

I'm reminded of the factoid that most professional hockey players have birthdays towards the beginning of the year, because the peewee leagues have cutoffs on New Year's Day. So you get more attention because you're statistically larger / have 11 months more growing time as a January peewee player than a December peewee player. It didn't require a proper scientific study, but someone just looking up professional hockey player birthdays and going, "huh".

I would be surprised, but maybe no one has done significant birthday analyses with regards to life expectancy and athletic records because it would feel like silly astrology. That's kind of why even analyses that can be painted as "silly" in a soundbyte, say, during a Presidential Address to Congress, might have a legitimately interesting motivation: are you doing this analysis because of "astrology" or because of epigenetic effects based on seasonal variations during gestation?

Either way, I think you're striking at the heart of the issue: we probably don't need to hook people up to devices that measure vitals in order to determine if there are measurable differences based on the calendar dates of their gestation. If the difference is meaningful, we should be able to see downstream effects in, as you said, life expectancy and athletic records, and other examples as well.

because the peewee leagues have cutoffs on New Year's Day.

it's important for the young but it shouldn't have effect on lifetime records

The kids that do well in a sport early on get extra encouragement, coaching, motivation, and more.

Yes, comment below made me think this too. But what if there is such effect for weight gain/loss too?

Shouldn't? Or doesn't?

The factoid I'm familiar with comes from Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers", in which he dubs the concept "accumulative advantage": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

Allegedly, elite Canadian hockey players tend to have birthdays earlier in the year.

Edit: this medium post shows the results of a very rudimentary data gathering exercise relevant to the topic: https://medium.com/market-failures/birth-months-and-hockey-players-further-validating-gladwells-observation-1187f4deb63b

Is this an L for CICO, or a massive W for astrology?

Not to mention the energy industry.

As others pointed out, CICO cannot be debunked in so far that thermodynamics is immutably true. It's just different factors can contribute to these variables on either side.

How many other “willpower problems” have less to do with willpower and more to do with 2nd and 3rd order effects which are hidden from us, or which compound invisibly? There are probably many more for obesity alone.

agree. Too many people, including even on the 'HBD side', downplay the role of metabolism in regard to obesity. Consider that having a faster metabolism (or more specifically, a less efficient metabolism) means being able to eat more food without becoming obese, hence less willpower is required.

As others pointed out, CICO cannot be debunked in so far that thermodynamics is immutably true. It's just different factors can contribute to these variables on either side.

The best way of thinking about it is that, CICO as an accounting tautology may be true, since it just describes weight loss/gain. But CICO as actionable dietary advice absolutely can (and has been) refuted. Simply deciding to eat fewer calories or exercise more (without doing something hacky like keto) doesn't work.

I don't think the study in that link, which is just about The Biggest Loser participants, refutes that. In terms of CICO as actionable dietary advice, I see it as a meta-dietary advice: follow whatever scheme it takes to lower CI to be beneath CO, and you'll lose weight. If you can reduce CI by just counting calories and willing yourself really really hard not to succumb to hunger, then do that. If you can do it by following a keto or Atkins diet because that leaves you less hungry for the same caloric intake, then do that. If you can do it by following intermittent fasting or one-meal-a-day because you find it easy to just not think about eating during the non-eating-mode times, then do that. If you can do it by just cutting out alcohol from your life and following whatever other eating habits you already were doing, then do that.

Similarly, to increase CO, do whatever it takes to increase your total caloric expenditure, as averaged out per-day, per-week, per-month, etc. That doesn't mean necessarily optimizing by finding the exercise that burns the most calories per second, that means finding an exercise that you will do regularly. Which could mean finding something that's fun enough that you don't have to fight with willpower to do it (or even better, one that's so fun that you have to fight with willpower not to do it), that's convenient enough that you don't have to reorganize the rest of your life just to do it, that doesn't injure you enough that you have to take long breaks, etc.

Of course, when it comes to CICO, it's also often paired with the advice that CI is far more influential than CO, so the latter part barely matters. Perhaps it should be called CIco.

Isn't that just moving the tautology up a level? Since CICO in its thermodynamic sense is just a description of weight loss, then giving the advice 'follow whatever scheme it takes to lower CI to be beneath CO' is the same as giving the advice 'follow whatever scheme leads to long-term weight loss' (which frustratingly doesn't include deliberate CICO).

Yes, and I think the usefulness of this has to do with how often people don't seem to consciously understand this tautology. Which seems very often in my experience, with how much talk there is about "healthy foods" (or variations like "natural foods" or "unprocessed foods") as keys to weight loss. Which they often are, but only indirectly, modulated through the effect on CI. And I've observed that many people tend to obsess over that indirect portion, making them lose sight of the actual goal of modifying the values of CICO.

There's the point that healthy foods offer health benefits other than weight loss, of course, but generally one's fatness level has such a high impact on one's health that, even a diet of "unhealthy foods" that successfully reduce CI will tend to result in a healthier person than one of "healthy foods" that fail to reduce CI (keeping CO constant in these examples).

Yes, and I think the usefulness of this has to do with how often people don't seem to consciously understand this tautology. Which seems very often in my experience, with how much talk there is about "healthy foods"...

I heard an incredible story about a person who got mad at her doctor after she asked, "What food can I eat to offset the fact that I'm eating this other thing?" and, unsurprisingly, her doctor did not seem to answer the question that she had posed in the way she posed it.

I've heard all sorts of other misinformation and bad fundamental beliefs from people. If anyone has a better strategy besides, "Ok, so let's talk about the fundamental basics of how calories and macro/micronutrients work, and how they might have different considerations," I'd be all ears. But it's genuinely difficult to progress if they literally just do not have any concept of the "tautology", what I would perhaps word as the "descriptive fact of the matter". It really feels like trying to teach someone how to play baseball, and they just keep saying, "Where's my racket? I need a racket. When are we going to get to how to use the racket? I just want to know how to use the racket; I'll figure out the rest of it later."

Simply deciding to do anything doesn't actually get the thing done, it's not exactly a novel insight, and I'm not aware of anyone denying it. CICO proponents don't argue for merely deciding to have a calorie deficit.

You misunderstand me. I'm arguing that successfully following CICO as diet advice is counter-productive. The Biggest Loser study showed that contestants who purposely decreased their CI (through having their food intake managed by the producers of the show) and massively increased their CO through exercise permanently reduced their metabolic rates, even after they regained the weight after the show was over. These people, who absolutely did follow CICO as advice ended up making things worse for themselves.

A person can choose to eat less. But eating less increases hunger (duh) and reduces metabolic rate. Homeostasis trumps willpower.

But obesity isn't caused by a lack of willpower (the whole world didn't get lazy in the 1970s for no reason). It's caused by a broken lipostat. This is the consensus among obesity researchers and it lines up with what we actually see. What caused the broken lipostat is still up for debate, I think it's vegetable oil but it could be something else.

But obesity isn't caused by a lack of willpower (the whole world didn't get lazy in the 1970s for no reason). It's caused by a broken lipostat. This is the consensus among obesity researchers and it lines up with what we actually see.

First google hit: *Some obese people have high body weight because they have broken lipostats, but these are a rare minority. *

I'm not sure what the page you're referencing is referring to (can you link it?), because I'm referring to the consensus among obesity researchers for explaining the obesity epidemic:

But there’s a third model, not mentioned by Ludwig or Taubes, which is the one that predominates in my field. It acknowledges the fact that body weight is regulated, but the regulation happens in the brain, in response to signals from the body that indicate its energy status. Chief among these signals is the hormone leptin, but many others play a role (insulin, ghrelin, glucagon, CCK, GLP-1, glucose, amino acids, etc.)

