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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.
As others pointed out, CICO cannot be debunked in so far that thermodynamics is immutably true. It's just different factors can contribute to these variables on either side.
agree. Too many people, including even on the 'HBD side', downplay the role of metabolism in regard to obesity. Consider that having a faster metabolism (or more specifically, a less efficient metabolism) means being able to eat more food without becoming obese, hence less willpower is required.
The best way of thinking about it is that, CICO as an accounting tautology may be true, since it just describes weight loss/gain. But CICO as actionable dietary advice absolutely can (and has been) refuted. Simply deciding to eat fewer calories or exercise more (without doing something hacky like keto) doesn't work.
I don't think the study in that link, which is just about The Biggest Loser participants, refutes that. In terms of CICO as actionable dietary advice, I see it as a meta-dietary advice: follow whatever scheme it takes to lower CI to be beneath CO, and you'll lose weight. If you can reduce CI by just counting calories and willing yourself really really hard not to succumb to hunger, then do that. If you can do it by following a keto or Atkins diet because that leaves you less hungry for the same caloric intake, then do that. If you can do it by following intermittent fasting or one-meal-a-day because you find it easy to just not think about eating during the non-eating-mode times, then do that. If you can do it by just cutting out alcohol from your life and following whatever other eating habits you already were doing, then do that.
Similarly, to increase CO, do whatever it takes to increase your total caloric expenditure, as averaged out per-day, per-week, per-month, etc. That doesn't mean necessarily optimizing by finding the exercise that burns the most calories per second, that means finding an exercise that you will do regularly. Which could mean finding something that's fun enough that you don't have to fight with willpower to do it (or even better, one that's so fun that you have to fight with willpower not to do it), that's convenient enough that you don't have to reorganize the rest of your life just to do it, that doesn't injure you enough that you have to take long breaks, etc.
Of course, when it comes to CICO, it's also often paired with the advice that CI is far more influential than CO, so the latter part barely matters. Perhaps it should be called CIco.
Isn't that just moving the tautology up a level? Since CICO in its thermodynamic sense is just a description of weight loss, then giving the advice 'follow whatever scheme it takes to lower CI to be beneath CO' is the same as giving the advice 'follow whatever scheme leads to long-term weight loss' (which frustratingly doesn't include deliberate CICO).
Yes, and I think the usefulness of this has to do with how often people don't seem to consciously understand this tautology. Which seems very often in my experience, with how much talk there is about "healthy foods" (or variations like "natural foods" or "unprocessed foods") as keys to weight loss. Which they often are, but only indirectly, modulated through the effect on CI. And I've observed that many people tend to obsess over that indirect portion, making them lose sight of the actual goal of modifying the values of CICO.
There's the point that healthy foods offer health benefits other than weight loss, of course, but generally one's fatness level has such a high impact on one's health that, even a diet of "unhealthy foods" that successfully reduce CI will tend to result in a healthier person than one of "healthy foods" that fail to reduce CI (keeping CO constant in these examples).
I heard an incredible story about a person who got mad at her doctor after she asked, "What food can I eat to offset the fact that I'm eating this other thing?" and, unsurprisingly, her doctor did not seem to answer the question that she had posed in the way she posed it.
I've heard all sorts of other misinformation and bad fundamental beliefs from people. If anyone has a better strategy besides, "Ok, so let's talk about the fundamental basics of how calories and macro/micronutrients work, and how they might have different considerations," I'd be all ears. But it's genuinely difficult to progress if they literally just do not have any concept of the "tautology", what I would perhaps word as the "descriptive fact of the matter". It really feels like trying to teach someone how to play baseball, and they just keep saying, "Where's my racket? I need a racket. When are we going to get to how to use the racket? I just want to know how to use the racket; I'll figure out the rest of it later."
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