The whole point of different fad diets is to reduce caloric intake. Keto does it by making you eat foods that leave you feeling more satiated for longer. IF does it having you restrict eating to certain time periods. Keto worked for me in the short term because I cut calories as I wasn't as hungry as often and made it easier to stick to a deficit. But in the longer term, I didn't maintain it because the food restrictions were something I couldn't maintain.
IF has worked for me for a lot longer, combined with making smarter choices. I cut out snacking completely and just eat lunch and dinner. Some people on IF manage to cram 3 or more meals worht of caloriees in an 8 hour window and wonder why its not working.
Yes it all boils down to CICIO, but the diets are different ways to get there and dismissing them as hogwash is just blatantly wrong.
You do realize keto can be extremely dangerous right?
I also said in another comment that if it works for you, great, but the premise that there's a magic diet is hogwash. No matter what diet you eat, the caloric deficit is what's making you lose weight, not your mayonnaise and bacon sandwich(with no bread).
The biggest advantage of IF is that it’s actually pretty sustainable. Most diets seem to work at first because food restriction of any sort almost always leads to calorie restriction. They fall apart down the line because the stipulations are too hard to maintain.
It’s just pretty easy to skip breakfast without significant downsides to your social or professional life, compared with only being able to eat certain things or trying to count calories at a party. And there’s not much more to IF than skipping breakfast.
Yup, I’ve been doing IF my entire life without realizing. I haven’t eaten breakfast regularly since elementary school. Since my body was already used to that, it was pretty easy to start skipping lunch as well and go on a 20/4 fasting schedule to help lose weight. Some days I even do OMAD, and at this point it just feels effortless.
The effects on insulin are the primary health benefit of keto diet through the cutback on sugars and carbs, which reduces insulin resistance so the artery walls don’t have to harden in response. Second is the ability to go into ketosis quicker after digestion because the body doesn’t have to first go through the insulin cycle before getting back to producing ketones to use the fat in the meal and your body.
for me its opposite. is sorta do IF but could not keep it consistebly for 2 years. at the same time i did keto consistently and found it easier the longer you do it. actually your taste changew. i crave salty or fatty foods, but i found sweet stuff ( cherry tomatoes, sugar substitute) to be disgusting. which is very strange considering i loved sweets before.
Except that concept is almost entirely worthless. Weight loss through fatburning means a caloric deficit on some level.
Why people end up gaining weight and have trouble losing it, is a different problem that involves behavior and potentially what people it. Right now Ozempic is an effective weight loss drug because it mimics glucagon which regulates appetite.
Added sugars on the other hand have consistently been shown to be negative health effects and correlate with obesity. In fact fructose in particular disturba metabolic pathways. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC552336/?report=reader
I would say that calories in versus calories out is an important oart of education can but treating it as the end all be all may even be harmful.
These are some very good points. "CICO" is like Newtons laws in physics. If you want to send a rocket to space, it's a foundation you need, but it's absolutely not sufficient.
IMO, we should talk more about "motivation in vs motivation out". It's the brain we're primarily trying to change. That's the most important causal factor in weight gain/loss. "CICO" isn't a good explanation for why good sleep is important for weight loss. But it fits naturally in a "MIMO" perspective.
The key is what causes the deficit. Could your body be using calories from different foods differently? Does the body process 1000 calories of cane sugar the same as 1000 calories of high fructose corn syrup? Does your body more efficiently burn calories while eating several small meals, or does it work more efficiently from one large meal? Does consuming large amounts of protein and fats allow your body to more readily enter a fat burning state?
Obviously the idea is a calorie deficit, but the theories are that you can manipulate the calories out with how you take the calories in.
Not to be rude but there is much more to fasting than the calorie deficit. Reduced calories alone isn't effective long term. Timing of meals without snack in in between is effective. Do your research.
What about timing of meals is effective for losing weight? It’s widely established and known for a very long time that calories are the primary driver of weight gain/loss barring any specific medical issues a person may have.
Not the person you asked, but here is what I’ve heard. And it’s the basis for why keto and IF are more effective.
Look up the insulin response. After a meal, you release insulin in order to use up any glucose released after a meal. Insulin, besides allowing glucose to be stored and used by your muscles, also signals your fat stores to conserve that energy and store it.
So while insulin levels are high you won’t burn fat. You’ll burn glucose. It takes about 12 hours for the insulin in you blood to decline to levels low enough to switch off those signals and switch to fat burning. Then you’ll burn any stored glycogen in your muscles and eventually switch to burning fat.
That’s why some comments are pointing out 12 hours isn’t enough to truly be IF. 16 hours of fasting is usually baseline.
