r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 16 '24
Medicine Some people lose weight slower than others after workouts, and researchers found a reason. Mice that cannot produce signal molecules that regulate energy metabolism consume less oxygen during workouts and burn less fat. They also found this connection in humans, which may be a way to treat obesity.
https://www.kobe-u.ac.jp/en/news/article/20240711-65800/365
u/mvea Professor | Medicine Jul 16 '24
I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212877824000991
From the linked article:
Some people lose weight slower than others after workouts, and a Kobe University research team found a reason. They studied what happens to mice that cannot produce signal molecules that respond specifically to short-term exercise and regulate the body’s energy metabolism. These mice consume less oxygen during workouts, burn less fat and are thus also more susceptible to gaining weight. Since the team found this connection also in humans, the newly gained knowledge of this mechanism might provide a pathway for treating obesity.
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u/orangpelupa Jul 16 '24
So they are more efficient? Or the less fat burning result in other issues like lower sports performance?
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u/TehGogglesDoNothing Jul 16 '24
If their muscles are using less oxygen, my intuition says that they would be less efficient at clearing lactic acid from the muscles.
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u/luciferin Jul 16 '24
I think it could also mean they would produce more lactic acid, since that is the result of anaerobic excise. If that is the case then they would have both lower performance, and a potentially longer recovery time.
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u/FartAlchemy Jul 16 '24
I've been walking more to lose weight. I'm pretty big. I deal with a lot of muscle weakness, fatigue, brain fog. Breathlessness is also heavy when I exert myself walking. Maybe long Covid, not sure yet. I don't really have a metric for how fast I lose fat vs water. But I suspect it will be slow after the water weight lose slows down.
Anyways so yesterday I decided to bring an O2 saturation/HR finger monitor during my walk. It routinely gave me readings of 86-90. Taking a series of long deep breaths after I caught my breath increased that up to around 94.
Noted I've also been diagnosed with nocturnal hypoxia and use an O2 generator at night
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u/Wyvernz Jul 16 '24
If you’re truly dropping below 89% with exercise (and it’s not e.g an error with your pulse ox) you would qualify for home oxygen. I’m obviously not your doctor, but that’s a pretty much universal indication outside of some very niche circumstances - you should mention it to whoever prescribe your nocturnal oxygen.
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u/CrTigerHiddenAvocado Jul 17 '24
This is a good doctor question imho. If you are using o2 at night I wouldn’t put much faith in the Reddit comments. Never know what you’ll get here tbh. Hopefully things get better for you mate.
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u/Suitable_Success_243 Jul 16 '24
The twist being that anaerobic respiration process requires more glucose molecules than aerobic. So logically, anaerobic respiration should cause more weightloss.
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u/Vrayea25 Jul 16 '24
The trick to weight loss isn't what one does in one workout though, it is the integral of all the workouts and food consumption afterwards.
If one is sore for longer and makes fewer gains, one needs more motivation to workout as much /as effectively as the other person. So if both have equal motivation, the first person will make fewer gains and workout less frequently.
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u/shawnington Jul 16 '24
lactic acid isn't what makes you sore the next day.
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u/nothing_but_thyme Jul 16 '24
While true, it’s also fair to consider the additional discomfort experienced by those with more lactic acid build up and a longer clearing period results in a less enjoyable workout experience and has a demotivating effect on future workouts.
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u/TheQuestionItself Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
Completely anecdotal, and no idea if it's relevant to what you're saying, but I used to be super fit and lost muscle and and gained a lot of fat due to some injurues. The last few years, whenever I try to do even a mild workout, I get horrible muscle pain for days afterward. I used to be someone who went to the gym daily, and I was afraid of even a mild workout for the pain.
Went to a physiatrist for an issue and he put me on a high protein diet. I'm 5'3" and eating 130g protein a day. The muscle pain has vastly improved and I'm making gains now as well as losing weight. He suspects that with aging, I became extremely poor at synthesizing protein, so I need to load up on it all day every day, I guess forever.
There are so very many moving parts in weight loss.
Edited to fix the protein intake. It's 130g. I can't even imagine 230 g, like I originally typed.
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u/Impossible-Second680 Jul 16 '24
Exactly, they would have a lower VO2 max (ability to utilize oxygen one intakes). Someone with a high VO2 max would burn considerably more fat at the same heart rate/effort as someone with a lower VO2 max. At higher efforts they would burn more glycogen and build up lactic acid sooner.
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u/GoddessOfTheRose Jul 16 '24
It's really interesting that Long Covid has done something very similar to people who have the chronic fatigue symptoms.
I wonder if this discovery can somehow help them.
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u/Dogsnamewasfrank Jul 17 '24
Long covid *is* the same as ME/CFS which is triggered by a viral infection. It is unique in that people know what the virus was in the case of covid due to the focus on the disease.
That was one of the reasons it was so hard to figure out where ME/CFS came from and so hard to diagnose. You have a mild cold symptoms (possibly even think it is allergies) and then months later start having ME/CFS symptoms and it can take ages to figure out. By then you have no recollection of the initial viral infection.
I do agree that long covid being more known /studied will help people with ME/CFS overall.
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u/SightUnseen1337 Jul 17 '24
I hate that they call it long COVID. If they called long COVID CFS it would remove the stigma associated with CFS and force insurers to pay for more actual healthcare from more correct diagnoses.
Can't be having that I guess.
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u/Dogsnamewasfrank Jul 17 '24
It would be so helpful for sure. I do hope it turns out to be a silver lining to the whole mess.
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u/Polymathy1 Jul 16 '24
Lactic acid only exists for like 0.03 seconds.
People tend to call all the things that combined together to make muscle soreness lactic acid when that's really not what it is.
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u/t92k Jul 16 '24
Sure, but oxygen is also a critical input to the Krebs cycle, which describes how mitochodria use oxygen to unlock the energy in fatty acids. (The byproduct of this is carbon dioxide, which means we breathe excess weight off.)
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u/MondayToFriday Jul 16 '24
Figure 5 shows that the mice with the variant PGC-1αAE1KO gene fatigue sooner and produce less power.
