This Diet Is All Over Reddit—But Here’s What It Gets Wrong

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Take a deep-dive into the weight-loss forums on Reddit and you're bound to come across the CICO diet.

One user who had been following CICO for two months and shed 20 pounds wrote, "For years I actually thought that [losing weight] required vigorous exercise, and eating nothing but tilapia, broccoli, and spinach. How wrong I was."

In a separate thread, another user shared, "CICO will work regardless of what you're eating. Junk food, healthy food, fancy food, cheap food. It doesn't matter. CICO is essentially the only thing that matters when it comes to weight loss."

But many experts have a different take on the eating strategy, and argue that CICO is just another name for a weight-loss myth that refuses to die.
 

So what is the CICO diet?

The acronym stands for "calories in, calories out"; and the underlying theory—which is by no means a new concept—is that to lose weight, you simply need to consume fewer calories than you expend each day on physical activity and vital functions (such as breathing and keeping warm). Proponents of CICO argue that it doesn't necessarily matter what you eat, as long as you create a daily calorie deficit.

"At the core of it, it's true that calories will rule things when it comes to weight loss," says Dawn Jackson Blatner, RDN, author of The Superfood Swap. "If you're eating just a ton, you're not aware of calories, you will not be successful. That is true in the most crude, raw possible way." But, she adds, calorie awareness is only a tiny piece of a much bigger picture.

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What CICO gets wrong

The problem with the CICO mentality is that it reduces weight loss to a calorie equation, when not all calories are created equal.

"We now know that the quality of the calories you consume—as well as the macronutrient balance and timing—all impact metabolism, satiety, and how your body utilizes calories," explains Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, Health's contributing nutrition editor. For example, 300 calories from a blueberry muffin made with refined flour and sugar does not affect your body the same way that 300 calories from cooked oats topped with almonds and blueberries do. "[CICO] is an outdated way of thinking," Sass says.

You also have to consider how food choices affect your body beyond weight loss. "Eating all junk, but keeping it low-calorie, will still wreak havoc on things like your skin, your mood, your gastrointestinal functions," Blatner says.

Mira Ilic, a clinical dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic, adds that certain macronutrients are important for things like tissue repair, and muscle recovery and growth. "If you're doing strength training and other physical activity as part of your healthy routine—which also boosts your metabolism and helps with weight loss—you're doing yourself a disservice by not thinking about the food you're putting on your plate," she says.

So can you lose weight just by keeping CICO in mind? "Sure, it's possible," Ilic says. "But would I recommend this to my patients? Definitely not."

Sass adds that she has seen clients lose weight after increasing their total calorie intake—or break through a weight-loss plateau by altering the quality, balance, or timing of their calories, without reducing the total amount. To sum up: "It's not as simple as a math equation," she says.

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A better way to watch your calories

For the average woman who wants to lose weight, Blatner suggests aiming to consume roughly 1,500 calories a day: "That number might be a little bit up or down, depending on whether you're taller or shorter, or how much you exercise," she explains, "but 1,500 calories is a great starting point."

However, instead of tallying up the calories from every single food you eat, Blatner recommends practicing "calorie consciousness." Look at your plate and ask yourself, Do I have a smart carb, protein, healthy fat, and vegetables? Then ask yourself, Do the portions of each look reasonable, with vegetables taking up the majority of the plate?

"If you look at your plate and you have what you can guesstimate is a half-cup of a grain, that's going to be roughly 150 calories; if you see a reasonably sized piece of protein, it's likely about 3 ounces, or about 150 calories," Blatner says. "And if you see a lot of vegetables, topped with just a little bit of fat, like a drizzle of olive oil, you're probably adding up to about a 400 to 450 calorie meal."

Developing calorie consciousness will help you get a good balance of nutrients to nourish your body, and stay on track to lose weight that actually stays off.

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The One Thing That Finally Helped Me Stop Overeating After Decades of Yo-Yo Dieting

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Let’s just say zen would not be the first word I’d use to describe myself. I fall more into the high-strung, nervous-about-everything camp. So mindfulness—a mental state achieved by focusing your awareness on the present moment—felt like a long shot for me. But living mindfully is having a major moment, billed as a cure-all for everything from anxiety to sleeplessness to obesity. At 42 and at my highest weight ever, I was willing to try anything.

Over the last two decades I rode our culture’s weight loss wave from Atkins to green juice detoxes. All to the same end: I was still fat. I finally got it that another diet was not the answer and made the decision to seek professional help. I started therapy with New York psychotherapist Alexis Conason, who specializes in mindful eating and body dissatisfaction.