There: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15284410/

I am hesistant to think of it as "consensus" with so few google results.

But obesity isn't caused by a lack of willpower (the whole world didn't get lazy in the 1970s for no reason). It's caused by a broken lipostat.

The 1970s also didn't see a novel virus or chemical triggering adverse reaction leading to "broken lipostat".

I wonder how much is there overlap between people claiming Russian citizens should raise and change government and people critiquing CIco. At least you can get fit just by yourself.

I mean, the paper says that obesity isn't caused by a 'broken' lipostat but one that is set too high, which is what I meant by 'broken'. I assume they use 'broken' to refer to things like Prader-Willi Syndrome.

The lipostatic model not only explains why some people become obese whereas others do not, but also allows us to understand why energy-controlled diets do not work

That is precisely what I'm arguing. CICO (as in calorie controlled diet) doesn't work.

The 1970s also didn't see a novel virus or chemical triggering adverse reaction leading to "broken lipostat".

No, but it did see a stratospheric rise in the consumption of vegetable oil, which is what I think caused the obesity epidemic. Seed oils are definitely novel, as is a diet with 5-10x the amount of linoleic acid that humans need.

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A thing can be true and be mostly bad advice. CICO is like that. If you get your gas car towed to a mechanic and the mechanic asks "have you tried filling it up with gas? You know you can't just get free energy from nothing. To change an object from at rest to in motion requires a force acting up on that object." You'd probably get a little annoyed. Cars cannot run without some form of energy this is true from a physics perspective, but as a way of diagnosing all car problems it's dog shit. You don't need the physics lesson, you need the engine checked by an expert.

But sometimes there is actually no gas in the car and that mechanic would be right that one time. Sometimes calorie counting works for some people. It just seems to fail for most people as a dieting measure. I tend to think of it as a diet for people who think accounting is fun.

You know you can't just get free energy from nothing.

that's the people who don't like CICO usually claim - "I eat virtally nothing and still gain weight".

For a car, mechanic has prior experience of what must be broken. Fat people usually have surplus of calories. SELECTED BY CAPITALISM TO MAXIMIZE CONSUMPTION AND REDUCE WAITING TIME

That would be a good analogy if people were lecturing you on CICO while you're bleeding out. You can't fix a broken engine with more gas, you can't fix a broken body with CICO.

But pretty much every case of being overweight can absolutely be solved with CICO. Calorie restriction always works if you actually do it. It's just that 90%+ of people prefer to dump a bottle of sauce on every salad they eat but still count it as 100 calories. Which is very understandable - I also struggle with plenty of things that are 100% willpower issues - but pretending that CICO doesn't apply or even claiming it is wrong is just silly. Even Ozempic is nothing but CICO at its core.

CICO is fine as a physics explanation. I disagree with OP that it can be "debunked".

As dieting advice it is crap. The main failure point of diets is compliance. CICO has terrible compliance rates.

I completely disagree with this framing. Advice that has it's intended effect, if you follow through on it, is good advice.

No it's not. And if it was I have a series of the best advice for various topics:

On sports: you should win

On war: kill anyone that opposes you

On politics: convince everyone you are correct and wield all the power.

That "advice" is basically saying what the end state is without good help on how to get there.

You are completely misstating the point of CICO- it is the fundamental truth of body weight from which all other successes must derive, but it is not a prescription for success. Upthread 07mk has a good description- you have to look at the CI and CO components and make for former smaller than the latter. Whateve strategies work for you to accomplish that goal is your path to success, but denying fundamental truths of physics are not one of them.

What I said above, and elsewhere:

A thing can be true and also bad advice.

Good advice in my opinion helps you achieve a desirable outcome.

CICO often manifests as calorie counting. It's the most straightforward interpretation of CICO. Calorie counting has historically and scientifically been shown to have just about zero impact on dieting and positive health decisions. It works for a tiny minority of people. I called it the diet for people that love accounting.

I don't dispute the physics, I never did. Just like I wouldn't dispute the physics of motion and free energy with a car mechanic. A car mechanic that started lecturing me about physics and the need for fuel would be an asshole and I'd never go to him again. Telling a fat person about CICO is the equivalent of that mechanic.

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On sports: you should win

On war: kill anyone that opposes you

On politics: convince everyone you are correct and wield all the power.

And you will, if you follow the advice. Advice is not supposed to be a magical spell that binds you to follow it.

I have this weird belief that advice should be helpful. That if you want outcome X then good advice will improve your chances of achieving outcome X. Bad advice is something that just restates outcome X or has no impact or a negative impact on achieving outcome X. Do you have a different word for helpful advice as I've defined it?

Apparently you believe differently, and think that advice does not have to assist towards achieving a desired outcome. That simply haranguing someone for not doing the thing counts as advice. Thats fine. I'm not gonna convince you otherwise, I'd just ask that if you ever see me asking for advice is a wellness thread, know that I'm asking for helpful advice, and whatever it is you are offering can be better left unsaid.

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And you will, if you follow the advice.

No, it's the other way around: if you will, you'll have followed the advice.

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A) CICO necessarily follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is perhaps the most confirmed scientific theory of all time. The day you disprove it is the day physics gets really, really weird and reality as we know it ceases to make sense. So CICO is a theory in the sense that conservation of energy is a theory, which is to say it is as cold and hard of an absolute as we know to exist in the universe, no amount of obesity cheerleading will change that.

B) The effects noted in the study are frankly not that big. Like a 3% increased likelihood of active brown adipose tissue, which might increase total energy expenditure of the bodies resting metabolism of up to 5%. So conceiving in the winter gives your baby a slightly higher chance of being slightly better at burning energy, which is only a benefit if you live in a post-scarsity world.

"You eat too much and you dont exercise enough" remains the core of any and all successful diet criticism.

conservation of energy is a theory, which is to say it is as cold and hard of an absolute as we know to exist in the universe

The expansion of the universe violates conservation of energy. Think of all that CMB radiation that has been redshifted by the expansion of space, thereby losing energy over time.

Relativistic effects may explain why CICO doesn't work for people with high mass.

"Yo momma so fat she halted the expansion of the universe!"

Like a 3% increased likelihood of active brown adipose tissue, which might increase total energy expenditure of the bodies resting metabolism of up to 5%.

Over a long period, this can have an cumulative effect. A small daily surplus can lead to obesity after a decade. It may also mean a lower set point, in which eating a lot food results in much less weight gain than predicted or expected according to regression estimates and physical activity. Overfeeding studies show enormous individual variability as to what percentage of surplus calories are stored as fat or burned off.

Yes, this is trivially true for say, tall people burn more energy by virtue of having more surface area to radiate heat.

Overfeeding studies show enormous individual variability as to what percentage of surplus calories are stored as fat or burned off.

I have yet to see one of these, properly controlling for things like height and weight, that demonstrates an effect I would call "enormous variability". Low single digit percentages, sure.

A) CICO necessarily follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics,

The naive version of CICO compares your meal plan to your gym time. The normal version compares all the food (including drinks!) you consume vs. all your planned or incidental physical activity. The true version compares the bioavailability of all the nutrients you consume vs. all of your metabolic activity, whether that's moving your muscles, thinking, growth, healing, generating heat, or anything else.

I have yet to see any diet plan that uses the true model of CICO. The closest I've seen is a single number for "base metabolism" that you back-calculate from your weight trends.