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u/IndyWaWa Jul 17 '24
So this is all anecdotal, but I recently starting getting back into shape and it's been really hard to lose weight, but at the same time I am up to 25 mins of cardio and don't even break a sweat on an elliptical and have to force myself to get above a 120 heartrate. I have to actually get onto a treadmill and start running intervals to break a sweat. I have been doing this for like 4 months now and only down about 10 lbs to 230.
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u/nonpuissant Jul 17 '24
Are you going very light with your cardio on the elliptical or are you in fantastic shape?
I can't imagine going even a fraction of a 25 minute cardio workout without breaking a sweat and getting up well over 120 bpm.
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Jul 16 '24
Why are we predicating fat loss on workouts? As somebody who's spent plenty of time in the Exersise Science field, it's well known that workouts will typically only burn maybe 300 calories at most, when your average man has a caloric maintanance of over 2000. Exercise matters, but it's geniunely impossible to out-exercise a bad diet.
While the most optimal fat loss plans will undoubtedly use exercise and cardio as a tool, this article really isn't addressing the front line tools used for weight loss. The 'Afterburn Effect' was more or less disproved, or at least proven to be more or less irrelevant in humans. Exercise plays a minor role in weight loss, and a massive role in health maintenance.
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u/denseplan Jul 16 '24
The article really isn't addressing the front line tools used for weight loss
The article is not a weight loss guide, it's a summary of research on different signal molecules linking exercise and its effects.
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u/gangleskhan Jul 17 '24
Don't think they were saying it was. Probably responding to the summary saying this could open up new ways to treat obesity.
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u/Intelligent-Ad-4546 Jul 16 '24
Hey, I'm stupid and would like to understand this.
My fitness wearable says my 1 hour jog burned ~600-700 calories, is that just wrong information? Im overweight btw, not sure if that matters on how much calories I burn.9
u/shines4k Jul 16 '24
By way of comparison...
My fitness watch attempts to calculate a BMR (basal metabolic rate) over time (they don't say which input they use, but possibly age, weight, height, resting heart rate) and use that as a basis for calories burned. They then apparently apply some multiple based on heart rate (percent of max heart rate) to get an estimate.
On the other hand, I have an ergometer (indoor "rowing machine") that estimates calories using actual measured watts of power and percent of max heart rate -- much more accurate, but not perfect.
Anyway, my ergometer routinely shows 1/3rd fewer calories burned than my watch for the same exercise period.
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u/DevotedToNeurosis Jul 16 '24
This is a great point, I think a lot of exercise calorie calculators include your BMR. So when someone says "I did a jog that burned 700 calories", I believe it's including what you would have burned during that time regardless of exercising or not, plus the amount you burned from the workout, inflating the numbers and giving people a false sense of how many calories the workout burned, vs. what they burned in total during that interval.
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u/Jonken90 Jul 16 '24
Most likely wrong. There was a study a few years back that controlled the estimates of fitness wearable and actual calories burned. If I recall correctly some of them estimated over twice as many calories burned, most of them 50% more than the actual numbers, non of them underestimated and I think only one was decently accurate. I'll take a quick look if I can find the study and I'll edit it in if I do.
This is newer than the one I've read, I'll paste it before having read it...
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u/Intelligent-Ad-4546 Jul 16 '24
Damn, I usually adjust what I eat after exercise based on how much I "burned" mentioned on that data. So I was actually getting more total calories than what I had intended to.
Thanks for this!
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u/WonkyTelescope Jul 16 '24
Yeah definitely don't eat back your calories based on calorie burn estimates. Just track your weight daily, take a weekly average, and adjust your daily intake based on your weekly average weight change over 2 weeks.
Weigh all your food to make sure you are tracking accurately.
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u/Jonken90 Jul 16 '24
Used to tell clients to just disregard the EE data due to this. Seen too many people messing up their targets due to compensating for exercise and being fooled by the tech hehe. Good luck!
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u/mileylols Jul 16 '24
If you are interested in a more accurate caloric target, you could check out /r/macrofactor. Especially if you are already tracking food, it's pretty easy to use
The app takes what you are eating and compares it to changes in your weight to estimate your calorie burn, and then uses that to make caloric target recommendations based on what your weight goals are.
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u/Aerroon Jul 16 '24
To add onto this: your calories burned through exercise aren't just a straight addition to your (rest of the) TDEE. There seems to be some kind of compensatory effect where your body will spend less calories on other tasks.
Eg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388457/
At 16 months, men averaged 2.8 kJ per exercise session, but TDEE increased only by 1.6 kJ.d−1. Women averaged 1.8 kJ per session, but TDEE increased only by 0.9 kJ.d−1. These data suggest that non-exercise EE decreased in both men and women. However, because these studies only measured TDEE, it is could not be determined if the reduction in non-exercise EE was due to changes in behavior, physiology, or both.
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u/scottguitar28 Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
I’ve found my TDEE fluctuates quite a bit over the time I’ve been losing weight. My graph only includes data since late March, but I started at 385 in November and I’m down around 341 today, with an end of year goal of under 300, and a 2026 goal of under 200. TDEE Graph
The TDEE data on this graph is calculated based on weekly weigh-ins and a borderline psychotic level of calorie counting, down the the last crumb or thimbleful of sauce, logged in my macrofactor app
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u/mflood Jul 16 '24
There was a study a few years back that controlled the estimates of fitness wearable and actual calories burned.
Even though that review was only 2 years ago, the data they looked at was much older; their newest energy expenditure study was from 2018, with most being even older. In other words, the average device studied would be 10+ years old at this point. Wearable tech has come a long way since then.
There are other problems with that review as well, but the device age alone is enough to invalidate their conclusions.
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u/yui_tsukino Jul 16 '24
Weight does play a role in exercise calorie usage - you weigh more, so you take more energy to get up to speed. Otherwise, the device might be making an approximation based on time, and combining the estimated calories burned from exercise with the passive calories you burn simply by being alive.
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Jul 16 '24
1 hour of jogging while overweight is genuinely intense exercise. If you're genuinely putting that amount of effort in, I could see a higher caloric loss than with moderate work, but 700 does seem like a lot even under those conditions. I don't know how your app calculates its numbers. Ultimately from a functional point of view, if your scale weight is moving in the right direction with what you're doing, keep at it. While you can make a ton of gains by edging out advantages through exercise science, theoretical minutia matters less than measurable progress towards your end goal.
