Calories in Versus OUT, a review of the doubters

This article is floating around - I thought I would write my answers to it. Take a read at the link first, then see my rebuttals below.

Click link to see the article

If I diet and exercise for 6 months, I will disappear

1. How is this busting anything. Yes, If she were to drop her calories in by 500 a day and increase her calories out by 500, she would lose a shit load of weight after 6 months. She just has to remember that metabolism will vary over that time span, so her calories will also have to. This is due to the body naturally requiring less calories as a smaller vessel, and also the body will lower non exercise energy expenditure (general fidgeting, moving around etc).

As her body got closer to lower levels of bodyfat, her metabolism would start to drop more dramatically; this is a survival mechanism. But she would die before she disappeared.

I don’t see why this is seen as proof against calories in versus out. Maybe it’s an attack on the accuracy of generic calculators (which is a small but fair point). But, anorexics do it this way. And bodybuilders also routinely drop huge amounts of weight over smaller amounts of time using this formula of eating less calories and expending more energy via exercise. Just because different people lose different amounts of weight is not proof of calories in/out being wrong, simply that people have individual metabolic rates (and reactivity to changes in calories) along with different partitioning of fuels (P Ratio).

We are getting hungrier because we are getting fatter

2.       Again, where does this disprove CICO? However you want to package it (eating causes us to be overweight, or overweight causes us to be obese), CICO still functions here. All he has done is put the chicken before the egg.

This is fair enough, and may be true to a certain extent (obesity does increase leptin to the point of leptin resistance for example). But the opposite is also true. You will not find many people hungrier than an on-stage bodybuilder sitting at 5% bodyfat.

Yes, hunger is far more than calories in versus out – eating foods which are more satiating (insert foods which satiate YOU PERSONALLY here), but people lose the same weight regardless of hunger levels – if their calories are controlled. As every clinical controlled scientific study has every shown.

Some mice get fatter than others with the same amount of food

3.       Yup, this is where genetics sucks for some people. But this is simply a case of certain people having different metabolic rates and P ratios, not a disproval of CICO.

Some people, when put on a calorie restricted diet, will lose more muscle than others, and less fat consequentially. Some lucky buggers in the human world can lose almost exclusively fat when dieting, and gain almost exclusively muscle when gaining weight. The opposite is true. And some people’s metabolic rates will remain largely unchanged during a diet, and others will have their metabolism drop like a stone.

However, CICO still applies. How did they get those obese mice to lose weight? They dropped the amount of food they took. Yes, relative to the other rats, they may not have come out as well, but (the important part) relative to THEMSELVES, they lost weight. Which will always be the case.

CICO still worked. Take the same organism, feed it less, watch it lose weight. Take that same organism and feed it more, watch it gain weight. THAT MUCH we can control. Out genetic, unfortunately, we have to deal the hand that Yahweh gave us.

Well, this is not news really. In overfeeding experiments, some people, when given the same caloric surplus, will gain lots of weight, and some will gain very little. This is simply due to how re-active someone’s metabolism is to increases in calories. Some people eat more and their metabolism goes up to match it (almost) so they put on hardly any weight. Others eat the same amount more, their metabolism is very slow to catch up to that excess (if indeed it does at all) and they gain more weight. But again, this is looking at differences between individuals as opposed to individually.

1000 calories of coke is not the same as 1000 calories of broccoli

4.       This guy creates a complete strawman – just because nutritionists say that “calories are equal in terms of weight gain/loss” (not strictly true, but a good enough generalisation) doesn’t automatically lead on to “therefore down all your calories in Coke”. This is ridiculous, as there is more to health than simply weight loss. We have to look at micronutrients, phytonutrients and probably stuff we don’t even know about yet in whole foods.

But, regarding the ‘calorie is a calorie’ – Ask Twinkie diet guy what he thinks. He seemed to lose over 30lb eating sugar and fat in twinkie form. And Suwit et al also showed that a diet consisting of 45% of sugar performed just as well as a diet consisting 4% sugar regarding weightloss.

The main area where we have seen that a calorie is not a calorie (well, actually, by definition it is) is with protein. By eating protein, around 25% of the energy is lost through thermogenesis. But in reality, an increase in thermogenesis is simply an increase in energy out, so it still abides by the CICO rule. Dummies. Maybe you should understand it before you attack it.

