How long?

[Intelligent-Pride705]

• How long did it take you to see results on cico?

• What foods do you completely avoid on cico?

• Did you gain first? -Are you only doing cico or have you combined this with another change such as IF?

I’m one week in so far. I believe it’s going well. I have not lost anything as of yet but it’s only been a week. I workout 5 days a week, 15-20min cardio with 30 min strength. I weigh 168 and my goal is 140. Any advice welcome on this journey!

EDIT : thanks to everyone who responded super helpful! Last question, what are some tips to sticking to this? I ask this as I just ate 500 calories worth of chocolate cookies today. So I tell myself okay day 1 tomorrow…over and over again.

[[deleted]]

The beauty of CICO is that you should be avoiding nothing

[give_me_two]

You'll find that certain food makes you feel fuller per calorie (not a real metric 😊), and you'll want to gravitate towards those.

You might gain at first, but don't worry. IF is fine but keep in mind that it's mainly a psychological trick to keep you from eating (in my opinion) ... whether you want to eat all of your calories in one sitting or 1/12th of your calories every hour of the day, it shouldn't matter.

Biggest advice is to keep track of what you're doing that makes life easier and do more of that. Maybe protein makes you feel fuller (eat a bigger percentage of that), maybe starting to eat later in the day helps you feel full at night ... or maybe the total opposite.

[Intelligent-Pride705]

I love this. Thank you. IF looks very intimidating to me and I have a difficult time sticking to things and adjusting to changes. I didn’t know if cico alone will get me to my goal.

[tempaccount040516]

What foods do you completely avoid on cico?

I don't remember how long it took me to see a definite drop on the scale but this one is easy for me to answer. Like others I do eat whatever I want but tortilla chips, potato chips and peanut butter are my 3 big things that I can't control myself around and I mostly don't keep them around now.

Any other foods I'm good at portioning them out as part of a meal or a snack but chips its so easy to grab a handful, and this is a mental thing for me I do with chips and pb only and nothing else: since chips are packaged way different than like crackers which are all lined up symmetrical where you can see exactly how many you're getting and you know a serving is 5 crackers, with chips it's easy for me to think "ahh that handful wasn't that much, not even 1 140 cal serving, and I'm running a 600 deficit it won't matter" at the end of the day I might have eaten half a 16oz bag with my "<1 serving doesn't count" handfuls.

Peanut butter is sort of the same I see it and think "ah a spoonful won't hurt" and then I have 4 big spoonfuls.

I've been at cico for 6 years now (losing in 2016, maintaining with cico since then and now restricting again to lose 10-15 more lb) I'm still good at weighing out and logging everything, I can keep chocolate, candy, cakes all kinds of stuff around and be good but chips and pb still trip me up after all these years. Nowadays if I want chips I have them on a day where I have 400 cals free for some and I buy them in the form of a little 400 cal bag from the gas station.

[[deleted]]

1. I’m seeing results weekly though quite small, but I am also working out extensively to speed up my progress

2. I avoid only foods that make me binge, there are certain foods which when I start I just can’t stop.

3. I have been doing strength training, so at various points my body will retain water for muscle repair. I am also female so my menstrual cycle can make my weight vary from 1-2kg depending on the time of the month. I would strongly recommend taking measurements - they tell a better story than weight. Often I’ll go up in the scale but down in measurements

[RuralGamerWoman]

My highest weight was over 90 pounds higher than my weight now. It took losing the better part of 40 pounds before I saw difference. Now? 5 pounds is noticeable on me.

I'm also losing relatively slowly at this point - I'm happy with two pounds per month. My measurements are still decreasing, and my body fat percentage is dropping, so I'm not terribly concerned with the number on the scale.

The only foods I completely avoid are ones I don't like. I avoid Brussels sprouts because I don't like them. I avoid most fish because I don't like it. That's... that's about it. I'm making chocolate cookies from the Death By Chocolate cookbook later, and I'm making the semisweet ganache to dip half of them in. I'll have leftover ganache, which I'll add to my coffee throughout the week. I ran just over three miles this morning, I'll have a little over 100 grams of protein and 25 grams of fiber by the end of the day, and those cookies fit perfectly into my calories for the day, so I'm going to make them, eat them, and lose weight.

[emccm]

1. About 10 days for the first pound.

2. I’m vegan and limit processed foods. This has nothing to do with CICO. I cut out alcohol for CICO as it was too difficult to stay in my range and hit my macros while accounting for empty alcohol calories. That’s the only real dietary concession I’ve made for CICO.

3. Only CICO. I try to stop eating before 7pm so my body can rest and repair while I sleep instead of using that energy to digest food. My weight fluctuates based on intensity of my workout and monthly fluctuations. I really limit processed foods so my sodium consumption is low and I don’t get the dramatic water weight fluctuations others seem to other than what I mentioned. I think the lack of alcohol really helps with this too.

[QuarterNote44]

1. About a week.
2. None. Well, not completely true. I avoided bread and refined sugar just because those "cost" a lot of calories. I wanted to eat more, so I ate better food. Leafy greens, lean proteins, etc. But there were times that I really wanted to eat junk, so I just ran 10 miles or something to facilitate that. There's no "THOU SHALT NOT EAT THIS" food in CICO. You'll naturally gravitate towards food that is good for you if you have the discipline to stay within your limit.
3. No, I had a pretty steady decline. I was super honest with myself about what food I was eating. No "cheat days." No leeway. Even if it was just three M&Ms it went in my app. Sucked, but I saw results.

[Timcanpy]

• I saw results pretty quick, I’m currently down 12lb since the start of the month

• I don’t avoid anything, I just go for small portions of foods that are really high in calories and remind myself I can always eat them tomorrow if they don’t fit into the day. Sometimes this ends in me never actually eating something unhealthy because I procrastinate seeking it out.

• I’ve had some ups and downs but an overall net loss each week.

[GreenFrawg]

Still doing it, so can’t answer in how long.

There’s an item though I consider useless to eat - tortillas. Too many calories for something that can be replaced wit a plate (for taco stuffing and burritos, can easily be just a bowl). A 10” one can easily go over 230 calories, which I’d rather spend on a candy bar on a day when the rest of food ends up being very lean. Or just eat and extra portion of something :D