I think you're pushing a strawman, but I'm open to seeing a diet plan that uses the "true CICO" model I described. Anything less precise can't follow from raw thermodynamics.

As we are mere mortals, generally we can estimate a CO number that's within 5-10% of the appropriate one (regardless of hormonal and compositional differences) and then ensure a CI number that's a decent margin less than that. This whole thing seems to be trying to invoke the Zenos paradox of weight loss in which 'I cannot lose weight since I cannot know my exact expenditure and the only thing stopping me from adjusting my consumption is not knowing to 8 decimal places how many twinkies I can consume to achieve an exact 200 calorie deficit'.

CICO is not a diet plan, it is a description of the fundamental physics that govern bodyweight. My comment is not an endorsement of any diet plan, but a reaction against the, as demonstrated by the storm of replies, substantial contingent of people who will do absolutely anything other than admit you must create a net gradient in a body's energy flux to achieve change.

The strawman is comments about "willpower" or "different basal metabolic rates"- these are simply inputs to be considered but not a reason to pretend the fundamental equation is not what it is.

You don't need official diets for CICO it's self evident. Reduce food consumption and/or increase activity until you lose weight. Still haven't lost weight? Decrease/increase.

Problems:

  1. People tend to lack self control. If you had self control you wouldn't be fat.

  2. People tend to over-weight the activity part. So really just forget about CO and reduce CI until you start to lose weight. See problem one.

Expand to why you're poor and struggle with addiction.

"you're poor because you don't earn enough" A lot of dieting advice is similarly circular or unhelpful. Thankfully we now have GLP-1 drugs, which seem to work for many people

There's a big distinction between obesity and poverty:

To become not-poor, you need to both do things you are currently not doing and do them in a way that gets other people to give you money for those things you do. You're adding behaviors, and you have to socially coordinate.

To become not-fat, you only need to not do a thing (eat). It requires no social coordination whatsoever, it requires no additional action, you literally only have to choose to not pick up the fork.

GLP-1 drugs

Be careful with that poison, I'm reading some horror stories about people going blind on that shit. And the media is staying as silent as possible for that one.

I suspect this is due to comorbidities like diabetes, in which blindness is a risk factor

No, you're poor because you don't do relatively simple things. And yes, hopefully GLP-1s help a ton.

the SS was written a long time ago when a HS degree was good enough. now you need college

So it's down from 97% to what?

People tend to lack self control. If you had self control you wouldn't be fat.

Its well known that certain medications lead to weight gain: do you believe they do so because they reduce the self control of those who take them? Does hyperthyroidism cause significant increases in self-control, and does hypothyroidism erode self-control? Do GLPs work because they increase the individual's self-control?

If not, then factors other than self-control are at play.

Those conditions (likely) don't change the "amount" of self control you have, but they do change how much your desire to eat is weighted in the semi-conscious calculation of what you end up choosing to do. Self-control is your ability to over-ride unconscious, animal instincts in favor of conscious choices. In the case of a medical condition that makes you hungrier, it does in fact require more self control to not eat more, but that doesn't mean that it isn't ultimately a question of self control that determines whether or not you eat more.

Hypothyroidism typically reduces appetite, yet you still gain weight despite eating less. Similarly, hyperthyroidism typically increases appetite, yet you lose weight even though you're eating more. Thyroid hormones are needed to make a lot of metabolic processes run, and if you don't have enough (hypothyroidism) then your temperature goes down and a dozen other processes don't work well and stop using up calories, so most of what you eat ends up in fat storage. If you have too much (hyperthyroidism) then your body temperature goes up, a dozen metabolic processes go into overdrive, and you lose weight despite eating more.

You could argue that someone with hypothyroidism could still use self-control to eat less and not gain weight, which is technically true. They'd probably end up in the hospital, but they could do it.

You could argue that someone with hypothyroidism could still use self-control to eat less and not gain weight, which is technically true. They'd probably end up in the hospital, but they could do it.

Where this hypothetical is from?

I know it wouldn't be The Motte if it wasn't 10,000 words of caveats. Yes, these are exceptions that apply to a minuscule number of people, yet a bunch of people use them to make excuses for why they're fat.

It would not surprise me one bit that certain drugs and conditions reduce self-control and other's increase it. Some things make desired outcomes easier and some things make them harder. If you've got lots of self-control and you get some condition or start some drugs that make it harder to keep weight off, reduce CI until you stop gaining weight.

I would bet you think I have some normie conception of self-control: "self-control is easy! Just don't eat." Nope, self-control is really hard, and you're probably mostly born with it, like IQ. Can a midwit get a PhD in math from Harvard...? Well, are they black? No? Very unlikely.

Additionally hilarious when the majority of people making these arguments, if confronted with a similar 'transness is valid since super rare hormonal dysfunction that impacts 1-in-2-million people' would instantly side on the yes but side whilst since it's about their own bodyweights are suddenly reality relatavists.

I'm reminded of a twitter thread from Big Yud ages ago on similar lines about why he was unable to lose weight. Can't find it on a quick search but it was a similar matter of 'rationalist attempts to rebut CICO when it's fairly obvious he just likes eating and doesn't like exercising'. A post meming on him from back then https://x.com/MorlockP/status/1657098074139811876

I've personally struggled with my weight depending on a bunch of factors, swinging 20-30kgs either direction depending on circumstances but ultimately CICO's the only way I've ever been able to lose weight and generally I gain when I'm distracted by other things to the point of letting go of either moderation or exercise.

One CICO diet plan I know of is The Hacker's Diet. You don't need impossible precision because instead you borrow a page from control theory. You measure your change in weight, and if it's not as desired, you reduce CI to compensate. Closed-loop feedback.

That's exactly what I'm talking about: It's a Calories In, Calories Out, Body Weight system and that third variable is essential.

Skimming through the paper, it appears that the difference between cold and hot is about 100 Calories per cold day, or about one pound per month. A pure CICO system couldn't explain why one person gains a few pounds every winter while an ostensibly-identical person (but fertilized in cold weather) doesn't.

Body weight is not an independent variable. But it is easily observable the way CI and CO are not.

A pure CICO system couldn't explain why one person gains a few pounds every winter while an ostensibly-identical person (but fertilized in cold weather) doesn't.

"Ostensibly".

A pure CICO system couldn't explain why one person gains a few pounds every winter while an ostensibly-identical person (but fertilized in cold weather) doesn't.

h-What? My understanding of the claim is that those two people have slightly different COs. Therefore, a "pure CICO system" would explain it perfectly fine if we're able to quantize this component to individual variability. There are tons of different components to individual variability, and most of the time, we just don't bother quantizing them because they're often hard to measure and are small effect sizes anyway.

Show me the table entry for "brown adipose tissue heating" on a CO calculation and I'll believe it. Otherwise it's just part of the fudge factor.

Quantizing that component (and every other one) to individual variability is the weakness of CICO, as they can result in wildly different results based on unmeasured variables.

These things are usually buried in textbooks. Often in the world of, "Yeah, it can kinda be done, but it's expensive and time-consuming and doesn't really change much."

they can result in wildly different results based on unmeasured variables

I mean, not really? We have a pretty good handle on individual variability. It's not nothing, but it's not insane. And it doesn't generally change much from a practical standpoint. You can just use direct observation and measure your own point in that range of individual variability.

Its not every winter, they measured when exposed to 19 C. Which is basically room temp. So it would be every month about 3k calories (1 lb) for the warm conceived groud vs the cold. Just because they were born when its on average 10 C outside instead of 18 C.