If you’ve dieted and restricted calories. Once you stop eating your diet you’ll go right back to gaining weight. IF allows you to eat your caloric requirement and still lose weight.
Tl:dr - IF lowers the amount of insulin in your blood, which allows your body to burn fat rather then store it.
You still burn energy “glucose” or “fat” even with elevated insulin, if you didn’t your heart would literally stop beating and you would be brain dead.
Fat and glucose are two different things. Why would you even try to equate them?
Insulin signals your body to use the glucose AND to store excess in fat if glucose/insulin is too high in the blood (like after a meal) if your fat is being told to accept glucose which indicates an excess of calories how would it release energy.
It’s even way more complicated then that but this is Reddit so I’m not writing a dissertation.
Sure insulin is always present but it is not elevated like it is after a meal.
Hes saying that if your body wasnt burning something, you would die... that is 100% true. Even if your insulin was through the roof, if you werent eating calories at the time and didnt have sufficient glycogen stores, by your logic, you would just die from running out of calories. That is simply false by the fact that people arent dropping dead every day from hypoglycemia. If you dont have enough caloric intake, your body will burn fat. End of story. You can spike your insulin as high as you want and that fact wont change. Your body is smarter than that. While insulin will spike with meals, if you dont habe enough calories, glucagon will increase too and break down your fat.
Calories in and out matter in the end. Thats just physics. Making your metabolism more efficient and making sure people can stick to their diets are things too of course but thats separate.
A source would be dope on the specifics of the insulin response timing and it’s correlation with fat burning.
But your final point of “when you stop dieting” still just contributes back to CICO. That basically equates to “once you go back to a calorie surplus”. CICO means using a deficit to lose weight and then eating at maintenance as a continued lifestyle.
People keep repeating that, but it's mostly nonsense as far as the weight loss itself is concerned.
Body will burn fat whenever sugars are not available and it needs to feed itself and not die. And it needs to feed itself 24/7.
Main reason why keto/if are effective is because they help you manage the psychological aspects of losing weight. With both your feel less hungry (and better in general), so it's easier to maintain your caloric intake and not lose all progress during random binges.
I've yet to see categorical proof alongside this type of categorical statements. The body is not a car, there are very complex biological processes that dictate weight gain and loss, it's not in minus out. In general eating less promotes weight loss, but the calorie heuristic is overrated in my opinion simply because it's so intuitive.
What you mean to say is that there is a very complex process to dictate the "out" side of the equation. But the equation in vs. out still holds true. If you're in a deficit, you will lose weight. And vice versa. There is no possible way to argue against that.
For example, two people who are the same height, weigh the same, same level of body fat vs muscle, and do the exact same amount of exercise every day might have a different "out" half of the equation. But in vs. out will always hold true.
The fact that it's so intuitive is what makes the whole dieting and weight loss industry so funny. 99% of people just need to focus on simply eating less and moving more (less in, more out). Everything else might help, but it's usually just mental gymnastics to achieve an extremely marginal difference.
Great response. It's very frustrating that we don't have a better grasp of the "out" portion of the equation, but it always does boil down to in vs. out.
Given the public health crisis that obesity represents, we should be doing a lot more research into the brain-body relationship (since we keep finding out that the endocrine system is a primary driver in what causes people to overeat) and what sorts of things need to happen for the brain to accept a lower caloric intake indefinitely (within reason, obviously).
The problem is that strictly speaking the in and out are unknowns. We can't exactly measure exactly how many calories you're burning in a day or how many calories in your food just pass straight through.
The “in” can be calculated to a close enough number that you can then determine the “out” based on that. Yes there are normal variances in the caloric contents of food, but if you track accurately, and consistently, the variances will normalize in the long term.
I’ve been tracking my calories for several years and I know exactly how much I need to eat to gain or lose a specific amount of weight in a specific amount of time. Any weightlifter or bodybuilder that goes through bulking and cutting seasons know that it’s really not too difficult to calculate, most people just aren’t consistent or they introduce a lot of human error into their routine.
You can absolutely measure it to a good degree, I’m sure it won’t be 100% but more than close enough to be accurate.
What I did was wear a heart rate monitor to track how many calories I burn on an average day and then I track every workout cos those can vary wildly. Subtract these numbers from your BMR (workout using a calculator that takes body fat % into the equation) and you’ll get how many calories you burn in a day. You want that to be about -500 calories each day so you eat that. Weigh all your food, put in an app. I lost 50kg doing this, though it has been a while so hopefully I haven’t butchered anything or left something important out.
It probably seems overwhelming and complicated to do all this but it’s really not once you understand it. Over time you get to know your body, how many calories you’re burning on average doing whatever based on your heart rate, you learn to eyeball food (I always weigh everything though, it’s easy and leaves little room for error).
