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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

#181

Post by Confusion »

listentojohan wrote: post #78
cyrusshepard wrote: post #37

Good overview of the benefits of calorie restriction, but doesn't touch on two of the most important schools of thought of the past couple years. 1. Calorie restriction is almost impossible for most humans to follow long term 2. 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 (…

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

No, it usually isn't. See my upthread response to dpark.

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

#182

Post by Confusion »

dpark wrote: post #104
chiefalchemist wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Fair enough. Allow me to clarify. I was speaking of norm for the body, not norm of what most people do. In any case, my point was "restriction" isn't a restriction if you're over-consuming to begin with. It's a language/communication issue. Telling people to reduce (when they think they're normal") is, imho, the wrong message. We've normalized obesity by, to some extent, allowing people to believe obesity is perf…

> I was speaking of norm for the body, not norm of what most people do. In any case, my point was "restriction" isn't a restriction if you're over-consuming to begin with. It's a language/communication issue. Telling people to reduce (when they think they're normal") is, imho, the wrong message. We've normalized obesity by, to some extent, allowing people to believe obesity is perfectly normal. Almost no one actually…

Causations are not necessarily one way. Inflammation causes disease, disease causes obesity (unhealthy people tend to move less), obesity causes more inflammation. Start anywhere in the circle.

  I don't believe there's actually any evidence for the 
  claim that inflammation is the root issue for most disease
I quote from a seven year old issue of Nature insight (http://www.nature.com/nature/supplements/insights/inflammati...):

  Inflammation forms the basis of many physiological and 
  pathological processes. Much is known about how 
  inflammation is initiated, develops and resolves over the 
  short term. But less is known about the causes and 
  consequences of chronic inflammation, which underlies many 
  human diseases. Recent studies have extended our 
  understanding of chronic inflammation and the cross-talk 
  that occurs between inflammatory responses and other 
  physiological and pathological
This is common knowledge and has been for a long time.

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

#183

Post by Confusion »

dpark wrote: post #178
chiefalchemist wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: inflammation Perhaps. But do you have a better term for "completely fucking over your normal body processes"? I was using inflammation as a generic term for "disrupting the baseline." Sorry. You're correct. I'll try to be more particular next time. Thanks.

> I was using inflammation as a generic term for "disrupting the baseline." You've lumped literally all illnesses together (anything that disrupts the baseline) and referred to them as "inflammation". This is exactly what I'm criticizing. Inflammation in this context is a meaningless term used to give an appearance of medicine to pseudoscience.

Inflammation go hand in hand with 'a disrupted baseline'. It is usually the cause of part of the disruption and the symptom of another part of the disruption. So it really isn't that unwarranted to use it as a synonym.

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

#184

Post by vlasev »

oh_sigh wrote: post #54
vlasev wrote: 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.

Hmm. If food is not waiting for you when you wake up, then you should sleep some more!

Not surprisingly, I don't have proof of what I said, but I've read in articles and studies that breakfast (and meals in general) tend to anchor your circadian rhythms (Although, light is a stronger signal). I might have extrapolated from reading about fixing your rhythms after experiencing jet lag and also from my own experience.

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

#185

Post by dpark »

Confusion wrote: post #182
dpark wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was speaking of norm for the body, not norm of what most people do. In any case, my point was "restriction" isn't a restriction if you're over-consuming to begin with. It's a language/communication issue. Telling people to reduce (when they think they're normal") is, imho, the wrong message. We've normalized obesity by, to some extent, allowing people to believe obesity is perfectly normal. Almost no one actually…

Causations are not necessarily one way. Inflammation causes disease, disease causes obesity (unhealthy people tend to move less), obesity causes more inflammation. Start anywhere in the circle. I don't believe there's actually any evidence for the claim that inflammation is the root issue for most disease I quote from a seven year old issue of Nature insight ( http://www.nature.com/nature/supplements/insights/inflamm…

I criticized referring to inflammation as the root of most diseases. I did not say inflammation does not play a factor in many diseases.

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

#186

Post by dpark »

Confusion wrote: post #183
dpark wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was using inflammation as a generic term for "disrupting the baseline." You've lumped literally all illnesses together (anything that disrupts the baseline) and referred to them as "inflammation". This is exactly what I'm criticizing. Inflammation in this context is a meaningless term used to give an appearance of medicine to pseudoscience.

Inflammation go hand in hand with 'a disrupted baseline'. It is usually the cause of part of the disruption and the symptom of another part of the disruption. So it really isn't that unwarranted to use it as a synonym.

It is unwarranted. To use "inflammation" as a synonym for "disease" is to willfully imply that inflammation is the root of every disease. This is inaccurate and it misguides people. If you have type 2 diabetes, you probably have some inflammation. But that's unlikely the root cause or the thing to worry about. Obesity and sedentary lifestyle are better causes to attack.

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

#187

Post by pascalxus »

exolymph wrote: post #149
pascalxus wrote: post #147

Due to social conditioning, It's not commonly known, but you don't actually need to eat every day. You could lose 10 lbs in just a couple of weeks of not eating any calories, but I would recommend eating 1 lbs of spinach and maybe a combination of other green, red and orange vegetables: that will keep your calorie count under 200 for the day. Drink lots of water. I know the hunger will drive you crazy in the first fe…

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

Of course you will gain the weight back, if your eating above your daily calorie burn - that has nothing to do with aggressive weight loss. You just need to keep your weekly average low enough to not gain the weight back. Depending on your metabolism and your bodies "set point" you might only need 3-5 days a month of this to maintain your current weight.

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

#188

Post by fibbery »

jm2721 wrote: post #129
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?

So, for your first question, no, we didn't evolve for the food we need to survive to cause inflammation. In the past, ancient humans had no diabetes or cancer, and ate mostly protein, fats (saturated and monounsaturated), high fiber vegetables, and roughly a 1:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. So it seems more likely that our relatively recent addition of sugar, vegetable oils and highly refined carbohydrate…

"In the past, ancient humans had no diabetes or cancer"

Do you have a source for this?

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

#189

Post by findoer »

Swizec wrote: post #81
cyrusshepard wrote: post #37

Good overview of the benefits of calorie restriction, but doesn't touch on two of the most important schools of thought of the past couple years. 1. Calorie restriction is almost impossible for most humans to follow long term 2. 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 (…

> have seen small improvements in my energy and general well-being FWIW I have moved to eating small meals every 3 hours a few years ago and have seen huge improvements in my energy and general well-being. The most key of those meals is the midnight meal that ensures I wake up full of energy and ready to go. Nutrition is tricky.

How are your teeth/gums? From what I understand, one of the major factors in tooth decay is frequency of eating, since teeth remineralize between meals, and frequent eating gives them less chance to do so.

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

#190

Post by caub »

orangecat wrote: post #46
caub wrote: post #8

if people could also consume less, stop having useless pets, stop smoking, etc.. that would help increasing the life expectancy on this planet too

Pet ownership is generally believed to increase life expectancy, for example http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/live-longer-with-a-pet...

I mean the expectancy of the planet, not of their stupid owners
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