Live slow, die old: Mounting evidence for caloric restriction in humans
geroscience.com
geroscience.com
For awhile now, the "obesity paradox" has been a thing, where segments of the population who are a little heavier than one would expect actually have the best all-cause mortality rates.
Recently there's been some pushback on this "paradox", but the one I want to call attention to is here:
http://annals.org/aim/article/2499472/relationship-among-bod...
The problem with the obesity paradox is that it's been based on the flawed BMI. In this study, they actually did DEXA scans of elderly women's body fat percentage, and those with the highest BMI and lowest body fat percentage had the best all-cause mortality rates.
This suggests plenty of calories plus strength training is in the running for a longevity lifestyle. This makes sense intuitively and if one is familiar with the panoply of beneficial physiological effects from exercise on the human body. And, it would not come as a shock to find that increased strength from greater muscle improves, e.g., balance and coordination to prevent accidents in the elderly, nor that increased muscle mass provides a protective tissue reserve for fighting disease without the concomitant downsides of adipose.
Why do you think how our body evolved is related to longevity ?
Also, a reproductive pair with living post reproductive (but still not decrepit) parents can breed at a higher rate as they are can delegate some childcare to them.
I'd at least say I don't see a strong evolutionary pressure for extended lifespans.
It's bizarre that people worship it, but then again, simplicity has always beat having to think.
BMI is still a pretty good proxy measurement. There's a very high correlation between BMI and body fat content. People like to complain that BMI is useless because a few weightlifters show up as "obese" but those are so rare as to be statistically insignificant.
A good explanation I saw is that if you care what your BMI is you probably aren't a weightlifter
It's pretty good over populations, and is pretty good even on lots of individuals. Body fat percentage and lean mass might be better but they're much harder and more expensive to measure (particularly accurately).
Why not both ?
Relatively high calorie diet, over the long run, to support strength training and a high level of exercise ... but regular (weekly ? twice-weekly ?) fasting to partake in what appear to be the benefits of forcing your body to change gears and clean house (so to speak).
You can have a relatively high calorie diet measured over the course of a week or a month while still fasting regularly.
What doesn't make sense to me is that exercise is known to be healthy but it will always lead to an increase in calorie consumption especially cardiovascular. When you exercise you are expending more energy so that means you need to take in more energy or calories.
But will strength training not wear out the joints?
For example strengthening your thighs reduces stresses on your knees. At least according to my orthopaedic specialist.
It turns out, after reading up on it, unilateral leg strength is important for knee health. The right muscles being strong and coordinated takes stress off the tendons, ligaments, and cartilage that support the knee. Doing one leg squats teaches and trains your glutes to balance and stabilize your body on one leg.
[1] For an unrelated experiement.
Ancient philosophy also says about fasting 2 days a week. The Autophagy process provides a scientific foundation for those claims.
[0] https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2...
'Ancient' is a meme, just like 'natural' or 'eastern'.
The chair has been used since antiquity, although for many centuries it was a symbolic article of state and dignity rather than an article for ordinary use.[1]
This makes it seem like you ascribe some qualities to old ideas, because they are old. E.g. it's old, so it must have been tried many times and determined to be better than other ideas.
Just take your example: "Thousands years of experience, and yet medical practitioners wouldn't wash their hands less than two centuries ago." Well, I had some pretty religiously hardcore relatives. My Mum's uncle, who died at 95 in 1985 was such a hardcore brahmin that if the shadow of a lower caste person fell on his food it was discarded (given away actually). I found that enormously offensive, but at the same time I am fascinated that my longest-lived relatives were the ones who preserved ancient cleanliness rituals. The meat-eating, alcohol drinking ones all had heart attacks in their 60s.
Standard practice if you were sick (and upper class) in ancient Persia: have your servants bring you out into the street where you would ask folks if they'd ever seen those symptoms and what they did. And now "evidence based medicine" is a modern revolution?
Likewise, some of the Greek scholars had brain-damaged ideas, and some had good ideas that are irrelevant these days (like estimates of the diameter of the earth or the use of zero). But they also had good observations on life and human nature. And the opportunity for longitudinal observation.
I used to mourn that only 7 of Sophocles' 120 plays survived, but then I figured that they were probably the best 7. I suspect a lot of ancient crap has been discarded, and the density of cleverness per unit work is higher than the contemporary corpus. After all, nobody watches 99% of the movies from the 70s, just the good ones. Why shouldn't this be true from ancient thinking, when you have had so many years to winnow it down?
