[westwooded]

A friend explained this to me with an analogy.

"If you make more money than you spend, you will have a lot of money!"

That statement is tautological, and obvious. But it doesn't address how to become rich.

Now let's compare.

"If you eat more calories than you expend, you will gain weight"

Again, this is likely true, but just very very incomplete. It doesn't attempt to truly get at the why. There are a few hypotheses for why CICO often does such a poor job at explaining the obesity epidemic. The two pieces I find most convincing are (1) there is some metabolic advantage based on the types of foods you eat, and (2) some of the calories out are excreted via waste and not processed by the body, and therefore, the simple CICO equation isn't complex enough.

[bumholio]

CICO perfectly explains human obesity and has not been scientifically disproved yet - the body is surprisingly efficient at breaking down various types of macronutrients and storing them as fat, regardless of them being "bad" or "good" calories.

What CICO does not explain is why people are so different regarding their appetites, nor how can we teach ourselves impulse control. This is where various low-X diets become relevant, and it's how we get these diet holly wars with people swearing by the one diet that helped them get CI under control, without turning them into zombies incapable of CO.

(BTW, my weapon of choice is old school: low on fat except essential fats, balanced on slow release carbs, high on protein)

[simonbarker87]

Interesting point, I could imagine that in a truly terrible diet with little overall nitrtional value some of the primary drivers could break down enough to skew the CICO relationship, however even in those cases if you took 25% off the calorie intake and went for a long walk energy other day they would probably loose weight. It wouldn’t solve the other health issues caused by a terrible diet though.

[tryitnow]

CICO doesn't explain the obesity epidemic? I thought it was pretty well-established that society's caloric surplus has risen pretty much in line with increasing obesity.

CICO doesn't explain why people are consuming so much more than they expend, but it does seem that CICO explain the obesity epidemic.