What Do You Eat for Weight Loss?

[classical_Liberal]

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[classical_Liberal]

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[jacob]

... could be volume, related to glycogen losses.

I think these eternal discussions are in sore need of a more detailed explanation/understanding of what happens in the body in the short run when undertaking diet and exercise changes (discontinuities). I don't think I'm qualified to explain what's going on in great detail, but I think we have ppl here who do. For example,

• Fasting/change from eating to not-eating (weight difference from different bowel movements)
• Adding or removing salt (weight difference from water retention/salt elimination)
• Adding or removing carbs (weight difference from glycogen that binds water, dough belly and all that)

These are all changes in configuration of the digestive system in the form of water and shit worth 5+ lbs inside of a digestive cycle (24-72 hrs) ... but don't actually change body composition even if it looks like way (because the bloating/water-logging is removed).

[7Wannabe5]

@BRUTE:

I don't believe in anything like strict CICO. For instance, since everyone poops, it is pretty obvious that the human body is in many ways not as efficient as a bomb calorimeter. Also, known fact that individual humans vary in their abilities to digest various foodstuffs. I just don't believe that anybody can digest food MORE efficiently than a calorimeter, and I do believe, even given variety of other influential factors such as hormonal influence of different diets, that there is some minimal amount of food energy necessary to keep a human alive even if sleeping or comatose. Therefore, I doubt that any adult could survive indefinitely without losing weight on only 600 kilocalories as measured by calorimeter. OTOH, I do believe that it is possible that a human could eat 4000 kilocalories per day as measured by a calorimeter and not gain weight due to variety of factors.

In fact, there is a good deal of recent research that suggests that previously unconsidered factors such as lack of daily exposure to sunlight and boredom may be partially to blame for obesity epidemic. The brain is very energy hungry and burns more calories when engaged or challenged then when a human is watching television or driving tedious commute or working at a dull routine job. Therefore, working out a tough math problem or fussing with a challenging piece of knitting (any handicraft) is more of a calorie burning activity relative to simply passively watching a screen. IOW, sedentary varies.

[BRUTE]

first, brute wants to apologize to classical_Liberal. brute doesn't usually like to get so righteous and emotional. this is one of the few places left where honest discussion is even possible, and brute is ashamed that he got so carried away.

regarding the questions:

1)3.5 day fast/3.5 feast (breaking the fast on Thursday afternoons)
2)brute was not eating carbs before this, he had been on keto for well over a year at the time.
3)the weight loss continued as long as brute continued the fasting, but that wasn't much longer than the month.
4)there was still extra body fat.
5)the weight loss seemed quite unrelated to the level of caloric intake. this has been brute's experience in general.

brute has tried pretty much any diet under the sun, including vegan, fruitarian, and zero-carb. (not raw zero-carb though, mainly because raw ground beef is hard to get fresh).

his main takeaway is that diet/exercise are overrated when it comes to body composition in humans. they're certainly levers, but the biggest levers by far seem to be stress and sleep. it doesn't matter how deep in ketosis brute is, when he doesn't get sleep, he will gain weight on the exact same diet/caloric intake that he was losing weight on before.

brute is also well aware of the difficulty of measuring body composition - weight is mostly water, especially in the short term. brute typically fluctuates by 8-9lbs over 2 days when fasting/breaking the fast.

waist measurements are as bad as weight, because the body swells up with the increased water just as it gains weight.

brute is even skeptical of DEXA, but it's too inconvenient/expensive to thoroughly test and try to disprove. but brute thinks the only reason it hasn't been shown to be as full of shit as the other methods is that increasing sample frequency is prohibitively expensive.

brute would bet $50 that if he was DEXA'd at the end of a 7 day fast, and the day after breaking said fast, his "lean body mass" as measured by DEXA would be significantly changed. both muscle and fat cells can store various amounts of water.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Michael_00005]

Watching a quick 3.5 minute video pretty much says it all, and the source of obesity is:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/thousa ... s-studied/

A major problem in asking for health advice in forums is that you cannot see pictures of those giving advice, and everyone likes to give advice. Whether obese, sickly, narrow minded, uneducated, it matters not, everyone likes to expound their opinion. I'd have to say, it would be extremely interesting to see pictures of people posting under health.

One item I've come across in regards to toxins, is that they are stored in fat. And to be rid of the fat, the body needs to be able to safely dispose of these toxins. It's one of the reasons a good weight loss program works slowly. And when you understand the amount of toxins it meat, which gets worse every years, you see way meat consumption has such a strong correlation to obesity.

[herp]

@Michael_00005: I'm not convinced that Dr. Greger is entirely unbiased.