I didn't say anything about evidence based medicine being new, and in fact, I don't care whether something is old or new, I only care whether it is proven to work.
If researchers aren't investigating some old way of curing something, it's probably because no one thinks it's worthwhile. As a result, we may miss out on a lot of things, but it's still much better to only use well tested, proven methods than to trust random snake oil peddlers.
... I'd point out that barbarian scientist doctors did not wash their hands 200 years ago, but 2,000 years ago it was really old news for pious Jews, because their God had told them all about sanitazion.
They were probably too primitive to understand the germ theory of disease, but if a voice from above told them "if you don't do as I say, I will punish you", and then they observed that bad things happened when they failed to obey... they would have to be pretty stupid to keep breaking the rules.
Not saying that this literaly happened precisely as described. But the belief that Progress is a straight line from caveman to astronaut is no less a myth than the previous one. You just don't see it that way because older myths are not part of your culture's world view.
A very small percentage of this old knowledge is still "as best as we can do", I would guess. But we have made vast improvements on almost all segments of knowledge.
I'm fairly confident that bykovich was being sarcastic.
Ancient knowledge has played an important role in us reaching great heights, but we should eye it skeptically, and recognize the things we have learned since then.
I probably could have made that clearer in my post.
It's not a strawman argument if you don't mean what you say.
I mainly felt the sarcasm was over the top and uncharitable. Fortunately, some good discussion resulted in the follow-up comments, so perhaps it was actually well placed.
Of course it's "almost correct", and the theory had holes which we've gotten better at. But the old 'wrong' version gave people a good way to act when faced with limited knowledge.
In the diet arena, we are still very much faced with limited knowledge.
Can that even actually happen?
But of course we should judge practices by today's knowledge and evidence (though informed by a historical perspective).
Ancient techniques like crucification and pederasty and slavery and infanticide are, quite rightly, considered passé.
My main point was that we should
a) not look to ancient texts for profound insights. (Note that it's perfectly fine to read ancient texts for entertainment or research or the historical perspective.) Even philosophy has advanced over time.
b) not fall into the trap of ascribing some profound wisdom to ancient thinkers that (on no basis) happened to get something right, like Democritus and his atomic theory. Would you go to Democritus writings for advice on string theory or energy policy or climate change? If tomorrow it is found that the shrimps near Canton province are polluted with heavy metals, should we triumphantly open the bible and point to Leviticus, who admonished us that "And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you."
Look at all texts with skepticism and practice reflective equilibrium, sure. That includes all modern texts.
Needless to say, I am not conflating yoga and slavery, just highlighting that both were prevalent millennia ago, thus demonstrating that this fact alone is not strongly indicative of something being good.
Also this is an extension of the Jewish tradition of fasting on Tuesday/Thursday. AFAIK, the only reason the Church changed it was simply to distinguish themselves from the Jews during the height of the Judiazing heresey.
Funny that with all the wisdom you'd think a deity possessed, he made the deal pretty bad for those followers who live in the very northern latitudes and happen to be born in the wrong century. Not eating for an entire month (or even a week) is extreme in itself, but not drinking anything either is just impossible.
Or maybe Muslims were not intended to come and live here.. :-)
Not sure if you're just trolling or being a typical reddit atheist jackass, but Muslims have adapted Ramadan at latitudes that the sun never rises (or sets) by using the times of a city or country where there's a clear and distinguishable difference between day and night. Not only that, but the entire point of fasting isn't the exact time that one is fasting, but the meaning behind it.
I'm not even a Muslim, but playing these kinds of logical "gotchas" with religious texts that were written centuries ago is just dumb.
I live in Seattle; being decently north, the Ramadan fasts are long in the summer (~18 hours) and super short in the winter (~10.5 hours). These days, Ramadan falls around June so the fasts are long but in ~16.5 years they'll be short again. Another factor to take into account: the further north/south you are, the milder the summers tend to be, so fasting is a cakewalk compared to what Muhammad and his followers had to deal with. I'll take an 18-hour fast in mild Seattle weather to a 15-hour fast in the deserts of Arabia any day.
