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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   31482 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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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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