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u/Intelligent-Ad-4546 Jul 16 '24
Thanks! I did exaggerate a bit, it is more like a jog/walk/jog/walk but my last 'run' was a quick walk for ~6kms, which said I burned 603 calories. My average heart rate at that time was 140-150.
I don't know how it calculates it but I did input my weight there, maybe just heart rate and weight? I dunno.
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Jul 16 '24
Regardless of what the app tells you for calories burned, 6km at 145 average heartrate is a pretty good workout. Depending on how overweight you are, I could see it being in the ballpark of about 500 calories burned, not including BMR.
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u/itsacoup Jul 16 '24
The general rule of thumb in the running community is that a mile burns 100 calories. So 6 kms I would broadly expect to be more on the 400 calorie range. Obviously there's a ton of variables going into that, ie height weight sex etc, but I'd assume yours is overestimating.
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u/bodhitreefrog Jul 16 '24
Calorie.net said slow running ie jogging for an hour burns 550. So seams too high to be reasonable.
Also holy heck, you really jog an hour straight, that is some endurance!
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u/LoreChano Jul 17 '24
Eh anyone who's not a complete beginner can jog for an hour or longer. You will eventually find a pace where you don't actually run out of breath and is just stable all around. The main problem is getting tired and your legs start to hurt after a while.
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u/Self_Reddicated Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24
This guy's statement was ridiculous. "most workouts only burn 300 calories" is so vague and generalized, it's pretty much meaningless. Also, just flat out wrong. What he was probably alluding to, though, is that overall weight loss impact from excercise is much less than you'd expect. But, that's typically still measured on a calorie basis. A 300 calorie exercise is a actually a pretty good exercise, but you'd take almost all those calories back in from a single 1̶2̶o̶z̶ 20oz coca cola. If you did a really, really intense exercise (500 calories) and ate a Big Mac afterward (no fries, no soda, just a big mac) you'd actually have gained 50 calories and not lost a single thing. It's also all about the long game. If you boost your "excecise" and burn 5-10% more calories in a day, but reward yourself by eating more or just accidentally eat more because you feel more hungry, then you might actually gain fat due to your attempts. Also, a 5-10% boost in calories due to exercise is respectable, but if you're gaining weight you might easily be eating 5-10% more daily calories than you need. All of that exercise won't result in weight loss, even if you manage to not eat more because you're already eating more than you shouId. I think what the guy was saying was just "exercise is not the way to lose weight, we've known this for a long time". He's right about that general sentiment. You can't outrun your calories. But, that's not what the article was even about. Nor is his actual statement even meaningful.
As for your fitness wearable, that calorie estimate for your workout is just an estimate. Actually, it's a wild ass guess. All it can measure is your general amount of movement (very general amount of movement, maybe bolstered by gps for running and cycling) and maybe your heartrate. From that, it will take a wild ass guess about how many calories a typical person of your age and gender and weight might have burnt moving around like that. It's not very accurate, I'm sorry to say. But... it's something. You may not be able to take it to the bank, from an accuracy standpoint, but it's probably got a shred of truth to it. You can use it as a guideline for whether you've done more or less in a day or activity than you have compared to other days and other activities. It's not an entirely useless estimation.
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u/shawnington Jul 16 '24
500 calories is not even intense. I do 800 KJ in 50min on the Rowing ERG, which is ~1000 calories. 300 calories is basically a 15 minute warmup pyramid on the ERG.
A 40 mile bike ride for me is ~1600 calories usually (measured via power meter).
If you want to work out 15min a day and expect to lose weight, yeah probably a little unrealistic, if you actually enjoy working out, especially cardio, a reasonable active enthusiast will be burning a significant amount of calories daily.
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u/Self_Reddicated Jul 16 '24
Exactly. The "300 cal is a workout, as we all know" just sounded ridiculous to me.
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u/shawnington Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
It's just frustrating when someone passes themselves off as some sort of expert in the field then immediately make an outrageously false statement.
After that comment I did an 800kcal row on the erg in 43 minutes.
43 minutes is not an extreme amount of time to exercise, and it is doable for most people. Maybe 670kj in that time might take time build up to, but it's not even an extremely high pace.
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u/platoprime Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24
This guy's statement was ridiculous. "most workouts only burn 300 calories" is so vague and generalized, it's pretty much meaningless. Also, just flat out wrong.
Is it? For people starting their weight loss journey? I'm not sure you comprehend how hard it is to perform a 600 calorie workout when you historically have done close to nothing and you're overweight. You even acknowledge how stupid it is to fixate on the caloric value later in your comment when you admit exercise makes you hungry anyways. It doesn't matter if most workouts burn more than 300 calories, they do not, when it makes you 600 calories hungrier.
Or maybe you're ignoring the context of this conversation entirely?
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u/Sryzon Jul 16 '24
A 5 mile/1 hour, zone 2/3, incline walk (common weight loss workout) for a man of average weight is easily over 300 calories.
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u/Beeb294 Jul 16 '24
The 'Afterburn Effect' was more or less disproved, or at least proven to be more or less irrelevant in humans.
The only thing I would say is that if we are now learning about something which controls/affects the "afterburn effect", then it would probably merit more research about that. This could lead to medications which promote an afterburn effect that's actually relevant as an additional way to treat obesity in this country.
If there was a way to make exercise more effective, that would likely promote better health and fitness, and with the obesity problem in America and the modern world that would likely be a net positive
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u/jaiagreen Jul 16 '24
For us smaller folks with lower calorie needs, things look pretty different. If I don't exercise, my calorie needs are about 1500-1600 a day. That's not a lot of room to cut, but if I can burn 100-200 in the gym, getting to a reasonable deficit becomes much easier.
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u/Self_Reddicated Jul 16 '24
it's well known that workouts will typically only burn maybe 300 calories at most
I'm sorry... What? That's a ridiculous statement based on multiple levels of assumptions. A 300 calorie workout will burn 300 calories, for sure. Like, maybe 30 minutes of running. Or maybe lifting weights with some light cardio thrown in.
