We were all taught that losing weight is a simple matter of eating less. If “calories in equals calories out,” all you have to do is eat fewer calories when you want to lose weight.

That’s true, mostly. You DO need to eat fewer calories than you expend to lose weight.

BUT. 

The CICO model doesn’t account for things like satiety, hunger, insulin resistance, and general metabolic dysfunction. It assumes that your body is functioning properly, that all systems are go.

CICO also assumes that all calories are the same. That carbohydrates are used by your body in the same way as protein or fat.

Those are both big assumptions.

When you take actual reality into account—instead of assumptions—you’ll find that most people have some form of metabolic dysfunction. That’s why lots of people find that they can lose weight and keep it off on a low-carb diet.

Often, during the weight-loss journey, people discover what foods they can and cannot tolerate. And as their bodies heal, they become healthier.

Other people can explain this better than I can.

Meanwhile, the CICO people favor putting more or fewer calories into a system that is already broken—without changing the system—and expect a good result.

It works if you’re generally healthy, but if you’re not? Good luck.

That’s health.

I see almost exactly the same thing happening around budgeting—especially budgeting around university operations.

“We need more money!” University Presidents cry. “We need to put more calories money into our system!”

Similar to calories, not all money is the same. Federal funding, especially grants, can only be spent on pre-approved activities. Universities try to skim off the top (F&A, I’m looking at you) but usually that money goes back into getting more grants. Even the way that tuition money is allocated, it follows so many arcane-sounding rules that the President or financial officer is prevented from distributing money into the places that need it.

Similar to metabolic disfunction, often the system of budgeting—and calculating ROI—within the university is either nonexistent or broken.

For example:

As higher education budgets have been reduced over the past decades, colleges and universities have been forced to rely on institutional grants to pilot programs designed to reduce achievement gaps and increase overall student success. Difficulties often emerge, however, when the grant comes to an end and there are difficult financial decisions regarding the transitioning of processes, offices, practices, and personnel.

AHEE.org

So you have a broken system, and people trying to get support for stuffing more money into it, instead of sitting down and doing the (hard) work of figuring out how to best distribute the money into the most critical parts of the system.

More money isn’t going to help until you FIX where the money is going and how it’s being used. Otherwise, you’re just limping along with a system that can’t make the best use of what it has.

The university gets fat, and malnourished, with administrative bloat instead of people teaching and seeking the truth. With students who can pull in $ instead of students who are the best fit for the university’s mission and research objectives.

Universities have financial diabetes.