I’ll just keep repeating this, but your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is not scientifically set in stone.
While it’s accurate for I would say 90% of the population, rough estimate, there are many things that can cause your BMR to not be accurate, like thyroid issues or lack of musculature due to sedentary lifestyle or due to hormone imbalances or any number of myriad things.
I went and had mine tested and it cost me I believe $70 at a sports medicine place, and I burn approximately 200 calories less than my BMR chart says that I should.
So if I wanted to maintain my weight, and I ate the calories the internet says that I should every day, I would actually gain almost 20 lbs a year (a nice rough estimate is every 10 calories a day you cut from your diet you lose one pound a year).
And as I am working on losing weight, and I’m eating 500 calories under my BMR, I’m actually only eating 300 calories under my true BMR, which means my weight loss is incredibly slow.
So yes, while calories and calories out is true, there are external factors that make it difficult to get accurate numbers to compare against.
Therefore calories in calories out is much simpler to say than it is to do for some percentage of the population.
Not only is it not set in stone, it appears that your BMR is affected by what you do. If not provided with sufficient nutrition, the body seems to adapt and lowers BMR.
Getting the numbers in practice can be difficult but that’s not the same as saying that CI/CO is bullshit, as many people do who don’t understand that it’s simple thermodynamics. If your fire isn’t producing enough heat, you add more wood. You don’t start to doubt that burning is exothermic.
And even if it was, wood in a fire pit does not burn uniformly.
The type of wood, the quality of the wood, the contents of the wood all affect how fast it burns and how hot it burns.
Very dry pine wood burns incredibly hot and very fast, whereas damp maple may self-extinguish. It may not be capable of maintaining its own fire due to its moisture content and the density of the fibers in the wood.
And while you can look at the whole and say this amount of wood emitted this many BTUs of heat energy, you can’t say “this amount of wood being burned should emit this amount of heat in this period of time” when you’re not taking into consideration the type of wood, the quality of wood, and even how the logs are arranged.
Science is about controlling variables, and when you have too many variables that are not being taken account of, you cannot get an accurate scientific measurement of the results of your experiment.
And that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that the raw nutritional quality of foods grown in the western world at least has dropped precipitously, inducing people to eat more food to get the raw nutrition they need that’s not just calories.
We know that calories are comprised of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and we can generally account for those, but the nutrition, the selenium, the zinc, the iron, the calcium, the phosphates, the everything else that makes up the food that we eat. If it’s not there in sufficient qualities to meet what our bodies are calling for, then it’s natural for us to overeat to attempt to fill in those nutritional deficiencies.
And when your brain has been fucked by not getting the nutrition it needs, and your body has been fucked by not getting the nutrition it needs, and your food has been fucked by not delivering the nutrition you need, then once you’re in that situation, it’s not as simple as, oh, just don’t eat that Twinkie.
So calories in, calories out is the truth.
Just like gravity is the truth.
But knowing the math, 9.8 meters a second squared, is not enough to go to the moon.
Showing a lack of thought or intelligence; vacant.
Surprisingly, I agree with you! CICO is lacking in thought and intelligence when applied to human metabolism.
The second law of thermodynamics requires a closed system, humans are famously open what with their breathing, eating, pooping, and peeing.
CICO is like saying cars without fuel don’t move, so if overfill the tank you should park your car. It misses the point, and that is the hormonal drivers in human fat mobilization.
I’ll just keep repeating this, but your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is not scientifically set in stone.
While it’s accurate for I would say 90% of the population, rough estimate, there are many things that can cause your BMR to not be accurate, like thyroid issues or lack of musculature due to sedentary lifestyle or due to hormone imbalances or any number of myriad things.
I went and had mine tested and it cost me I believe $70 at a sports medicine place, and I burn approximately 200 calories less than my BMR chart says that I should.
So if I wanted to maintain my weight, and I ate the calories the internet says that I should every day, I would actually gain almost 20 lbs a year (a nice rough estimate is every 10 calories a day you cut from your diet you lose one pound a year).