I'm also curious about your interest in seeing pictures. Why do you feel that would be valuable in such a discussion?

[Michael_00005]

The blind leading the blind.

I'm also curious about your interest in seeing pictures. Why do you feel that would be valuable in such a discussion?

A major reason healthcare is so horrid in the US, is because doctors are not able to take care of themselves. What sort of heart advice can we expect from a "so called" expert who does not know the cause of heart disease? A few years back I was on a forum with a bunch of doctors, and they thought it incredulous a person could reverse heart disease... even though it was proven in the 1990's - Dr. Esselstyn's "Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease". Not a single person knew the truth, and this was a forum for health professionals and doctors. Pretty pathetic, a guy in IT telling doctors where to do their research.

[BRUTE]

brute demands pictures of human hearts!

[BRUTE]

how did you manage to consume an overall caloric surplus for the entire week in only 3.5 days? That's impressive! Were you only eating once per day in the 3.5days of feast?

1-2 meals per day. it's easier after a 3.5 day fast.

[IlliniDave]

Joining late, I'm another skeptic of "a calorie is a calorie". Our bodies respond differently on a hormonal level to each of the three macro nutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat). Each of those categories have differing effects in their metabolic process. For example excess carbs are very efficiently stored in body fat.

The way my body works there is a single dietary key to weight loss: eliminate carbohydrates from sugar, grains, and starch, and to moderate fruit intake. Carbs from non-starchy green, yellow, and red vegetables can be eaten to the point of feeling like Mr Creosote. I like to roughly split my caloric intake equally between protein, carbs as described above, and fat. That's pretty much the Zone diet approach. When I'm exercising a lot I up the protein. But again, the key when it comes to weight loss is to avoid foods which cause insulin surges.

[Smashter]

CICO is literally causing millions of deaths by preventing society from moving on to models of thought that are actually effective.

I know you were in the throes of passion while writing this, but I still think it needs further challenging.

You really think all the disease of civilization would be drastically reduced if stopped believing in CICO? Can't we find a better scapegoat? Replace "CICO" with "a completely insane food environment that allows for gorging on unhealthy, cheap foods with very little physical effort" and I'd be on board.

CICO, as much as your n=1 experiments say otherwise, is the key to weight loss according to the best research we have.

Sure, maybe the scientists who devote their lives to obesity research are all corrupt and Taubes, Teicholz, and the other low carb zealots know the real truth.

But I doubt it. Gary Taubes' own NUSI research has shown that high sugar intake does not impair weight loss.

That's not to say that hormones, stress, and sleep don't play a huge role in determining how many calories you take in. They do! And some people, like you and iDave, do great on lower carb diets. That's great! But I think it's misguided to heap massive blame on CICO.

[IlliniDave]

CICO is certainly part of the equation, it has to be. But even within carbohydrates I react dramatically differently if I eat, say 400 carbohydrate calories of broccoli (not a trivial feat-4.5 cups per meal times 4 meals/day) versus 400 calories of bread (not hard in a single sitting) with everything else held pretty much constant (protein and fat intake/sources). So for me it isn't about demonizing carbohydrates except for the subset of carbs that for the most part arrives at the store shelves via a factory of some sort.

Another advantage to sticking to low starch veggies as a primary (or exclusive) carbohydrate source is that it is nearly impossible overload on them the way one can easily do on junk food carbohydrates (which compounds the rush of blood sugar they cause with grossly excessive caloric intake).

I can't say I'm typical or atypical, but for my n=1 database, quality dwarfs quantity when it comes to losing weight, as long as we're not talking extreme deficits. I can't say for gaining weight as that usually happens only when I am not paying attention.

[black_son_of_gray]

Many of you might enjoy this talk (~35-40 min), which covers topics like:

• calories in/calories out
• how body weight can be modeled
• an interesting study of The Biggest Loser contestants
• metabolic adaptation that occurs with weight loss
• other sundries

The impression that I get is that calories in/calories out is coarsely true, but there are some very important caveats (e.g. the perceived effort of dieting vs. the reality of calorie intake, metabolic adaptation) that aren't intuitive.

Other resources:
The slide deck [pdf]
Referenced body weight planner tool

[BRUTE]

You really think all the disease of civilization would be drastically reduced if stopped believing in CICO?

humans might start investigating/experimenting with actual solutions to the problems they face. CICO is simply not an answer to the question.

CICO is the equivalent of answering the question of "how can humans stop being alcoholics" with "alcoholism is defined as having too much alcohol in the blood". it's not even wrong. that itself wouldn't be problematic, but it's being used to shut down any attempts to find real answers. "stop drinking!" - "no, alcoholism is defined as having too much blood in the bloodstream". "limit to 1 drink per meal?" - "no, alcoholism is defined as having too much blood in the bloodstream."

