I've been swearing by CICO my whole life. Anytime someone asked me for guidance on dieting and losing weight, I just responded with "it's just calories bro, just eat less than you burn".
Not too long ago though I learned something that shattered my world view...
>you eat 160kcal of almonds
>only 130kcal of it gets absorbed
I'm sure even more extreme examples exist, especially with meat where the absorb ratio is closer to 50%.
How am I supposed to do CICO if shit like this is real?
the more complete reality of CICO is that not all foods are treated equally by the body, and your metabolism does not work at a perfectly constant rate. if you were to eat slightly above or below your TDEE for 1 day, your metabolic processes increase or decrease to maintain homeostasis. it is extreme or consistent overeating or undereating that make you lose or gain weight, and the simple way to track this is by weighing yourself (preferably when you first wake up for consistency) every morning, and tracking your weekly average weight.
if you're weight is not going down, eat less. you will know you are eating less because you will feel more hungry. if you eat less often, and feel hungry more often, consistently, your weight will decrease.
set a weight loss target (1lbs every week, 2lbs every week, for example, depending on how overweight you are) and simply force yourself to weigh what you are supposed to weigh according to your goal. if you aren't reaching the goal, eat less and in a few days you should be back on track. this is way easily than "counting calories", which is very hard to do accurately, and ultimately only matters in so far as it allows you to decrease your weight consistently, which you can just do directly instead.
the problem with CICO and "just eat more" is that you're not educating the general inquirers on the reality of eating food. the goal with CICO is not to just plainly "eat less", rather it's to eat less CALORIES while satisfying hunger and meeting requirements on macros.
eating 200g of rice is way less calories than eating a snickers, and some people don't actually understand that. learning to weigh your volume eaten vs calories eaten is the first step in understanding how to modify your diet to be more weight-loss friendly.
the whole chicken and rice thing to build mass is kind-of a joke as there are far more options to pack on calories than rice, for example.
going one step further and actually evaluating your individual metabolism is something most normal people shouldn't even need to consider unless they have a severe glandular/endocrine issue.
the "move more" while definitely having some merits, doesn't actually answer any questions. sure some poor homosexual who's 30 or 45lbs overweight can start jogging an extra 40 minutes every day and lifting like a bodybuilder but that will only take him so far before he starts feeling the stress on his tendons/joints and his hungry heart will increase his appetite.
overall, the CICO crowd could do with a little humanizing and clearer explanation to the process and ideally, more normal people(uneducated) will benefit.
You just described why CICO is perfect for normies though. They don't have the capacity to understand any of the shit you just wrote out, their pea brain can only get the simple concept "eat less and move more, then you'll lose weight". CICO is too simplistic for educated people but perfect for the unwashed masses who still think in terms of 80's food pyramid propaganda.
>the problem with CICO and "just eat more" is that you're not educating the general inquirers on the reality of eating food
That's not a problem with CICO
it is a problem when they think that they can just eat less of the same dogshit food and get by on willpower though
eating better not less is the best way to diet
Thats not a problem with CICO
you're wrong
if you try to elaborate then it's no longer CICO, it's an actual diet, and it's not relevant to why CICO fails
Nope
Yep
>the goal with CICO
CICO has no goals. That's why debates about it are so stupid. It's all just assumed implications.
Good post anon.
Cico as a diet tactic and cal counting are just tools to help you burning more than you eat just like your body doesn’t give a frick about number of sets or reps, it cares only for stress coming from intensity and duration of mechanical tension and possibly metabolic state of the muscle but your body surely doesn’t count reps nor calories, it’s not the language your body speaks. And indeed a calorie is not always a calorie.
Only thing I would add to
Is that you should only consider the 3 week moving average with weighing because if you compare week to week it can easily happen that you seem to stall or gain bf when in reality you don’t. A lot happens under the hood influencing your body weight and the slightest change in your daily routine can affect it. Also bf burning is not a linear thing but rather curvy and zig zaggy. The best advice is that you need to feel hunger and struggle, again same with muscle hypertrophy: you need to struggle on some level to get a hypertrophy response.
The biggest challenge with having a too high time preference and daily weighing is that you gaslight yourself into thinking you are not succeeding resulting in you giving up. Successful dieting is all about psychology especially hunger management.
Huh? You say something?
Move more, you lazy fatass. CICO isn't a science, in fact, it's the polar opposite of science and reality. It's a guiding spirit to torture yourself and deny your organs the fundamentally basic nutrients they need to function for the sake of low, arbitrary numbers.
Fat moron
>he doesn't want to move more
TLC would love to have you on.
But moving more will literally make you want to eat more, so you end up exactly in the same situation
>But moving more will literally make you want to eat more, so you end up exactly in the same situation
Funnily enough, it will not. It will in fact kill your appetite for some reason. Some say it's because only high intensity exercise increases your hunger, but in my xp, all exercise and movement will kill hunger pretty fast. Like, if you'r ehungry, walk a mile or three. Hunger will be gone for hours afterwards. It will only come back after you sit down at your pc.
Why does PC usage increase hunger is the better question.
Wow you sure proved 0 people have ever lost weight
Quite literally the dumbest post I've ever read on IST
Damn, I only had that title until you posted! Congratulations, moron.
