[makeitdouble]

> Are there countless valid long terms studies demonstrating the existence of gravity? No, not really

Yes, there are. There’s actually periodic assesments of gravity at most places to get an idea of the trends and detect underground movements. An exemple of this: https://earth-planets-space.springeropen.com/articles/10.118...

Surveying gravity is one of the many measures that are done pretty frequently and very seriously around the globe.

On CICO, the issue is it’s a model that is true at a very low level view of the body mechanism. You are right that it’s very generic, and in theory it makes sense. The disconnect is between that extremely low level view, and what you do with it in practice.

There was this excelent discussion on type 1 disabetes (https://maori.geek.nz/the-unreasonable-math-of-type-1-diabet...). These people have their life on the line and actually monitor their blood levels, and it’s still tough to manage a good guess of the inputs and when/how much sugar will get in the blood. Reading the labels doesn’t give enough info on what will be actually processed, and the real solution becomes real time constant monitoring of the actual blood levels, without relying on a model of how it’s supposed to work.

When you advocate counting calories for a random person on the street, they won’t monitor their blood, they actually are in a worse position as what they care about is not sugar levels but their whole body intake, which there is no way to monitor. And you also won’t be hooking CO2 masks on them everyday to monitor their out, so it’s also a random guess. At this point CI has crazy large variations, and CO is basically unknown, especially as it will change as they change their CI. This is why applying a CICO thinking for someone who’ll change their diet for the rest of their life makes no sense.

An argument I’ve often seen is to just lower CI to the ground until seeing effects. Which basically means obliterating the subjects social and professional life and ask them to keep it that way or it will be their fault if they rebound. That’s not what I call a weight loss strategy.

On the linked study:

It’s a meta study based on three prior papers, one of them is “ Decrease in fat oxidation following a meal in weight-reduced individuals: a possible mechanism for weight recidivism. ” https://europepmc.org/article/MED/8596485

From the abstract: > Twenty older (age:mean +/- SE, 61 +/- 1 years; range, 56 to 70 y) obese (body mass index > 32 kg/m2) subjects (12 women, eight men) completed an 11-week dietary restriction program in which they lost 9 +/- l kg.

So the research is on 20 “obese” people. Aside from the low number of participants, there’s not even a “healthy” control group here. They’re “obese” by their BMI but they might as well be gym trainees, who knows ? It only lasted 11-weeks, there is no mention of the social conditions of the study ([EDIT: I didn’t realize at first look that all participants where elderly. Which brings in more questions IMO, but I don’t know where to stand on that). So this study is aimed at bringing a single piece of information, but we don’t have enough context to extrapolate that info’s validity in any other context it does it apply to any population at large? are the effects permanent ? do we even get the same effect after 1 month ? was it random fluke from the limited test subjects ? who knows). The title is about weight recidivism but there is 0 follow up on the subjects outside of that 5 hour post meal check.

And that’s just the first study. We could go on and on, my point is we don’t have the “science” on the subject, just a ton of questionnable data points and random intuitive theories, everyone with their beliefs and prejudices.

Athletes have the means to control a lot better what they do, including adjusting everything to their actual body without having to care for grand theories. And many people succeed in getting healthier in many different ways, including by going to different diets that actually increase calories as counted and little change in their daily life.

That’s why I feel it’s a disservice to preach a “one true theory” when it doesn’t help much really.

[dahart]

Hey I truly wish you good luck in your search for what works. I mean it. This seems like overthinking it to me. If CICO doesn’t help you, then don’t use it. I’d love to hear about what alternatives work for you.

[makeitdouble]

Thanks. I didn’t care at all about this until close people started to do random diets they see on instagram. Every single one of those were rooted on pop science, garbage studies and very shaky foundations. That got me to look a lot more on a regular basis into what we actually know, and the answer was “very little”.

I think it’s fine for us to not know much about something. We don’t have all the answers in the universe, we’re just hairless monkeys after all. I just wish more people would be accepting of a “that’s complicated, nobody really knows and you’ll have to try a bunch of stuff to see what works for you specifically” approach.

To your question, I am slightly above the prescribed line in a lot of metrics and don’t really do anything special, I am lucky enough it doesn’t have any impact on my life in general.

[dahart]

Ah I wish we’d gotten to this earlier, you make some great interesting points we could talk about more. I think I should bite my tongue though, because my narrative isn’t helping you, and all I wanted to do was be helpful, especially for people who are where I used to be. That might not be you, I just want to say this in a way that would have convinced a younger me earlier. The only thing I’ll say here that is that fad diets are fundamentally different from setting a budget, I completely and totally agree that most fad diets are bullshit, especially the ones on Instagram. Keto has a pretty poor long term outcome rate, for example. The whole point of a diet is to avoid setting a budget, which is the main reason they have low success rates.

I like the way you put it, it’s okay that we don’t know everything, and you’ll have to try a bunch of stuff. That really is at the core of what I was trying and failing to say. :) We don’t actually know how gravity works, but we use it anyway. I made an analogy to PID controllers in another comment, maybe that’s a better way to describe calorie I/O; PID controllers know nothing about the thing they control other than it’s output, and yet they are an extremely useful tool.

My wife reminded me of a book that might interest you and might have pointers to some of the research you’re looking for. “The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You“ by Sylvia Tara.