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A blow to the CICO theory of obesity: Pre-fertilization-origin preservation of brown fat-mediated energy expenditure in humans
I find this noteworthy for three reasons —
There’s possibly an easy and natural intervention for obesity. The Japanese neurotically dress for the weather, so how great will the effect be for those who accept the cold? “College woman walking to a party in winter wearing a short dress” was a joke when I went to school, but it was apparently pro-natal. Is it the fluctuation which is most significant? Does it need to be tied with the day-night cycle?
This is more evidence that humans are shockingly attuned to specific conditions they evolved in, which should be reverse-engineered to find more potentatial interventions for human flourishing. We are much more animal than we like to admit.
How many other “willpower problems” have less to do with willpower and more to do with 2nd and 3rd order effects which are hidden from us, or which compound invisibly? There are probably many more for obesity alone.
A) CICO necessarily follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is perhaps the most confirmed scientific theory of all time. The day you disprove it is the day physics gets really, really weird and reality as we know it ceases to make sense. So CICO is a theory in the sense that conservation of energy is a theory, which is to say it is as cold and hard of an absolute as we know to exist in the universe, no amount of obesity cheerleading will change that.
B) The effects noted in the study are frankly not that big. Like a 3% increased likelihood of active brown adipose tissue, which might increase total energy expenditure of the bodies resting metabolism of up to 5%. So conceiving in the winter gives your baby a slightly higher chance of being slightly better at burning energy, which is only a benefit if you live in a post-scarsity world.
"You eat too much and you dont exercise enough" remains the core of any and all successful diet criticism.
The naive version of CICO compares your meal plan to your gym time. The normal version compares all the food (including drinks!) you consume vs. all your planned or incidental physical activity. The true version compares the bioavailability of all the nutrients you consume vs. all of your metabolic activity, whether that's moving your muscles, thinking, growth, healing, generating heat, or anything else.
I have yet to see any diet plan that uses the true model of CICO. The closest I've seen is a single number for "base metabolism" that you back-calculate from your weight trends.
I think you're pushing a strawman, but I'm open to seeing a diet plan that uses the "true CICO" model I described. Anything less precise can't follow from raw thermodynamics.
You don't need official diets for CICO it's self evident. Reduce food consumption and/or increase activity until you lose weight. Still haven't lost weight? Decrease/increase.
Problems:
People tend to lack self control. If you had self control you wouldn't be fat.
People tend to over-weight the activity part. So really just forget about CO and reduce CI until you start to lose weight. See problem one.
Expand to why you're poor and struggle with addiction.
Its well known that certain medications lead to weight gain: do you believe they do so because they reduce the self control of those who take them? Does hyperthyroidism cause significant increases in self-control, and does hypothyroidism erode self-control? Do GLPs work because they increase the individual's self-control?
If not, then factors other than self-control are at play.
I know it wouldn't be The Motte if it wasn't 10,000 words of caveats. Yes, these are exceptions that apply to a minuscule number of people, yet a bunch of people use them to make excuses for why they're fat.
It would not surprise me one bit that certain drugs and conditions reduce self-control and other's increase it. Some things make desired outcomes easier and some things make them harder. If you've got lots of self-control and you get some condition or start some drugs that make it harder to keep weight off, reduce CI until you stop gaining weight.
I would bet you think I have some normie conception of self-control: "self-control is easy! Just don't eat." Nope, self-control is really hard, and you're probably mostly born with it, like IQ. Can a midwit get a PhD in math from Harvard...? Well, are they black? No? Very unlikely.
Additionally hilarious when the majority of people making these arguments, if confronted with a similar 'transness is valid since super rare hormonal dysfunction that impacts 1-in-2-million people' would instantly side on the yes but side whilst since it's about their own bodyweights are suddenly reality relatavists.
I'm reminded of a twitter thread from Big Yud ages ago on similar lines about why he was unable to lose weight. Can't find it on a quick search but it was a similar matter of 'rationalist attempts to rebut CICO when it's fairly obvious he just likes eating and doesn't like exercising'. A post meming on him from back then https://x.com/MorlockP/status/1657098074139811876
I've personally struggled with my weight depending on a bunch of factors, swinging 20-30kgs either direction depending on circumstances but ultimately CICO's the only way I've ever been able to lose weight and generally I gain when I'm distracted by other things to the point of letting go of either moderation or exercise.
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