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Conason describes mindful eating as being fully aware and present in your relationship with food and your body. “It’s based on mindful meditation and brings the same skills cultivated there, like non-judgmental observation, to our eating experiences,” she says. During my very first session, she explained to me that eating mindfully as a strategy to get thin negates the entire point of the practice and simply doesn't work. There’s always a catch, I remember thinking to myself back then, when I still hoped mindfulness could be a fix to help me lose weight.

A lifelong emotional eater

My troubled relationship with food and dieting went back decades. I tried my first diet my freshman year of college. After that, I was always either on a diet or planning to start one. All foods were labeled good or bad in my mind, and my behavior was categorized by the same measure. What I actually wanted to eat rarely crossed my mind. But this is where mindfulness comes in, Conason tells me in a separate conversation we had outside our therapy sessions.

“To truly eat mindfully, we have to trust our body, which for most of us is a major leap of faith," she explains. "It is nearly impossible to hear what our body is telling us when we are working against it to lose weight. We come equipped with an internal navigation system to guide our eating. The problem is that we spend so much of our lives trying to override this internal GPS that it becomes very hard to hear what our body is telling us.”

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She says most people, specifically those who have a history of yo-yo dieting, as I do, fight their bodies instead of tuning into its natural guidance. “When our body is craving a cupcake, we feed it kale. We deprive ourselves of what our body wants, fighting against our cravings until we finally 'cave' and devour a whole box of cupcakes, hardly tasting them, feeling out of control, and then berate ourselves for being so 'bad' and vow never to eat sweets again.”

Sound familiar? It’s basically the story of my life (minus the kale). 

Even though I began therapy specifically for my food issues, I went week after week for a full six months before I even started to get to the root of my overeating. This was hardly my first my rodeo on the couch, but as I started the familiar unpacking of my life story, including an absent father and pretty crippling anxiety, I looked at things through the lens of my emotional attachment to food for the first time.

Making peace with food

At this point I also participated in Conason’s nine-week group class, The Anti-Diet Plan. The premise is that a person needs to make peace with food and their body before truly eating mindfully. So every Tuesday night I joined eight other skeptical New York women to basically re-learn how to eat.

Each meeting began with a meditation and included an eating exercise. We started by eating raisins. We smelled them and touched them and ate them one by one and finished them only if we wanted to. I distinctly recall one woman, shamefully saying, “Did you see how I just shoved them all in my mouth?” The self-consciousness you feel when you live with food shame runs so deep, it can even apply to raisins.

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From there we worked our way up to eating chocolate cake, going out to a restaurant together, and then finally conquering our individual albatross—whatever food made us feel our most out of control—and attempted to eat it mindfully. Some members struggled with what they would pick, but for me it was a no-brainer. I brought homemade chocolate brownies, which I used to devour until I was physically sick. My sugar cravings were so strong at that point, and I knew they were rooted in a million emotions other than hunger.

One thing that we repeatedly discussed was the idea of self-acceptance, which like so many other women who were always trying to lose weight, I rejected with every cell in my body. How could I ever accept myself this way? One group member said aloud what we were all thinking: “That would feel like such a defeat.”

Conason tells me this is a common point of resistance. “We have somehow come to believe that if we are really mean to ourselves, if we just bully and berate ourselves enough, then we will finally find the motivation to change. We view acceptance as defeat and think that if we accept ourselves that means that things will remain the same," she says. "Self-hatred immobilizes us. Long-lasting change comes from a place of compassion and nurturing. We have to let go of the struggle to move forward, and self-acceptance is the first step to releasing yourself.”

Outside of the course, I attempted this new practice with the same religious fervor I applied to every stab at weight loss. I would look at a slice of pizza like it was an equation to be solved, asking myself, Do I really want it? After inevitably eating it, I would apply the same obsessive attention the next time I was faced with a "bad" food. I felt puffed up pride when I didn't eat something—and the same old familiar shame when I did.

Self-acceptance—and silencing her inner bully

Finally, it occurred to me: I was treating mindfulness like another diet. That light bulb was truly the first step on my journey. Slowly, and paired with other positive changes like exercise, cutting down on alcohol, and ongoing therapy, I’m now able to make more authentic decisions based on what I really want. If I’m craving dessert, I have it. (Spoiler Alert: most nights I crave it.) 

RELATED: To get our best healthy eating tips delivered to you inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

But the most seismic shift is my newfound ability to silence my inner bully. Learning to accept myself just as I am is so much harder than counting calories—but right now, it’s my primary objective. I wish I could tell you that the size of my body is no longer an issue for me, but I'm not quite there yet. Learning to navigate my true hunger, I focus on progress not perfection. I have lost weight and continue to lose.

