CICO is one of those concepts which is fundamentally correct but can cause so much pain if you follow it religiously and assume all energy sources are the same
CICO works perfectly well. It only causes pain because people are addicted to eating and lie to themselves about how much they actually eat.
Study after study has shown that people who claim to not be able to lose weight via diet simply do not have any idea how many calories they are actually eating.
The oversimplification here is that you're assuming that over-consumption is both completely voluntary and the root cause. But it's not - it's actually a symptom.
People overeat for a variety of extremely complex reasons. Mental health, stress, hormonal interactions. gut microbiome, dopamine deficiency, and on.
The assumption that forcing yourself to eat less is solving the root cause is not sound, in my opinion. If you look at GLP-1 inhibitors, those appear to be a much more root cause solution. Rather than solving over-consumption, they solve the propensity to over-consume, which then solves over-consumption.
What we really need to be looking at is why some people have a propensity to over-consume and why some don't. Why are some people destined to a life of constantly fighting food when others don't have to try at all and they stay thin?
Just intuitive, I know this is also the case for other substances like alcohol. I've never had to struggle with alcohol and I never will. I just drink whenever and never think about it. But for some people, it's a lifelong struggle. They have to constantly be thinking about alcohol, and every time it touches there lips it's a problem. Why? Is it genes? Our environment? Psychological support in childhood?
But the fact people over eat so readily is most likely down to the heavily refined food we eat that our hormones aren’t tuned to handle in my opinion.
I know I was miserable on CICO as Iw as constantly going through cycles of gaining then losing lbs. Whereas once I switched to a whole food diet I no longer even need to think about the calories I eat, I just eat when I’m hungry. And I don’t even crave the cookies and marshmallows at all
I wish I never read IIFYM when I was younger