Its ridiculous lol

Who are these 100% blank slatist CICO advocates? Especially around here in the land of "IQ is real and probably has a large genetic component."

Here.

CICO by the Second Law of Thermodynamics holds for force feeding and starvation. Everything between those extremes is confounded by biology.

Should I believe my lying eyes? When my wife and I tracked our weight and caloric intake for a couple years, we had a range of different intakes, and the trend line was bang on at 500cal/day ≈ 1lb/wk. It was noisy, yes, but probably about as noisy as any measurement we have for any biological research.1 Taking another look at the data now, it would be kinda dumb to think about modeling it as a step function, S-curve, or deadzone or whatever. Generally, one needs some justification for moving to some other weird modeling assumption.

1 - Moreover, it is utterly unsurprising that it is so noisy, due to the mathematical realities of numerical analysis and differentiation. If anything, it was extremely surprising that it worked so well!

the trend line was bang on at 500cal/day ≈ 1lb/wk

It's very strange to me this is controversial. You don't have to rely on an small sample studies or individual anecdotes. Thousands of serious bodybuilders track year round. To the point of using an activity tracker to track general physical activity, having a detailed log for total resistance training volume, and eating & measuring common foods to the gram. Essentially universally they find that an offset of 500 kcal/day from maintenance is good for a pound a week, with maybe a variability of 100 kcal.

Now tracking everything too the gram is annoying. Peoples sense of hunger and motivation differ, etc. As hunger develops it's supper easy to spray that cooking spray for 1 second instead of 0.2. It says 0 Cals on the back, but it's not it's 9 kcal per gram. For two items per meal, four meals per day, and 1 gram per spray that's 7.5 pounds of body weight per year. Additionally, in a deep deficit, if you don't use an activity tracker, it's easy to go down to 5k steps a day from 10k steps a day.

So if your eating and activity are driven by intuition or satiation knowing about CICO does not make you lose weight. Particularly the longer and deeper the deficit the easier it is to deceive yourself. You can bypass this problem in approximately two ways. One, is to exercise extreme levels of detail and self-corrective feedback in tracking. The other is to suppress appetite, which is the obvious mechanism by which GLP1s and gastric work.

Did you calculate your base metabolic rate (or whatever the fudge factor is called in your system) so that it all worked out? If not, you got lucky that it happened to be both correct at the start and steady over time. If you have adjusted it, then that means your calculations are on target, and adjusting the inputs so that 3500 kcal = 1 lb resulted in a trendline at 3500 kcal per lb.

This study gives some people a 20% headstart on your dieting goals (admittedly they didn't measure "CI"), which is a pretty notable difference.

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This is certainly what I do - weigh myself every couple of weeks, if my weight's gone up stop eating lunch for a few days, if it's gone down start eating dessert for a few days. Hadn't heard the name "Hacker's Diet", though; it seems kind of too obvious to need a name and I kind of thought anyone who's actually at target weight would be doing it.

It's pretty much what I do as well. Also anticipating excess calories, "Gonna get drinks and have a big dinner so going light on lunch.". Bonus, less booze to get tipsy.

Also knowing your indulgences and where calories sneak in. For most I think that's liquids and snacking. I have a huge sweet tooth. I keep snacking to a minimum and cut out sugary drinks over 20 years ago so I can have an extra slice of cake every now and then. Over the last 5 years I've started "light" intermittent fasting so it's even easier to keep tabs on things. Also I think being comfortable with the feeling of being hungery is a good thing.

To be clear; I'm anorexic (in the proper sense); I don't get hungry*. Obviously, this largely negates the "ate too much" side of the coin.

*I recently discovered that I can get cravings for specific foods; when I started training with my bow, I started getting meat cravings, presumably because I needed protein to add muscle.

Well, it is, but how much do we know about the CO part of the equation? There seem to be often-cited figures for calories burned by various activities, but for example it seems quite obvious that whatever people poop out is not actually of zero caloric value, and that moreover the difference between, say, diarrhea and wombat poop cubes must be nontrivial, but this seems to never be addressed in those arguments.

There is a kind of motte and bailey going on. The motte criticism of CICO is that it's actually very difficult to calculate exactly how many calories are exhausted per second of exercise given how many variables go into such a thing and it's also difficult to calculate how much food is able to to be absorbed by an individual's digestive system therefore we can't calculate out the exact to the calorie differential. The bailey is therefore it's impossible to just consume less calories each day until you find the equilibrium where you're losing weight. You absolutely don't need to have an exact measure of Calories in and calories out to make sure the sign of the difference is negative and the broad tools of calorie restriction will easily allow you to flip that sign to negative. We can't make sure it's -500 and not -485. But this swing aren't even that large as things average out.

CO is the more important one . two people can be identical yet have TDEEs that vary by over a thousand calories despite boing being nearly equally active . that is the power of CO

be indentical yet have TDEEs that vary by over a thousand calories despite being nearly equally active

Either we have very different definitions of the word "identical", or i am going to need a source on that claim. It seems to be farcically untrue at face value.

here you go https://greyenlightenment.com/2024/08/12/the-myth-of-the-myth-of-the-slow-metabolism/

CICO necessarily follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is perhaps the most confirmed scientific theory of all time.

This is why, should I ever have a child, I will feed him a pound of uranium. He won't have to waste time eating for the next 20,000 years.

It is disproved on the grounds that humans are not machines, they are in fact living animals, and hunger no more obeys our will than thirst or sleep. If I ask you to voluntarily keep yourself at starvation level for an extended period of time, and offer a moderate monetary reward, you will break after a few weeks when you smell a slice of pizza or remember cookies exist. If hunger were subordinate to our will, we wouldn’t have instances of cannibalism caused by intense hunger despite the preferences of the hungry party or the threat of eternal damnation. And when you remember that modern life already requires willpower and cognitive expenditure, it’s no more surprising that the obese cave to hunger than that a thirsty person drinks sewage.

So CICO is a theory in the sense that conservation of energy is a theory

That’s not how the expression is used. The expression is used with the implication that the feasible locus of control in obesity is our willpower in regards to caloric intake.

conceiving in the winter gives your baby a slightly higher chance of being slightly better at burning energy

The significance is in the extrapolation. The takeaway is to not have babies in winter in Japan (that would be silly), but that we may be able to modify obesity significantly through pre-conception cold exposure, the limit cases of which are explored in the study. Japan is probably not even a top 100 place in the world where residents experience genuine cold for prolonged periods, due to their urban living and wealth to buy clothes.

You eat too much and you dont exercise enough" remains the core of any and all successful diet criticism.

Only if you ignore the hundreds of millions of times it has practically failed. (I have a photo of a plane with a lot of red dots to show you.)

I'm sorry, but you have disproven nothing, and your comments about willpower are frankly irrelevant. Willpower is just a modifier to your calories input, and calories output. If you completely lack the will to put down the donut and go for a run/swim/whatever, and have no interest in balancing or reversing the energy flux of your body, then sorry your ass is fat and will get fatter barring external intervention. For proof of this, I refer you to Novo Nordisk's stock price.

All successful diets must deal with the fundamental truth of CICO, it cannot be otherwise. You can adopt any number of strategies for managing the two halves of the equation, but you cannot pretend the equation does not exist. The universe has no complaint department.

