There's a totally different way to live that also has mounting evidence, and it's a way that sounds a lot more satisfying to me.
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:
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.
Don't be faked out by BMI; it's no different from the Dow Jones Index (something easy to calculate with pen and paper, or in your head), that gives you a low-resolution signal at best. If you have a BMI of 50 (or 16) you have problems, but you already knew that.
It's bizarre that people worship it, but then again, simplicity has always beat having to think.
> It's bizarre that people worship it, but then again, simplicity has always beat having to think.
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).
The equivalent is probably a 2D DXA scan with body composition report. Supposedly it can measure the amount of bone, muscle, and fat in your body to within 1% of actual values. Those scans are widely available for <$50.
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.
> 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
You can be a bit healthier by just doing a whole variety of things and accepting the average, than by letting an expert choose what things you should do. ;-)
This jibes with my own pet theory for longevity. Our bodies evolved in much more demanding conditions than we have now. Wild temperature swings, strenuous work, etc. I think a lot of current diseases are caused by the systems the body developed to deal with these things that now have nothing to do, like an unloaded motor spinning out of control.
> I think a lot of current diseases are caused by the systems the body developed to deal with these things that now have nothing to do, like an unloaded motor spinning out of control.
People continue to influence their children long after they stop reproducing. Genes that help you children have more children are selected for, so something like a gene that keeps you alive long enough to care for your grandchildren seems plausible.
Children might have better likelihood of eventual reproduction if their parents are in good health as the parents raise their children during and past the parent's reproductive age. I could even imagine present and healthy grandparents having an influence on the reproductive probabilistic success/failure of their grandchildren.
Long juvenile period. A 10yo human child with living parents has a greater chance of surviving to breeding age than the same aged child with dead ones.
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.
"This suggests plenty of calories plus strength training is in the running for a longevity lifestyle."
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.
The article does seem to be about total calorie consumption so fasting once a month or year does not seem to be beneficial as long as total calories remain the same.
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.
This! My wife had chronic knee pain that no one could figure out given her relatively youthful age. A smart trainer spotted that her leg muscles were very, very weak. She strengthened them and now has no knee pain - and in fact is running about 20-25m per week where before she assumed she'd never run again.
Well, I happen to have personal experience here. I had pain on the outside of my right knee for a few years. I also had clicking in my knees whenever I would squat down, ever since I was a teen. One day, I did an hour of Bulgarian split squats[1], which is a one leg exercise -- I did it with no weight. The next day my knee pain was essentially gone. One day!
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.
2016 Nobel prize was awarded to Yoshinori [0] for his work on Autophagy [1] - Cells eating dead cells and auto-correcting body functions when there is lack of calories/energy in the system.
Ancient philosophy also says about fasting 2 days a week. The Autophagy process provides a scientific foundation for those claims.
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)
At least in the case of ramadan fasting, the difference is that you eat (and drink) nothing at all from waking up until night. This way the digestion system never gets started, the stomach kind of just shrivels up and you never actually feel much hunger.
Incidentally, Islamic practice is to fast two days of the week too (outside of the month of ramadan).
I don't think one should give any credence to those ancient theories. Greek philosopher Democritus came up with the theory of atoms, but it was a lucky guess without any evidence at the time.
100 years ago there were people who still believed in the miasma theory of disease. The scope of human understanding of physiology and nutrition was straight up garbage before the modern era.
I'm not sure this is a real counterpoint: with no microscopes or tools, they figured out airborne infections and learned to stay away from dead and rotting things, as well as gases emitted by those who were sick (the same way we're not walking around inhaling peoples' coughs).
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.
That compounded experience was not useless garbage, it directly led us to our far more informed state today.
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.
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.
Fair enough, my use of the term strawman doesn't really work.
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.
That's an easy and lazy characterization. Sure, there have been a lot of dumb theories, but there are plenty today as well (anti-vaxxers, for example). But folks 3500 years ago (or 100,000) were just as smart as the folks today, they just lacked a lot of tools we have. But some of their observations are apposite.
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?
Your relatives living longer doesn't prove anything though. They might have lived longer by chance.
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.
We know how to conduct experiments properly now, so there is no excuse for simply believing something when you could try and see if and how well it works.
All he is saying, and this is a good point, is that the long time use of something isn't indicative of it being good for you. Going to church has been around for 2000 years too, that doesn't mean that it's healthy, it's just something people do.
