@BlackGaynProud Isn’t CICO the only thing that matters when it comes to weight? At least this is the current belief from what I see on a lot of fitness websites.
Now being healthy is another topic, which I agree is achieved by exercising and eating whole foods and getting adequate amounts of sleep.
But unless you are staying within your calorie limit, it is still possible to continue to gain weight and end up in an unhealthy weight while eating whole foods.
Unless you already have metabolic syndrome, your body will find a nice homeostasis naturally.
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That has been the case for me, I normally stayed around 85kg or so throughout my life until I turned around 35, then now I’m around 90s. I guess your homeostasis isn’t always the ideal BMI or even what society wants. But the problem is if you mess with it you can really screw your body up. Many have screwed up their body trying to chase the so called healthy BMI, and you end up with yoyo diets that are unhealthier in the long run.
CICO is the only thing that really matters in terms of weight loss.
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I’ll never subscribe to the a calorie is a calorie idea.
Point in case. Hunter-gatherer societies eat until they are full, but obviously have rich, varied natural diets with plenty of fiber. They maintain healthy weight and have almost no incidence of heart disease, diabetes or cancer.
If you are eating right, you’ll naturally eat the correct amount of calories and maintain a healthy weight.
I cant be bothered to have this argument again. Its not an argument, in terms of actual weightloss, a calorie is a calorie. No need to make things complicated. There isnt really an argument in terms of mainstream nutrition.
There are some people on the fringes who say otherwise and sell lots of books. People dont like boring answers and CICO isnt sexy
Losing weight and being healthy is easy:
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Eat less calories than your TDEE and be in a small deficit.
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Make sure you are get enough fiber. Actually try and eat high fiber and protein foods because they keep you full longer.
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Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) more important than exercise activity thermogenesis(EAT). Basically get a step counter and try to walk a lot everyday. Take little walks in the evening and lunch time. Over the course of a month these accumulate
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Make sure you have a diet that you actually enjoy. Substitute higher calorie foods for lower calorie alternatives so that you can still enjoy your diet and dont fell like you are dieting.
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Volume eat-Low calorie & dense foods that make you feel full. This is the killer secret.
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Just slowly lose weight and be in a slight deficit, eating stuff you enjoy, with cheat meals once a week with beer or whatever. That way you will feel like you arent dieting
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Dont skip meals, cut out carbs or any of that horrific shit. Its not enjoyable
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In terms of being healthy, eat lots of whole foods, legumes, vegetables etc.
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This is my issue. Because hospitals still use BMI as one of the measurements to determine health, being outside of the healthy range could end up negatively affect insurance cost later on in life. And since all these records are now stored electronically it’s something that will be stuck with you if you have a bad checkup for whatever reason.
Eating less calories than my TDEE is the challenge. A healthy BMI of 22 for someone that is 5’9 is 150 pounds. For someone with a sedentary lifestyle, the TDEE is around 1900 calories. Only eating 1900 calories just to maintain weight is a challenge when you consider a small banana is 100 calories, or a serving of 40 gram of oatmeal is 150 calories. Take away the 400 calories in fats that you should be eating at a minimum, there isn’t a whole lot of calories left.
The obvious answer is you need to exercise, except exercising makes me more hungry. And the first response when people ask why they are not losing weight even though they are exercising is because your exercise is not burning as much calories as you think and your eating more calories than you think. I believe the latter is true since there is no way to accurately calculate calories unless you never go out to eat. But then even eating home cooked food is still not accurate since food labels are not accurate.
So not that easy to lose weight and be healthy imo.
You also have to remember hunter gatherers have to use a LOT of energy for every pound of meat/vegetables they eat. Hunting isn’t exactly something you can do sitting in your chair.
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The reason CICO is nonsense is extremely complicated to explain. The crucial point is that, as @BlackGaynProud said, your body does what it does with a set of closed-loop control systems. Those control loops are adaptive: they can adjust their own operation.
“Homeostasis” is the word biologists use to mean “keeping things the same”, but in reality what your body does is keep things at a specific desired setpoint. You can do anything you like with your diet and your body will just jiggle everything around to carry on doing whatever it intended to do in the first place. If you “reduce your calories”, it will just adjust itself to run on fewer calories. The aim is to eat in such a way that you do not need to carry lots of bodyfat, given the constraints that your body is working with. Your body’s control systems will then adjust themselves to meet that goal.
If you want a long rambling exposition on the underlying physics and physiology I can do that, but the simplest (most intuitive) reason that “eating less” doesn’t work is the evolutionary one. Any human in prehistory that just burned calories at a constant (“TDEE”) rate during a famine would have died without reproducing. Only those humans that had the ability to conserve bodyfat and reduce metabolic rate during a food shortage would have survived. It is impossible that any human alive today would respond to a shortage of food by discarding bodyfat. What you would expect is that people who go through repeated food shortages would actually get better at storing fat and would end up carrying more fat as a matter of routine, “just in case”. And that is exactly what happens to people who yo-yo diet.
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Example of why counting calories is just a guessing game even if you are using the labels.
Here are 2 labels from Asia Farm Spinach that Costco sells. They used to sell 500g bags, but now they sell 1kg bags. Both frozen and packaged the same as far as I can tell.
The 500g bag showed 32 calories per 100g. The 1kg bag shows 17 calories per 100g.
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Being roughly there is enough. 1900 calories is fine as well. There are only three meals a day and snacks. I dont really care about any macro outside of protein and fiber. You just need to eat more filling foods within that 1900 calories
Most people should walk more and exercise more. Its all about the little manipulations. Walking another 15 minutes per day accumulates across the week and month.
Yeah its inaccurate and TDEE is also inaccurate as is BMR but if you roughly have an idea of all of those things and do it consistently its fine. Being consistently inconsistent is fine enough.
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I eat 900 gram of liquid egg white a day because I love eggs, and 1.7kg of mix veggies. So think I’m good on the fiber and protein front. Also 400g of spinach.
how can you possibly be struggling with 1900 calories then? There are like hardly any calories in egg whites and most vegetables.
Do people really count calories?
That’s not all I eat. I also eat chicken breast, fish, sweet potato, oat meal and fruits. But the point is, yes, my meals keep my in my calorie limit, but I am still hungry. So the whole eating whole food, and volume eating doesn’t necessary work for everyone.
Yeah its really easy
then you need to adjust the amount of calories you are eating everyday. Everyone is different and those TDEE benchmarks are just guidelines and often roughly inaccurate.
Are you maintaining/losing weight on 1900 a day?
It sounds incredibly boring.