The exact values do not matter. If you gain weight, you have been eating in a surplus; if you maintain your weight, you have been eating at maintenance; if you lose weight, you have been in a caloric deficit. Adjust your food intake and energy expenditure according to the development of your weight. You won't gain or lose weight so quickly that you won't be able to counteract it if necessary, unless your diet is inadequate in the first place.
>>you eat 160kcal of almonds
>>only 130kcal of it gets absorbed
If you eat 160kcal of almonds you get 160kcal absorbed moron.
The absorption rate is calculated into their nutritional metrics.
>If you eat 160kcal of almonds you get 160kcal absorbed moron.
>The absorption rate is calculated into their nutritional metrics.
No. Even impossible to do so, you dumbass. Frick, how stupid are you?
Are you just acting moronic or what? CICO still applies. But instead of the 160kcal your calories in were only 130kcal. So ? CICO still worked, your calories in were 130kcal and calories out are gonna be whatever they are gonna be. ??? Like I dont get it what is it thats shattering your world?
It has always been and will always be an estimate. Yes its easier to calculate your calories in because of the labels and its fairly close to reality but you have never EVER calculated your calories out accurately. And you know it, you are literally lying if you say you know what your TDEE is. It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to calculate with 30kcal precision what your calories out for the ENTIRE day are going to be. It literally changes if you take the stairs instead of the elevator or if you walk around your house for 5 minutes longer than the previous day. It is absolutely fricking impossible to get that accurate idea of your calories out as it is with calories in like you gave your example. This is why you play with margins. You aim for 500-1000kcal deficit and you dont calculate exercise in your TDEE etc. And you check the scale every day and take weekly averages and adjust accordingly.
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CICO isnt a que for you to count calories like a sperg, it's your que to eat less. for a week, eat less. if number doesnt go down, eat even less next week. do this until number go down. even when number go down you will have to eat less, because it takes eating even less for THAT number to go down too.
just eat less.
problem here is that any specific strategy to eat less that given individuals may find useful gets attacked by morons chanting CICO with glazed eyes.
Logical fallacy
we calculate variables into CICO
We know we do not absorb every calorie, we also know when we burn calories there are also variance (running 2.9 miles instead of 3).
Which is why we calculate our intakes based off weekly averages and calculate our outtakes based off weekly averages.
If I lose too much weight, I am either
>not eating enough
>working out too much
So I cut back on both.
If I gain weight I
>eat less
>workout more
Until I find the variance that is correct for me.
Which has always been a 150 calorie deficit based off my lifestyle.
the state of the human metabolism is either:
anabolic, burning fuel to build complex chemicals
or catabolic, breaking down complex chemicals to create energy
while the body is anabolic it is building muscle and supporting general body health but it is not burning fat (all dietary fat absorbed from diet is instead stored in fat cells)
while the body is catabolic it is burning fat but it is not synthesizing whatever chemicals are missing from dietary sources
CICO fails when the body spends too much time anabolic and not enough time catabolic, leading to muscle wasting instead of fat burning when or if weight is lost
Keto fails when the body spends too much time catabolic and the body doesn't get the exact prescribed nutrition needed to maintain a healthy body and mind (ketards are genuinely psychotic)
a trend of insulin spikes over time decides whether the body will maintain a catabolic or anabolic state, carbs spike insulin a lot, fats spike insulin a little, protein doesnt really spike insulin (and the whole thing as a predictor is probably correlated and not causative but it's the best that dieticians and fitness experts can point to as the "cause" for the body to be burning fat instead of running on available dietary energy)
when bulking minimize fats and maximize carbs and protein
when cutting minimize carbs and maximize fat and protein
dont drop either side to 0, just limit the densest sources of the avoided macro and never eat the avoided macronutrient as an unplanned snack
and yes, chicken and rice is the ideal meal for bulking but the follow on statement is that the rice sucks when you're cutting, staple foods are dense carbs
there's also cycling daily uptime/downtime to carb load at breakfast and lunch for energy then low cal before bed
>chicken and rice is the ideal meal for bulking but the follow on statement is that the rice sucks when you're cutting
fricking moron
this explanation leaks pseudointellect everywhere.
it's not so cut and dry, anabolic activity actually consumes energy, like maintaining muscle mass and repairing the body. Catabolism can also occur in a caloric surplus, like when you have a deficiency in any given nutrient, or even stimulus. like a fat person that never works out will have muscles breakdown while gaining fat.
it's not so cut and dry dude. while I agree that insulin can make you store more fat, it's not really the deciding factor of fat gain unless you're type 2 diabetic with an eating disorder. besides, insulin is important in the muscle building process too.
I also agree that carbs are best for bulking, and that fats are great for cutting. but when you're measuring calories and maintaining macro goals, it's mostly up to your ability to avoid eating extra food and planning to avoid it.
I know everyone here has a God complex like
but most normal people have an IQ of like 85-90 so they are literally so turbo normie that they get info from movies because they think it's "scientific".
and if the goal isn't to educate people:
then why even explain anything at all? I thought you Black folk wanted people to get IST? but now you're presenting gatekeeping behavior like regular people are too dumb to follow a proper plan. honestly it's baffling, no wonder so many people on IST are turbo skellies who shit on anyone that doesn't fit their dysphoric ideal of the male body.
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I've both gained and lost weight using CICO. Learn to track calories.