Funny that you would bring up chairs. Originally, other pieces of furniture were used for sitting.
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]
I see the point, but your example is unfortunate. It turns out it is healthy/protective to go to church (and thus have a large support system) in both the current research and the earlier research that under-reported atheists/non-theists.
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.
So what of the modern illumination of the health benefits of ancient techniques like meditation and yoga? You're saying don't practice until we're 100% sure they're beneficial?
Not everything that was done thousands of years ago is bad, like for example eating and sleeping and exercise.
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."
I chose these simple, extreme examples to avoid being misunderstood again, because you brought up a complete straw man ("You're saying don't practice until we're 100% sure they're beneficial?") when I said nothing of that sort, so I assumed you might have a certain proclivity for misunderstanding things. Looks like I was right.
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.
If you look hard enough and squint a little you can always find some ancient philosopher or physician whose writings appear to support whatever you want. But it's just meaningless confirmation bias. People are seeing what they want to see.
Orthodox Christians also fast two days a week (Wednesday & Friday) most weeks of the year, and for a number of other times, totalling about half the year.
Same goes for Eastern Orthodox Christianity if you can accept that religion is form of ancient philosophy, usually Tuesday and Friday are considered fasting days.
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.
Wednesday fasting is to remember the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. Friday fasting to remember the Crucifixion. And of course there's fasting periods as well as weeks you don't fast at all. Monastics also fast an extra day of the week (Mondays), in addition to eating a more restrictive diet in general.
Friday fasting is a remembrance—and to a certain extent, identification—with the cruxifiction. Mild discomfort to commemorate a much stronger act of self-denial. It's documented as early as the 3rd century by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata VI.75) but as you point out it's a logical extension of a practice that was integrat to the Jewish tradition.
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.. :-)
> 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.
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.
Just gonna add to what dvt said: the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar calendar. Unlike some other lunar calendars, the Islamic one doesn't add/intercalate days into the calendar to make the lunar months align with the solar months. The lunar year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year, so the month of Ramadan (in which Muslims fast from food, drink, and intercourse during daylight hours for one month) actually moves "back" 11 days each year. Every ~16.5 solar years, the month of Ramadan has effectively moved half a year. All of this translates into much shorter fasts for those of us further north/south when Ramadan falls in the winter.
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.
User dvt covered that situation just fine, so I didn't feel like repeating what they said :) Residents living in areas that experience periods of 24-hour of continuous daylight/night base their fasting on the dawn and sunset times of the nearest city that have normal sunrises and sunsets. It's a common case study when learning Islamic Law (aka Shariah).
As a counterexample, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment found a substantial variety of negative effects from calorie restriction:
> 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.
>From that Wiki: "Their meals were composed of foods that were expected to typify the diets of people in Europe during the latter stages of the war: potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, bread and macaroni."
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.
As I mentioned, Luigi Fontana is in the film and he's big on researching calorie restriction. Google shows he has been doing some studies on calorie restriction though I'm not sure which one to point you at, I haven't gotten to reading them yet since I just saw that documentary a few days ago.
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.
Control period was 3,200, starvation was 1560. This seems high. Most dietary recommendations today are structured around a 2000 calorie diet. Wikipedia mentions that this was a healthy weight diet - they must have been very active and/or large.
What calorie deficit is required to obtain 25% weight loss in 6 months?
It says they tweaked it per person, those are just approx amounts. They were measuring weight to make sure it stayed on track for that loss. So I think the deficit varies slightly.
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.
The participants were expected to perform manual labor every day and expected to walk no less than 22 miles per week. 1500 calories a day is really low under those conditons, and the 3200 was probably selected to maintain weight given them.
> What calorie deficit is required to obtain 25% weight loss in 6 months?
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.
The method for reducing calories can have dramatic differences in results. One of the flaws with the above cited study from what I remember was that it simply reduced calories but they still ate several times a day.
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.
There is mounting evidence that fasting and a few dietary approaches (like the ketogenic diet) are useful tools for dealing with a whole sort of issues, from autoimmune diseases and generally any excessive inflammatory responses (including CHD).
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.
I'm not sure I would describe the available literature as "enlightening"; for me at least, it's quite confusing. I'm just a computer scientist so it's hard to sort through the often contradictory results and claims.