It is easy for me, and presumably you, to not eat the donut. You believe that this is a power by our will, though you don’t believe that this should be deemed “willpower”. However, we can’t peer inside the hunger of an obese person. What is considered a power of our will may in fact be a less strong sensation of hunger. How easy would it be for us to not eat the donut if we stopped eating for two days? Because our hunger would increase, the power of our will to control it decreases, and we would likely succumb to the donut. In the same way that we are liable to nap after not sleeping. The thought is simply: what is the evidence that the skinny and the obese experience the same level of hunger? It’s possible that they experience more hunger. The circumstantial evidence indicates this. The above study suggests environmental factors influence hunger. Etc.

It’s something of a theory of mind issue to think that everyone experiences the same level of hunger or that our own ability to manage weight would remain if our hunger doubled.

Okay, you are off on some tangent responding to a staw man I cannot even conceive of. I have not, and am not saying anything about experienced levels of hunger, or the theory of mind of an obese person. All I am saying is that the basis of a successful diet must be the recognition of the fundamental equation that determines whether body mass increases, decreases, or remains the same. Use whatever strategies you want to manage both sides, but to claim that CICO is somehow disproven, as OP does, is grossly incorrect.

Willpower is just a modifier to your calories input, and calories output

It is disproved on the grounds that humans are not machines, they are in fact living animals, and hunger no more obeys our will than thirst or sleep. If I ask you to voluntarily keep yourself at starvation level for an extended period of time, and offer a moderate monetary reward, you will break after a few weeks when you smell a slice of pizza or remember cookies exist. If hunger were subordinate to our will, we wouldn’t have instances of cannibalism caused by intense hunger despite the preferences of the hungry party or the threat of eternal damnation. And when you remember that modern life already requires willpower and cognitive expenditure, it’s no more surprising that the obese cave to hunger than that a thirsty person drinks sewage.

The success of GLP-1 drugs shows how medicine is more effective than lifestyle modification.

It is disproved on the grounds that humans are not machines

You are wrong in about fifteen different ways here, but I'll highlight this one: humans are in fact machines, just very complicated ones made out of meat.

You are wrong in one way, but only because you made a single assertion. Humans are not machines as they have particular evolutionary forces at play that need to grasped to make sense of their behavior.

If you had perfect knowledge of the physical makeup of a human body and perfect knowledge of physics, you could perfectly predict the results of any input on that body, no need for cludging together predictions with meta-knowledge like what evolutionary pressures led to that physical arrangement of atoms. People are deterministic machines like literally everything else.

Similarly, a car is in fact just a simplified animal that's made out of steel.

While we have advanced pretty far on the "reacts to sensory inputs" front lately, the "autonomous reproduction" is still sorely lacking.

It's intentionally disabled by breeders so they could have a profit for themselves. Unlock this feature with one simple...

It is disproved on the grounds that humans are not machines, they are in fact living animals, and hunger no more obeys our will than thirst or sleep. If I ask you to voluntarily keep yourself at starvation level for an extended period of time, and offer a moderate monetary reward, you will break after a few weeks when you smell a slice of pizza or remember cookies exist. If hunger were subordinate to our will, we wouldn’t have instances of cannibalism caused by intense hunger despite the preferences of the hungry party or the threat of eternal damnation. And when you remember that modern life already requires willpower and cognitive expenditure, it’s no more surprising that the obese cave to hunger than that a thirsty person drinks sewage.

No, it is not disproved. The second law of thermodynamics does not apply to only machines, it applies to everything.

You are conflating "calories in" with hunger. In a thermodynamic system sense, hunger does not matter. Hunger is not a thermodynamic property. Hunger has nothing to do with the second law.

  1. A person can be hungry and intake no calories.

  2. A person can be not hungry and intake many calories.

  3. A person can be hungry and intake calories.

  4. A person can be not hungry and intake no calories.

Yes, humans generally eat when they are hungry and do not eat when they are full. But this is outside of the second law.

So CICO is a theory in the sense that conservation of energy is a theory

That’s not how the expression is used. The expression is used with the implication that the feasible locus of control in obesity is our willpower in regards to caloric intake.

I have never heard of CICO used in any other manner than "eat less calories than your burn and you lose weight". But why not engage with what CICO actually means instead of how you think people use it? What does it matter how it is used?

What you describe is not actually a blow to CICO, it is a blow to what you contend is the common usage of CICO. Which, what would you like the second law of thermodynamics to say to that? "Congratulations, you have defeated your own definition of CICO?" Ok?

Only if you ignore the hundreds of millions of times it has practically failed. (I have a photo of a plane with a lot of red dots to show you.)

CICO does not actually fail in a thermodynamic sense. People just don't have the self control to limit the "CI" part to below the "CO" part. Maybe you could consider it a failure in a "people have a hard time limiting their diet because hunger is powerful" sense. Or "when people get hungry for a long time their metabolism slows down and reduces the CO which makes it harder to lose weight" sense. But in a energy in = energy out + energy accumulated system sense, it does not fail.

The metabolism slowdown is the major problem. Some people see such a huge slowdown despite still being fat and cutting calories to low levels. those people are screwed . you can only cut so much

you can only cut so much

Wrong.

Its a major problem for people trying to lose weight, its not a major problem for "your body is made of matter and therefore obeys the laws of thermodynamics; so CICO is unambiguously true to the extent it is a thermodynamic statement"

The principal works. The problem I see with CICO is that it’s kinda like telling a drug addict that they just need to not do drugs. It’s true, the best thing a drug addict can do is not do drugs, but the advice if that is as far as it goes is precisely useless because it does tell people how to actually stop using the drugs. Better advice would include changing your routines and habits to avoid triggers and easy access to drugs, and finding things to do that fill your days with happiness without the drugs.

Food wise, the advice, in my view is to eat Whole Foods, unprocessed foods, favoring plants and protein, and limiting carbs especially simple carbs. Then you add in some exercise especially muscle building exercises though even walking has benefits.

Food wise, the advice, in my view is to eat Whole Foods, unprocessed foods, favoring plants and protein, and limiting carbs especially simple carbs. Then you add in some exercise especially muscle building exercises though even walking has benefits.

Do you expect that following your advice will cause people to consume fewer calories than they expend? Otherwise, I would find that this

advice if that is as far as it goes is precisely useless because it does [not] tell people how to actually stop using the drugs

This is really the rub. People want to claim that there is a "problem [they] see with CICO", but it's not actually a problem with CICO. It's a problem with advice for behavioral modification. That advice needs to be linked to a realistic approach to achieving the desired objective, given the reality of the underlying facts.

Imagine saying that the problem with math is that telling people that math is correct doesn't tell them how to actually learn math. ...that's a problem with math?!? That means that math should be viewed as useless or something? No, man. That's not a problem with math at all. Math is just fine. Math is correct, actually. People can, and do, learn math. Obviously, simply saying "math is correct" will not immediately and instantaneously result in someone learning math. Work still needs to be done. But people wayyyy overcorrect and want to imply that there's something wrong with math if they can't just easily, instantaneously, learn math with zero effort and nothing but an incantation of math being correct.

It’s a problem because it’s generally the standard advice given by everybody, with no follow-up to help people actually achieve their goal weight and maintain it. Just don’t eat as much, bro. It’s not useful in getting to the goal. And since tge reason for giving weight loss advice in the first place is to help people reach a goal weight that’s appropriate for their height, advice that doesn’t lead to them getting there is a loss. Yes, any good set of weight loss advice will ultimately mean eating less, much like various budgeting plans still generally result in spending less money, and study tips generally result in people spending more time reviewing for tests. That doesn’t mean the underlying principle for those things doesn’t work, it means that you need more than the technically correct answer to make it possible to do it.

with no follow-up to help people actually achieve their goal weight and maintain it

I mean, frankly, I don't believe you? I think what you're seeing is that most online discussion is not between a person who acknowledges physical reality and is looking for strategies to actually achieve their goal weight and maintain it and a person who has been through it and has even a quarter of a millisecond to start describing follow-up advice. Instead, within a tenth of a millisecond, the discussion is just totally swamped with people claiming that the entire framework is bogus, unhelpful, or not paired with follow-up.