Even today, Muslim farmers work in the baking heat of an equatorial sun while fasting during Ramadan. And these folks aren't sitting in air-conditioned tractors; they're working the fields by hand, far too poor to afford the machinery considered standard by farmers in the developed world. And before you get worried, those who are too old or sick to fast are excused from it.
Anyways, I'm not attacking you. I can understand how impossible it must seem to someone who isn't Muslim. But it really isn't that difficult, especially if your job consists of sitting in a comfy chair in a climate-controlled classroom/office. We have lots of non-Muslims who fast with us from time to time during Ramadan; give it a try and I think you'll be surprised with what you can do when you put your mind to it.
I don't know about you guys, but if I don't eat breakfast and lunch, I get a headache in the afternoon, and have serious problems concentrating, and very little energy. My conclusion is that either I am doing something wrong, or intermittent fasting only works if one stays in bed the whole day.
2. Your body will get used to fasting if you do it repeatedly and it will become effortless (this from personal experience so I might be doing something different without realizing)
Incidentally, Islamic practice is to fast two days of the week too (outside of the month of ramadan).
What I can't ignore is having a pile of work on my desk and absolutely zero energy available to get it done.
> Among the conclusions from the study was the confirmation that prolonged semi-starvation produces significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis as measured using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Indeed, most of the subjects experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression.[1]:161 There were extreme reactions to the psychological effects during the experiment including self-mutilation (one subject amputated three fingers of his hand with an axe, though the subject was unsure if he had done so intentionally or accidentally).[6] Participants exhibited a preoccupation with food, both during the starvation period and the rehabilitation phase. Sexual interest was drastically reduced, and the volunteers showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation.[1]:123–124 The participants reported a decline in concentration, comprehension and judgment capabilities, although the standardized tests administered showed no actual signs of diminished capacity. This ought not, however, to be taken as an indication that capacity to work, study and learn will not be affected by starvation or intensive dieting. There were marked declines in physiological processes indicative of decreases in each subject's basal metabolic rate (the energy required by the body in a state of rest), reflected in reduced body temperature, respiration and heart rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experimen...
The two aren't comparable.
What calorie deficit is required to obtain 25% weight loss in 6 months?
It says they picked people from the CPS(civilian public service) work camps, so I would guess they were doing a lot of physical labor.
Depends what you originally weigh, but we can make a reasonable approximation of 3500cal/pound of fat, so ~20 calories per day deficit for each pound lost. So ~800/day if they weighed 160lbs to begin with.
They were very active, that's an important part of the experiment.
What an interesting study. Seems they had that limited selection of foods though so it's not just about the calories in that case. I've seen a few documentaries of people doing CRON (Calorie Restriction Optimal Nutrition) and they focus on very nutrient dense foods. I think mostly fruit and veg. Eat, Fast & Live Longer is the documentary I saw most recently. Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D. talks about it and they visit someone doing the CRON diet and run tests. Doc said he was very healthy.
This is not very convincing. A blinded clinical study would be much better. I guess it's not very practical though.
I know know they've done a study with rats that's shown a link between CR and longevity though and I can at least point you at that. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21792819
That said this is just something I've been reading about recently, still looking into the topic so I don't have any real opinion on it yet.
The methods that are more associated with the positive benefits involve fasting windows.
The macronutrients will also make a difference. A diet high in carbs would be horrible to use with reduced calories. The CR diets that seem more successful are ketogenic in nature.
Calorie restriction OTOH is something that gives mixed results, and I suspect it may be related to the diet adopted and how it is implemented (ie, LCHF vs LFHC, fasting vs frequent small meals).
I suggest anyone interested in food/health to spend some time on google scholar searching about these approaches, it's enlightening.
Everyone is focusing on longevity when quality is probably more important. 120 years as a couch potato would be shit compared to 60 years of being active every day (whether physically or mentally).
People are against TRT because it shortens lifespan, while completely ignoring the quality of life improvements, which is just stupid.
Give me something to burn fast and bright, not slow and dim, thank you very much.
The CALERIE study included a number of questionnaires asking about quality of life issues like libido. While their CR level was moderate, the benefits looked good, attrition was minimal, and they reported little decrease in quality of life.
I'm curious about fasting though. It's very easy for me to believe that our bodies are designed to go without eating for a while, much like we need to sleep. In nature we wouldn't really have needed any prodding to miss some meals so there wouldn't necessarily be a corresponding drive like thirst or sleepiness. I haven't tried it but personally I've never suffered much from missing a meal or two... seems like it wouldn't necessarily hurt quality of life if you were used to it.