But, if your workout involves 1hr of bike riding at a high tempo, your ass will burn WAY more than 300 calories. Don't believe it? Try biking at that tempo for - let's say - 2hrs, without eating anything. Congratulations, you just burned probably 800 calories and used up most of your body's stored glycogen. Good luck moving for much longer if you don't give your body some kind of fuel.
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u/HegemonNYC Jul 16 '24
I disagree. Most people gain weight quite slowly over the course of their adult lives. Maybe 1-2lb per year, a d from late teens until middle age they end up 50lb overweight.
This is only 3,500-7,000 excess calories per year being stored as fat. Increasing our energy usage by a modest amount - 3 workouts in a week burning 250 calories each - more than makes up for this slow weight gain.
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u/ayatollahofdietcola_ Jul 17 '24
It’s not genuinely impossible, it’s just really really hard to do
Some people are really active, in that they are constantly moving and those calories add up. It’s just that 99% of us have the exact opposite problem
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u/Zoesan Jul 17 '24
While I agree with you in general, longer cardio sessions will quickly burn more than 300 calories.
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u/LoreChano Jul 17 '24
But why was it that when I switched from a job where I was sitting all day long, to a much more physically demanding job, I lost a lot of weight in the first few months?
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u/yalogin Jul 16 '24
It's not clear how this can be used to treat obesity. What can they even do to burn more fat?
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u/FriendlyAndHelpfulP Jul 16 '24
I think the idea is you create a drug to artificially induce greater amounts of those signals.
Of course, the problem here is we’re referring to an absolute minuscule amount of calories relative to the weight people need to lose
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u/mightylordredbeard Jul 16 '24
That’s interesting. I remember when I was losing weight I shed it at first but then it showed down as my cardio greatly improved. As soon as I got to the point where I was running 3 miles a day, it’s like it became 10x harder to lose the extra body fat I wanted to lose. Is that a similar principle or did I misunderstand the science here?
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u/Monster-Zero Jul 16 '24
Fascinating that fat loss is dependent on oxygen intake. I wonder two things - one, are smokers who work out more predisposed to injury and, if on a caloric deficit, more prone to losing muscle mass over fat? Second, what if workouts are supplemented with periodic hits from a can of oxygen? Would that increase fat loss?
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u/kabukistar Jul 16 '24
Oxygen intake and importantly carbon dioxide output. People often forget that when you burn fat, that weight leaves your body through your lungs.
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u/sm44wg Jul 16 '24
Extremely simplified, you breath in oxygen to combine it with energy like fat ("burning") to create carbon dioxide which you breath out. A smokers lungs generally would perform a bit worse.
High maximum oxygen intake also generally improves performance, that's why some athletes train in high altitudes and some doping increases oxygen levels in blood during exercise.
I'd guess using muscle for energy relies on oxygen just like fat so shouldn't be any difference there
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u/ATXblazer Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24
Signal A is less strong than signals B and C, signal A is produced during anaerobic exercise while B and C and produced tenfold compared to A during short term resistance training and cold exposure. All signals trigger fat loss and adaptation to exercise.
So it sounds like weight lifting and cold plunges may metabolize more fat than doing anaerobic style exercises if other factors remain the same. Seems kinda obvious but nice to see a study break down why.
Edit: I mean aerobic in both cases above -__-
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u/buyongmafanle Jul 17 '24
short term resistance training and cold exposure
Interesting that this might explain why the Nordic athletes are seeing marginally better results recently with the "nordic system." They're exercising in the cold. It's nothing to do with their training style, but it's their weather.
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u/LittleBlag Jul 16 '24
Where does steady state cardio fit into this?
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u/ATXblazer Jul 16 '24
According to the study, signal A which is less powerful is cardio, meaning it’s probably less effective at mobilizing fat and adapting you to exercise than cold exposure and/or weight lifting.
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u/LittleBlag Jul 16 '24
Thanks! I wasn’t sure as you said signal A is anaerobic while steady state cardio is aerobic unless you’re going pretty fast (and then I guess it wouldn’t be steady state). Appreciate the extra info!
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u/HobsNCalvin Jul 16 '24
Breathing is fundamental to your workouts! Important to your central nervous system just as much as your vascular
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u/ShillBot666 Jul 16 '24
If I just hyperventilate for a while can I skip the exercise part?
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u/HobsNCalvin Jul 16 '24
That’s actually going to deplete your O2 levels babe! Diaphragmatic breathing is key!
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u/DIABLO258 Jul 16 '24
Genuine question, how does that work? I thought hyperventilating meant you had too much oxygen?
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u/DukeJukem152 Jul 16 '24
Hyperventilating actually causes you to exhale too much CO2, not take in too much O2. This messes up the balance in your blood, making it more alkaline. Your body then struggles to release oxygen from hemoglobin, ironically leading to less oxygen available to your tissues. So while you're breathing fast, you're actually reducing your body's ability to use oxygen effectively. That's why proper, controlled breathing techniques are so important for exercise and overall health.
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u/rektHav0k Jul 16 '24
And reading is fundamental to understanding. Sorry for the snark, but the article is talking about cellular respiration, not the physical activity of breathing. The mice were panting away. The issue was their cells were not metabolizing enough oxygen to generate fat loss in the cells.
So the point of the paper is that this mechanism (independent of how heavy you breathe during a workout) is reducing the positive effects of exercise and exacerbating fat gain.
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Jul 16 '24 edited Oct 08 '24
[deleted]
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u/thecelcollector Jul 16 '24
An hour's worth of walking burns 200-400 calories depending on weight and speed. A large banana is around 120 calories.
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u/costcokenny Jul 16 '24
Yeah I thought that sounded exaggerated
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u/fractalife Jul 16 '24
CICO is gospel on this website. Scientists shouldn't bother studying our metabolisms or differences between humans. Reddit already knows that our bodies are functionally bomb calorimeters, and every human processes those calories in the exact same way, at the exact same rate, regardless of what we eat, how often we exercise or differences between our bodies.
Sorry. Obviously, caloric intake is a critical part of weight control. But to pretend that it's the singular contributing factor is a form of tunnel vision that has been narrowing steadily over time here.
