Do you still think it's all about calories in vs calories out and fat people are not disciplined enough ?

[deebate]

I've been doing a lot of online research over the years around diet/ exercise and what's the answer. How can I keep fit and be healthy.

I've tried various things and I am generally a believer in calories in vs calories out. Which seems to be the favoured method on here.

If anyone complains they're struggling with losing weight, it must be because they're not counting everything etc.

In any case, I've now stumbled across a number of podcasts of different doctors and nutritionists in the field talking about gut microbes and sugar spikes etc and how actually it's really not just about calories at all.

What's the consensus on here about all this ?

Like many others have said it is about CICO, but there are many confounding issues, diet, relationships with food etc.
i also believe most people don’t know how many calories they need. I am 5”4 with a BMI of just under 23. I have a relatively active job and go to the gym 3 hours a week.II”m in my 50s. My total calories needed a day are 1670. If I ate the suggested 2000 I’d gain weight.
Due to the easy availability of calorie dense food it’s very easy to overeat and not realise it or still be hungry.

Slimming World used to work like that - basically not mixing protein and carbs, there were 'red' and 'green' days and anything not on the red or green list was a 'sin'.

Nowadays they don't do that - they have 'free' foods (unlimited in theory) 'healthy extras' (limited but good for you, such as cheese) and 'syns' (rebranding of 'sins' as a reaction to rival WeightWatchers 'no food's a sin' advert) such as alcohol, chocolate etc.

Both methods, and WW, boil down to, if you follow them, you are eating fewer calories, it's just a question of which method you find easier and most palatable.

All of the things you’ve said do make (very) small differences to a person’s metabolism and/or appetite. So whereas the bottom line is calories in vs calories out, the of calories we each need is different. Height, weight, and activity levels make a big difference whereas gut biome makes a very small difference.

Almost everyone who is overweight is overweight because they overeat, but the reasons why they are overweight are complex.

Think back a hundred years ago or so - there was nowhere near the levels of obesity we have now. Also look at other countries in the world who don’t have so much unhealthy food as part of their regular diet. Why is it mainly the U.K. and US with obesity problems? Because we have more cheap and unhealthy convenience foods which lead people to overeat.

Not that it changes your point but SW red and green days still had free food - red it was meat and protein and green carbs and on each you could have a small amount of the other as a healthy extra, alongside your other healthy extras. It was never a food combining diet like a lot of people seem to think.

I've struggled with my weight since my twenties, and I know a lot of this is because I live a less active lifestyle than I did then. It's also because when I lived at home I ate what I was given and there wasn't money for snack foods - we mostly ate homemade meals. Despite this my Mum has always been (since I remember) very overweight.

Despite it seemingly obvious, I recently had a lightbulb moment that it's actually less about the calories in than the calories out....we keep trying to control calories in, but we don't really understand the calories out. Because its different for each person. Some people burn calories much easier than others.

My husband probably eats double the calories I do (no exaggeration - his diet is appalling), we walk a similar number of steps per day but he does no other physical exercise. He has never struggled with his weight. I fluctuate between 13 and 15 stone (approx size 16).

And I only get down to 13 stone with some quite severe (to me) restrictions - no carbs, very low calorie, no UPF. At which point it plateaus/I put on weight and I can no longer maintain the restriction. I know I need to be more physically active, but get too hung up on the food aspect and don't focus on the activity.

I do all of this and I'm 9.5 stone. I go to the gym 3 times a week and lift heavy weights. I always do about 9000/10,000 steps a day

Well I'm 54, so am old hat myself. I've not been on and off diets my whole life. I was a fat child because I ate much bigger meals than my peers containing more calories than i needed. After losing weight in my teens because I was more active (so ate less and moved more!) I made the link pretty quick for me, whatever theories were about at the time. And since then have always been the weight I 'should be' based on what I eat compared to what I do.
What isn't old hat is the constant theorising about weight and the whole industries dependent on selling women new ideas, methods and cures, from the days of the Victorian quacks selling tape worms, to contemporary 'experts' charging for consultations and getting book deals from it. While meanwhile as a nation, for all this new learning, we get ever fatter.
I suppose I'm lucky in that despite having an obese mother and not being 'naturally' athletic, my genes don't seem to be an issue. Eating UPFs, sugar and all the other gut damaging things have not left me unable to lose weight when I eat the amount I require, and my body doesn't seem to mind if my calories come from carbs, if I eat them after 6pm and don't fast on Thursdays.

The bottom line is that restricting ones food intake in a society where high calorie food is everywhere, there is a strong association between food and pleasure, and we don't use our bodies much in our day to day is very hard indeed, which I imagine is as responsible for the failure of CICO as any flaw in the method.

You would still lose weight if you ate only chocolate but remained in a deficit. You wouldn't be healthy though.

CICO is objectively true, but given that energy cannot be created or destroyed, kind of tautological. The answer to how a person can healthily lose or gain weight is rather more complicated.