5              This has nothing to do with debunking CICO. I don’t know why it is in the article.

I ate a lot and didn't gain as much weight as I thought I would

6.            Sam Feltham is an interesting case, and probably the only one so far in the article who opens up a question. He did a number of overfeeding studies and found that he didn’t gain as much weight as predicted.

                The fact is, if Sam wanted to gain weight, he just needs to eat more. He did gain weight by eating more, just not as much as he thought he would. But guess what, if he eats even MORE of that same food, he will gain more weight. Probably not as much as he would think, but he would gain. And if he want to lose weight, simply eat less of the food he was eating. Simple.

                This just highlights that looking at each person as an individual and taking into account their metabolic rate and re-activity, and adjusting from there. If he is not gaining sufficient weight on 5,000 calories, increase it to 6,000 a day. Hell, Phelps was on 12,000 a day and he looked pretty lean.

Different metabolic pathways have different metabolic costs

7.            “The second law is a dissipation law [which] says that variation of efficiency for different metabolic pathways is to be expected.”

Umm, yes. Different macronutrients (carbs, fat, protein), will take different metabolic pathways. Protein tends to lose 25% energy, Carbs around 5% and fat around 3% via these pathways. But all of this can (and is, by good nutritionists) taken into account. However, this dissipation simply fits the ‘calories out’ side of the argument. Why do people forget that????

And if there is variation within individuals, ok, we can adjust for that too. If you don’t lose weight on 2,000 calories of certain macronutrient profile, see what happens when you take 1500 calories of the same macronutrients. In every clinical trial I have seen, weight loss occurs.

 Whore moans

8.            I’m not sure what she is trying to say here (if anything at all), but it doesn’t seem to disprove CICO anywhere. At best, it alludes to the broken record idea that hormones are solely to blame. Well, guess what, you won’t gain a lot of weight if you have high insulin and don’t eat much. Obese people with high insulin levels also lose weight when put on a calorie restricted diet. Don’t you watch ‘The Biggest Loser’ (I am in no way in agreemnet with how they conduct that show).

                Insulin doesn’t cause you to gain fat – see here. It may make you hungrier (debatable), but this will only increase fat if you eat more – which still fits in with CICO

The idea of a 'calorie' is untrue IN PRACTICE

9.            This is really easy to dismiss. Go onto pubmed for a few hours, look at every well controlled caloric deficit study and you will see, regardless of macronutrient content, everyone loses weight. Different people lose different amounts (as explained) but they all lose weight.

Counting Calories to lose weight does not work

10.         " Counting calories to lose weight does not work for the majority of dieters. This happens, in part, because the calories in food are not the same as those expended by the body."

Counting calories does not work for the majority of dieters because the majority of dieters are useless at counting calories. It is a well known fact that people consistently underreport their caloric intake and over-report their exercise energy expenditure. To be honest, not a lot works for the majority of people for societal reasons. But this does not mean Calories in VS out does not function.

You don’t have to count calories. You could count points, you could exercise portion control, you could skip a meal (shoot me), you could quit beer, you could cut those snacks, you could eat more satiating foods and/or you could cut out trigger foods. All is fine, as long as it creates a calorie deficit, whether you’re aware of it or not.

But yes, he is right, we expend different amounts of calories from the food we eat. But, if you just ate less of that same food, you would lose weight. It works in every case. Never seen a study where it doesn’t.

You will only lose weight by healthy eating, therefore calories do not exist

11.          There’s not really anything in this last point worth debunking, as it doesn’t seem to disprove CICO, only says that it is not true. Well, where is the evidence exactly? There is plenty of evidence that CICO is true.

Eating healthier foods makes us more naturally lose weight? Yes, in most cases it does. But I know plenty of overweight people who eat really healthy. And I Also know people who eat crap and are underweight. There is also a plethora of people who have lost weight eating crap, and people who have gained weight eating healthy food (I am one who has done both).

I am in agreement for his call to exercise at shorter, but more intense bouts. However, to each their own. Find out the exercises which suit you and you have more fun doing.

How about we take some words of wisdom from a guy who has, and repeatedly does, look at the research and then apply to his clients.