CICO is also extremely vague and meaningless, and pretty much all humans that say "CICO" mix up those concepts.

brute believes CICO is either a tautology ("fatty acids entering/leaving fat cells"), or clearly, demonstrably false ("manipulating the amount of food eaten or exercise performed is a useful way to change body composition").

ideas like low-carb, keto, fasting, IF, even weight watchers, are at least attempts to answer the question ("how do humans lose fat and stop the accompanying diseases of civilization"), but they're being shut down by humans that claim physics exists and therefore all other ideas are invalid.

[suomalainen]

It seems to me that what you anti-CICOs (ha) are saying is that although it's relatively easy to calculate CI, it is very difficult to accurately measure CO due to variability 1) between people (genetics, gut microbiome) and 2) in a given person due to varying physiological conditions (hormone levels, gut microbiome changes to diet changes, lifestyle impacts, other environmental factors?) so that the CICO approach is really just too vague to be informative, other than perhaps the obvious truth that given the same diet (other than portion size), 2000kcal/day will cause relatively higher weight than 1800kcal/day. Is that fair to say?

[BRUTE]

It seems to me that what you anti-CICOs (ha) are saying is that although it's relatively easy to calculate CI, it is very difficult to accurately measure CO due to variability 1) between people (genetics, gut microbiome) and 2) in a given person due to varying physiological conditions (hormone levels, gut microbiome changes to diet changes, lifestyle impacts, other environmental factors?) so that the CICO approach is really just too vague to be informative

not just difficult to measure, but in and out of what? the human body? digestive system? stomach? blood stream? liver? fat cells? there are inefficiencies and complexities at each step.

other than perhaps the obvious truth that given the same diet (other than portion size), 2000kcal/day will cause relatively higher weight than 1800kcal/day. Is that fair to say?

brute wouldn't even say that, as this has consistently not been his experience.

brute wants to talk about nutrient partitioning. nutrient partitioning is the idea that there are various pathways to go for nutrients entering a system like the human body.

it seems quite obvious that at least some of the nutrients ingested by a human can go to directly feed that human's activity: muscles require glycogen, the brain uses glycogen and medium chained triglycerides, cell repair requires amino acids (proteins).

it is also obvious that at least some of the nutrients ingested by a human can end up being stored as fat, in the various fat deposits of the human body.

if brute understands CICO correctly, it basically means that all nutrients that are ingested, but not immediately used for cell repair of powering of cells, end up being stored as body fat. it thusly follows that, in order to reduce body fat, CI should be decreased, or CO increased. CICO seems to posit that nutrient partitioning, i.e. the decision of "where will the nutrients go", is a simple overflow mechanism.

there are many systems in the body involved in this scenario that are left out of the simple CICO mechanism. here are a few:

1)the human body tries to stay in nutrient homeostasis, regulating food intake through appetite and energy expenditure through "energy levels" (a subjective measure of how active a human feels, and how well the human can concentrate).
2)the types of food, ways of food, genetic variation, and other factors like stress, sleep, and hormones, can influence nutrient partitioning, appetite, and energy levels.
3)certain types of nutrients cannot be stored as body fat, cannot be used by certain organs, can be converted to and from others.

brute will call the incoming nutrient partitioning factor between activity/body fat X.

this is of course still simplified, as there is neither "one activity" nor "one body fat deposit" - for example, most fatty acids and proteins cannot directly supply the brain with energy, whereas glycogen and ketone bodies (produced from medium chained triglycerides, a certain type of fat, by the liver) can. protein can actually not be used for energy at all, but it can be converted to glycogen by the liver, allowing it to be used for energy. how and when this happens is still subject to debate (on-demand vs. overflow, for example).

so if X is 0.5, half of the nutrients will be stored as body fat, and half will be used to supply the body's activities. if it's 1, no body fat will be stored at all. if it was 0, there would be no activity, and the human would probably die.