I've got no interest in living to 100 if I can't even wipe my own bum. Hunter S Thompson had the right idea.
If we very boldly assume these relationships are causal and predictive to individuals, it follows lower energy consumption -> longer life. Caloric restriction might be one way to do this.
However, with lower metabolism, stuff in the body tend to get older. This will make them fail more easily, then you are likely to get sick, which will shorten your life. Therefore the optimal strategy to maximum life expectancy seems to be control metabolism (by exercise / calory intake etc.) to a certain point where you are just unlikely to get sick, then stop.
[0] biology.stackexchange.com/questions/20489/is-there-any-relationship-between-heartbeat-rate-and-life-span-of-an-animalH
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate-of-living_theory
These correlations probably have more to do with the membrane pacemaker view of resistance to oxidative damage, and how lipid composition of membranes varies with metabolic demands. Look at birds and bats, for example: tiny, with rapid heart rates, and very long lived in comparison to other species of similar size.
I honestly think it might not be about caloric intake itself, but the content of those calories. Papers like this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3718635/
Make me wonder what the effect of certain foods might be on telomere and mitochondria. In the same way it has been shown that charred or overcooked meats (red meats in particular) can have certain adverse long term effects, it makes me wonder if certain chemicals or cooking methods contribute to reduction of effenciency in cells mitocondria or can cause dna damage that results in shorter life spans.
In this case, the increase in caloric consumption might just be that with more calories in, the more likely some of those calories are to be ones that might damage some tissue functionality somehow, and it's the actual calories to life expectancy is more of a correlation and less of a causation.
Here is a paper that showed "For every 1 serving/d greater intake of processed meat, the T/S ratio was 0.07 smaller".
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/5/1405.full
On your note though, I would say everything we have talked about indicates that one particular combo would seem to be an ideal starting point for reaching an effecient balance: high intensity excercise to increase metabolic effeciency paired with meditation excercise to reduce standing heart rate/stress hormones.
Some people eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day, by choice. Anyone like that would say that hunger is well worth a longer life.
Personally, I like variety, but I'm trying to change.
Pain is the body's way to signal illness or injury, when the pain is signalling inaccurate, the brain can learn to not feel the pain.
But I spent over a year at perhaps a 10-15% reduction in calories. Persistent discomfort never went away for me. I was only able to maintain the diet by my constant awareness of concrete and measurable progress towards a specific weight loss goal.
I believe that I have more willpower than most, and diets are probably easier for me than most. Yet I doubt that I could live the rest of my life on a calorie restricted diet for the sake of living a bit longer.
I still struggle with overeating when I'm hungry and there's food in front of me.
I have also cut alcohol consumption completely out of my life, unless I am celebrating something. This makes me far, far less likely to not care about my weight and my health, and I have no feelings of regret when I am hungry.
But pleasure is easy and ice cream tastes good. Balance is everything.
That's why calorie restriction is a thing of beauty; eat what you want within the bounds of a caloric limit.
Personally, I eat very light all week (sub 1500 calories), then splurge on the weekend.
On the weekends I would eat like a pig and play Oblivion all day.
Still, I lost 50 pounds in 2 months. I do not recommend this. My lung popped (but it healed itself) and some of my hair fell out (it grew back) from the loss in protein intake. Like I said before, balance is everything.
Still, I do agree it makes sense to be light on the weekdays and splurge on the weekends. After all, there's only so much food you can stuff down your gullet in a span of a couple of days without making yourself sick, regardless of your caloric intake from the previous week.
Right. I make no claims about my method being "good". But I work long days, and commute. So I usually don't each during the weekday, then come home and have a great meal. Then TV and bed. I'm sure any benefits come from fewer calories eaten in aggregate.
I'm 46 now and this seems to have started maybe four years ago. It's kind of a bummer because I really enjoy beer and cocktails.
This space is crippled with pseudo-science, but I think the idea is that there could be irrecoverable damage done by that time, and that your old self simply won't heal as well. But I'll bet starting at 60 beats never starting.
For most people hunger is a mind set, and eating is a habit.
What sort of data? That we (in the West at least) eat far too much? That you won't starve if you skip eating for a day?
