[jm2721]

CICO is not 'false', per se, but it's fundamentally misleading and tautological. Yes, people will lose weight on a calorie restricted diet of just twinkies. However, their bodies metabolic rate will decrease gradually to the point where continuing to maintain a caloric deficit will be unsustainable (i.e. a 500 calorie deficit if your basal metabolic rate is only 750 or 1000), at which point they'll stop losing weight, but still be 'skinny fat'. They'll also cause potentially irreparable harm to their liver and pancreas, and if they do manage to sustain it for longer periods, be on the express track for diabetes and heart disease. The difference between eating equivalent calories of twinkies or a salad is that one is a toxic substance and the other isn't. In the same vein, as another poster mentioned above, you can say that a milligram is a milligram, but a milligram of cyanide will kill you while a milligram of water is harmless. That's why more and more people are challenging CICO; it gives you the false sense that replacing meat and vegetables with coke and doritos is harmless as long as they're equivalent calories.

Nobody is suggesting that CICO and the insulin theory are mutually exclusive; what the author is saying is that CICO is a profoundly unhelpful statement for people looking to lose weight, improve their health, or reverse diabetes/heart disease.

> Taubes would be hard pressed to explain how those subsisting on high carb, low fat, low protein diets that fail to meet their caloric needs in famine-afflicted regions remain thin.

Thin doesn't mean healthy. We're talking about disease, not necessarily weight, and you can have metabolic syndrome even if you're considered 'thin'. Most people who are thin with a poor diet have visceral fat (fat around the organs) which is far worse than subcutaneous fat (as a risk factor).

[sn9]

If your BMR is 750-1000, you're likely a female shorter than 5' and/or weighing less than 100 lbs. At that point, you are likely severely underweight and probably shouldn't be trying to lose weight.

I'm not denying that there are other reasons to eat a diet with greater nutritional density, but trying to convince people that CICO is wrong is far more harmful than trying to convey that it is literally the most important factor in trying to modify your weight.

If you want to make changes in your life, you need to know the right things to measure, and your caloric intake relative to how your weight changes is the single most important factor for people trying to lose weight. If you're not even doing that, it's unlikely you'll succeed, as millions of people who struggle with their weight will understand.

Once you've convinced people of the value of that, it then becomes more productive to go into the value of high protein intake and strength training to further improve body composition, the importance of eating a diet centered around fruits and vegetables, etc.

For people that are severely overweight, getting their weight down will have the highest impact on their health.

>Nobody is suggesting that CICO and the insulin theory are mutually exclusive;

Taubes literally argued this in the paragraph where he quoted the biochemistry text.