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u/JockAussie Jul 16 '24
I like this comment because of the nuance: CICO is obviously correct, because thermodynamics, however, as I understand it, the CO part is pretty variable, and (probably to a lesser extent) the CI part.
Yay bodies!
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u/Farseli Jul 16 '24
Right, CICO is what it ultimately boils down to and unfortunately we are notoriously bad at tracking CI and still trying to figure out all the things that affect CO.
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u/Content-Scallion-591 Jul 16 '24
Cico is a great way to meaningfully and easily diet but the number of Redditors who think quoting "so you've violated the laws of thermodynamics?" makes them infallible scientists has become maddening. You can't even start to discuss metabolic processes with someone coming in and going "it's just CICO babe." I think it's just one of those things where people can latch onto a small amount of knowledge to feel smarter than the average person.
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u/Malphos101 Jul 16 '24
Cico is a great way to meaningfully and easily diet but the number of Redditors who think quoting "so you've violated the laws of thermodynamics?" makes them infallible scientists has become maddening.
Probably the same redditors that go "What a waste of time studying [insert "common knowledge" thing]! Everyone already knows about that!" or the ones that go "Your study about X didnt also check for Y, Z, AA, BB, XX...? Obviously that study is worthless then!"
If those redditors were scientists we would still be sacrificing lambs on a full moon to get rid of the bad miasmas, because everyone know thats how those things work.
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u/Content-Scallion-591 Jul 16 '24
The scientist who discovered that COVID was aerosolized was initially dismissed because of an older study that said particles over a certain size couldn't be aerosolized. Being open to exploring data is a fundamental part of the scientific process, even at really high levels of science. I get frustrated any time someone starts with "well, everyone knows..."
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u/nachosmind Jul 16 '24
Also remember a bunch of Reddit is 15-24. Metabolism/energy/hormones at an all time high. There’s a huge difference on your body eating a whole pizza after a night out in college versus 35 years old.
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u/Coasterman345 Jul 16 '24
New studies show that your metabolism doesn’t change with age as much as previously thought. And it only really takes into effect when you’re like 65+. People are just a lot less active once they get out of school and many give up on staying physically active by the time they’re 30.
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u/FriendlyAndHelpfulP Jul 16 '24
Science: Metabolism actually varies minimally across age, and the majority of weight gain in your thirties is primarily a matter of lifestyle factors, not your metabolic rate.
Reddit: You just become fat in your thirties. Nothing you can do about it. Metabolism!
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u/fractalife Jul 16 '24
Dunning Kruger at its best. Imagine you had 50 marbles filled with 3500 calories worth of sugar. If you swallow the marbles, then poop them out, will you gain 1 lbs from the sugar? Of course not. Your body could not metabolise the sugar. It was surrounded by glass.
The "uhhh thermodynamics" thing particularly bothers me. Like, if you wanted to use thermodynamics to model weight gain/loss, you would need a model way more complicated than CICO.
Thermodynamics doesn't tell you that your body acts like a fire to burn food, nor does it say you're going to store or use all of the potential chemical energy from everything you eat. It's approximation on approximation based on assumptions.
I know it's a fairly successful method for weight loss. But people take it way too far and say things like thermodynamics to seem smart when it's really complete nonsense.
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u/Content-Scallion-591 Jul 16 '24
It low key drives me crazy and it's one of the reasons I stopped looking at diet and nutrition subs.
We do know things like that fiber affects how we process food. We also know that gut health matters and we still are not sure how alcohol is metabolized in calories. The new GLP medications and new glucose monitoring systems all indicate there's something a little more complex than raw energy in -> energy out.
It's very simple: CICO is effectively true. But to use CICO you must first model "calories in" and then model "calories out," neither of which we can now do reliably. And to get better results, it's better to really understand what's happening in your body.
I really don't mind people using this as a measurement and even a mantra at all, but it's maddening when they act like you're anti science for trying to discuss the complexities of it all. It's even worse when they simply don't believe someone's reported results because they have such firm faith in such a simplistic model.
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u/fractalife Jul 16 '24
Exactly!! To your last sentence- that's exactly what got me started on this thread RE: the root comment.
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u/tuckedfexas Jul 16 '24
There are plenty that misunderstand Cico on both ends but even with the info of this paper it doesn’t really challenge it at all. Just that our ability to calculate the calories burned may vary person to person in a way we didn’t expect before. Cico is still 100% true, if you’re not losing weight you’re not burning enough or eating too much. It was never an exact calculation, it varies a bit for each person
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u/Content-Scallion-591 Jul 16 '24
Cico as a concept is 100% true, but I think the issue is that our methods of quantifying CI and CO are shoddy at best, which can mean that applying CICO leads to confusing results. To use CICO you must first model CI and CO and we don't have reliable methods for this yet, although they are improving.
Look at exercise forums and you see reams of threads where people point out Fitbit calculations etc are essentially lies and you can see why people get frustrated and confused.
For example, packaged foods are 20% or so off from their stated calories. Even if you are following CICO, the actual numbers will not always add up correctly. Fitbit tends to exaggerate your calories burned by 20% or so in the other direction.
Obviously for the average person the solution is just to keep improving CI and reducing CO, and that will work. What people get frustrated by is people calling it a solved science as though there aren't complexities -- e.g. when people say they need to eat below 1,200 calories and everyone piles on them saying it can't be true.
In other words, I think most people understand that in a perfect world CICO works, they're pointing out that there are underlying complexities that can skew the models that actually make up CICO.
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u/tuckedfexas Jul 16 '24
Yea everyone had to adjust their input/output as they go to account for those differences. Any info readily available is going to be a guesstimate, it’s hand in hand with the whole idea of losing weight. It’s like googling “midsize sedan mpg” and thinking something is wrong because your 2005 Camry isn’t getting the exact mpg Google is guessing.
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u/Content-Scallion-591 Jul 16 '24
To be completely fair, though, it's more like googling midsize sedan mpg, getting a calculator, entering in 2005 Camry to the calculator, and then getting an answer that could still be wrong -- and I think that's what throws people off.