I also enjoy eating. What I meant was, people, generally, aren't eating because their body requires nourishment, but rather because it's meal time.
Amnesiacs who ate a big lunch could eat another large lunch after they forgot the first one.
Not perfect, but it helps indicate a leaning towards hunger, satiety, and the mind.
I agree. And I think that's how most fad diets work: they are roundabout methods of calorie restriction. It's really hard to eat 3000 calories worth of vegetables, or even lean meat.
A lot of people that do it say they don't really have a problem. They eat a large volume of food with a high nutrient-calorie ratio. Or some people only eat within certain time ranges which they say makes it easy to lower calories without getting extra hungry.
Also people they say they feel physically and mentally great when they eat a super healthy and calorie restricted so a little hunger is a mild tradeoff.
Long answer: no, because:
For $reasons I accidentally ended up on a calorie controlled diet, something around 1600-1800 a day. This persisted for too long.
Basically I felt like I was on the edge of a cold all the time. Anything activity like cycling was utterly draining. The world was very dull and grey indeed.
Now, I suspect that what they are talking about here is diet and calorie control (I wasn't eating rice). I doubt it was as extreme as what 1800 kcals a day is for a 6ft3 male.
Now, there were other factors that may or may not have contributed to the feeling of utter "urgh" however, I don't see how its fun to like on a calorie controlled diet, unless you grew up with it.
Let me guess... pretty bad headaches and maybe what feels like palpitations, specially when laying down?
Did you end up getting off the caloric restrictive diet or tone down on the exercise?
For the headaches and the rest, you have to up your electrolytes: sodium, potassium and magnessium. Your body on ketosis will excrete much more of them than usual. Occasionally I get a pretty bad headache that goes away with 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, sometimes even more.
Case in point: I've done IF on and off for awhile and a mate of mine was interested in trying it. He used to say that one thing that put him off was that he'd get cranky and a little shaky if he didn't eat for awhile. Something you could mistakenly arm-chair away as 'most likely just anxiety about being hungry'.
So he did IF for a bit and it was generally fine. He didn't do it really long-term.
So around a year after that he starts having visual problems. Well, turns out he's a type-1 diabetic and he'd been pre-diabetic for most of his life without realizing it. Relatively late-onset for the condition, but a lot made sense after that diagnosis.
To go back to the original comment, it's probably less about 'talking' to your doctor literally; sure there's nothing they can say about IF that you can't find out yourself, but they can get you blood tests and perform the right physical tests to make sure you're suitably healthy to do IF correctly without harming yourself.
I think the idea that he'd been less glucose-tolerant than average, before developing full-blown type 1, was thrown around but it wasn't anything definite.
Such as?
Please name just one such metabolic product, otherwise this is just pseudo-scientific bullshit. (Extra points for a link to a paper in the primary scientific literature.)
Last time I heard similar bullshit, the guy, when pressed, named "amino acids". Which is not a waste product, it's raw material. If you can't name even one, either you're making stuff up or you've been lied to.
Of course, it makes as much sense to say we shouldn't exercise because it releases "toxins"that make our muscles hurt. But, I'm guessing that's what people are normally misunderstanding in these cases.
[1] I have a chronic autoimmune digestive disease, at one point I couldn't eat enough to keep from dropping weight, was in hospital with intravenous nutrition etc.; I'm pretty much OK now after surgery and new kick-ass meds.
Also, I've found that eating food high in fat keeps me satiated. I have an avocado w/ coffee for breakfast (~5:45 AM) and that lasts me until ~1pm.
Unfortunately, we (US) teach people that it does require action - through advertising, through school nutrition teachings and implementations (meal + 2 snacks in a 7 hour school day, at least for young kids).
People would rather start "bike shedding" rather than try gain a deeper understanding of the topic.
I personally maintain a weight at the edge of under weight generally consuming a high level of calories (and this is in my 50s). I doubt I could survive calorie restriction.
Anyway, maybe it's sour grape but I suspect the whole calorie restriction thing is boondoggle based on ignoring the variety of factors influencing calorie consumption and longevity outside very controlled circumstances. If normal lab mice (or monkeys or some humans) are fat and inactive, calorie restriction might be good for them while it might be very bad for active animals.
