u/ElizabethMae_Liz_

I'm seeing a podiatrist for torn achilles tendons (one on each side! fun!)

The bill for the office visits show that I owe $150, insurance paid $35.
Why is this not covered completely, like other doctor visits?

(This is my first year on medicare, rough start as medicare thought i was still on employer plan, so many bills had to be resubmitted. But I'm pretty sure this is resolved. But these bills make me wonder?)

THANK YOU all. I got into medicare.gov. Does that show how much *I* Pay or does those amount now all go to Tufts Supplemental 1a for them to pay still more?

If I pay it, it turns out all that free health care is going to be a lot of money LOL.

This post is only for people who find CICO doesn't work, or who are interested in the explanations against CICO. If you love CICO and it works for your body I believe you fully--please pass this by.

So for me, Calories-in Calories-out diets have never worked. Eating less has not generally resulted in weight loss. I've spent some time researching what could be going on, some of which is specific to my body. But it helps us with the larger picture. If you know more of the science arguing against CICO I'd love to hear it!

In general, the idea that the more energy you take in must equal the energy you put out. It seems to me that the CI CO model makes two broad mistakes with that. ONE that the calories we take in equal how much energy we take in, and TWO that a TDEE or other calculator accurately measures our baseline energy needs, and therefore you can calculate how many calories you need to lose weight.

ONE: Calories in food are determined with a bomb calorimeter, which burns the food, or by measuring the amount of protein, fat, and carb in the food and doing a calculation to create a number. For prepared foods the number must be within 20% of this calculation. So a food that says 100 cals could be 80-120 cals.
But we don't *burn* food, we digest it. Some items go straight through, some are digested fully. For me, several FODMAP foods sit in pockets in my small intestines and ferment, creating gasses and diarrhea, and providing me with few of the nutrients.
The main point being, we don't *know* how much energy each body can use from the food we eat.

TWO: Putting your height, weight, and activity level into a calculator may give the average amount a person needs in energy. But none of us is average. And I'd presume the formula assumes some kind of healthy body.
Our bodies actually use the energy we take in for a lot of things! For healing muscles. For raising our body temperature. Creating inflammation. My body spends a ridiculous amount of energy thinking that I'm being attacked by pollen and producing all sorts of immune responses to defend me.
Some of us use that energy to over-create insulin, or to grow unwanted hairs in annoying places.

Not covered here but another useful topic: hunger isn't just about whether our stomach is full.

Links to some articles in the comments.