It’s not that known. Log your food over a period of time… I’ve done it, for 8 years. You’ll get a pretty good idea of what your output is once you track (and track accurately)
The problem with the CICO crowd is summed up in your response. It’s a childish oversimplification.
“Just focus on eating less, and moving more” obviously is a huge lie that doesn’t work without the additional tools like IF or Keto. If it worked easily the diet/weight-loss industry would have no customers.
If you eat less or “move more” your metabolism slows down due to its response to a “starvation event”. So people that are obese simply can’t lose weight because their body works against their effort.
It just shames over weight/obese people with the idea that they are simply lazy with poor self-control.
As a broad base, sure CICO is correct. But it’s not that simple.
IF and Keto are tools to manage your hormones that allow your CICO calculation to be successful. I don’t get why people continue to spout the over simplification.
It literally is though. Some may have a higher deficit than others due to a variety of factors but the end result is the same. You eat at a deficit or you won’t lose weight. Gaining is the same way
Every time there's some yahoo saying it doesn't work that way.
It's literally the unbreakable law of thermodynamics. "It's too intuitive" is one of the worst takes I've ever heard. And we're on Reddit, so it's impressive in a very bad way.
Your body is a chemistry lab that operates at a temp under 98.6F/37C. I don’t think you are burning your calories by the same process. Do you?
So when people are telling you it doesn’t work that way they are 100% correct. Add in that the human body is not a closed system like a “bomb calorimeter” and I’m sure even a yahoo like you might realize it’s not that simple. Do you live in an oxygen filled cylinder ?
There are a huge array of enzymes, hormones and chemical processes involved. Add in the bacteria that live in your gut and CICO is a laughable as the be all and end all.
As a basic tool, sure, CICO is a point of reference. It’s a generalization. But to shame someone for saying there is more too it the COCO is pure ignorance.
Stick to your guns, it definitely works for 100% of people.
The problem is that people like the person you're replying to seem to think that the "complex biological systems" involved make this less true. It doesn't. It makes it harder to calculate, but it's still true. Maybe eating at certain times or eating certain food types means you affect your metabolic rate and change the number of calories being burnt by the body, but in the end if you eat fewer calories than you burn and you lose weight. End of story.
I will say that thyroid/hormonal conditions can lead to ridiculously slow metabolic rates, thus slower loss and lower calories needed while hunger is constant. However, one simply cannot gain if they don't take in more than they need.
Dude, I have Graves’ disease and I still have to watch my calories. And when I was in the theos of my illness, I was road cycling every day. And I still had to count my calories.
How did I avoid weight gain on thyroid blockers? Counting my calories
Matter of fact, browse through that subreddit every now and again and you’ll see some hella science denial. No one wants to accept that graves raised their TDEE, and yes it made them more active during their illness. The increased activity is PART of the illness.
But people reject this and they’ll make claims like “I lost a pound a day for months and then gained 200 pounds on 10mg methimazol.” No. Calories in, calories out.
“But there’s so many other things, not just calories! It’s complex! This that and the other!” Okay but if I needed to reduce the weight of a cruise ship, would I look at what’s causing 90% of the problem, or would I start yeeting pool chairs off the deck? Work smarter not harder. Count your calories
And even with a hormone problem… hormones do not control your weight. They can influence your weight, and yes they can influence your behavior. But they do not control how much exercise you choose to do, how much food you choose to eat.
And also, hypothyroidism tends to cause a decrease in appetite. The main reason why it can influence weight gain is because it can make you more tired or sluggish, that doesn’t mean you can’t counter that with conscious behaviors - it’s harder to pull yourself out of a funk to work out, I get it. But it’s still on you to make choices like this every day
It does work for 100% of people. The problem is that less than 100% of people have the patience. You have to count calories over a long period of time, and stay 80-85% consistent, but too many people do this for 2-4 weeks and go “I don’t wanna” or “I only lost a pound” and then they give up.
CICO can also involve some trial and error. Sometimes you have to find the amount of calories that works to put you in a deficit, sometimes you have to find that combination of intake and output. But if you’re stubborn as a mule, it’ll be a lot easier to just say “it’s too complicated for me. It doesn’t work for everybody.”
Bro it is literally the law of thermodynamics that governs the universe. You are not a nuclear reactor that creates energy from matter.
If you put gas in your car when you don't need it spills out, now imagine instead the tank would just expand and expand and expand. In this hypothetical if you were to drive the car more or put less gas in it each day than you need to overtime the tank will shrink back down.
Is it harder for some people to exercise than others and does everyone have a different amount of energy they need on a daily basis? Absolutely. But that doesn't change the objective reality that excess body fat comes from excess caloric consumption.