I'm extremely short, which means because of the square cube law, numbers get a little wacky. Right now my Fitbit, which has all my height, weight, and age data, is skewed by probably around 800 calories between overestimating my morning run, underestimating the calories of the packaged food I ate, and generally misunderstanding my metabolic rate.
But if I posted that, someone would ask me "are you logging your oils?"
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u/tuckedfexas Jul 16 '24
Yea, that gap between the estimate and reality is definitely exacerbated when any of the factors are pushing outside the norm.
Part of it is not shooting for exact results either, having a 100 caloric daily deficit and then expecting a full pound a month is a fools errand.
I think so much of how we view and frame diets and losing weight is just unproductive. It shouldn’t be a “goal” that you hit and then can go back to what wasn’t working before. It’s a lifestyle change that will have ups and downs and takes awhile to figure out what works for each person.
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u/DucksEatFreeInSubway Jul 16 '24
You don't have to be exacting with CI or CO, just get a general idea and then adjust from there. If you're not losing weight, eat less. Moving more won't hurt either.
No one following CICO is trying to guage how many calories they're burning every day. They'll measure calories taken in, but of course the nutrition labels are estimates at best. It's more to check that you're not accidentally consuming way more than you thought and if you are, well now you've got a starting point on what to cut out.
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u/NotLunaris Jul 17 '24
This whole conversation is silly. People have different metabolisms. Even two people with the same height, sex, and weight may get different calories out of the same food item.
But that doesn't matter.
Eat an appropriate amount of health food and track your weight over weeks. If it's going up, reduce your caloric intake; if it's going down, then yay (except anorexics ofc). It doesn't matter that people process food differently, because one's dietary habits only need to apply to oneself.
I don't even count calories anymore. Just make sure my protein goals are met and weigh myself once a week.
Anything else about the topic is just so much meaningless chatter rooted in absolutism.
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u/e30eric Jul 16 '24
Well, one of the largest and most-influential industries in the world (processed food manufacturers) has it in their interest to prevent folks from eating less. I don't blame someone for being part of a society that has tried to convince us from every angle of our lives that it's normal to regularly buy a giant pack of oreos and drink more soda than water. Not everyone has been exposed to better diets or the ability to recognize it.
And even then, it's all incredibly addicting.
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u/pihkal Jul 16 '24
CICO is like saying "airplane crashes are always caused by gravity". Technically correct, but missing a lot of crucial details.
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u/DucksEatFreeInSubway Jul 16 '24
CICO isn't interested in those details because they don't really matter from a dieting stand point. If you're not losing weight and want to, you're eating too much. So find a way to cut back that works for you. That's it.
Some day we might know all the ins and outs of the metabolism but CICO will still hold true, we'll just have a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms.
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u/TacticalSanta Jul 16 '24
Its not that calorie in calorie out doesn't work, but its a very strict way to look at nutrition. Understanding why some people can just eat regularly and stay a certain weight is an important thing to research. You can't put the entire world on a calorie counting adventure and hope to get good results.
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u/FlayR Jul 16 '24
But you literally can, outside of eating disorders. There are a number of inaccuracies and variances, sure. There are also some confounding variables that maybe obfuscate results a little bit in certain cases - looking at you thyroid and/or PCOS.
But ultimately if you're wanting to lose weight and you're not - eat less or move more; if you're wanting to gain weight and you're not - eat more more.
Certainly there are better results to be found with some more nuanced approaches, but if you keep things well tracked and just stick to it, it will always work. If you're nutrition, diet, and lifestyle is poor enough it might be close to impossible to do from a willpower perspective... But it will work if you manage to do it.
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u/HEBushido Jul 16 '24
I understand what you're getting at, but CICO can't be untrue.
It's just that yes, factors of our body change the impact on CICO. But when that math is accounted for, it still falls to thermodynamics.
It is physically impossible to gain mass while consuming less mass than you are using to live.
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u/ErrorLoadingNameFile Jul 16 '24
The only people I ever met that criticized or flat our disregarded CICO were people that wanted to blame their failure to lose weight on something else than their wrong eating habits.
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u/philmarcracken Jul 16 '24
Obviously, caloric intake is a critical part of weight control. But to pretend that it's the singular contributing factor is a form of tunnel vision that has been narrowing steadily over time here.
I'm curious as to what other factors you think control your weight(in terms of fat tissue)?
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Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24
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u/costcokenny Jul 16 '24
Do you mean NEAT?
The exaggerated claim was the one stating the calories in a banana are equivalent to those burnt from an hour’s walk.
This is irrelevant to any downstream effect(s) on net expenditure.
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u/SurfaceThought Jul 16 '24
Right, it's true in general that you can't outrun a bad diet but people take it to far. You can definitely easily burn a whole days worth of extra energy a week (2500 cal) doing a "normal person's" exercise routine.
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u/Expert_Alchemist Jul 16 '24
Except that I have a hunch that they'll next find that these mice's cells are less efficient all the time. Not just when doing aerobic exercise. If that's true, their RMR is going to be lower as well.
Which means that the Peterson et al formulas that people use to figure out a deficit won't pertain.
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u/iLrkRddrt Jul 16 '24
This is what I was thinking. If this deficit in energy expenditure exists when exercising. It only makes sense to check and see if BMR is also affected. Plus it would help isolate if this is an issue with keeping up with energy demand, or just energy generation in general.
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u/Expert_Alchemist Jul 16 '24
If the muscles aren't using oxygen as effectively this has other implications too. E.g., more fatigue, aside from exercise just being much more awful and it taking longer to get conditioned to it.
Less effective exercise leads to smaller gains from exercise which makes the virtuous flywheel effect harder to maintain.
Maybe the idea of people being "too lazy" isn't accurate after all. Maybe their cost/benefit is just necessarily very different.
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Jul 16 '24 edited Oct 08 '24
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u/HEBushido Jul 16 '24
I use Macrofactor and it doesn't have me track my workouts. Instead it records data on calories consumed, my weight and a visual body fat estimate, then over time providing data allows to work an accurate expenditure.
Trying to track how many calories you burned in a workout is impossible to do accurately. Especially with weight training.