But just like with my obsession with food, monitoring the number on the scale becomes a slippery slope, so I try to shift my focus to my emotional well-being. Truly allowing myself to eat what I want when I want it has been so incredibly liberating, and feeling in control of my food choices has made me feel more in control of my life as a whole. While seeking happiness and self-contentment, I’ve finally (finally!) made room for goals that can’t be measured by a scale.

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Kim Kardashian Had a ‘Last Supper’ Binge Before Starting a Diet. Here’s What Nutritionists Think

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But first, pizza.

That was Kim Kardashian’s plan before overhauling her diet, as she revealed on Sunday’s episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. On the show, Kim, Khloé, and Kim’s BFF Jonathan Cheban ventured around New York City for a couple of slices of pizza, followed by chocolate ice cream cones with rainbow sprinkles. It was all part of a final food indulgence before Kim would embark on a “lifestyle change” that she hopes will give her a “good body.” (As if she wasn't already #bodygoals!)

We don’t have the details on what exactly Kim’s lifestyle change will entail, but Cheban’s already betting she’ll fall off the wagon. “I’ve heard about ‘lifestyle changes’ before,” he said. “I’ll see her at Cipriani—she cannot resist that pasta.”

“I’m really going to be dedicated and committed,” Kim fired back. “You’ll see.”

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Sorry Kim, we've got disappointing news for you: Feasting on your favorite foods before banning them from your diet sets you up for failure, as Cheban predicted. “If you’re starting a diet on this notion that you have to restrict foods you love, that means the diet is unsustainable and you’re going to fail,” says Julie Upton, RD, co-founder of Appetite for Health.

That's because a binge-then-restrict plan requires a heck of a lot of willpower, especially if you’re denying yourself foods you really crave, explains Claudia T. Felty, PhD, RD. “Over time, you’re going to be around those foods and you’re going to be tempted by them,” she says. “When you set them up as foods you binge on now and then never eat again, that binge mentality comes back.”

Plenty of dieters believe that a Kim-style “last supper” will jumpstart lasting eating-habit changes, Upton says, but what it really does is “jumpstart the desire to get off the diet and [eat] the foods they’ve been restricting!”

When you decide a food you love is entirely off limits, you're more likely to fixate on that no-no. “We want what we can’t have,” Felty says, and this longing can actually trigger more intense cravings. Plus, telling yourself you simply "can't" have certain foods turns eating into a moral issue. “It sets up this 'good food' versus 'bad food' mentality that, for a lot of people, feeds an unhealthy relationship with foods that they love,” Upton adds.

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A smarter approach is identifying an eating plan that meshes with your lifestyle and food preferences and then taking small, sustainable steps to keep at it. “For someone who loves pasta or bread, a ketogenic diet is never going to work, because they’re going to constantly crave those foods,” Upton says. Instead, following a Mediterranean-style diet that allows for some grains can lead to slow and steady weight loss, she says.

Felty and Upton both recommend the 80-20 rule. For 80% of the time, stick to a healthy eating plan; 20% of the time, enjoy the treats you love that don’t necessarily fit that plan on a daily basis, like pizza and ice cream. As long as you're also exercising regularly and you consume them in reasonable quantities, incorporating those treat foods 20% of the time won't derail your weight loss goals, Felty says.

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Here’s How the ‘Biggest Loser’ Contestants Have Kept the Weight Off

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Your diet may help you lose weight, but exercise appears to be the key to keeping it off.

A new study, published in the journal Obesity, tracked 14 former Biggest Loser contestants to determine how some of them kept weight off after the show. Physical activity, the researchers determined, was the clear answer — even though diet, not exercise, was shown to help the contestants lose weight in the first place.

Half of the study participants maintained their weight loss after the Biggest Loser ended, while the other half gained the pounds back. Over six years of follow-up, the maintainers tended to be far more active than the other group, increasing physical activity by up to 160% since they started losing weight. Those who regained weight, by contrast, only increased physical activity by 25% to 34%. Overall, maintainers completed an average of 80 minutes of moderate exercise or 35 minutes of vigorous exercise each day — well exceeding the national physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week. 

The findings tie into another study published by the same researchers last year. Back then, they found that contestants' metabolisms slowed drastically after their dramatic weight losses, significantly cutting into the number of calories they were able to burn each day. As a result, many contestants saw the pounds creep back on, sometimes even exceeding their pre-show weights. 

Exercise, the new study suggests, may counteract that effect, helping people burn enough calories to stay thin. But the time commitment of a robust fitness regimen can make weight maintenance an uphill battle, according to former Biggest Loser contestant and study author Dr. Jennifer Kerns, who is now an obesity specialist at Washington's Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

“The amount of time and dedication it takes to manage one’s food intake and prioritize exercise every day can be an untenable burden for many people," Kerns told the New York Times. "It's totally unfair to judge those who can't do it." 

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