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Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#11

Post by WatchDog »

jackvalentine wrote: post #9
zeamaize wrote: post #5

This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.

Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…

Yeah it's interesting, I find myself choosing a potentially less healthy food option simply because it's nutrition information is more readily available and easily quantifiable.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#12

Post by nabla9 »

I read from somewhere that even 16 hours is enough for the benefits of Intermittent fasting.

Has anyone done studies with Buddhist monks in Vipassana tradition? They have rule not to eat after midday. Obviously many of them cheat different ways but if you can find the hardcorce monks and monasteries, you would have several thousands (possibly tens of thousands) subjects who have already been following the regime for several decades.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#13

Post by jaggederest »

jackvalentine wrote: post #9
zeamaize wrote: post #5

This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.

Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…

I calorie counted for years.

You take things apart and weigh them, or make good estimates based on total weight. You don't need to be very accurate, anything within ~25% error is fine. You just need to be very consistent.

The USDA has a great database that provides you all the raw materials (and many of the packaged composite items) to use, and once you've eaten a thing and recorded the values, you can simply reuse them infinitely. One ham sandwich, if you're consistent about it, is a given calorie intake.

The key is what that lets you do: It lets you analyze your intake versus body composition and weight, determine whether you're eating too much, too little, or a bad ratio, and then make slow changes over time to fix that problem.

If you're like me right now, you're overweight. Okay, look at your calorie count, reduce it by say 5% or 10%, wait a month, see how your body composition changes, and reanalyze.

With this method you don't need to be dead-on-balls-accurate with your calorie counting, only consistent and reasonable.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#14

Post by cardine »

jackvalentine wrote: post #9
zeamaize wrote: post #5

This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.

Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…

I have a scale in my kitchen and I weigh everything. For most restaurant food you can look up the calorie information really easily.

So for me it is a very small minority of food that I can't get an exact number on and I've been weighing and entering things enough that for those edge cases I can usually do a decent job at eyeballing serving sizes.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#15

Post by chrisfosterelli »

jackvalentine wrote: post #9
zeamaize wrote: post #5

This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.

Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…

If you go to the corner store and get a sandwich, just put a rough estimate of a sandwich based on the sandwich options in your app and what you think seems right. You learn to make smart estimates when you start counting the calories on everything. Even then, washy estimates are just fine, just put them on the conservative side (ie, overestimate when you have to estimate).

Calories are never an exact numerical science anyways, even if you did weigh everything precisely. You really don't care if you have a margin of error of 50-200 calories if you are lower than your goal most days. You still loose weight.

I've been using MyFitnessPal on and off throughout the years and have always been able to consistently gain or loose weight (depending what I am aiming for) even when relying highly on estimates. This is just my experience though.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#16

Post by df3 »

All of the participants in this study were over the age of 65. I'm curious what the effects of fasting would be for someone younger? I'm 26 and want to do everything I can to improve my lifespan. Most longevity research seems to target older generations.

Do I have to starve myself now or is there an age where the benefits really start to kick in?

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#17

Post by flat6turbo »

jackvalentine wrote: post #9
zeamaize wrote: post #5

This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.

Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…

> If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate.

uh, why not? i'll do it right now for you off the top of my head, which anyone can do after they look them up for a while.

100g of white bread = ~ 250 calories / 2 tbsp of mayo = ~ 200 calories / 4 oz of deli turkey = ~ 100 calories / 1 tbsp mustard = ~ 10 calories / 2 slices (2 oz.) of cheese = ~ 240 calories / 2 slices of tomato = ~ 20 calories / 1 slice of lettuce = ~ 5 calories / 1 bag of chips = ~ 280 calories (probably on the bag)

there. 1105 calories total. is that perfect? no, but is that useful? yes, a whole lot more useful than "it's too hard, so i might as well not do it."

as an aside: this is why people are fat. a sandwich and a bag of chips is insulin-spiking can easily be over 1k calories, and most people would probably guess it's 300 calories, and 'not fattening', whatever that means.

throw in a soda and you've got a recipe (literally) for disaster.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#18

Post by simplicio »

zeamaize wrote: post #5

This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.

Eh, I'm kinda skeptical education is the issue. Most people are exposed to the basic ideas of calories, most processed foods (and lately, most restaurants) have calories printed in relatively easy to find places, and with a little practice, guesstimating your calorie consumption is pretty easy even if your not exact.

It's just mentally hard to do. Like sleep, sex and other physical needs, food is wired pretty deeply in our heads, and changing our behavior in regards to it takes a lot of mental and emotional effort. And most people have a lot of other things more immediately important in their lives that take mental effort, so they eat more than they should, even if they know the consequences.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#19

Post by hourislate »

nabla9 wrote: post #12

I read from somewhere that even 16 hours is enough for the benefits of Intermittent fasting. Has anyone done studies with Buddhist monks in Vipassana tradition? They have rule not to eat after midday. Obviously many of them cheat different ways but if you can find the hardcorce monks and monasteries, you would have several thousands (possibly tens of thousands) subjects who have already been following the regime for…

Joe Rogan had Dr Rhonda Patrick on and they spoke about Time restricted eating and she referenced some studies that if you keep your eating within a 10 hour window without doing anything else, you will lose weight and gain lean muscle mass. You will also improve long term memory recall. Facinating stuff, it's toward the end of the interview around 2:27.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxM_CLsvieE

He also had Gary Taubes on and that was a treat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ffswUVoxA

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#20

Post by dualogy »

rubicon33 wrote: post #7

I have long believed, due entirely to anecdotal evidence, that restricting calories and eating less is one of the best ways to add years to your life. It seems that eating is inherently stressful for the body. Though obviously necessary, eating is something that we should strive to minimize. Any more than necessary, and the stress induced from digestion, and inflammatory molecules, damages the body and undermines our…

> It seems that eating is inherently stressful for the body.

Broadly speaking, somewhat accurate, but in the details it can vary greatly. Digestability, resources required to be mobilized for certain foods vs others (enzymes, how much stomach acid & how often etc), and certainly insulin among other "signaling hormones" are crucial factors. In mammals insulin especially is almost always a quite potent "stress/damage" agent ---observe the capacity of human pets to develop diabetes (not exactly something a wolf in the wild could ever catch, even when absent abundance of prey animals munching some berries or fallen apples in the applicable very short season)--- even wild pigs are nowhere near as fat as our agri-breeds, and practically all mammals given abundance of their preferred natural food choices, eat a high-fat diet (in herbivores this is effected by a radically more potent microbiome of bacteria and other microorganisms converting cellulose and most-not-all other carbohydrate into chiefly short-chain fatty acids, plus synthesization of some vitamins/etc for that mammal) --- my point? "Eating is doubly stressful for humans" if we consider the foods we have invented since the dawn of agriculture, namely (A) quickly and easily digested carbohydrate loads (B) available year-round, and (C) 24/7 --- a real triple-whammy for the mammal. OTOH we're quite robust mammals (systemic damage only really gets noticed/troublesome with age! it's amazing the assaults human bodies can handle for so many decades, whether we're talking foods or other substances) on the whole IMHO and we're quite a bit "better at fasting" in a way (we can utilize more ketones for longer and more efficiently esp our brains, no other mammal could fast as long as we can, indeed if you're 200-300+lbs with a handy source of just-the-water-soluble-vitamins you can easily fast a year, as an interesting pre-1971 study investigated before "ethics guidelines for research" were.. "cultivated") which could well mean that it has less pronounced / fewer of such "benefits" as is the case for MICE!

Well now.. what was my point just now..

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