What you're probably missing is not-online discussions that don't get bombed in this way. Where people actually have a serious conversation about goals and strategies to accomplish it. Again, I think the biggest reason you don't see this online is that any such discussion doesn't have a chance to even get off the ground.

Yes, any good set of weight loss advice will ultimately mean eating less, much like various budgeting plans still generally result in spending less money, and study tips generally result in people spending more time reviewing for tests.

Correct. You don't see those other discussions getting bombed and derailed by hoards of people saying that it's totally bogus to even think about trying to spend less money or to study more.

Perhaps test the thesis? Maybe post in the Small-Scale Questions Sunday Thread? Unlike this one, which started immediately out the gate just saying that the entire conceptual schema was bogus, perhaps start by saying that you think that "any good set of weight loss advice will ultimately mean eating less", and you'd like some follow-on advice on how to accomplish it. See what response you get. I would predict that you'll get some realistic advice, probably with some variation, because different things have "worked" for different people. You may also get bombed by folks saying that your entire premise is bogus.

I hate to do it, but I'm going to go back to the math example. Suppose you were wanting to learn math. Perhaps some relatively higher-level math that only a relatively small percentage of people in the population know how to do. Suppose that the second you asked about it online, before anyone even had time to give some advice, folks were swamping the discussion with claims that it's actually impossible for most people to learn said math; after all, we can just look at the low percentage of the population which has currently learned it! Sagan, that would be a trainwreck every single time. I find this example extra funny, because it's not uncommon for math professors to seriously say things like, "You don't so much learn math as you get used to it." Doing math is also uncomfortable for a lot of people; people do get frustrated and upset when trying, and it is even true that a solid number of them just quit trying. But if every online discussion on math was swamped in the same way online weight loss discussions were, I'd probably be stuck just sighing and saying that you're going to have to just find someone offline to help you or put enough shibboleths in your initial inquiry to ward off the throngs of derailers.

I hate to do it, but I'm going to go back to the math example. Suppose you were wanting to learn math. Perhaps some relatively higher-level math that only a relatively small percentage of people in the population know how to do. Suppose that the second you asked about it online, before anyone even had time to give some advice, folks were swamping the discussion with claims that it's actually impossible for most people to learn said math; after all, we can just look at the low percentage of the population which has currently learned it! Sagan, that would be a trainwreck every single time. I find this example extra funny, because it's not uncommon for math professors to seriously say things like, "You don't so much learn math as you get used to it." Doing math is also uncomfortable for a lot of people; people do get frustrated and upset when trying, and it is even true that a solid number of them just quit trying. But if every online discussion on math was swamped in the same way online weight loss discussions were, I'd probably be stuck just sighing and saying that you're going to have to just find someone offline to help you or put enough shibboleths in your initial inquiry to ward off the throngs of derailers.

Imagine that, for some reason, wanting to learning calculus was as common as wanting to lose weight (perhaps an eccentric billionaire has promised $100,000 to anyone who can pass the AP Calc exam), but that mathematical talent remained as low as it is our world (where, after we spend 13 years force-feeding everyone math in an attempt to get them to at least understand algebra, it turns out most people cannot deal with negative numbers or division, let alone variables, and top out their mastery of mathematics at memorizing multiplication tables; i.e., 3rd grade). However, the masses were not willing to accept this, and flooded message boards asking for advice on learning derivatives, purchased index cards with terms like "critical point" on them, etc., despite conclusive empirical evidence that the vast majority of people who attempted this failed.

It seems like the very first thing that should be said in such discussions is that most people are not capable of learning calculus, and that if you failed geometry in high school you are probably wasting your time. Specially when it became obvious that OP could not tell the difference between 7-3 and 3-7.

perhaps an eccentric billionaire has promised $100,000 to anyone who can pass the AP Calc exam

Let's go further. I posited this one on reddit a while back. Let's suppose an eccentric billionaire credibly offered a literal billion dollars to a somewhat-randomly-selected obese person, on the condition that they lose a certain, reasonable amount of weight for their height/gender/etc. and keep it off for, say, five years (this is often a cited duration). Let's say they take drugs/surgery/whatever off the table and it's agreed (perhaps monitored) that it's going to be only "diet and exercise", "CICO", or whatever descriptor. They could plausibly take out loans against the future payout to the extent that lenders think they're likely to collect, which they could use to pay for professional advice (let's say it's highly likely that the person will accept the billionaire's recommendation for a professional who deeply understands caloric balance, macro/micronutrients, sports science, personal training, etc.) or even, say, quitting their job in the meantime or whatever if the numbers allow it. What do you think their chance of success would be?

I've got some other great hypotheticals along opposite lines, but let's just do a direct hyper variant of yours first.

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The principal works. The problem I see with CICO is that it’s kinda like telling a drug addict that they just need to not do drugs. It’s true, the best thing a drug addict can do is not do drugs, but the advice if that is as far as it goes is precisely useless because it does tell people how to actually stop using the drugs. Better advice would include changing your routines and habits to avoid triggers and easy access to drugs, and finding things to do that fill your days with happiness without the drugs.

Providing optimal advice to drug addicts is something I have neither the education nor inclination to do, but I'm still going to snort when a bunch of crackheads on Facebook or whatever start badmouthing the "drugs in drugs out theory" and telling me they get high no matter how little they smoke.

Drug addicts can admit that they're doing drugs. Doing drugs is a discrete act from non-drug, non-destructive acts.

Speaking from direct experience: Food addicts either don't know or actively convince themselves that they haven't crossed the threshold between eating and gluttony. Their mental math never bothers to account for that extra quarter cup of canola oil they dumped into the pan. They don't have a good sense or willfully refuse to investigate how calorie dense a cup of berries is compared to a cup of Nutella compared to a cup of jam. The direct relationship between that snack (which they may forget when they go back to tally at the end of the day) and the amount of time it'd take to burn it are conveniently uninvestigated.

When some people are forced to stare this in the face with strict CICO, they make better decisions.

Which goes back to better decisions, which is precisely what CICO by itself doesn’t do. Telling someone to just CICO is like saying “dude, just spend less than you make” with no other advice. Yes you need to sit down and budget, but you also need to understand the difference between a good purchase and a bad one, understand that rent and other bills come before entertainment in the budget, and understand how to get more bang for your buck. It’s not wrong, but from the POV of getting people to make better food decisions it’s not going to work because it’s woefully inadequate to that task. Telling someone to choose Whole Foods over crap is useful because it makes you feel full and therefore eat less. Telling someone to exercise gives them more calories to work with.

Yes you need to sit down and budget, but you also need to understand the difference between a good purchase and a bad one, understand that rent and other bills come before entertainment in the budget, and understand how to get more bang for your buck.

CICO without cheating (which is why we always emphasize actual tracking) makes this clear. Or clear enough for weight loss.

Knowing the calories you get out of a Snickers bar, given your daily caloric needs and the satiation you get from it, lets you know how bad a decision it is. Once you set a ceiling you can easily see which foods are inefficient.

And, if you choose to indulge, you'll have to fast or exercise later (which you'll probably enjoy even less, proving the point) or compensate with some satiating, low-calorie foods.