Wait just a minute. What if I don't want to live longer? What if I want to live a shorter life full of energy?
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.
> 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).
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.
From what I read of the early caloric restriction studies on animals, it tended to greatly increase the healthy adult portion of the lifespan rather than adding a lot of geriatric time. That was the great hope for the human version too, but all the accounts I've read do indeed sound miserable.
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 have a wild theory about longevity. For all the mammals, increased heart rate correlates with lower life span [0]. But heart rate itself may just be a measurement, and what's important is rate of metabolism - higher metabolism, higher heart rate, lower life span. And vice versa.
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.
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.
Heart rate is genetic - some people like me and my family have increased resting heart rate even while being athletic (one cousin was a table tennis champ and other highly competitive swimmer, both have increased resting rate). And our genes make us look young (20-30s) even in our 50s, as I can see on my relatives. So different genotypes have different characteristics I guess.
I have thought about this too and while I think it is a good starting point, there are many variables you may not have thought of, such as is it about heart rate on average or perhaps more about actual number of heart beats in a lifespan (eg, short high-intensity workouts vs distance running? Drugs that increase heart rate being used daily, etc)
I honestly think it might not be about caloric intake itself, but the content of those calories. Papers like this:
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".
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.
This has been my primary (ignored) hesitation with the consumption of coffee and other caffeinated beverages - the worry about the increased heart rate therefrom reducing my longevity. The threat has definitely not stopped my consumption, though maybe it has decreased it. A little.
Do you have any reason at all to believe that this is a meaningful effect, or an effect at all? Have you considered that gearing your life-long behavior towards adding seconds to your lifespan is, perhaps, the wrong tact?
Interesting but is it worth living being hungry all the time? Are the extra years (you might not get anyway due to illness or accident) on average worth it to you the individual?
My own anecdata: Late in 2014, as I turned 50, I stepped on the scale and saw 295 pounds. I knew I had long been overindulging, but I freaked and decided to do something about it. As it was, it was starting to hurt when I walked.
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've dropped ~50 lbs in two years nearly the same way, or at least the same net effect: a rather large breakfast every day, no lunch, and medium sized dinner. No snacks during the day, though I often grab something later in the eve.
The gap might qualify as intermittent fasting, but I do drink coffee with a fair amount of whole milk & sugar through the mid afternoon.
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 learned that if an entire sentence is parenthetical, the period goes inside the parenthesis. (This makes sense to me.) Otherwise the period is outside (when the parenthetical part is at the end).
First, congratulations on the weight loss. It's great that you're finding a routine that works for you. I offer the following as a friendly suggestion if you would like to take another step: please drop the sugar from the coffee. Sugary drinks are hell on your body and especially on your teeth.
Thanks - re: the sugar, I'm ... working on it. Some days more than others ;) All told, it adds about 100 calories to my day so intake wise it's not a huge thing... but you're right re: body & teeth.
Well, to be fair, a teaspoon or less of sugar in coffee is a good bit different than the 9 or so teaspoons that are in a can of soda. "Sugary drinks" can mean a wide range of things.
The problem is, the less fat mass you have, the less good you will feel restricting calories. Dieting down to 15-20% range is very different than dieting down to 8 - 12% range (for males). The additional fat mass is like having a constant drip feed of fuel. Some other factors matter too, like leptin.
You are likely to get used to it. Try to get up to 3-day fasting on electrolyte water only, one day more at a time. Usually the first day is the worst, then you can fast and even do intense sport normally for a few days (this should also kick start your immunity if you weren't too weak already). Or try to take a restricted ketonic diet for 2-3 months, with one day per week permitting eating whatever you like - you can drop 20-40lbs of fat easily, reducing the amount of "garbage" your body stores in the belly fat (which is created by your body when it can't get rid of some dangerous metabolic products immediately).
You definitely want to have a check-up before doing this, you often don't know what you don't know.
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.
Is this an argument against IF, or for getting a checkup? I'm not sure how IF would have contributed to diabetes, nor how not doing IF would have prevented it. The core issue here seems to be not getting a checkup and/or not enough information in general, the IF seems irrelevant.
Yeah I wasn't terribly clear :) My argument is just FOR getting a check-up, not against doing IF. Especially if you're practising it long-term, you want to make sure that it isn't something that's uniquely harmful to you.
