Yes it is for people who go on this diet to lose weight. There is no weightloss without calories in < calories out, period.
So eating lots of raw food etc. ends up being portion control, because obviously you won’t be eating 5 lbs of greens, ending up above your daily expenditure.
This is definitely a fad diet. As you said, the science behind it is a joke. If your interest is in fast weightloss, there are many interesting diets that would match your lifestyle more easily.
Alain
This is 100% wrong. Do the research. It’s an antiquated notion which has been disproved in well-designed study after study in recent years. There are so many diet and nutrition myths perpetuated, it’s laughable. Like the idea that 1 pound of fat equals 3500 calories. Also not true outside of a lab.
You can consume more calories than your body uses and still lose weight? Sign me up!!! Can you elaborate or post some links?
I get really mad at the perpetuation of diet myths that lead people to obsess over calories, so my statement that it’s 100% wrong does have some emotional exaggeration attached to it - I apologize to Alan. The amount of food you take in and the amount you burn does, of course, impact weight. But your body is not a calculator, and it is a mistake to think that calories in vs calories out is a formula for weight loss or weight gain. Perhaps I should restate: There can be weight loss without calorie reduction from current levels. No, you cannot start eating a whole lot more than you are now and except to lose weight. Not for most people, anyway.
The basic falsehood springs from 1) the fact that calories and the laws of thermodynamics that they relate to are not all that relevant for the human body and the way it actually processes food and 2) the fact that, as we reduce calories consumed, our body fights to retain weight. And 3) hormones, metabolism, all sorts of other things go into how we process and store fat and weight of other sorts, as does the kind of food we consume and what the macro-nutrient content is of that food.
There’s a ton of information out there - if you are truly interested instead of just wanting to argue (which is fine - sometimes I feel that way, too), I suggest doing the research yourself. I jumped in to make my initial point because it is not only mistaken to believe CICO is the whole story, it is dangerous. That’s right - dangerous. So it was important to me to correct that idea.
Thanks for all the detailed, logical, explanation.
Very true Sarah. I’m a proponent of eating GOOD food (minimally processed) in amounts that fuel your body’s energy requirements (activity level). Too little is not good, nor is too much. Restrictive diets of any kind have never worked for most people in the long term. Moderation in all things. My diet is primarily based on complex carbohydrates (all kinds of grain, fresh veggies/fruit, beans, etc.). That works for me, but not for my sister who has celiac. She is a vegetarian, so has limited choices of what she eats, but manages to stay healthy and very active. I don’t particularly care for a meat-centered diet so have never wanted to try Paleo, but whatever works to make you feel healthy is fine in my book. Just as our palates are different, so is our food requirements.
No worries, my “CI < CO, period” was a bit of exaggeration as well.
As for your other points:
Here’s a chart that I like a lot, it is from Precision Nutrition website. They have a similar one for calories we burn, you can check it out if you’re interested.
If you have some well designed studies for the CICO rule then I’m definitely interested. Most studies I’ve seen are a joke in terms of sample size and subject control (most are declarative only). You really have to look at who the tested subjects were to get an idea of how reliable a study can be. When I see one where the subjects were overweight 70 years olds, and then the headlines are just “New study shows XYZ!!!” as if it can be applied to an in-shape 35 years old, I just go mad…
Alain
Alain -
what you are saying, yes, is part of my point. Also, that a calorie itself has no direct correlation to what happens in the body. And things like 3500 calories equaling a pound of fat (which gets repeated like gospel over and over) is only true in a lab, not in a body.
I disagree. The same situation comes into play with people trying to lose the last few pounds, not just with the extended major weight loss crowd. Your body fights to keep those pounds if you try to do so by reducing calories.
we may be subject to the same factors which influence how we burn and store fat, but we are most certainly not subject to them in the same ways. That’s what studies have shown more than anything else - that people’s hormones, metabolism, genetics, body composition, and things we don’t even understand for sure vary greatly and affect how our bodies deal with what we put in them. It’s one of the reasons it’s so hard and why the notion of something simple like CICO is so massively appealing.
I read this stuff constantly, daily, but keep no records of what I read. Much of it can be dismissed, but there definitely is some good research being done. Again, it’s very tough to design these studies well since, like I said, we don’t understand the interactions of all the factors in the body that well yet, and it’s tough then to get a group of subjects on the same page, if you know what I mean. I’ll see if I can find something I’ve found solid.
Just one more note - I’m not saying the notion of CICO is without any merit or use in the diet and nutrition world. It can help people who have no clue get a basic grasp on why they are not losing weight, and how they can begin to think about weight loss. But it is (and I think you’d agree) so far from the whole story, that to put it on a pedestal and worship it as all you need to know is a huge mistake and leads to exactly the opposite of understanding as well as to dangerous and unhealthy eating and thinking.
I also have Hashimoto’s disease. I am on meds.
Curious why you have not been regulated in the last 3 years Do you not take meds that help regulate your levels? Or do you take meds and losing a little weight made the medicine more effective? And certain food choices affect the disease? Not questioning you, just curious.
Yes, I’m on meds, but it took a while to get the dose correct, and I still had some symptoms and a very slow metabolism even when my TSH was in the “normal range” (but not in the “ideal range.”) Many things affect absorption of the medication (including food and other meds), so even if you take the right medicine, it may not be fully effective. And as you know, it’s a delicate balance to get it right and there is a very real risk of too high a dose pushing to the other direction.
