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The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

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

#161

Post by hellofunk »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #132
ams6110 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably better to skip breakfast and dinner, and eat only at mid-day. You're still generally active for hours after the mid-day meal, so you don't have the tendency to gorge and then curl up on the couch or go to bed.

In my experience the only intermittent fadting pattern that works is to eat your food later. If you try to eat 2000 calorie lunches, you'll have major lethargy in the afternoon and insomnia from hunger in the evening. Better to use hunger as a driver during the day, then gorge and go to sleep at night.

> Better to use hunger as a driver during the day, then gorge and go to sleep at night.

Is this just a guess you are making, or do you have research or citations to back up this advice?

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

#162

Post by chiefalchemist »

JamesBarney wrote: post #136
chiefalchemist wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But isn't it odd that our diets cause information in the first place. In an evolutionary way, that feels odd. So, then I have to wonder, is this further incrimination of the modern diet? And lifestyle? That is, is CR simple a proxy / correlation for putting less (modern) shit in your body?

But CR doesn't work because our diets cause inflammation. The CR was discovered in worms, and they're eating the same diet they always did. That is, is CR simple a proxy / correlation for putting less (modern) shit in your body? No, you can take a drug rapamycin that has the exact same effects as CR, even if you are putting the exact same amount of food in your body. The benefits of CR are not caused because food is…

I suspect CR speaks to your gut more than you body. A couple months back there was an article (somewhere) on the benefits of a 3 day fast. CR feels like a slightly different version of that.

And, best I can tell, if it goes in your mouth than it's about your gut (bacteria). Any downstream reactions are communicated via those bacteria.

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

#163

Post by stefs »

hanoz wrote: post #124
listentojohan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have thought about the fasting as well, but isn't it basically the same as skipping breakfast?

Fasting is by definition skipping break fast.

technically correct and also not very helpful :)

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

#164

Post by jjt-yn_t »

stevewillows wrote: post #41

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 adapted a similar pattern but not so much by choice but had to reverse course from ' a new one on me' [1] , in other words persons knowingly gathering to eat food together at set times. [ breakfast...]
half-year instance where not only the food was prepaid, but shouts were actually done that I was remiss in fully joining in... [1] set of diseases

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

#166

Post by eneveu »

Cyph0n wrote: post #84
dpark wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of the same benefits of calorie restriction may be achievable through intermittent fasting, which is much easier for people to follow. I've been experimenting with a daily 16 hour fast Citation? I can't get the NIH study to load, but the other two are wildly different from 16/8 IF. IF proponents like to look at alternate day fasting or periodic weekly fasting and claim evidence for the effectiveness of 16/8 fa…

How about skipping breakfast and lunch, as done by Muslims during Ramadan? In general, Islam recommends voluntary fasting for 2 days every week (traditionally Monday and Thursday).

The issue with Ramadan is that they eat at night. It is indeed intermittent fasting, but it is not as good as intermittent fasting where you eat during the day, because eating is related to peripheral oscillators of our circadian rhythm.

I heard about that a few weeks ago while listening to this podcast by Dr. Rhonda Patrick: http://tim.blog/2017/05/04/smart-drugs-fasting-and-fat-loss/

This article might also be of interest: http://minimalwellness.com/mealtiming/

As well as this video interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-eqJDQ2nU

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

#167

Post by ashark »

moochachana wrote: post #156
exolymph wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of aggressive diet is usually followed by gaining back the weight.

I have to agree with this. However it's not because it's aggressive. It's because he's recommending eating at all. When you eat very little, your body's metabolism drops to match the new standard energy intake. A much preferable recommendation would be to simply water fast for the same time. Lose even more weight (mostly water weight), then eat normally. Much more natural in the context of evolution. Periods of eatin…

I've found that I can manage a day without taking in any calories, if I'm willing to feel really tired and have a moderate headache by ~1pm, and be horribly brain-fogged and useless by ~2pm. I've got a job and kids to take care of—I can't afford to have days like that very often. The hunger's not a problem—it's that I feel rather ill by mid-afternoon.