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.
Doing some Googling, I realise I've probably got the description wrong, especially the timeline.
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.
> created by your body when it can't get rid of some dangerous metabolic products immediately
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.)
I've read about it a few months ago in some "serious" newspaper but I can't remember - maybe search would help if you try to filter out garbage pseudo-scientific sites? They stated something like body binding certain metabolic byproducts with fat when it can't cope with the load to process them later (like eating sugary food right before sleep), and they get stored around belly. So most obese people likely carry decades of unfinished exhaust byproducts alongside having clogged internal lymphatic system, which can lead to "loads of fun" when they finally try to get rid of their fat.
Just one. Please name just one. No, it's not carbon dioxide.
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.
Last time I heard tell of similar things, it was probably mild starvation-induced ketoacidosis.
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.
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.
Been there, and can confirm. Six months of a restricted diet for $probably_similar_reasons does some interesting things to you. The body aches were definitely some of the worst parts, but for me, the worst part was the mental garbage that rides alongside. Maslow's hierarchy can be a huge kick in the teeth.
If you could, move to a sunny state, it's easier to be on such a diet and full of energy if you are in warmer climate. Once during winter I did keto, daily cold shower, daily HIIT, 3-4x strength training/week and then I lost all energy and got sick for a month. I did the same in summer and it was all great.
Did you take into account your extra energy requirements in the winter? Your body has to keep you warm and this uses energy. It would be interesting to have an app or wearable that could help you keep up with intake based off of your environment (e.g. yesterday you walked n+10 miles and it was cold, you should eat more today than normal).
No, I didn't at that time. An app like one you mention would have to observe you first and see which foods give you what amount of energy, as your body is cherry-picking compatible food to some extent and burning rate is highly individual, probably even depending on your gut bacteria and how they pre-process your food. What works for one person won't for another :(
To get your energy back, you have to do little or no calorie restriction, 500 calorie deficit tops. I'd say start first with no calorie deficit (even if it's hard on a fat diet because you feel full) and see if that improves it.
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.
I don't think of it this way. Instead consider that the modern abundance of every type of food is very different from the environment in which our bodies evolved. Our natural/hard-wired cravings are actually harmful in the modern environment. It's less about being hungry and more about being satisfied with considerably less. Anecdotally I can tell you I absolutely feel better when I eat less than when I eat to satisfy whatever craving I might have.
This is just an anecdote, but as others have mentioned, you kind of get used to being hungry most of the time. A few years back I was getting a ton of exercise and was trying to cut weight. I was burning close to 3000 calories per day and eating around 2000 calories.
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.
While hunger pangs may be unpleasant from time to time, I personally have found myself to be at my happiest and most at peace with life when I am consistently losing weight.
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.
I've almost eliminated alcohol as well mostly because I seem to have grown very sensitive to it. Even if I have only one beer with my meal, I almost always wake up with a headache. I've also found that ibuprofen does almost nothing for this type of headache (it will linger all day) but acetaminophen works very well.
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.
That's kind of what I did when I was 18. I'd eat a handful of dry cereal, run 5 miles, go to school, then walk uphill for 45 minutes to my job as a produce clerk lifting boxes and stuff, then skip dinner.
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.
>Still, I do agree it makes sense to be light on the weekdays and splurge on the weekends.
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've run a couple of uncontrolled n=1 trials on myself with calorie restriction in the past three or so years, and have found that I quickly (ca. 2 weeks) habituate to a lower caloric intake and don't experience hunger pangs unless I forget to eat altogether. Indeed, my current problem is eating enough - I had to consume an additional 900 calories past full yesterday, just in order to meet my 1k/day restriction goal. (Which it is important not to undershoot, as I discovered when I ran -2k for two days running and fell asleep leaning against a train station lamppost on my commute home the second day.)
Take it from someone who had to consume as many calories as possible for medical reasons [1]: nothing beats custard for boosting your daily calorie intake. A single glass is almost 1000 calories, and you can learn to chug it pretty easily.
[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.
Most people (including me) eat because they're bored, or they have nothing better to do, or because it's meal time. Not because they necessarily need the nutrients.
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.
I remember a passage from a health class textbook from years gone by, regarding commercial over-the-counter diet pills: "What works is the little circular in the package telling you to eat less."
