suomalainen wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 12:50 pm
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.
suomalainen wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 12:50 pm
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.