Comment by tsimionescu
3 years ago
Based on your description, I will venture a guess that you are not obese / grossly overweight. There is good evidence from various studies that obese/overweight people are not typically able to achieve this - usually their craving for food is far too powerful to just control simply by falling into a routine; or, the body sometimes finds other ways to adjust (the lipostat model).
This is really the problem with CICO - it is definitely correct in an abstract sense (weight doesn't come from thin air, and neither does food you eat magically disappear), but the factors controlling calories in and calories out are far more complex. Human behavior is far from being entirely rationally determined. Our choices (particularly in regards to food, exercise, and other basic needs) are to a great extent controlled by our metabolism, even though it often doesn't seem that way.
This probably explains why people rarely lose weight on the long term - you can allow yourself to be forced to eat less than your body thinks it needs for a while, and obviously you'll lose weight; but you will go right back up to your "normal" weight as soon as the forcing stops (program ends, willpower exhausted etc).
the type of food definitely matters. Carbs somehow 1) dont fill you up 2) spike your appetite. When I do low carb I feel so much less hungry on lower calories.
The deficit cant be too large, for me 500 is ok, but 1000 has me ravenous the next day.
Lots of obese people easily lose 2 pounds/week but as you get closer to a healthy weight it gets harder.
CICO was the first time I was able to actively lose weight in my entire life.
The general observation from most long-term clinical studies of obesity, as far as I understand, is that many types of diets work to reduce weight in the short term, but the weight almost invariably comes back after the intervention period ends (usually within 1 year or so after the initial weight loss). Conversely, people who are normal weight and are forced on a hyper-caloric diet for a limited time (say, a few weeks) will gain weight as expected, but will naturally lose it back over the next period without explicit effort.
This has generally been treated as a lifestyle issue, but another possibility gaining traction is that "obesity" is a disease in itself, one that tricks your organism is seeking to maintain excessive weight, by impacting your appetite, BMR, exercise habits etc; this will of course usually make people suffering from "obesity" (for lack of a better name) over-weight, but the weight can be controlled without curing the disease. Basically losing weight doesn't cure your "obesity", just like when you suffer of diabetes, controlling your diet keeps you healthy without curing your diabetes.
The possible causes of this "obesity" disease could well be diet related, and definitely refined sugars seem to be at least a major culprit.
Correct, temporary diets don't work. You have to change your lifestyle/diet permanently. This means after weight loss, you need to adhere to your new caloric intake baseline, which will be _lower_ than when you started. The more you lost, the lower it will be. This is hard, but not impossible to do. I can't speak for the obese because I was never there, but I was solidly overweight and proceeded to dump 40 lbs a decade ago, and never gained it back. Had I gone back to my pre loss diet it would have all come back.
NOTE: Before someone points it out, this is NOT incompatible with my parent comment. Going on a 500 cal/day cut and losing say 8 lbs will not lower your caloric baseline all that much, so temporary more or less works fine. If you use the same method to dump 40 lbs, you will need to readjust your baseline when done or you absolutely will gain it back as your caloric intake needs have been meaningfully reduced.