I see a lot of threads/comments on here and all over that conflate CICO with Calorie Counting. Most of the time it really isn't an issue but I thought maybe it would be useful to help give people a little clearer perspective.
CICO, short for "Calories In Calories Out" is a thermodynamic principle based on the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. You may also know it as The Law of Conservation of Energy.
This isn't a physics lesson but applied to weight loss, it simply means that in order to lose mass over time, you must consume less energy (Calories In) than you expend (Calories Out), over time.
Calorie Counting is simply a diet strategy. It is the simplest and most direct strategy to control the CI portion of the equation. You find your target intake, you can eat "whatever" you want, as long as you don't eat more than that in terms of calories. If you don't lose weight, reduce the target. Simple. That doesn't make it easy. It doesn't account for macros, hunger, fatigue, intolerances, or any of that.
A few other items of note:
-Every diet strategy utilizes the principle of CICO for weight loss. Keto, IIFYM, Paleo, Atkins, all of them.
-Diet strategies above are different in how they will affect your body composition, hormone (and thus, hunger/satiety) levels, and other bodily processes, but when it comes to weight loss, they all work the same. Some people can control themselves on 1200 cal of Twinkies and beer a day. I can't.
-Every person (and everything, for that matter) is bound by the laws of CICO.
-Don't let small nuances corrupt your understanding of thermodynamics. For example, water has energy in the atomic sense, but it doesn't get extracted by your body so we don't say it has dietary calories. Just because you gained 2 lbs of water today doesn't mean you didn't lose fat or that CICO doesn't apply to you. Respiration, Perspiration, Defecation, and Urination all contribute to mass leaving your body.
If you believe you are exempt from the above laws, please contact the world's leading theoretical physicists immediately, because your body is likely the key to limitless energy for the world, and based on some information about relativity, likely a key to unlocking gravity-defying flight, faster-than-light travel, and time-travel.
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