I see that some of you are focused on calorie restriction. What would you say if it was said that on a LC diet, this is not necessary. Atkins is one form of LC dieting but of course there are variations.

I am on a strict (or severe) LC diet and not for the purposes of longevity. Simply, I desire to maintain the best of health for as long as possible (and to continue loving my wife too) and LC dieting appears to be producing the results. Previously, from the late 60s when Dr Richard Mackarness (prior to Atkins) was on the throne I took-up LC dieting (known then as the stone-age diet) for weight loss purposes and over the intervening years returned to it to maintain weight (except for the period when I was a vegetarian). Over the past 6 years I've been on it more frequently and with the blossoming research that it is currently receiving and the beneficial results that are arising from this, I have decided to attempt to see how long I can remain on strict LC and to observe the results.

Other than from full-cream milk I do not take any other known carbs and have not done so for almost 4 months. It has not produced any adverse effects. I feel good but then I have always felt good. One difference is that I do have more energy. My blood sugar level, which prior to LC was in the prediabetic level, is now lowered to within the normal range. My BP is around the 115/65 range. I have no difficulty doing anything physical.

Saturated fat is reputed to be nutritious and gives flavour to meals. Saturated fat has also a high satiety level and the more taken the less hungry one will be. Protein, of course, is essential. Think of this (but few will agree with it) if we eat red meat preferably from meadow fed animals, including the bone marrow and organs, then our bodies will be getting all the nutrition it requires. My diet consists of read meats, saturated fats, eggs, hard cheese, milk, and double cream; that's all; and I am never hungry. I take the usual beveridges of tea, coffee, and cocoa (made from plain powder).

Initially there can be a problem with constipation but that soon passes. Coconut can assist in overcoming this problem. Brain fog at the very early stages and a desire for carbs can be another problem but this can be overcome with l-glutamine.

Who knows, tomorrow, I may be dead, but, today, healthwise, I help the elderly across the road!

Saturated fat in the diet is essential and so too is red meat. The balance between red meat (protein) and fat is the key to weight loss. If the saturated fat is too high in relation to the protein, weight will be maintained. If the protein is as high as the fat intake then weight-loss is more likely to occur. It is the balance between those two that matters, that is, after the carbs are removed. The only problem with LC dieting is its unsocial aspect when it comes to dining out.

Counting calories does not come into the equation and neither does longevity. Good health and having that 'feel good' factor everyday, does.

Let us do some math first. let us assume that your ideal weight is 150 lbs and the amount of calories necessary to supply your energy needs is 2500 calories.

Now if you force yourself to eat 2000 calories a day you will be giving your body 500 calories less than it needs. Mathematically, you should be losing 1 lb each 7 days. If you maintain this situation for a year and a half you will lose more than half of your weight and will not be able to survive if you continue.

How about if you reduce your calorie intake by merely 100 calories? You will reach the same critical weight in less than 7 1/2 years. How about if you reduce it by only 25 calories / day? Same thing should happen in less than 30 years. So, mathematically, even the smallest amount of reduction of your calorie intake will take you to death one day!

I know you don't notice that reducing your calorie intake can take you that far, if it can take you anywhere! So something is wrong and I can tell you what it is.

Your body understands that he is the boss. He expects you to do nothing except obeying his commands. How much body fat you should have is determined and maintained by himself. The only thing he expects you to do, is to eat whenever he makes you feel hungry.

So each time you force yourself to eat less at one meal, your body tries to make you more hungry at the next meal in order to compensate. If you resist, it will make you more hungry the next day or the next week. If you can still resist, it will use more of its powers to maintain your weight at the weight he has set for you. Here are some of these powers:

(1) He can over-digest or under-digest food as he sees necessary.
(2) He can change your metabolism to any amount he wants.
(3) He can use major part of your calorie intake to make body fat with leaving you with less energy to live with.