First thing to go: snacks. I made a simple rule: don't keep snacks handy. It's way too easy for me to graze. The other thing I did was to greatly reduce my portion sizes. I found a couple of things: first, that if I still felt hungry after finishing a meal, I didn't feel that way a few minutes later. I also noticed that I didn't feel nearly as hungry in general as I thought I would. Keep in mind that restaurant portions often are big enough for two, sometimes three people. If I take half home, there's tomorrow's lunch or dinner. Win-win.
Occasional treats are not a bad thing, but I won't let myself fall into the trap of "oh, just one more bag of chips won't do any harm (lather, rinse, repeat)."
The first summer, I broke out my long-dormant recumbent trike, fixed the broken spokes, and got it back out for long rides, and I also rode a lot last summer as well. During this time, I found that I needed to eat more to support the rides, but I didn't gain weight, and my rides got faster through the season - very noticeably so last summer. Once it got too cold to ride, I had to readjust my eating habits again, but it still wasn't too difficult.
After 28 months of this, I'm down to 195. I'd like to get down to 170, but I'm not going to go nuts trying to hit the target. As it is, my knees and feet are very thankful, and I feel a whole lot better.
I am not eating any healthier, just less food.
For exercise, I started walking my dogs 4-5 nights a week in the evenings for a few miles (think closer to speed walking than regular).[0] I stopped losing weight when I stopped walking so often - the cold is getting to me this year, will resume in the spring. I'm seeing no weight gain though, because I haven't increased the amount of food I'm putting in.
Couple of things to add to your observations:
I've found that with time, a sensation of 'hungry' is just another sensation that my body reports - it's not an imperative to eat. And as I've adapted to reduced calories, this has largely faded.
For the periodic conference or social gathering, I'll and enjoy the excessive amounts of food. For longer events this might cause an uptick of a few pounds, but it settles back to the prior level within a week or two.
----
[0] I know - in the US I should put the period inside of the paren (or quote). But that's illogical. I refuse.
I fully support your choice. We're in good company:
"... it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them."
I also noticed that my weight tended to stair-step downward.
Your assumption that you will be "hungry all the time" is incorrect. It's quite easy to run a 25% deficit in keto. So easy that difficulty maintaining body weight is a big reason people stop.
My observations: (1) you start to pay less attention to the hunger signals over time, (2) food, even bland food, starts to taste really good, (3) this could just be a placebo effect, but I would get really cold when hungry and then feel really warm after I ate, not sure if that was my metabolism increasing after a meal and (4) if I cheated, I could put 3-4 pounds on in a day which I assumed was mostly water and muscle glycogen stores, not fat.
See summary of studies: http://outcomereference.com/causes/115-Fasting
They take a very Hallmarks of Aging view of the causes of aging, which I can quibble with around the edges, but it is good to seem more people putting their money into the game of building ways to treat the causes of aging.
The principals at Apollo became involved in this space and raised a fund both because they are enthused by the field of therapeutics to treat aging and want to see it succeed, but also because they recognize the tremendous potential for profit here. The size of the market for enhancement biotechnologies such as rejuvenation treatments is half the human race, every adult individual.
Publishing a magazine on aging research is a way to help broaden their reach within the community, find more prospective investments, talk up their positions, and raise the profile of the field as a whole, all of which aligns fairly well with the broader goals of advocacy for longevity science. Many hands make light work, and we could certainly use more help to speed up the growth of this field of research and development.
I'd be a bigger advocate of intermittent fasting. This has also been shown to improve health and longevity.
It's just another method of caloric restriction: forcing your meals into a 6 or 8 hour window, or not eating for a day a week. You're just eating less.
You don't have to; I conditioned myself to enjoy all the excellent foods, but to just take less of it. The quality is not in the quantity while I thought all my life it was. There is no 'better' feeling eating an entire cake versus taking 2 bites of the same cake. It took me 40 years to figure that out but he.
The main trick was eating very very slow. Do not load the next spoon until your mouth is completely empty. I noticed i'm absolutely full eating a fraction of what I hammered down usually in a fraction of that time.
> I'd be a bigger advocate of intermittent fasting.
Yes, but stuffing myself in between, depending on your age, doesn't actually work very well. I felt like shit doing that, did not lose too much weight and my brain thought I needed that stuffing. Now I feel fit and healthy doing fasting & eating slowly. Let's see how long I keep it up. I need less sleep too.