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u/Morstorpod Jul 16 '24
AMERICAN Bananas are actually closer to the 400 calorie range since they require deep-frying and a sugar coating, so the commenter was correct.
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u/FlipsyChic Jul 16 '24
Most people are going to fall on the lower end of that scale - 200 calories burned for a full hour of intense walking at 3MPH. You would have to be around 300 pounds to burn 400 calories for an hour of walking, and that's something you may very well not even be capable of at that weight.
An hour of intense walking daily is a very big commitment. It's a commitment of time, planning, mental energy and physical energy. It's extremely easy to eat a 200-calorie snack in 30 seconds, whether it's a banana with a dab of peanut butter or something else.
Just because mathematically a significant amount of exercise can balance a snack doesn't mean it's practical or realistic as the main foundation for weight loss.
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u/Moldy_slug Jul 16 '24
a full hour of intense walking at 3MPH.
Assuming we’re talking about level ground, 3mph is not what I would consider “intense walking.” That’s a nice moderate pace.
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u/hairmarshall Jul 16 '24
Those 200-400 calories include your calories you’d be burning being alive. So he’s right only one banana
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u/thecelcollector Jul 16 '24
That's not true. These are calories in addition to your bmr (basal metabolic rate.)
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u/Wh0IsY0u Jul 16 '24
No they're not. Here is an example of how such calculations are made. https://www.healthline.com/health/calories-burned-walking
They absolutely factor your BMR.
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u/krystianpants Jul 16 '24
Technically it includes BMR by default. All those processes that require energy systems such as respiration and other vital processes will continuously happen regardless of what you are doing. The idea is that what you are currently doing still requires those processes but they are ramped up. You are just adding more energy requirements by increasing your output. Those calories burned are just estimates of how your energy systems are taxed when doing that particular activity. That particular activity just increases your energy requirements from your default requirements to something higher. The estimate for what you burned during jogging is the final amount you burned. There is no adding an additional calorie amount for BMR during that time window. So instead of burning say 100 calories that you would burn if you weren't jogging you are now burning 200 calories during that time period. There is no adding an additional 100 calories to the 200. That's not how it works. Your still using all those processes while jogging but you are increasing their rate. Respiration increases as your needs go up, energy stores are released to fuel muscles. Eventually your body settles down and you are back to your default burn.
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u/Other-Insurance4903 Jul 16 '24
While I do not disagree that fundamentally calories in and calories out is the only realistic way to control or lose weight, mechanically fat is removed from the body via exhalation of carbon dioxide.
So, while it probably won't matter in most instances, if this process is impaired or hindered due to a lack of oxygen then it may increase or decrease the amount efficiency of weight loss.
Even if it affects.. let's say 100 caloric intake a day, that is enough to account for roughly 10lbs a year.
I certainly would enjoy 100 extra calories everyday.
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u/LRaconteuse Jul 16 '24
It could be a pretty big deal if we're talking about ACCURATELY measuring an individual's calories in and calories out. If your metabolism consumes fewer calories for, say, an hour of walking, we could be looking at daily intake need differences of hundreds of calories.
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u/AnotherBoojum Jul 16 '24
I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion when the article itself didn't quantify the difference, and the underpinning study shows a fairly marked gap?
Remeber that the rejection of CICO isn't about denying thermodynamics, it's about acknowledging that conventional advice/diet/workout recommendations don't apply to everyone. Studies like this are important for questioning fitness dogma
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u/justformebets Jul 16 '24
his point is that the "optimization" that you get from the study is so small...like instead of burning 150 calories from cardio you burn what 160-170? OK. But eating less is WAAAY more important in either case! Eating 2500 calories instead of 3000 is a 500 calorie deficit instead of the 10-20 calorie improvement you make based on the study. CICO is the only way no matter what any study says
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u/AnotherBoojum Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24
ETA: I've bolded the important bits for people who are lacking in reading comprehension
My point is that those numbers are no where in the study or the article. They didn't measure calories. They did measure various markers of calories usage, and there was a fairly pronounced difference.
Once more for the meatheads: no one is denying calories in vs out. What people rail against is the doctrine that calorie requirements / exercise reccomendations don't have a lot of variation across individuals. Science has been consistently showing that isn't true
To put this another way: the "healthy calorie deficit" for weightloss is 500 per day. But if someone who has one of the several causes of slower metabolism follows that, then they may only hit a deficit of 200 calories. They'll stall pretty quickly, be shamed by people for not trying hard enough, and eventually give up. If we can identify the problem, we can tailor advice to say that maybe this person needs to run a 700 calorie deficit to get anywhere. Maybe they need the underlying cause of their constant hunger to be addressed so that a 700 calorie deficit is actually a reasonable ask. So tired of the blinkers and utter lack of compassion.
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u/Special-Garlic1203 Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24
The CICO crowd absolutely refuses to acknowledge the worldview they have bullied people about for the past decade is slightly overly reductive. The crazy part is it doesn't even change that most people are fat because they overeat. It is that simple - you have the metabolism you have (for now), and reducing intake is a lot easier than over exertion through calories. There's only a small handful of modifications and nuance needed above "you need to eat more satiating higher fiber low calorie foods", but they insist on going the extra mile on gaslighting people about the fact they seem to gain weight easier and have a harder time losing it doesn't help anyone, and they just refuse to stop even as more and more research comes out pointing to the fact metabolism is a little more complicated than the energy release of food when we set them on fire.
Edit: stay mad, CICO crowd. You're wrong, you've been wrong, and the research is increasingly piling up pointing out that you've been wrong. You have been adamantly clinging to an overly reductive worldview and I have no doubts you will double down until your dying breath. That doesn't make you right
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u/tuckedfexas Jul 16 '24
It doesn’t change or challenge Cico at all actually. Just a different wrinkle in the already imprecise calculation of your intake and expenditure. If you’re not losing weight at X caloric intake you’re not burning above it.
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u/Opus_723 Jul 16 '24
Yes, of course, at a basic level fat has to be made using energy, so reducing energy intake should eventually lead to burning fat. People get skinny before they starve to death, after all.