CICO, as brute understands it, posits that X will be 1 if CI = CO, and lower if CI > CO, an overflow dynamic.

what if this is not true? what if certain behaviors, stressors, foods, modes of eating, genes, or combinations thereof cause X to vary independent of calories ingested?

for example, if a CI is 2000kcal and CO is 2000kcal, but X is 0.9. the human body will not have enough energy available to fuel all activity. the human will either experience increased appetite or decreased subjective feelings of energy/lack of concentration. sure, at only a 100kcal deficit per day, the human could probably power through with discipline for a while. but what about the long term, or if X is 0.7, or 0.5?

there was a study, a while ago, of contestants from The Biggest Loser. they were tested for their CO, and after months/years of willing through calorie deficits, it turned out many of them had reduced COs of around 1,000kcal/day or even less. the effect of their discipline was that their body had decreased energy usage dramatically.

brute himself has fasted completely for 7-10 days several times. after multiple days of 0kcal/day CI, and non-zero CO, he would start feeling very sluggish. his workout performance, and especially recovery, would dramatically suffer. he wouldn't be able to concentrate on even movies. this was likely brute's body decreasing energy demand and available activity, as a consequence of decreased energy input.

point being, this can happen not just when fasting, but also for other reasons.

there are various factors known that dramatically change X - carbohydrate in certain humans, stress, lack of sleep. typically these seem to work through insulin and cortisol, but there are probably other factors.

brute remembers another study, which probably couldn't be repeated today. it was a study done in the 50s or so, of humans that volunteered to be starved on a 1,000kcal diet or so for a few days or weeks at a time. one group was fed 1,000kcal per day of carbohydrates, the other group used olive oil if brute recalls correctly.

interestingly, the humans on a 1,000kcal diet of carbohydrates went insane, and the experiment had to be cancelled. some tried to gnaw off their own fingers from hunger.

the humans on the olive oil diet were fine. brute can personally report that being in ketosis simply deletes the feeling of hunger. brute has not been hungry in years. (this does not mean infinite fasting down to six pack abs is possible, unfortunately. there are other complications like adrenaline/sleep, sluggishness, and the immune system).

hunger is the body complaining that it lacks sufficient energy to operate, especially the brain.

the mechanism by which the brain receives energy is not simply "calories from food + calories from body fat". there are various complicated mechanisms involved. for example, eating even a relatively tiny amount of carbohydrate completely blocks access to body fat. this is how the ketogenic diet works - staying under the limit, so that the body adapts to using body fat as energy.

it is thus possible to literally starve while being obese. this is probably what obese humans experience when they get crazy cravings - due to circumstance, they are starving their brains of energy while carrying hundreds of thousands of calories worth of body fat with them.

a good analogy brute has heard is that of a tanker truck running out of gas in its own internal fuel tank, because the big tank isn't connected to the engine.

the conclusion? while CICO might be accurate for some subsystem (body fat cells, for example), is is neither a useful diagnostic nor does it imply any path of action towards body recomposition. if the nutrient partitioning variable X is being pushed down by insulin or cortisol, through stress, lack of sleep, high amounts of fructose or other carbohydrates, a diet incompatible with the genetic adaptation of the specific human, or whatever else, then CI and CO are simply not useful levers. if the human is of the sort that has tried dieting before and it didn't work, it's likely that the humans has a nutrient partitioning problem and can't simply fix it with CICOing - otherwise the problem wouldn't persist, as eating less or working out more is pretty much what most humans try first.

here's an analogy. the human body consists of about 80% water. water is heavy. would any human recommend to humans looking to lose weight that they simply drink less water than they pee and sweat out? after all, WIWO (Water In, Water OUT) dictates that the human body must lose water when more is lost than is regained, and that any water that is drunk but not peed + sweat out must be stored by the body (by definition, duh!).

edit: brute had confused MCTs and ketones - MCTs can not fuel the brain, but get converted to ketone bodies by the liver. ketones can fuel the brain.

[classical_Liberal]

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[7Wannabe5]

@BRUTE:

I don't disagree with anything you wrote, and I think there are many possible flaws with rigid reliance on CICO, yet I am an individual for whom CICO has always worked almost exactly like it should. I just multiply my current weight by 12, give myself extra calories for any exertion above sedentary, and an approximate 18,000 kcal deficit on the spreadsheet will almost always equal 5 lb. weight loss. The main reason why I am sometimes chubbier than I prefer is because sometimes I like to eat a good deal of yummy food more than I like to be slender. I can't or won't stick to any high-fat/high-protein plan because I like being an omnivore who eats all sorts of interesting things more than I care about never being chubby (especially at my current age/stage*) or sometimes feeling hunger. Therefore, for ME adopting your arguments would be a sort of cop-out or denial of the reality of my own piggly-wiggly preferences and their likely consequences. However, I do know of others who suffer all sorts of odd symptoms, such as loss of hair, when they attempt low-calories diets at high BMI. IOW, MMV.

*For instance, my BF recently referred to me as "scooter butt", because I was hiking too slow on the trail in front of him, and I didn't feel pain, anger, or even calculate financial surcharge to ongoing relationship contract (I can't say for sure, but I would guesstimate that most women would tack on at least $250. )