There is definitely a difference between having an appetite (wanting to eat) and being hungry (needing to eat). If you cut back on your calories, you pretty quickly notice the difference between the two situations.
Hmmm.. I think I was misreading what you were asserting. I was taking it to meant it is a purely learned behavior. While I can see how it has heavily learned aspects, I'm curious if it is solely a learned thing. More, I'm curious how successful people can change their learned behavior.
Carbs that are quickly digested set you up for a roller coaster of blood sugars. It's the sudden crash of the blood sugar that makes your body tell you that you better grab something sugary again for another dopamine fix. Our bodies are much better at detecting fluctuations compared to absolutes.
I tend to agree with the original assertion and I think there must be some truth to it when you look at how many people get up from their desks and eat exactly at lunch when they can take their lunch whenever they want.
I've found that after a while you can train your body to be more resistant to hunger pangs, if you feel a bit of a pang, get some tea or water. Now obviously if you're really hungry feel free to eat a meal, but I've noticed that my stomach growling doesn't necessarily mean I'm ready for a full meal.
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.
Hungry is a signal, but it doesn't require action. Or rather, when it is strong enough that it does require action you can tell the difference.
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).
I remember an article about a fellow who was doing caloric restriction in Portland, OR. He was described as going from entirely average build to at the edge of under weight.
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.
No. Eating the same thing every day says that you do not value putting out energy for variety of taste. It says nothing about your willingness to accept persistent discomfort.
"persistent discomfort" is not necessary. I know people who swim in open water; it seems too cold for me, but they are not in persistent discomfort. I know people who drink coffee, it's too bitter for me, but they are not in "ersistent discomfort.
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.
From experience, I know that these things are not comparable. Swimming in open water is fine after a few minutes of adjustment. I have learned not just to drink coffee, but to prefer it without sweetener.
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 find the opposite. When I experience hunger, if I wait for an hour or two I forget that I'm hungry. Just today I was working and skipped breakfast. Around lunch I thought I should get up, but I kept working. I forgot to eat until I had to stop for a meeting at 4:30pm. Suddenly I remembered my hunger and grabbed a banana.
I still struggle with overeating when I'm hungry and there's food in front of me.
I eat the same every day - but I still wouldn't do long term calorie restriction - I enjoy being physically strong quite a bit more than potential years in my 80s
I also think there's lots of confounding variables at play here. TFA says their diet differs from the mainland in several important ways: more vegetables and fish, less white rice and meat, and lower average calorie intake. Both of the first factors are extremely well-documented and uncontroversial dietary improvements, basically in the recommendations of every public health organisation in existence. We also know that being overweight is bad for your health, so as you say, if they're just less overweight than average, nothing much to see there.
Most people who adopt a ketogenic diet that is lower calorie do not report hunger. In fact, many report less hunger despite consuming significantly less calories. The reason being is that the body becomes more efficient at burning fat so there is always enough energy. That is in contrast to a non-ketogenic diet that has highs and lows of energy corresponding to eating.
>Interesting but is it worth living being hungry all the time?
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.
An alternative that works equally well is intermittent fasting. Every 3 months, you fast for 5 days. Make sure to drink plenty. If you can't fast for 3 days straight, you can also do a 2-days fast every month.
Yes, restricting a standard western diet to 25% is can be awful when you're addicted to easy digested and processed foods. Our homeostasis mechanisms did not evolve with those.
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.
Maybe... I personally doubt I'll be savoring the sweet 70+ years of age period if I make it there.. but who knows I guess. I'd rather enjoy my life and not worry so much about "one day I'll be glad I deprived myself of so much." There is a balance as others have said too though.
Good point. I wonder how effective it would be to drop calorie intake past the age of say 60 years. That way one gets to enjoy a regular calorie intake for most of their life and then sacrifice it in favor of longevity. Hopefully more research on this topic surfaces in the coming years!
>I wonder how effective it would be to drop calorie intake past the age of say 60 years
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.
Of note, Geroscience is a new popular science of aging online magazine supported by the Apollo Ventures investment fund, devoted to longevity science startups. You should absolutely take a look at their site to see the sort of sea change that has occurred for the perception of aging research in the funding community:
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.
You might live longer on a calorie restricted diet but you might just die of boredom. Seriously, food is amazing. Why would you deny yourself so much of it.