FWIW I rarely eat breakfast, so I guess I'm usually doing the (lame, IMO) "16/8" fasting pattern, though I'm skeptical that has any benefit.

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

#168

Post by jm2721 »

tarsinge wrote: post #158
jm2721 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I hear the 'basic physics' or 'first law of thermodynamics' argument in favor of CICO I can't help but remember the joke about 'spherical cows': "Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so a farmer wrote to the local university to ask for help. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars…

I'm not saying eating 1500 calories of sucrose is not dangerous, but from an energy point of view yes it's the same as eating 1500 calories of cheese. At the end of the day if your energy expenditure is 2000cal your body will have to burn 500cal. Macronutrients in this case make a small but negligible difference. It's anecdotic but as an hobbyist bodybuilder tracking calories everyday I can confirm that my weight fol…

From an energy point of view, it's true that 1500 calories of sugar is the same as 1500 calories of cheese. It's also the same as 1500 calories of sawdust. In a lab, you can burn each of these samples under a bomb calorimeter and they'll all read the same thing. There's no debating the scientific definition of a calorie as a unit of energy. My argument is that it's extremely disingenous to just say a calorie is a calorie when it comes to a living organism, because the metabolic pathways for each different macronutrient are so different. It doesn't really matter how much energy a food has, if your body can't use the energy contained therein.

The moment that you accept that macronutrient composition is very important for health and body composition, you acknowledge that in biological system a calorie is not a calorie. If I want to lose weight, I don't want someone to tell me that CICO so I can just eat whatever as long as I stay under x calories, because as you rightfully pointed out some foods are more energy dense than others, cause fewer cravings, and don't spike your blood sugar. With CICO, I can lose weight but get fatty liver disease, or I can lose weight but lose muscle while increasing visceral fat, since fat weighs less than muscle. These are terrible outcomes. People want to lose weight to be healthier and look better; what's the point of losing the weight if your risk factors for metabolic syndrome go up and you still look fat in the mirror?

For the anecdotal evidence you provided, I think it's not as simple as how you've portrayed it, because your body can be in two energy burning modes, glucose burning or fat burning. If you eat more fat while in glucose burning mode (which is what most people are in), it will just get stored as fat and yes you will gain as much weight as the amount of calories you ate. In so called 'fat burning' mode, your body will increase its metabolism to burn off the excess fat. Likewise, if you're in fat burning mode and you eat more carbs, they'll just get stored as fat. This is also anecdotal evidence (sources: https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/who-needs-to-avoid-fa..., https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/smash-the-fat-calorie...), because unfortunately we don't really have good nutritional studies about this.

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

#169

Post by godshatter »

codingdave wrote: post #108
pors wrote: 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 doesn't mean that "more calories in than calories out" is wrong... it means that "calories out" is FAR more complex than people give it credit for. We don't even know all the variables yet. Taubs' writings do bring to light some of our unknowns. We keep finding more variables for the equation, but that doesn't mean the equation is wrong... just incomplete.

Not to mention that if the "more calories in than calories out" people aren't measuring the calories in their excrement or (in the case of diabetics) the amount of glucose in their urine, then they aren't getting the complete picture anyway regardless of what gets stored where. They would also have to factor in how many calories are burned to process each type of food.

As you say, it appears to be more complex than just watching how much you take in.

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

#170

Post by Qub3d »

dirkg wrote: post #127

It is pretty ironic and sad that following a healthy diet, including CR, is much harder in Western nations and esp in the US. - Processed food costs less than fresh food. - Multiple generations of people have been conditioned to eat processed and junk food. - People believe in the myth that 'cooking takes too long' - People are lazy and don't want to spend any time on cooking/food even when living a life of luxury co…

If you're concerned about the "Western Diet", Michael Pollan wrote an interesting treatise on it, called In Defense of Food.

His arguments are very similar to yours.

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