People who come up with a fixed budget and can't decide between Netflix or rent have a problem but it isn't ignorance.

eating is so subconscious

To be a little tighter, it's like telling them to have some willpower and just use drugs in moderation. Which is precisely what they have proven to be unable to do.

I don't even know why Japan is mentioned. In the mountainous regions (and there are many,) it gets cold as a mother f*ck, and apart from the modern era where everyone has become a pansy people suffered through all kinds of cold. Japanese houses, in particular traditional houses, are extremely poorly insulated, if at all. But so what? Surely the steppes of Russia with its ample babushka have always been colder.

As for diets failing, that's willpower, as you point out yourself. It's not the reasoning behind the dieting. Finally, water retention, liver functionality based on one's lifetime eating habits (and thus metabolism) and heredity (variations in adipogenesis) are all factors in any one person's potential for weight gain.

But so what? Surely the steppes of Russia with its ample babushka have always been colder.

Russia has serious insulation and heating where it's cold. Our homes are a lot warmer than typical European is used to. Plus, major hbd confounder.

How are Russian houses insulated? I hear a lot about brick and concrete, especially on the old housing blocks, which hardly insulates at all. Huge district heating probably helps in a lot of places though.

The outer walls are very thick. Common is "2 and half bricks" i.e. 640 mm. And mineral foam layer in modern houses.

The motte version of CICO, which could be described as "any caloric input that isn't output is necessarily stored" follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but the bailey version used to dismiss other people's difficulty in losing weight as only self-control issues, which you've expressed as "You eat too much and you dont exercise enough", does not, because exercise is not the only way calories are output, fat is not the only way an input can be stored and absorbtion rates can vary.

I am not advocating for dismissing anyones self-control issues, in fact I think they are fundamental for any successful diet plan. All I am advocating for is recognition of fundamental truths that, for reasons I do not understand, are vociferously denied by a portion of those interested in loosing weight.

If you do not have the self control to stop eating in abundance, plan around that- maybe substitute foods that can be eaten in large amounts with few calories. Maybe have that donut, but as a treat for a good exercise session. Many wiser people have many better thoughts. But throwing up your hands and saying "CICO is wrong" is not going to help.

fat is not the only way an input can be stored

What other ways are there?

Muscle can be built

Even if absorption rates vary, the thing is that you cannot absorb more energy than there is in the food you eat. So sufficiently restricting calories necessarily results in reduction of mass.

Yes, but it may not result in a stable reversion to a healthy weight. Some people's absorption rate might be dysfunctional such that they lose any middle ground between "obesity" and "starvation". If all you care about is making them thin, you can technically keep them forever balanced on the razor's edge of starvation, but this is neither a practical solution (because their willpower will crack) nor a good one if what you want is to make the patient healthy.

Scott described a rare case of genetic leptin deficiency.

Usually they are of normal birth weight and then they’re very, very hungry from the first weeks and months of life. By age one, they have obesity. By age two, they weigh 55-65 pounds, and their obesity only accelerates from there. While a normal child may be about 25% fat, and a typical child with obesity may be 40% fat, leptin-deficient children are up to 60% fat. Farooqi explains that the primary reason leptin-deficient children develop obesity is that they have “an incredible drive to eat”…leptin-deficient children are nearly always hungry, and they almost always want to eat, even shortly after meals. Their appetite is so exaggerated that it’s almost impossible to put them on a diet: if their food is restricted, they find some way to eat, including retrieving stale morsels from the trash can and gnawing on fish sticks directly from the freezer. This is the desperation of starvation […]

Unlike normal teenagers, those with leptin deficiency don’t have much interest in films, dating, or other teenage pursuits. They want to talk about food, about recipes. “Everything they do, think about, talk about, has to do with food” says [Dr.] Farooqi. This shows that the [leptin system] does much more than simply regulate appetite – it’s so deeply rooted in the brain that it has the ability to hijack a broad swath of brain functions, including emotions and cognition.

i guess this is how some people also feel around alcohol

I have no reason to think this is real. In fact I suspect it is entirely imaginary.

Some people's absorption rate might be dysfunctional such that they lose any middle ground between "obesity" and "starvation".

I'd be interested to see a controlled medical case study of such a person. So far in many hours of conversation about this, none has been produced. I am not confident that such people exist.

Yeah this sounds like fattycope.

This is unnecessary, low effort, and obnoxious.

So sufficiently restricting calories necessarily results in reduction of mass.

Yes, indeed, but the "sufficiently" part can be much crueler on some people than others for reasons outside of self-control.

Agreed, and hopefully nobody would dispute that. I think what's being pushed back on here is the very strong claim in the OP of "A blow to the CICO theory of obesity". Given that due to the basic laws of physics CICO must be true, it's not really accurate to say that it has received a blow. That does not mean that focusing on CICO is the best strategy for any given person to effect weight loss, but the basic physical principle is true for them even if they struggle to make use of it in their lives.

I hate both extremes of the obesity conversation. One extreme -- of which there are examples -- is people who just flat out hate fat people, hate looking at them, have no compassion or understanding of any obstacles that have kept them in that state, and desire to shame and bully them for its own sake. I recall one motte user said something like, "people don't like fat people, don't want to be around them, and don't want to be friends with them."

I used to hold the view that you do, that nobody held the extreme form the obesity activists complain about. But when that post happened, I had to update in their direction. I had to update in the same way that seeing tumblrinaction posts that went "KILL ALL MEN. KILL ALL MEN. KILL ALL MEN." forced me to update my views on feminism, and started my turn from feminist-sympathetic to anti-feminist. There are certainly some people who hate the obese enough to segregate away from them.

The other extreme, of course, says that CICO is wrong not only as the sole guidance, but as the biochemical explanation of what's going on at a basic level. That's obviously false.

But I'm convinced there are more in the anti-obese extreme than in the pro-obese extreme, which is why I consider myself a moderate anti-fat-stigma person. Not in the sense that I believe being fat is good or healthy, but in the sense that I believe the shaming doesn't do the job, and just makes a bad situation worse, isolating people who need support rather than helping them take agency and affect their choices in whatever ways they can.

Health positivity, and not fat shaming, is the way to go. We should be promoting healthy, delicious meals that provide balanced nutrition, and socially boosting drinks that aren't drenched in sugar while providing the social and psychological appeal soda has. (Right now, soda is one of the only beverages you can get everywhere at a consistent quality. That should change.) Insofar as the fat activists oppose that, I oppose them.

The point is that people's desire for the obese to lose weight should be based in a concern for their health and a desire to see them live long, healthy lives, not from an aesthetic revulsion or contempt. The point of a lot of the discussion about set points is to encourage the view that "but for the grace of God go I."

The reality is that the cause of the obesity crisis is directly related to sedentary lifestyles, easily available cheap, calorie-dense food, and more sweets on store shelves than in a Wonka factory. They're social factors. We've put the human organism in an environment where our instincts -- like craving sweet fruit, which is relatively uncommon and seasonal in nature, or prizing meat, which was always the result of a bit of cleverness or a bit of strength -- backfire on us. What was once rare, and thus craved and hoarded, is now commonplace. And so like a dragon in a treasure vault, we hoard and we hoard. We're built for an environment where the most rewarding food takes the most work, but we live in a world of convenience foods and candy. Of course many people are going to lose control! (I believe the same about pornography. It should not be possible for millions of strangers to see Belle Delphine's vagina.)