So, eating less for life time is useless. Eating considerably less for a short time (low calorie diet) can make your body decide to use your body fat for energy so you lose weight. Don't let that make you think that you can ever be in command. There is a historic reason for that and once you end your low calorie diet your body will restore your fat back.

The only two tricks which you can use to make your body assigns less weight for you are low carbing and excercising. Let us stop here before this post gets too long.

When Dr. Atkins started this diet, the allowed carb intake was only 5 carbs. He has been criticized badly for not telling people to eat vegetables. He then changed the carb allowance to 20 and later he developed the 4-phase Atkins plan.

In the past, some of our ancestors must have lived in areas where the only food they could eat was meat. So, the human body must be capable to live on meat only diet just like lions and tigers do.

I lived that lifestyle for years, and trust me, twenty extra years of irritability, forgetfulness, exhaustion, fainting and stealing candy from children's Halloween bags in starving desperation is really something I don't want... They can have those 20 years!

For me, I am back and forth between CR and always on LC. LC works a lot better but it is hard for me to want to eat because of guilt, lol. But I don't see how starving yourself can make you live longer, lol. Deprivation just isn't healthy. Even though I am a hypocrit but I am just saying. I know it isn't healthy, but I do it anyways.

I felt like GARBAGE when I wasn't on LC, I couldn't imagine any other way of living. I try the low fat and low carb, so that works, I get pretty tired, but that's ok. My job and life are not a high impact one, so being tired isn't so bad.

I think on discovery channel or maybe PBS.

Anyway, these people eat at least three times a day, and eat high nutrient value foods. It's neither low carb nor vegan, but highly nutrious.

Calories depend on gender, age and activity level.

Only the women complained about being hungry, but only occasinally.

All lost weight. All said they felt great (except the hungry women). Only the men looked kind of emaciated.

They do eat protein and fat.

This is based on a rat study that found nutrient dense, less caloric feeding increased lifespan signficiantly in rats. So, if not rats...why not humans.

I find it intriguing and I believe it. oxygenation is a large part of why we age/get disease. The less we eat..the less oxygenation goes on. The only trouble is, we aren't programmed that way. We are programmed to survive.

Here is a really informative site about calorie restriction.
http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics...restriction.cfm

The thing i have found is that the point is not to starve yourself but to try and fill yourself up while taking in the proper amount of nutrients with as few calories as possile. This can be done by eating lots of veggies, fish , lean meats, some nuts and fruits. The rationale is that burning excess calories release free radicals. There are some other theories as well. Scientists are really studying this phenomenon and there have been studies with humans (mainly the japanese) This is found to be the only proven method to expand life. Some one earlier mentioned that they have only tested animals from birth but they have actually done studies testing cr animals form birth vs. cr animals from midlife (rats i think) both rats lived substantially longer than the control group, proving that even starting cr in your 40's can affect your lifespan. Also the website above does not recommend restricting your children's calories
The website above doesnt promote vegetarianism and in fact says vegetarians should not try and do cr. It mostly promotes a paleo way of eating and then says to try and keep proportions of The Zone 30-30-40.
I tried this last summer and lived the whole summer on </=1500 a day that consisted of fruits, fish, a lot of sauteed onions,a little yogurt and some popcorn at night if i needed to crunch on something. I never felt better in my life. I lost about 20 lbs at a slow and steady pace and had tons of energy but it became too hard and i lost my motivation when the winter came because there were no good fruits available. I plan to do this again soon and try to plan better for next winter like maybe more fish and meat.
I think the main reason people dont like the sound of this is because at first it does sound like an accepted version of anorexia but in truth you are not cutting cals that much and your focus is on getting the right amount of nutrients in as little cals as you can. When i was 14 I had a small bout with anorexia and i remember my sole focus was on eating as few cals as i could, exercising as much as i could and losing as much weight as i could without passing out. This is in no way the goal of cr.

Aimee

This certainly would be much easier to do in the summer for me, when there are abundant fresh fruits and vegs.