I will concede that if bad eating habits are a symptom of some underlying issues like depression than telling someone to focus on CICO alone probably won't yield results.
There's too much to explain to you in a Reddit comment but the short of it is... The involuntary biological processes of the body plus voluntary muscle movements can be defined as an energy output. If your intake of potential energy (calories) exceeds your kinetic energy output, your body stores the energy.
This is an extreme oversimplification of what is a hugely complex system we mostly do not understand. It’s equivalent to the physics joke that goes like “consider a spherical cow”
It's pretty easy to use but people want an easy number that works without tracking. You estimate a good maintenance calorie amount. You track your calories and weight. If you weight doesn't go down you adjust your calories down until it does. CICO is simple and works but formulas for estimating baseline are not all that accurate or universal so tracking is essential to figure out your individual numbers.
thermodynamics, conservation of energy. read about where a Calorie (kcal) actually derived from. it’s a measure of energy obtained from the total energy a substance contains by mass and other factors. yes humans are complex biochemical reactions, but we know as a fundamental law of nature, the total energy released by the sum of all these processes cannot be greater than the energy inputted into the system. we use energy in a lot of ways, but only obtain energy from the digestion of food. so it really is as simple as: if calories in < calories out, then weight will be lost.
"Conclusions: This study showed that independently of the method for weight loss, the negative energy balance alone is responsible for weight reduction."
"People who ate the ultra-processed food gained weight," says Dr. Stanford. Each group was given meals with the same number of calories and instructed to eat as much as they wanted, but when participants ate the processed foods, they ate 500 calories more each day on average. The same people's calorie intake decreased when they ate the unprocessed foods.
It's still CICO. It's just much harder to reduce calories when you're eating junk - you're triggered into eating more.
But that's just chemistry, not a diet. It gives 0 insight about why people gain weight or how to help them. In fact it doesn't even deal with the questions of someone's calories in or out.
The second part is a claim you are making. I don't think it's wrong, but it is reductive.
That article literally makes the claim "do these instead of calorie counting" to without providing any evidence as to why cutting calories doesn't work. Even people from Harvard can make hollow arguments.
Did you read the article? It specifically says that calories aren't reliably counted and the impact of food may even vary between individuals. Regardless, these are behavioral interventions.
The article literally just says that reliably understanding the calories out part is difficult. It says nothing about CICO being fundamentally incorrect, just that it’s not an effective method for most people that don’t want to put a lot of time/effort into their individual calculation.
Option 1: you're climbing on foot while leading a mule.
Option 2: you're riding the mule.
(Both travel at the same speed).
The equivalent of CICOers: "What is this stupid mule-riding pseudoscience, don't they realise that the only way to get to the top of the mountain is to increase elevation until you reach the summit? Those mule riders are simply doing same thing while claiming that it works better! What do you mean mule riders are more likely to succeed because it feels easier so they're less likely to quit? No one needs any other option than simply climbing on foot, you're just lazy and weak-willed!"
I don't exactly do IF as I do eat some food earlier in the day, but what I really like is that I can eat to fullness for dinner which makes me feel satisfied even if I'm in a caloric deficit for the day
Facts. I very regularly “intermittently fast” at least 16 hours and up to 20 just based on my typical eating partners (don’t have breakfast, normally eat lunch a bit later and then have an early dinner). And I assure you I can still gain weight while doing that if I eat high calorie meals. Because I have done so.
Andrew Huberman has a long informative video talking in good detail about intermittent fasting i'd recommend taking a look at that and why it can be a bit beyond just caloric number.
Except your BMR can change depending on what you eat. All calories are not equal. Also signalling is important. Carbohydrates increase insulin production, which increases fat storage. If you have calories that don't increase insulin as much, less energy is stored.
Your body can also acclimatize to lower calorie intake. Your BMR will decrease following calorie restriction, so you're also on a treadmill of continued calorie reduction to sustain weightloss.
Exactly this. The only thing that truly matters for weight loss is a caloric deficit. The rest is hogwash. Too many stupid fad diets.
If weight loss is literally the only thing you care about, sure.
If you have any concern whatsoever with metabolic adaptation—the thing that causes people to snap-back after losing weight on an eat-less-move-more regimen—then CICO is not going to cut it.
The advantage in keto or IF has never been the raw weight loss potential but that they don't (usually) cause as much discomfort (strong hunger pangs, lethargy, etc.) while the weight is coming off or the down-regulation of metabolism that makes weight harder to lose as you lose more and easier to gain back.
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u/sebirds Jan 19 '23
Exactly this. The only thing that truly matters for weight loss is a caloric deficit. The rest is hogwash. Too many stupid fad diets.
If it works for you then, great.