What studies (HMS,Johnhopkins) have shown is exercise (blood flow vital to removing waste and in result inflammation) and sleep (recovery) is equally as if not more important than diet.
These focus points are the same in fighting age related diseases: Alzheimers and sleeplessness.
'Therapeutic Fasting - Solving the Two-Compartment Problem' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk
Health = Nutrients/Calories!
First, n anecdote:
1.) One year I decided to run a marathon, and joined a running group including some elite runners.
One was a former state champion. In that particular year he'd run an Iron Man, a marathon, and the Goofy Challenge. That is a big deal.
He was carved out of stone. At running clubs, women would surround him. They'd paw at him, giggle as they pointed and touched this man body of steel.
After witnessing this for months, once at a pub I saw him order, IIRC: 2 hotdogs, a hamburger meal (with its own sides), and sweet potato fries, which he washed down with several beers.
I was shocked. I asked if he always ate that way. He said he just eats what he feels like eating, with one exception: added sugar.
So that's what I do. I eat what I feel like, with (3) exceptions. Small portions, no added sugar, and limits on artificial flavours. I've seen great results in energy, mind and physique. It appears my body is actually really well tuned to tell me what it needs without me having to do anything at all--as long as I follow those three rules.
2.) We need to be careful what we call actual science. If you can't rigidly follow the scientific method and test your theory to see if it matches with nature, it's not science.
3.) Nutrition is ridiculously important to our well being. It's more important than sex, shelter, and ego. Our bodies have been evolving for millions of years to learn how to tell us what they require. It's arrogant to declare yourself to know better here without having hard scientific evidence of it. That's what we're seeing now in the "scientific" literature. Butter is no longer a heart risk. Eggs are now healthy. All of the sudden sugar is the devil. Etc.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-...
Discussion on HN:
He existed and even thrived on a diet of “subrancid cheese and milk in every form, coarse and hard bread and small drink, generally sour whey”, as William Harvey wrote. … "On this sorry fare, but living in his home, free from care, did this poor man attain to such length of days".
Thomas Howard brought him to London to meet King Charles I.
Parr was treated as a spectacle in London, but the change in food and environment apparently led to his death.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenarian
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html
Caloric restriction improves health and survival of rhesus monkeys https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14063
Will calorie restriction work in humans? http://dx.doi.org/10.18632/aging.100581
As caloric restriction is being more and more shown to be the only efficient method to increase longevity, I suppose more and more people will try it and soon enough we'll get to break records. Time will tell.
>much of it from plant-based material like the Japanese sweet potato, their staple food, in contrast with the rice-heavy cuisine of the mainland.
When it comes to sweet potato versus rice, cooking method makes a big difference in GI: Jasime rice = 109, baked sweet potato = 94, boiled sweet potato = 44 [1]
[1] https://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/blog/glycemic-index-c...
I cannot imagine doing every day below 2000 and then going to the gym indeed. That would definitely not be productive and painful, but doing days of weights with 2500 max, other days around 2000 and then some days 0 works fine for me.
I'm trying something along those lines this month - I eat maintenance calories and work out over the week (~3000) and then I eat ~1000 on the weekend (mostly from coffe/milk/protein shake), but I want to do side projects on the weekend - sometimes I can get in the zone and food doesn't even get on my mind, other times I just feel like doing nothing when I haven't eaten.
Additionally, why is a restricted diet healthy if it lowers one's definition of quality of life? I read a study somewhere that showed that castration helps men live longer. Not my definition of healthy.
Don't know why comment was downvoted.
Maybe because people who are young and never had anything wrong with them want to (and think) they will live forever? So they don't like your negativity possibly. Just guessing here, but this drive to 'live forever' seems mostly advocated by people young people; once you (or a loved one) had a roll of the dice (something you could not have prevented with your fasting, weight lifting, sports etc), however small, you will change your mind; it is now, not in the future you need to enjoy.
Although living healthy works in ways, shit happens and then growing old indeed sucks. And it is not only your health; my grandparents both died within a year of each other, healthy as oxes with brains fully intact (both their hearts stopped in their sleep), still living together at 95 years old. They were lucky we think but they didn't consider that always; all their friends and relatives were dead. For a long time most of them. Their brothers and sisters; dead. Everything they had done in their lives; forgotten and dead besides their children. Of course that gave them joy together with grandchildren but still, the days were long and lonely for them even while they still had each other.