I guess it would kind of be like the paleo diet, except that the only meat they ate on the one I watched was an occasional piece of fish.

I think some of you have got the wrong idea about Calorie Restriction. There is around 70 years of research on it and it's proven to work all the time... Before making an opinion on it you should try reading some books or papers on it. Just google some or buy books on it, then you could possibly make an educated opinion?


I follow CRON (calorie Restriction With Optimal Nutrition) and everything is steadily improving with time (I'll provide a graph). The idea is to get the most nutrition out the least amount of calories, to get all nutrients required and not to become deficient in any, regular monitoring of health via methods we can do at home and routine blood tests.

My experience with CR has been really easy... One would think that I'd be hungry all the time but it isn't the case at all. I eat Breakfast, Raw Salad for lunch, streamed/boiled vegetables for dinnner. I usually include some protein with these meals from Chicken, turkey, fish or Whey Protein powder. I take various supplements but don't megadose... this is to ensure I get a few nutrients that I could easily become deficient in.

Weight loss is inevitible with CR and the idea is to lose weight as slowly as possible... research has shown that dropping too quickly could shorten life span. There are some theories now that life span may actually be more to do with metabolic stability.

I've only been doing Calorie Restriction for around 6 months now and recently started to monitor whats going on carefuly just incase... But all me and my doctor are seeing is good benifits from doing CR.

Believe me, the majority of people doing CR know what they are doing and are very careful about how they go about CR. They didn't just rush into the diet... people generally do some research before going into something like CR. I researched it for a couple of months prior to starting.

-At the moment my Ratio of total Cholesterol to HDL is 3.3 and I am aiming to get it better in the coming months.
-I would like to slow down weight loss so I have increased my calorie intake slightly.

To the person doing a bit of math on weight loss... You do realize that as you lose weight you will require less calories to maintain a certain weight? At some point your weight loss will level off.

I hope that you will take a look at all the research on CR available on the net.

CR effects health in many ways...

Improved Insulin sensitivity
Lower average circulating levels of glucose
Increased Maintenance of DNA
Reducation in expression of oncogenes
Reduced Decline in sexual activity with age
Lowered Blood pressure
Reduced risk of arthritis
Improved mental functioning / reduced risk of AD and PD

There more! just look them up

Human studies have shown that CR is the only method that reduces the risk of so many age related diseases, results from monkeys are promising too and results from short term studies on humans are excellent.

Here are some links

http://mednewsarchive.wustl.edu/med...6256E76005D51F6

http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_inform...10404heart.html



I have a few blood results coming shortly

And maybe you, too, could do a little more research.
Have a look at this thread.

Perhaps you could research low carbing for a change? You'll be amazed at just how healthy a lifestyle it is.

Rosebud

Thank you for pointing me to that thread.

All the various low-carb plans with which I am familar stress eating high micro-nutrient foods and avoiding overeating. If one is eating properly low-carb, monitoring of health is not needed as the proper eating takes care of the numerous health problems related to eating high-carb foods.

I guess according to some thoughts I must have an ED then since I cut out Dairy, sugar, and starch, and if I hit 1,000 cals a day I'm doing good

When I was extremely fat I ate like 1200-1500 (on a VERY HUNGRY day) a day and stayed the same weight...

Just as a note...

There have been numerous observances within the scientific community regarding Low carb diets and why they work. One of the reasons frequently discussed is that, while eating low-carb, people experience a significant reduction in appetite, which in turn results in eating less throughout the course of any day. It's believed that the LC woe works not just because of its fat-burning strategy, but also because of the reduced calories people consume while following it. So...low-carbers...for the most part...are reducing calorie intake whether they realize it or not. Basically losing fat by inadvertantly incorporating two weight loss strategies. Kinda interesting.

There's another thought, one I still think is significant, is that insulin wreaks havoc. Both low carbers and CRONites would be doing that.

It is interesting!