I'd be a bigger advocate of intermittent fasting. This has also been shown to improve health and longevity.
> Seriously, food is amazing. Why would you deny yourself so much of it
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.
>I'd be a bigger advocate of intermittent fasting.
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.
I actually believe starvation and caloric deficiency has more correlation with inflammation. When you introduce foreign sustenance (food) into your body, it has to spend resources to work through it, absorb it and expel waste. The higher the caloric count the more work it has to do and usually more inflammation from working through it instead of working on recovery.
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.
Dr. Jason Fung, a Canadian Nephrologist is an encyclopedic resource for the impacts of calorie restriction and fasting. While he has a couple (really good) books, the following presentation is a nice overview of his work, findings and results of therapeutic fasting:
Eat To Live, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman describes a diet that is low calorie high nutrient and it's a very good, easy read for anyone who is interested. I personally lost 70+ pounds on it: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Eat_to_Live
Given the inconsistent, even capricious prescriptions coming from nutritional science and medicine, here's three reasons I don't worry too much about nutritional "science."
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.
>I'm guessing you didn't read the article or have a poor understanding of nutritional science.
First of all, rebuttals disagreeing with comments by suggesting one hasn't read the article are specifically against the community guidelines here, and ad hominen attacks about a commenter's understanding of a subject are also not appreciated.
Math is math. Physics is a science. Theoretical physics specifically, unfortunately, some times can not be tested as expediently as we'd like. Perhaps you'd be more willing to digest it when taken from the horses mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw
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.
Given the well-documented rarity of modern centenarians [1][2], it's highly likely that Old Tom Parr did not live to be 150 years old - and is much more likely that his documented age is due to errors in recordkeeping.
The third section of this article states that Parr was likely under 70 when he died and that his birth records may have been confused with those of his grandfather.
Some of the more interesting recent research, from the perspective of evidence for meaningful health benefits, and some degree of additional longevity in our long-lived species.
Meh, I'll just wait for the iHeart, the iKidney and the iLiver. Surly hope I do not end up with an Android-powered brain b/c my insurance plan does not cover the always reliable and reasonably priced AWS Cognito Plus, while I'm definitely not rich enough to dream about the iBrain 7. Until then, the triple-b diet will do: beer, burgers and bike to work.
Yet as far as know longevity records among humans did not have any particular diet, did they?
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.
Interestingly, I read about this idea in «Corps et âmes» (1943), a marvellous novel by Maxence Van Der Meersch (a physician). The wife of the main character is able to recover from tuberculosis thanks to a diet with very low calories.
I get what the author's saying -- that white rice is pure carbohydrates, while sweet potatoes are a healthier mix -- but it's phrased pretty strangely. What exactly is rice, if not a plant?
Isn't glycemic index (GI) an important measure of the potential negative effect of the carbohydrate? Some varieties of rice have a surprisingly high GI. Jasmine rice, for example, has a higher GI than pure glucose, a sad fact for me since it's the favorite rice where I live. Other types of rice have much lower GI.
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]
I wonder what's the best way to apply this to daily life. Restriction at every meal vs alternative day restrictiona vs fasting a few days every once in a while.
I think the implication is that you age slower if you consume fewer calories. So if you adopt CR then you might feel at age 50 how someone on a normal diet feels at age 40, and at 100 you might feel as they do at 80.
When I want to lose fat I go low calorie high protein (below 2000kcal). I get constant food cravings and I can't even get myself to do anything in the gym, also have a hard time focusing at work. It was considerably better when I wasn't lifting - then you get used to it (I still felt weak) - but weight training + low calorie = very draining.
But 2000kcal is already well below a male doing normal things during the day; so 2000 + gym with weights would drop that completely out. When I do weights I try to shoot for around 2500 which already sucks compared to what I was used to (which does affect performance but it feels the same so I think overall I benefit?). But when just doing cardio I can go well below 2000 on a day or just not eat at all (only tea + water) and feel sharp, I just choose not to and just do days without any food.
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.
Yea going really low calories and working out is really nasty - you visibly start shaking during practice and start feeling really strange - I'm guessing from lack of blood sugar. Will not be doing that in the future.
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.
No, the suck factor is greater when you're old as opposed to when you're younger, that is unless you live about the same way all your life. Imagine how a professional athlete feels.
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.
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.
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.