I go for blood work every 3 months, and my numbers were steady for a while (in the normal range), but in Feb, my TSH went up a lot, so I decided to eliminate gluten and dairy and soy, which had helped other people. It was easy to just adopt the rest of the Paleo diet, and without any extra effort (I mean, no calorie restriction and no extra exercise - I have worked out 5-6 days a week for 20+ years so it’s not like I lead a sedentary lifestyle), the scale started moving in the right direction for the first time in 3 years. I went to the endocrinologist this week, and my numbers are in back into the low range of normal, I feel better than I have in years, and my symptoms are gone. I am going to keep doing what I’m doing, and I honestly don’t miss the things I’ve cut out. Just my own anecdotal experience.
Thanks for sharing your personal information, and, most importantly, glad to hear that things are going in a better direction for you.
I think I understand what you meant earlier a bit better now. I think we’re quite on the same page on pretty much everything.
If it seemed that I’m in the “a calorie is a calorie” crowd, then sorry. If you check the link I posted there are 2 parts (one on calories in, one on calories out), it covers most of the topics you listed. Differences between people and all that.
However, excluding your body going into starving mode etc., I still think that your only way to lose fat tissue and achieve body recomp is through caloric restriction. I’ll take the example of bodybuilders (the pros).
These guys take insane amounts of drugs to manipulate their hormones and grow muscular mass with minimal fat beyond the natural abilities of the human body. But even them need to go on (horrible) diets to achieve 3-5% bf for contest time. It seems there’s no way around it…
Again I’m not saying that CICO is all there is to it, but realistically it works for most people - up to a point, we agree, said point I’m sure most people are content with given enough efforts. I also think learning to control your hunger is something very important, but that’s another topic.
I’m sorry to hear about your condition and congratulate you on being informed about it and open minded on the ABCs of it all.
Alain
Actually, the CICO paradigm has been a proven failure, time and time again. It simply doesn’t work, for many reasons, not the least of which is that calories are fairly irrelevant; the body doesn’t operate on calories. Starvation doesn’t work, at least for prolonged maintenance of weight.
Read the recent NYT article on the studies of “Biggest Loser” contestants. Pretty good studies, and fairly revelatory for the CICO crowd.
I cannot verify any of this, but the site has a few cool articles, especially historic dietary practices…
This was interesting, thanks!
I found this article fascinating (and depressing).
Calories are fairly irrelevant? I beg your pardon? I don’t pretend to be an expert, far from it, but I have a degree in engineering so I’m hoping all science is not lost on me! 
Here are some extracts from the article, with my comments, feel free to respond!
Leptin is just one of a cluster of hormones that control hunger, and although Dr. Hall and his colleagues did not measure the rest of them, another group of researchers, in a different project, did. In a one-year study funded by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, Dr. Joseph Proietto of the University of Melbourne and his colleagues recruited 50 overweight people who agreed to consume just 550 calories a day for eight or nine weeks. They lost an average of nearly 30 pounds, but over the next year, the pounds started coming back.
See my point above on how studies are conducted. We don’t know by how much these people are overweight, but 550kcal/day looks quite like starvation mode.
Mr. Cahill set a goal of a 3,500-caloric deficit per day. The idea was to lose a pound a day. He quit his job as a land surveyor to do it.
See also the point above about “1lbs of fat = 3,500 kcal”. I’m not sure who his coach was, or if he even had one, but he should have looked harder for proper advice (see additional point below).
If he had not burned enough calories to hit his goal, he went back to the gym after dinner to work out some more. At times, he found himself running around his neighborhood in the dark until his calorie-burn indicator reset to zero at midnight.
With a proper coach, he would have learnt that weight-training burns more calories than cardio, and helps in maintaining your metabolism.
Soon the scale hit 265. Mr. Cahill started weighing and measuring his food again and stepped up his exercise. He got back down to 235 to 240 pounds. But his weight edged up again, to 275, then 295.
So when he decreased Calories In, and increased Calories Out, he did lose some weight. Even with low metabolism and all. It didn’t last for too long, but it worked.
There is always a weight a person’s body maintains without any effort. And while it is not known why that weight can change over the years — it may be an effect of aging — at any point, there is a weight that is easy to maintain, and that is the weight the body fights to defend. Finding a way to thwart these mechanisms is the goal scientists are striving for. First, though, they are trying to understand them in greater detail.
And then further down:
“We eat about 900,000 to a million calories a year, and burn them all except those annoying 3,000 to 5,000 calories that result in an average annual weight gain of about one to two pounds,” he said. “These very small differences between intake and output average out to only about 10 to 20 calories per day — less than one Starburst candy — but the cumulative consequences over time can be devastating.”
So it seems there is a weight that is easily maintainable, but still we put on 1-2lbs per year due to aging (or other factors, we don’t know). So what is this weight if it changes throughout the year? I’m a bit confused here…
Cliffs:
I don’t see anything that contradicts CI<CO in that article.
That still doesn’t contradict the fact that to lose weight, you have to consume less than you burn. Or if it does, please help me understand how! 
Alain
Calories represent the total energy that can be extracted from food. A body doesn’t extract and make available all of that energy. After it’s extracted and put into the bloodstream, not all of that energy is burned or turned into fat (some of it is excreted in urine).
People differ in their efficiency in extracting and utilizing energy from food because this depends on microbiome, hormones, etc. The body also has feedback mechanisms that attempt to maintain some state (which may not be a state you want) through changes in hormones, metabolic rate, etc. There are also feedback mechanisms in the microbiome (the part of your body that isn’t you) that affect the way it extracts and utilizes energy from food.
So, there is an equation involving energy in and energy out that will determine weight gain. But, it has coefficients that vary between people and over time with a given person.
-Al
So how about some Paleo recipes or sites with your favorite recipes? I’m not a strict adherent to anything, but if I can add Tequila and wine in moderation- i’m game.
Paleo Leap is my favorite source for paleo recipes. There’s also a ton of stuff on Pinterest.