Diet Guide
Calories In, Calories Out. Eat less than you burn and you lose weight. Simple as that.
CICO stands for Calories In, Calories Out. Your body burns a certain number of calories every day just to stay alive and move around. That number is your TDEE.
Eat less than your TDEE and your body uses stored fat to make up the difference. That is how weight loss happens.
No foods are banned. No meals are skipped on a schedule. You simply track what you eat and make sure the total stays below your target.
Think of your body like a bank account. Calories are money. Every day you have a spending limit based on your TDEE. Go over that limit and your body saves the extra as fat. Stay under it and your body spends its savings instead. The savings are stored body fat. Spend enough of it and you lose weight. The math always works.
CICO stands for Calories In, Calories Out. It is not really a diet, it is the mechanism every diet runs on. Eat fewer calories than you burn and you lose weight. Eat more and you gain. Keto, paleo, fasting, Weight Watchers, the cabbage soup thing your aunt tried, all of them work by putting you in a calorie deficit. They just take different routes to get there.
Calories in is everything you eat and drink. Calories out is your resting metabolism plus digestion plus movement plus training. When people say they are doing CICO, they mean they have dropped the food rules entirely and are just tracking the number.
The appeal is that nothing is banned. Rice is allowed. Nasi lemak is allowed. Beer is allowed. It costs you calories, and once you have spent them you are done for the day. That trade is a lot easier to live with than being told an entire food group is forbidden forever.
Work out your maintenance calories first. The calculator does it from your height, weight, age and activity level. Take 300 to 500 off that number and you have your target. A 500 calorie daily deficit is roughly half a kilo a week, which is a sensible pace.
Then weigh your food for the first two weeks. Not forever, just long enough to learn what 100g of rice looks like versus the 250g you were actually serving yourself. Almost everyone underestimates portions, and the gap is usually 300 to 600 calories a day, which is exactly the size of the deficit you were trying to create.
Log everything for those two weeks, including the teh tarik and the two pieces of kuih at the office. After that most people can eyeball it. If the scale stalls for three weeks straight, go back to weighing for a bit. It is almost always portion creep, not a broken metabolism.
The food calorie database has real numbers for nearly 290 Malaysian dishes, which is the part most tracking apps get wrong.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| No food is off limits | Requires consistent daily tracking |
| Backed by the strongest scientific evidence | Calorie counts on packaging can be inaccurate |
| Works for any eating style or culture | Can feel tedious over weeks and months |
| Builds real awareness of portion sizes | Easy to underestimate calories when eating out |
Energy balance is the most consistent predictor of weight change in all of nutrition science. A 2017 study confirmed that weight loss comes down to total calorie intake regardless of whether those calories come from carbs, fat, or protein. Tracking calories consistently for several weeks builds awareness of food portions that tends to persist even after people stop tracking actively.
Read the researchThousands of people doing this diet share their experience on Reddit. Visit r/CICO
Calories In, Calories Out. It means tracking your calorie intake against what you burn, with no food banned.
Not really. It is the mechanism behind every diet. Keto, paleo and fasting all work by creating a calorie deficit, they just hide the counting behind food rules.
Yes, and it is the most consistently supported approach there is. The failures are almost always tracking errors, usually untracked oil, drinks and snacks, rather than the method itself.
Yes. Nothing is banned. White rice is about 130 calories per 100g cooked. Weigh it, count it, fit it in.
Your maintenance minus 300 to 500. Run your numbers through the calculator instead of using a generic 1,200 or 2,000 figure.
Calorie counting is the engine behind every result on this site. See how I went from 128kg to 86kg with it.
Look up the calories in any Malaysian dish in the food calorie database.
Free TDEE calculator. Thirty seconds, no sign up.
Use the calculator