And as I am working on losing weight, and I’m eating 500 calories under my BMR, I’m actually only eating 300 calories under my true BMR, which means my weight loss is incredibly slow.
So yes, while calories and calories out is true, there are external factors that make it difficult to get accurate numbers to compare against.
Therefore calories in calories out is much simpler to say than it is to do for some percentage of the population.
Not only is it not set in stone, it appears that your BMR is affected by what you do. If not provided with sufficient nutrition, the body seems to adapt and lowers BMR.
Getting the numbers in practice can be difficult but that’s not the same as saying that CI/CO is bullshit, as many people do who don’t understand that it’s simple thermodynamics. If your fire isn’t producing enough heat, you add more wood. You don’t start to doubt that burning is exothermic.
The body isn’t a fire and food isn’t wood, so the analogy isn’t a very good one.
And even if it was, wood in a fire pit does not burn uniformly.
The type of wood, the quality of the wood, the contents of the wood all affect how fast it burns and how hot it burns.
Very dry pine wood burns incredibly hot and very fast, whereas damp maple may self-extinguish. It may not be capable of maintaining its own fire due to its moisture content and the density of the fibers in the wood.
And while you can look at the whole and say this amount of wood emitted this many BTUs of heat energy, you can’t say “this amount of wood being burned should emit this amount of heat in this period of time” when you’re not taking into consideration the type of wood, the quality of wood, and even how the logs are arranged.
Science is about controlling variables, and when you have too many variables that are not being taken account of, you cannot get an accurate scientific measurement of the results of your experiment.
And that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that the raw nutritional quality of foods grown in the western world at least has dropped precipitously, inducing people to eat more food to get the raw nutrition they need that’s not just calories.
We know that calories are comprised of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and we can generally account for those, but the nutrition, the selenium, the zinc, the iron, the calcium, the phosphates, the everything else that makes up the food that we eat. If it’s not there in sufficient qualities to meet what our bodies are calling for, then it’s natural for us to overeat to attempt to fill in those nutritional deficiencies.
And when your brain has been fucked by not getting the nutrition it needs, and your body has been fucked by not getting the nutrition it needs, and your food has been fucked by not delivering the nutrition you need, then once you’re in that situation, it’s not as simple as, oh, just don’t eat that Twinkie.
So calories in, calories out is the truth.
Just like gravity is the truth.
But knowing the math, 9.8 meters a second squared, is not enough to go to the moon.
We literally burn sugar as fuel. Fires are just fast oxidation.
Yet, cico works.
You have completely missed the point of my entire rant.
Cico works, but “o” is a variable that can vary wildly from person to person, day to day based on environmental, genetic, and nutritional factors.
Yes. And you can carefully select the value for your case.
The only way to find it is to eat less and less until you lose weight tbh. Cico is vacuously true.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vacuously
Surprisingly, I agree with you! CICO is lacking in thought and intelligence when applied to human metabolism.
The second law of thermodynamics requires a closed system, humans are famously open what with their breathing, eating, pooping, and peeing.
CICO is like saying cars without fuel don’t move, so if overfill the tank you should park your car. It misses the point, and that is the hormonal drivers in human fat mobilization.
Sugar/Carbs drive blood glucose, which drives blood insulin, which shuts down fat mobilization. Yes, you can lose weight eating only sugar, but it’s making the entire process more difficult then it needs to be. For more details please see The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity - Beyond “Calories In, Calories Out” - 2018
I absolutely agree that cico could be very difficult psychologically and could demand health monitoring.
Eating a tapeworm also makes you lose weight, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Not everyone can starve themselves thin in a healthy way.
You don’t need to “starve” yourself. That journey can be milder (though longer).
This is what you’re not getting. Some people do. Just getting to the point of not feeling like they’re starving puts them over their calories out.
Can you monitor your health while cico?