Exactly this. And the cheap unhealthy food is easy to chew so we can eat more of it faster, but it doesn’t give us what we need nutritionally, so we crave more. Not to mention the use of science to make the foods moreish and to market them very cleverly.

People often focus too much on the calories in and not enough on the calories out.

Mr Monkey is a pretty serious marathon runner so I spend a lot of time around people who run sub 3 hour marathons. They are a very clear demonstration of the basic truth of calories in and calories out. They eat huge amounts (during Marathon training periods we can go through two to three large loaves of bread a week - and I only eat a slice or two of toast at the weekend) but are obviously, in the main, whippet thin.

That isn’t true at all. I am slim and still have cravings. I love sugary food, especially chocolate, cake, biscuits etc. But I control what I eat so I don’t become overweight and I try to eat as healthy as possible and avoid upf’s. Also I exercise.

A lot of MH medication makes people feel that they want to eat more, so intuitively you will have eaten less and consumed fewer calories now that you're off it

So very much CICO

I think the vast majority of those who are overweight either have too big portion sizes or eat a bad diet.

However, I do believe there is a small number where there are biological factors - and I include PCOS in that. Some people, due to something like PCOS, have bodies that struggle to process sugar. I have PCOS and had to work really, really hard to lose enough weight to give myself the best chance to conceive - I mean exercise every day for at least an hour (proper cardiovascular workout) and cut out all sugar, particularly carbs. I've also noticed I'm hungrier and crave fatty, sugary foods just before my period. I've always struggled with my weight and have yo-yoed all my adult life. I'm not massive, but average size 14 clothes - the smallest I've ever been is a 12. Mind you, portion control is also a factor with me.

These are all the influencing factors and how they interact;

Or even this one;

CICO is fact.

However, not all calories are equal - so the origin of the calorie and the effect it has on your body is also important

are you sure you are eating enough? That can’t be much above 1000 calories.

when I was eating 1000 calories a day (and running obscene amounts) I was losing HALF the weight I am now on 1800 with less running.

Anti depressants Amisulpride and Mirtazipine make me fat, but as depression and anxiety don't exist according to Rishi, I guess I'm just a fat bastard.

There is such a thing as food addiction. People who are seriously fat and have been for most if not all of their lives can be addicted to eating, have no “full” switch, eat for psychological reasons.
I am not talking about a stone or two overweight but eating until you are maybe double the weight you should be or more.
This is an addiction which is far easier to fall into for those who will be affected than smoking, drugs and alcohol because of course we all eat so it is not an optional extra and it is harder to stop because complete abstinence is not possible.
There is not the sympathy for people with food addiction that exists for other eating disorders because the sufferers (and it causes great suffering) look very fat and society is disgusted by that.
Research is developing and I sincerely hope that eventually people can be helped with more than the one size fits all (pun intended) approach that is frequently applied to someone at a stone overweight who simply wants to look “better” vs someone at double their healthy bodyweight whose life is blighted by weight related complications who desperately wants to stop overeating but can’t.

As an overweight person who's struggled with my weight since my teens, yes, it is about calories in, calories out but the greatest battle is the battle in my mind.

If it were as simple as just sticking to a calorie controlled diet, I would probably be a good weight but the reality is I do it for a week, feel great and then for a variety of different factors I don't fully understand, I fall off the wagon and undo the hard work. I have a disordered relationship with food and think in terms of 'good' and 'bad' and I trip myself up every single time.

However, when I stick to the rules of eating well, in my case, the principles of SW agree best with me, then I lose weight.

Yeah, I hadn't appreciated that some think us slim people never get cravings! How lucky are we!?

I crave certain foods, but resist those cravings. I just tell myself "Well of course you can't have a second bit of chocolate - you've already had one today, that's you done". Or, "Just wait another 2 hours and you'll be eating dinner".

The amount of rubbish on this thread, trying to deny basic science, trying to explain away weight gain and obesity on very rare disorders or the insignificant differences in how a calorie is absorbed if its been blended to if its eaten whole and trying to explain this as a reason why its not CICO, or getting confused about why you need fewer calories if you're in peri/menopause (like me) and why you're eating more calories if you're on medication that makes you crave food,,,, is all the reason why we as a nation are so overweight. Complete and utter denial that the basics is, eat less.

We dont want to eat less, I dont want to eat less but eating less is what loses you weight.

Yes, you're right! I remember as well, you could do all green days or a mixture of green and red (but not all red).

Green was essentially low fat and red was low carb, and of course junk food (sins) was strictly portioned with both, so if you did a mixture and stuck to your sin count, you'd overall be reducing the amount of fat and sugar you consumed in a week, so would lose weight.

If I recall correctly, SW did present it at the time as something of a 'magic formula' which is probably why the food-combining myth arose.

What would be interesting to me is to hear from people who have substituted one of the theories that challenge CICO and have found long term success. CICO keeps my BMI at 21, so it clearly works for me. Has anyone thrown this completely out of the window and consumes 2800 calories a day for example, without exercising them off, but because they follow a particular eating regime or avoid certain foods, are not OW?