It seems that by one and one, my nutritional gurus are attacking caloric restriction. Despite the amazing benefits that it has shown one by one line, David Sinclair, and every other expert are backing up on caloric restriction. The irony of this is not one of them, explain that caloric restriction does not necessarily mean nutritional restriction. I have devised a diet for myself that requires about 12 super foods that I aspire to eat every day. After eating the super foods, I give myself a 4 to 6 hour window to eat, whatever my body tells me whether it be carbs as vegetables and nuts which provides fat and protein and avocados which provide fat and a multitude of nutrients, I have a kale, organic fresh turmeric and beet smoothie four or five times a week. I have to admit it’s disgusting, but I believe it provides an amazing array of micro nutrients That signal to my brain that it is receiving sufficient nutrients therefore the brain signaling to the stomach it requires no nutrients. My diet includes fresh wild salmon or fresh Alaskan cod, 2 to 3 times a week. I endeavor to make a huge salad using as many longer lasting Ables as I can . This with walnuts blueberries flaxseed meal in my smoothie are just about all my stomach can handle throughout the day. My bedtime is 9 o’clock and I won’t eat after 4 The first meal next day, I don’t eat until first meal until 12 o’clock. My only problem with this diet is maintaining weight. I am 69 having had double valve replacement surgery, pancreatitis, and a Double bout of endocarditis leading to an abscess on one of my valves.
Despite this, I am able to do three sets of 60 push-ups eat, and hike 2 miles a day. I am going to start lifting heavy weights at the gym because I hear muscle strength is Paramont too longevity.
If your VO2Max, strength, muscle mass, bone mineral density, and other measures of vitality, are all in the top percentiles, I don’t think anyone is complaining about CR
I keep thinking about CR. I am biased against it because I don’t want to do it. But still I think I am right in my doubts about the benefits of CR for me at this point in my life.
- certainly eating less of an unhealthy set of foods would be beneficial. Less Coke, less French fries, less booze, less fried foods…would have to be health improving / life extending. But I don’t eat that stuff
- certainly losing excess body fat especially visceral fat would be health improving / life extending. But I don’t have much to lose nor do I need to continually reduce my calorie intake to lose it.
- I do think that avoiding a continuous supply of excess energy (mTOR over activation?) to my immune system and other growth mechanisms is a good thing. I should avoid consuming more calories than I need and make sure I consume less than I need sometimes to shut down / slow down these systems periodically. I do this in pulses with my resistance training and rapamycin and periodic fasting.
I just don’t need to slow my metabolism down all the time, or at least I don’t think so.
Maybe metabolism is our burn rate.
Alexander the Great versus Mahatma Gandhi.
Certainly, a yoga teacher thought this when I was young
Paraphrasing from memory “You are allotted a certain number of breaths and heartbeats”
Maybe I was allotted a higher-than-average amount of heartbeats? 
@desertshores I remember a fellow in my first job out of college who believed we only had a fixed number of heart beats, and he didn’t want to waste any of them with exercise. I thought about that for a long time but eventually understood that by exercising (cardio) for 5-10 hours a week, my resting heart rate would be so much lower for the remaining hours that I was saving heart beats with exercise.
Even among the members of the CR forum, there have been discussions about whether CR is an effective way to lengthen life/healthspan, rather than a healthy diet that avoids overweight.
I have the perception that the issue is far more complex than presented, as it usually happens with an hypercomplex system like the human body.
Luigi Fontana, the eminent gerontologist, has been studying human practitioners of CR and is convinced that the relevant biomarkers improve in the direction of better longevity. Valter Longo, another eminent gerontologist, is against caloric restriction and is convinced that it may shorten lifespan.
Even lab mice do not always live longer on CR, it depends on particular strains.
And primates did not provide undisputable evidence of longer lifespan with CR.
I believe in order to be successful at caloric restriction requires a complete change in the way you view food. Food is taught to be pleasurable and we eat what taste good. I have disciplined myself to eat. What is the most nutritious for me and then if I have any room, I will eat whatever I want minus sugar or complex carbs
@dwglinn I assume that somewhere in your successful formula includes a desire to do CR.
i have a desire to lift weights regularly because it feels good (right now), and I get to shape how my body looks in a way I like (medium term), and maybe I get some health benefits include some healthspan and longevity benefits (medium and long term benefits).
Which of those things do you get with CR? My obvious bias is why I don’t want to do CR.
Such a good question! We need a standard chow, like the mice have or like my pigs used to have. Then with the pigs they would raise the protein and do a trial and find out what level of protein gives the most profit. Hard to feed different foods to groups of people for life and see who does best.
A good guess would be to eat lots of mushrooms. Ergothioneine is important. I like animal proteins, so eggs,cheese meat and kefir. I eat mostly deer, ground with beef fat and put beans with it. I also eat whatever I can find in the garden and chase it with glucosamine and chondroitin (they bind lectins that you can get from plant foods).
I think what to eat is whatever you can find as close to nature as you can find it. More important may be what not to eat. Added sugar, grains, vegetable oil, ultraprocessed stuff with additives you can’t pronounce.
