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The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

bbc.com

61–70 of 193 posts

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#61

My father has had a low calorie diet all of his life. At 78, he is in perfect physical and mental condition. His doctor had only one concern; he is slowly losing weight each year and needs to reverse that. The doctor wanted to prescribe an appetite enhancing drug but my father explained he can not simply gain weight by eating more. It's as if his digestive system is already at a maximum threshold. I wonder if habitua…

Does your father do any resistance training? He should. Strength training stops muscle loss and improves bone density.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#62
post #54
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you skip breakfast, but if you do, you are missing a strong signal to your circadian rhythm. What happens is you end up sleeping later and waking up later as the rhythm shifts towards your first meal of the day.

Do you have any source of proof of any of this? I have no problem waking up at 630am after 7 hours of sleep and not eating anything until after noon. Thinking to premodern humans, do you think they would frequently have food waiting for them as soon as they awoke? Some days maybe, but then other days probably not.

I'm the same as you. I don't eat until noon and can't make myself sleep past 6 am.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#64

About five years ago I switched to one large meal per day (dinner) with a snack or two. Prior to this I lost nearly 40lbs by shifting my diet toward dominant protein and smaller portions. I also added in a good 30+ minutes of walking per day. Nothing fancy. I also dropped almost all of my sugar intake. I drink about 3L of water per day and have one cup of coffee in the morning. I've been able to maintain a healthy we…

I've settled into a similar pattern and have found it the most sustainable out of all the diets I've tried. I also recommend a few multi day water fasts a year as a sort of 'soft-reset' of your appetite/digestive system. You learn the difference between cravings and hunger and how marvelously tuned your body is for dealing with caloric deficiencies. People get so anxious and scared of hunger when it's no big deal. You're basically asking it to 'garbage collect' to conserve the energy you're burning which it doesn't seem to do normally when food is coming in every few hours.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#65
anecdotal datum: A few years ago I lost about 40 pounds (230->190ish) in a little over a year by limiting the amount of food and not caring about the type of food.

steak, sandwiches, cheese, potatoes, all good. salad, bananas, cereal, all good.

I had to make sure to look at the nutritional info. If the food was small but energy dense you have to eat less of it.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#66
post #52

There is lots of proof now that obesity is not caused by "more calories in than calories out", it is caused by hormone reactions to what you eat (esp. insulin). Just read the books by Gary Taubs for zillions of details and references to studies. So the "eat less" claim in this article is again back to the old MD advice, "eat less and move more". Not going to work if you don't look at your macronutrients.

That's an oversimplification. Hormone response is not well-understood enough to make blanket statements like that, as far as I know.

There's been tons of research on diets. Low-carb high-protein diets certainly do work, but so do several other diets, including some of the traditional "eat less calories" diets (the research I've seen indicates those diets are on par with Atkins and keto in terms of long-term weight loss, and they all work when consistently/correctly applied). Reducing calories below resting metabolic rate demonstrably causes weight loss. It's almost impossible for it not to.

And, there are ways to manipulate insulin response without going to a high-protein/fat low-carb diet. I've been experimenting with intermittent fasting; where I eat mostly freely, but responsibly, for ~8 hours out of the day and fast the other ~16. This has been shown to improve insulin response, in similar ways to low-carb diets.

I've lost about 16 pounds over three months. Every few weeks, I change the diet, to see how my body responds, in terms of energy, weight, etc. And, also because I love food and really like variety (lots of weight loss programs suggest a very regimented diet of the same thing every day for months or years, but that's not for me).

I've found that when my calories are below my MR, I lose weight, no matter what I'm stuffing my face with. I did a couple of weeks of bread and pie and ice cream every day (to the point where I got tired of bread and pie and ice cream), and still lost weight during that time; calories were consistently below my MR. And, I did nothing but proteins, and healthy fats, and greens for a few weeks, too...also lost weight, but not notably more than the "bread and pie and ice cream" weeks.

I've kept logs of my weight and caloric intake for a couple of months, and it's pretty consistent. A couple days after I eat more calories than my MR, my weight either stabilizes or increases. And, a couple days after I return to below-MR, I see the weight dropping again. I will say that I've had better luck with intermittent fasting than with portion control as a means to achieve below-MR caloric intake; so maybe there's something to the insulin response theory since there's evidence fasting helps with that.

There may also be an argument to be made about cravings (sugar+fat can cause cravings; there's decent science on that), and that may lead to problems managing portions and caloric intake. And, there's certainly evidence that protein and fat calories are more satisfying than sugar or simple carb calories. It may very well be easier to lose weight on a high-protein and high-fat diet. But, when I was on the high-protein/high-fat diet, my cravings for fruit were pretty intense, and the weight loss was not measurably better than the other macronutrient mixes I've tried. I didn't find it valuable enough to continue, so I went back to eating rice, bread, and having dessert sometimes.

But, "eat less" still works, and always will. That's not really negotiable. The basic physics of the thing require it to work. It's just that a lot of folks have no idea what "eat less" really entails and don't keep track of what they eat well enough to know they're not actually doing it. When losing weight, you're going to experience hunger sometimes, which is not a thing modern people are accustomed to.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#67

A few thoughts. It seems that "calorie restriction" is a misleading term. If these funds are correct, CR should be considered the norm/ideal. That means the majority, currently, over-consume. That aside. I wonder if it's also related to modern food, and the production there of. If inflammation is the root of most disease, and CR, I presume, reduces inflammation, then what is it about our foods that trigger so much in…

A CRON or calorie restriction optimal nutrition diet is a thing, not only eating fewer calories but what you do eat has to be absolutely perfect in nutrition.

Micheal Mosley on BBC interviewed a CRON advocate he are an apple peel but threw away the inner part.

I've read that a rumbling stomach is necessary for gut health without it your microbiome suffers, CR may incidentally do that.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#68

I checked out the recipes on the iDiet website recommended in the article, and I'm feeling sad and deprived just reading them. I'm willing to suffer for better health, but I'd hate to suffer through a life of egg whites and margarine and then discover in the end that the science was wrong.

Even if it means dying a year earlier I'm going to eat salted butter and drink red wine and enjoy it. Better to enjoy less than to have more you don't enjoy?

It probably doesn't mean that anyway.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#69

I checked out the recipes on the iDiet website recommended in the article, and I'm feeling sad and deprived just reading them. I'm willing to suffer for better health, but I'd hate to suffer through a life of egg whites and margarine and then discover in the end that the science was wrong.

Even if it means dying a year earlier I'm going to eat salted butter and drink red wine and enjoy it. Better to enjoy less than to have more you don't enjoy?

That is not how it works. Living an additional 5 years does not make a difference; however, you "could" be living a much more productive work life, have better sex, be more friendly, be more active with your children etc...

It's like when someone says I rather smoke and die at 75 vs 80. Sure, but then you spend more time at the doctor's, you get exhaust faster, you are not always fun to be around with because your clothes may smell like cigarette and more.

Re: The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

#70

A few thoughts. It seems that "calorie restriction" is a misleading term. If these funds are correct, CR should be considered the norm/ideal. That means the majority, currently, over-consume. That aside. I wonder if it's also related to modern food, and the production there of. If inflammation is the root of most disease, and CR, I presume, reduces inflammation, then what is it about our foods that trigger so much in…

>then what is it about our foods that trigger so much inflammation?

Huge quantities of sodium and sugar, all kinds of BS half-tested preservatives and additives, growth hormones and the like.

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