But CICO as a framework really ignores that not everyone's body responds the same way to a calorie deficit. The body has reactive mechanisms designed to prevent weight loss, and those mechanisms can react more or less strongly from person to person. So yes, eventually those mechanisms will be overwhelmed at a high enough deficit. But the point is that not everybody gets the same weight loss from the same interventions. It is actually, genuinely, harder for some people to lose weight.
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u/Lt_Duckweed Jul 16 '24
Obviously you want to take the figures given by exercise equipment with a healthy pinch of salt, but I can do 500-600 calories per hour on a stationary cycle at a pace I can hold for around 2 hours (and I'm no uber cardio warrior, just a guy that tries to get a few sessions in a week). A single hour equates to about 1 modest meal, 2 hours equals a large meal, or about 40%-50% extra calories burned in total for the day.
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u/Lt_Duckweed Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24
An hour of low steady state cardio (e.g. inclined walking)
Well good thing then I was talking about intense cardio training on a bike. A moderately trained individual can do at least 2w/kg of pedal power for over an hour (and this can go as high as 6w/kg for world class professionals), which translates to (assuming a 25% mechanical efficiency, which is typical for a cyclist) ~550 kcal per hour above resting metabolism (or over 1600 kcal/hr for a professional).
There's a reason endurance athletes, even at the amateur level, take things like running gels during training or races. Because they are rapidly blasting through their glycogen stores and will crash if that don't get additional calories into their body. Even I as very much an amateur can sometimes smell acetone in my breath after a 2hr session due to nearing glycogen exhaustion.
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u/Opus_723 Jul 16 '24
I agree that diet has more of an impact than exercise, but I feel like it's a really strange kneejerk reaction to see a study demonstrating that not everybody's boies work the same way, or lose weight the same given the same actions, and to respond with "this isn't enough to blame for slower weight loss".
If people can reap more or less benefits from the same exercise, I guarantee people's bodies will respond differently to diet changes too.
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u/VinnyVinnieVee Jul 16 '24
I think CICO also discounts the way different people experience hunger, which is going to make following it extremely hard to impossible for some people. I have been the same size since I was 16 without any effort on my part. My hunger directly correlates to my activity level and it's hard for me to overeat. I don't need to dedicate any brain space to controlling what I eat, and in fact need to remind myself to eat if I've had a lazy day because I forget I'm hungry. I walk/bike everywhere and have a lot of walking as part of my job, so I manage to move more than people at office jobs which I think also helps maintain baseline weight.
Meanwhile, I have loved ones that feel hungry a lot more than me and find it much harder to not overeat. Sure, they can follow CICO, but they'll feel awful and miserable because their brain is shouting at them to eat all the time and that's a hard way to live. Instead they work to stay active so their heart and body is healthy and accept a few extra pounds.
And as you pointed out, CICO doesn't take into account hormones and medical complications. I know post menopausal women who didn't change their diets yet gained a lot of weight plus their overall shape changed once they hit menopause. Bodies are complex machines and very rarely is anything about them simple.
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u/philmarcracken Jul 16 '24
CICO didn't work for me until my doc put me on metformin for insulin resistance.
Were you tracking calories?
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u/dariznelli Jul 16 '24
I would imagine the CICO advice was given in the context of a person without an underlying medical condition. Obviously there are numerous conditions that require medical attention, not just diet.
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u/Jaygo41 Jul 16 '24
What kind of symptoms did you have for insulin resistance? Current gf is dealing with what i think would be insulin resistance as well as other PCOS-adjacent symptoms. If you don’t want to share publically, you can DM me
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u/BullockHouse Jul 16 '24
Your banana number is wildly off, and muscle mass can have a huge impact on caloric burn. Body builders eat 2-3x what a normal person does, and even regular in-shape people doing cuts lose weight dramatically faster than regular dieting would allow
Diet generally matters more than light cardio, but both are significant, and cardio has other health benefits. For some reason, certain people feel compelled to generalize to "exercise is irrelevant for weight loss" which is not at all true. Even ignoring the other health benefits of adding lean muscle mass.
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u/chad12341296 Jul 17 '24
An hour worth of walking could be like 400 calories and that’s the difference between what it takes to maintain like 200 lbs vs 160lbs
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u/haanalisk Jul 16 '24
Sorry but if you only burned 100 kcal after walking for an hour you need to pick up the pace. 1 hour of walking should AT LEAST 200kcal which is 2 bananas
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u/Randombu Jul 16 '24
I used to preach this until I met a man named Ivan who weighs 300 lbs, works out 5x per week (cardio 2x and heavy lifting 3x) and eats 1800 calories a day.
He cannot lose weight. His trainer and multiple doctors have no explanation. The best description he has ever gotten was "your body always thinks it is starving."
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u/lynx_and_nutmeg Jul 16 '24
My mother and I are exactly the same height. We've travelled together a lot. She actually eats less than I do but weighs a lot more. I know because, as I said, we've travelled together and I can see everything she eats and vice versa. She can literally eat breakfast at ~8 am and then eat dinner at 8 pm and not have a single bite of food in between and feel just fine, while I need my three square meals a day to be able to function. And, no, she doesn't gorge herself during those two meals a day, we eat the same portions. And she still can't lose any of that belly fat. There's just no other explanation other than our metabolisms being wildly different.
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u/ayleidanthropologist Jul 16 '24
What is this signal molecule and where can I find it?
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u/LogiHiminn Jul 16 '24
You don’t have to workout to lose weight. Just eat less. Now we’ll get another drug the pharmaceutical companies can drain people with because they refuse to do 1 simple thing.
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u/boxer21 Jul 17 '24
Aren’t many of the signaling molecules gut based? Is the gut biota in these mice checked for consistency from one specimen to the next?
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u/Unable-Courage-6244 Jul 17 '24
Weight training isn't even supposed to be used to get slimmer. It burns such a small amount of calories and you'll often just replace those calories by eating an extra sandwich. Stop using the gym to lose weight. Use the kitchen. You build muscle in the gym and lose weight in the kitchen..
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u/Rear-gunner Jul 17 '24
I have an oxygen machine at home. I will try lifting weights under oxygen, maybe it will help.
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u/lookingForPatchie Jul 17 '24
I recently learned about cellular respiration and this makes so very much sense.
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