Just out of curiosity, are you afraid of phytochemicals? I have found that a diet consisting mostly of raw vegetables, nuts, seeds, and protein I feel my best. I have several foods that I eat every day or five out of six or seven. Avocados, kale, red cabbage, radicchio beets and raw turmeric all organic. After consuming these that turmeric kale and beats, combine in a smoothie with a tablespoon of powdered flaxseed topped off with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of black pepper. I allow myself to eat anything and everything I want after I have consumed these items. I believe the nutrient density rather than the caloric amount signals the brain to signal the stomach that it is full. At least that’s my hypothesis.
BTW, one of the everyday foods, I forgot to mention our mushrooms.
Ha ha, not really, but I did read a couple books by Steve Gundry and learned about lectins. Then I read a book by Lustgarten and now I’m constantly worried about my microbial burden. It turns out some of the worst lectins weaken the junctions in the gut. I think I figured out something about that recently.
So an article previously published here told about how Lutein and Zeazanthin are hard to absorb. They did an experiment where half got the supplement, and half got the same amount in Goji berries. The L and Z were found in the blood of the Goji Berries, not in the blood of the supplemented people. I actually got a free Goji from a nursery and planted it I was so impressed by the study. It’s a weed:
Seriously it was a short stick with a couple leaves, mailed in soggy napkin less than a year ago.
Then I started reading about the Goji and discovered some people call it a super fruit, but Gundry says it has a lectin that weakens your gut junctions. This makes sense because that’s why Lutein and Zeaxanthin can be absorbed better from the fruit than the supplement. There are drug companies that use wheat aglutenins with their drugs to help them to be absorbed because a healthy gut won’t let them through. So this is a real thing, and while the drugs and supplements are getting through so are microbes from your gut.
What I find particularly irritating is the so-called experts are discouraging people from trying strategic caloric restriction. They say that a third of people fail. They say that it is dangerous. They say it’s going to make you angry in other words, hungry and angry. I have found the exact opposite. When one looks at food like medicine and eats those things that he knows his body can assimilate effectively and eliminate effectively his body will respond.
Caloric restriction is the most well validated longevity approach in animals, no question. I think the monkey studies were a little less compelling, but there is little doubt it helps in healthy longevity.
And especially when we are talking about CRON (cr with optimal nutrition), it’s fine.
I tried CRON for a year, here in the silicon valley when the trend first started. One of the CR mailing list members wife started a small business selling the premade meals from Walford’s book and for approximately six months I was eating about 30 percent fewer calories. I lost a lot of weight, had to wear a sweater even in the summer, and was constantly hungry. There are definitely some negative side effects.
I think the reason people/ researchers have given it up is it’s really hard, and likely appeals to a very small portion of the population in the USA.
I now take rapamycin, I have no noticeable side effects and it costs only $10/week.
People can still do CR, and it’s not a terrible idea, it’s just that rapamycin and other small molecules are a lot easier.
And people should probably still do at least some CR, to stay relatively lean.
Would you have the same side effects at a lower deficit?
I don’t know if it’s my age or the supplements that I take, but I practice a moderate calorie-restricted diet based on a calorie calculator that looks at weight, activity, etc.,
and I am never hungry. My current BMI is ~22.
Is there any other measurement which you can use to know whether you are in CR that is more reliable?
I’d look at 4 things:
#1 You should have weight loss if in CR as a long trend, until at a steady state, at a body weight that is likely less than ideal (e.g. you are likely to live longer, but be a bit miserable)
#2 Get an initial whole body composition DEXA and repeat it in a few months, %body fat and visceral fat would be confirmatory.
#3 Adiponectin will typically increase with CR
#4 Leptin levels will decrease with CR
I’d however think the proof of CR is a body weight/composition that is significantly less than starting point, as it would be difficult to have CR that was effective without having these changes.
The other way is simply understanding your BMR (you can have this measured) and look at activity, and see where calories are now, and knock off whatever % and measure everything.
It would seem a miserable existence to me … I like my food! I’m happier mimicking it with Rapamycin … and I’ll take what I get from that.
@DrFraser I get the feeling that you are discussing classic, “full blown”, 25-30% CR? I agree with you on huger, psychological cost, etc for that.
What are your thoughts on mild CR though? Perhaps of a similar magnitude to what people actually ended up doing in the Yale run, NIH funded human clinical trial with results published in multiple Nature journals?
That seems to be similar to the degree of CR that is part of Bryan Johnson’s and Mike Lustgarten’s diets and neither of them seem to be under muscled.
See for example the papers on this chain:
I guess the issue is whether your believe prospectively that these changes in “Epigenetic/Biological Age” will actually be predictive of real outcomes.
For example, if these changes are real - then if they go back to eating their usual diet - I’d bet the changes in age will reverse … and there will be no gain? So does the change in age require the same behavior ongoing for the remainder of one’s life to sustain the benefit?
There is a lot of unclear detail here. My concern is, that any short term intervention (and we’ve seen many) that can suddenly improve one’s Epigenetic age is unlikely to be real, which calls into question how to interpret those.
So I’d guess the 2 years will improve rate of aging during those 2 years, yielding some days or maybe a month or two additional life.
I’m happier taking my Rapa … albeit, I used to weigh a fair bit more and knocked off a lot of weight 2 years ago, so I guess I’m relatively on CR now as compared to when I had another 30 kgs on me …