Originally Posted by
KraneXL
It sounds so simple when you put it like that. Yes, lose weight, but the point is to lose fat. So CICO does not tell the whole story; and one reason why I consider a weight scale a "dumb" measurement of weight loss. You don't know whether you're losing fat, muscle, or water.
Having read through most of the comments here, its not so much that they're wrong, rather, incomplete or just partial truths. Is "calories in, calories out" true? Yes, but again its more complicated than that. The body can absorb different types of foods at different rates at different times. So timing is also important.
Do carbs cause you to gain fat and are bad for you? Yes, but simple carbs, and only in excess. Carbs of the complex variety are beneficial in so many more ways. Which is also true with any macro-nutrient. The thing about carbs that makes them seem bad, is that they typically come in forms that makes them so much easier to over-consume (you can literally eat donuts and cookies all day) However, few people will eat a pound of brown rice, or 10 potatoes in a day.
Overall, the biggest deciding factor on feeding and weight management is determined by your genetics. That's the main reason why some people can eat all the bad foods in abundance and still not gain any fat.
You're wildly overstating the differences between complex carbs and sugars. White flour is primarily a complex carb, as is white rice. People eat a lot of french fries, potato chips and large quantities of mashed potatoes, and a baked Idaho potato can weigh quite a lot, and people eat those all the time. The collapse of the food pyramid basically occurred because the assertions that complex carb calories were affecting blood sugar significantly different from simple sugars and were less likely to get converted into fat were simply not true, and that the pyramid was recommending an amount of starch that was actually disastrous for weight loss and maintenance.
Whole foods and grains are healthier for you not because their carbs are somehow different, but because they contain other things that your body needs like fiber and protein. The starches in white rice and brown rice are, by definition, identical, but the same quantity of brown rice will have fewer carbs and calories than white because of the proportion of other stuff in the bran that's left on. I don't know, however, of any reason you can safely assert that people won't eat as much brown rice as white. I can easily binge on either.
I agree that genetics play a huge role, but I think they also play a large role in how people should balance their macronutrients in order to sustain or achieve a body weight, as well as the level of physical activity they can maintain.
CICO is true at a very abstract level, but people live and eat in a complex world for of all sorts of variables that are hard to balance, so it's a bit like saying "the key to human-powered flight is to balance thrust, drag and lift." The devil is in the details.