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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.
One CICO diet plan I know of is The Hacker's Diet. You don't need impossible precision because instead you borrow a page from control theory. You measure your change in weight, and if it's not as desired, you reduce CI to compensate. Closed-loop feedback.
This is certainly what I do - weigh myself every couple of weeks, if my weight's gone up stop eating lunch for a few days, if it's gone down start eating dessert for a few days. Hadn't heard the name "Hacker's Diet", though; it seems kind of too obvious to need a name and I kind of thought anyone who's actually at target weight would be doing it.
It's pretty much what I do as well. Also anticipating excess calories, "Gonna get drinks and have a big dinner so going light on lunch.". Bonus, less booze to get tipsy.
Also knowing your indulgences and where calories sneak in. For most I think that's liquids and snacking. I have a huge sweet tooth. I keep snacking to a minimum and cut out sugary drinks over 20 years ago so I can have an extra slice of cake every now and then. Over the last 5 years I've started "light" intermittent fasting so it's even easier to keep tabs on things. Also I think being comfortable with the feeling of being hungery is a good thing.
To be clear; I'm anorexic (in the proper sense); I don't get hungry*. Obviously, this largely negates the "ate too much" side of the coin.
*I recently discovered that I can get cravings for specific foods; when I started training with my bow, I started getting meat cravings, presumably because I needed protein to add muscle.
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