CICO is the hoary old acronym used to designate the Calories-In-Calories-Out nutritional paradigm. It is pure bunk, and I can prove this with a simple example. Does anyone in their right mind think that, say, the nutrition provided by 2000 calories of sugar is precisely equal to that of 2000 calories of beef?
Didn't think so. To be sure the above is an obviously nonsensical comparison, but nevertheless it's taken as gospel by most of the public and the medical establishment. The major problem with this mindset is that we humans do not have a steam engine in our innards that is "burning" the food we eat. What we do have is a metabolism that chemically processes the macro-nutrients of fat, protein, and carbohydrates differently. Radically different in fact, to put it as mildly as possible. At the extreme high end, it is true that one can eat too much of anything. 6000 calories of steak and eggs will put weight on you for sure, but it won't send you into autoimmune overdrive as 6K calories of carbs. The big catch is that it is difficult to eat that much highly satiating protein and fat and therefore it limits such activity greatly.
It is best to think of food intake as "volume" not calories. If one is in fact eating very nutritionally and energy dense food, such as meat, then the volume of that intake will be much lower than what is "normal" on the wretched Standard American Diet. It is easily possible that one can nearly starve on, say, 700 grams of junk food and quite dramatically thrive on 700 grams of protein and fat. As previously stated, this process is strongly abetted by the fact that consuming protein and fat results in much higher satiety signals from the old gray matter. Some aver that a very low carb way of eating is a "fasting mimicking" situation. To whatever extent that is true, it is a thing much to be desired.
Add up these crucial differences and the result is that a high-carb diet is in every way grossly unhealthy, and a very low-carb diet is not. And a near zero-carb diet is healthiest of all in the short, medium, and long term. Carbohydrate toxicity is the bane of modern society in too many ways to count. Toxic it most certainly is, and viciously addictive. Among the numerous addictions of our world, carb addiction may well be the worst in terms of the overall health of that world. It can be as hard to kick as smoking, drinking, and opiate use. Stop the madness, dammit. Go low, live long, and prosper.