The solution has to be social changes -- I think liberals are right and car culture is a big problem -- coupled with regulation, and medical marvels that help shift the needed willpower into a range more people have, as we're seeing now. But the big problem is that people's emotions, aesthetics, and experiences are getting mixed up with the data, and it seems impossible to talk about the ability of personal choices to improve health without getting called 'fatphobic', or to talk about the real and enduring social, biological, and psychological barriers that make it hard for many people to use willpower to control the problem without getting accused of using 'fatty logic'.

I used to hold the view that you do, that nobody held the extreme form the obesity activists complain about.

I actually don't hold that view! I have seen plenty of that behavior (all over the Internet and even on this very forum), so that I know that there is a very real problem with people who just have seething hatred of fat people. Some try to couch it in terms of "we need to shame them so they improve", but that's a lie (maybe even lying to themselves) used to justify picking on easy targets.

I also agree that shaming does not work, nor am I proposing it. I've written impassioned arguments against shaming fat people, in fact. It sucks major ass to be obese, and it's full of constant shame every time one looks in the mirror (ask me how I know, lol). If the soul-crushing shame we already apply to fat people hasn't fixed it, no amount of shaming will.

So as far as that goes, I don't think we really disagree at all. What I'm trying to push back on is the overcorrection I perceive in activists all over the Internet (and which, in fairness, I may have incorrectly read into this discussion - prejudice can do that to you). I've seen way too many fat acceptance activists (ironically, including on TiA like you said) take positions that are untrue and unhelpful, such as:

  • You don't need to change, the goal is to be healthy and not to lose weight
  • People [meaning loving friends and family, not fat people hate posters] are bigots who can't accept that you are fine the way you are
  • You can't be expected to change, you have a medical condition that means it's impossible
  • You didn't do anything wrong in the first place, this is the result of external conditions in society (or genetics) which mean you have no culpability in where you are

Needless to say, I find these positions to be not only incorrect, but actively harmful to the people they purport to help. I think they're coming from a place of love (which is good), but that isn't the only thing that matters imo. You also have to not allow people to continue in the unhealthy direction they are going, at least not without being gently nudged into a better direction. What I'm advocating for is an approach where we are frank (but kind) with people about their own culpability in the mess they are in, while also not falling back on empty "just do better bro" advice. I think it's possible to both be honest with people that yes, they bear responsibility, while also being compassionate about the difficulty of the change they need to make and how they may need strategies that go beyond simple effort of will.

I'm going to make an analogy in the hopes that it'll help to make my position clearer. I view the obesity problem as being somewhat similar to the disease of sin in Christian thought. While in a sense sin isn't any individual's fault (due to original sin corrupting man and the world), each individual still bears culpability for the sinful choices he made. And while a sinner can't fix himself (only Jesus can do that), he still has to acknowledge that he is a sinner, do his best to sin no more (even though that won't be enough), and accept the Lord's help in fixing the disease of sin within him. So while the problem is beyond the individual to fix himself, there is a personal choice that must be made to turn away from the old bad path. I see the obesity problem as having a lot in common with that.

I've written impassioned arguments against shaming fat people, in fact.

I think it's helpful to distinguish two behaviors:

  1. Shaming fat people: "hey lardo, put down the donut, you're gross"
  2. Being ashamed of fat people: "the other day, I saw lardo eating a donut, it was gross"

IIUC, you're addressing (1). (1) is actively directing sentiment at fat people. It's unkind for sure, and unlikely (?) to be helpful. Fat people aren't unaware they're fat.

I think (2) is more common, and that you may be conflating it with (1). (2) is a valid, common, reasonable, borderline inevitable way to feel. Any suggestion that people should strive to eliminate (2) is naive. People like beauty, health, and symmetry. The same reflex that makes us avoid corpses, shit, and disease makes us avoid obesity.

That doesn't mean we can't have empathy for the difficulty of losing weight, or the tribulations of being fat. Willpower is hard! Free will is a fuzzy concept at best. But, it also doesn't mean it's reasonable to want people to not have the disgust reaction they so commonly do - that's not the same as "shaming" fat people.

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Nobody brings up CICO as merely an underlying physical mechanism. The implication of CICO is always "therefore, the way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more, and it's your own fault that you are fat".

People who are against CICO are not denying thermodynamics; we are disputing that this is in any way a practical guide to action. It's like saying "the way to get rich is to earn more and spend less".

People who are against CICO are not denying thermodynamics; we are disputing that this is in any way a practical guide to action.

I mean, the OP is denying thermodynamics.

You're right that CICO in itself is not a practical guide to action. It's a description of what's happening. A practical guide to action would be one that helps you burn more calories than you eat. There isn't a universal solution for that, though unless you have an extremely unusual metabolism, the low-hanging fruit of "eat less and exercise more" will work, and the reason it doesn't work for you is that you don't like to eat less and you don't like to exercise more. This is true of most people, and while entirely understandable, it does not actually debunk the reality of CICO.

Nobody brings up CICO as merely an underlying physical mechanism. The implication of CICO is always "therefore, the way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more, and it's your own fault that you are fat".

To be blunt: it is people's own fault that they are fat. It doesn't just happen, they made choices that led to that point. Perhaps there exists the occasional edge case where someone has a genuine medical condition that is hindering them, but the overwhelming majority of cases come down to bad personal choices and the consequences thereof.

And this isn't just about assessing blame - much like with addictions, you can't make progress until you acknowledge your own agency and the fact that you will need to make different choices if you want to get to a different place in life. The battle doesn't end there, and you might need to come up with different strategies based on your unique circumstances. But the fundamental truth is that it really is about personal responsibility in the main.

It's like saying "the way to get rich is to earn more and spend less".

That is in fact also true. Lots of people who are fairly poor bust ass, live within their means, and get ahead as a result. It's hard, and you can suffer setbacks from circumstances even when you do everything right. But the fundamental truth holds.

Is it fundamentally the poor's own fault they are poor?

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Up to a point. I recall stuffing myself with food, at least 4-5kcalories/day for 15yrs and my weight never got above 190 even though i was sedentary (all day on computer). That was three large meals, lots of snacks, and lots of soda. I didn't need willpower because my body decided to not store enough fat for my weight climb any higher. It's not a personal failing if for some people this threshold where surplus leads to fat storage is set too low or unreasonably low.

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It's really more like saying "the way to get poor is to spend more and earn less".

I feel it is a necessary tonic to people who claim it is physically impossible for them to lose weight, choosing to blame the outcome on other people or nature itself. CICO is the reductio ad absurdum which proves that the ultimate locus of control cannot be found elsewhere.

The motte version of CICO, which could be described as "any caloric input that isn't output is necessarily stored"

No, the motte is "it would violate the laws of thermodynamics to gain weight without consuming an energy-equivalent number of calories." CICO people don't deny that some people have metabolisms that permit them to consume excess calories without gaining weight. They only claim that someone who claims to have gained fat while restricting calories below that threshold is lying.

I see two viable mechanisms to get rid of food energy with an inefficient metabolism:

  • You could never absorb the nutrient molecules in the first place
  • You could run your body (especially the extremities) at a higher temperature

Both of these could be easily measured. I wonder how common these are. In the ancestral environment, wasting energy was strongly selected against. But then again, so was nearsightedness, and yet here I am.

But then again, so was nearsightedness, and yet here I am.

Nearsightedness appears to be primarily caused by lack of sufficient exposure to sunlight during childhood while the eye is developing. So in all likelihood if you had been raised in the ancestral environment you would not be nearsighted.

Really it’s just “you eat too much” I can go months without exercising without gaining weight. But if I eat more? Yeah I gain.

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