CiCo Vs Hormones
Calories In Calories Out
So, why is CICO a bone of contention
Some people in the discussion think CICO is simple while others disagree. The simple fact is that if you aren't losing weight, it's because you are either eating too many calories or not moving around enough, or both. Easy, just cut back on calories and ramp up your activity level.
There is also a camp of people who think CICO is ineffective (or even a complete myth). Opponents say it ignores the effects of insulin resistance, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and other metabolic disorders. Some diets and foods are promoted as having a "metabolic advantage," or the ability to aid in weight loss without increasing the risk of developing CICO.
Adopting an extreme position on this topic is problematic, as it prevents you from seeing the bigger picture, whether you're a health and fitness coach trying to help clients manage their weight or just trying to learn how to do it for yourself.
This article will give the discussion a more nuanced perspective. To begin, allow us to dispel a few myths about CICO. Then we'll look at several case studies that illustrate how people's lives have been hampered by extreme ideologies.
CICO isn't just about diet and exercise.
CICO is not the same as "eat less, move more." However, many people, including some CICO proponents, confuse the two. The "eat less, move more" philosophy only considers the calories you consume and the calories you expend through physical activity and normal daily activity. In reality, however, CICO is just a shorthand notation for the much more involved Energy Balance Equation.
Your brain is crucial to this, but it's easy to forget about it. It keeps a close eye on and regulates CICO. Imagine it as the brain's "mission control," where signals are sent and received between the body's many systems, including the digestive tract, the endocrine system, the nervous system, the nervous system, the muscles, the bones, the fat cells, and the environment. It's a stunningly intricate and intricately beautiful system.
The Energy Balance Equation, on the other hand, appears deceptively straightforward.
This is it:
[Energy in] – [Energy out] = Changes in body stores*
*Fat, muscle, organs, and bones are all considered "body stores," or potentially metabolizable tissues. I have avoided saying "change in body weight" on purpose because fluid retention can affect one's weight regardless of caloric intake or expenditure.
To rephrase, water is a variable that causes energy balance to appear to be off even though it is not.
This formula takes into account more than just caloric intake and expenditure. The diagrambelow shows how many different variables can impact these two main ones.
Looking at CICO in this way, from a more macro level, reveals that reducing it to "eat less, move more" is a gross simplification.
CICO is different from calorie counters.
Calorie calculators are widely used to help people roughly determine their daily energy requirements and keep track of what they've eaten. On occasion, however, it seems that none of these methods are effective.
This leads them to wonder if CICO is fundamentally flawed. If they don't work (or don't work properly). Estimate and approximation are the keywords here. This is due to the fact that calorie calculators aren't always reliable.
To begin, they deliver an average result, which can be off by as much as 20-30% in otherwise healthy young adults. Possible greater variation exists in clinical, morbidly obese, and elderly populations.
As for the "energy out" side, that's already quite a bit. Energy intake, or the number of calories you consume, is also an approximation.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows for a 20% margin of error on calorie counts on labels, and studies have shown that restaurant nutrition information can be off by 100-300 calories per food item.
Additionally, even if you were able to precisely weigh and measure every bite you ate, you still wouldn't have an accurate "calories in" number.
This is due to the presence of extra variables, such as:
The calories we eat are not completely absorbed by our bodies.
Furthermore, different food types have different absorption rates. We take in a larger percentage of the calories from foods high in fiber than was previously thought, but a smaller percentage from nuts and seeds.
Calorie absorption varies from person to person based on the makeup of their gut bacteria.
It's possible that the number of calories listed on a food's nutrition label is lower than the
actual number after it has been cooked, blended, or chopped.
Naturally, this is not to say that CICO is useless. This merely indicates the limitations of the methods currently available for estimating dietary intake and expenditure.
Just to be totally clear, calorie calculators can still be incredibly useful for some people.
However, one must be acutely aware of the constraints imposed by such methods. If you must
use one, treat it more as a rough guide than an exact solution.
Calorie counting is one tool we use at Habitual Practice to encourage healthier eating habits in our clients. On other occasions, we serve by hand. Sometimes we rely on our logical reasoning skills, and other times we use our intuition.
Take the case of a client who is trying to lose weight but not succeeding. We may use their calorie
or portion counting as a starting point to eat less. But we could also try to persuade them to abandon that strategy in favor of something else. Eating until they are only 80 percent full, for example.
We are always manipulating "energy in," whether we are discussing numbers or not. On occasion, the two ways are directly connected. So make no mistake: Even when we're not "counting calories," CICO still applies.
Consider these
- High-quality sleep can help you control your appetite, heal faster, and burn more calories.
The effects of stress can be mitigated through techniques such as meditation, deep breathing,
and time spent in nature.
- Non-exercise ways to get more movement into your day include leaving the car a little further away from your destination, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and/or standing up while you work.
- Swap out some of your high-intensity workouts for lower-intensity ones to speed up your
recovery and lower your overall stress levels. Instead of trying to lose weight by restricting your calorie intake, focus on increasing the nutritional value of your current diet.
It's possible that this will help you consume more calories from the same meal.
- Modify your diet by focusing on the macronutrients. Increasing protein and fibre intake,
carbohydrate intake while decreasing fat intake, and vice versa are all examples.
- Adjust your meal and snack schedule to suit your preferences and hunger signals.
- To verify that you are eating the amount of food you believe you are eating, you might want to keep a temporary food log using hand portions or weighing/measuring tools (as closely as reasonably possible).
- Get more out of your workouts by identifying and fixing any nutritional gaps you may have (and in everyday life).
*If you've been making healthy lifestyle changes but haven't seen any results, it may be time to
talk to your doctor or a specialist.
About the Author
HABITUAL PRACTICE believe that a healthy diet is the key to a happy and full life. Our goal is to make healthy food easy and fun for everyone to eat.
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