I keep hearing "low carb diets are CR diets"

No they aren't. The appetite suppression that happens when overweight and losing weight is transient. If body fat is too high then yes appetite is suppressed but when body fat is reduced to low levels appetite comes back. I ate 1900 cals today and I'm a sedentary female. CR? Hell no.

Whoa,
I came across this article on Okinawa:



June 7, 2006

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwa...0dm024000c.html

I can't remember who, but I read somewhere about a people that ate very little and had a very high level of activity (some kind of nomadic society) who had a record of unusually long lifespans in their culture. Maybe there's some truth to the theory.

The thing is....how many calories are too little? We've been programmed to eat so much, that maybe we just don't recognize a normal amount. Look at the portions you get a restaurants. Sometimes it's enough for three people. So eating 1400 calories a day may seem like its starving to some people, but really, its probably just the right amount for most average sized adults. America needs to downsize in a big way.
(however, the one meal a day thing doesn't sound healthy at all)

1400 is not a normal amount of food for any normal sized adult.

Maybe a 5ft 85 year old woman, maybe...

"The traditional okinawa diet" which only the elders are sticking to. The under 50's are eating more western diet, very high in processed foods and high in fat, very little vegetables and less whole grains. The okies have been de-Calorie restricting since the 1960's with only the very eldest sticking to the old diet and remaining healthy. The okinawa centenarians mostly ate pork on special occasions (Like I eat turkey on christmas dinner). Some of the researchers now live in okinawa since they started their study over 25 years ago... they know what people eat and don't eat.

only 3% of their diet is poultry/meat/eggs btw (VERY LITTLE)

page 68-69 okinawa program

"Yes, even at 95 yukinsan still works. He is a consultant in a company that publishes educational materials. He walks 3/4 a mile to work everyday, then after some desk work hits the streets against on busines calls, maing the rounds of the five or six bookstores in town. He says it stimulates his mind and body.
Yukinsans father died at 88, relatively young by okinawa standards, and his last few years were not good ones. Yukinsan says that this taught him an important lesson. "My father loved eating pork and died young," he explains. My mother didn't eat meat and was youthful and energetic until 102. So thirty years ago I started eating more fish and vegetables and less meat. I haven't spent a day in hospital since then!"


If you want information, get it from the actual 25 year study done on these people. Okinawa is only a small place, 1.3 million people and 600 centenarians, so the researchers had a chance to visit most of them.

from that article you posted

[QUOTE=Whoa182page 68-69 okinawa program

"Yes, even at 95 yukinsan still works. He is a consultant in a company that publishes educational materials. He walks 3/4 a mile to work everyday, then after some desk work hits the streets against on busines calls, maing the rounds of the five or six bookstores in town. He says it stimulates his mind and body.
Yukinsans father died at 88, relatively young by okinawa standards, and his last few years were not good ones. Yukinsan says that this taught him an important lesson. "My father loved eating pork and died young," he explains. My mother didn't eat meat and was youthful and energetic until 102. So thirty years ago I started eating more fish and vegetables and less meat. I haven't spent a day in hospital since then!"

That's all well and good for Yukinsan, but other Centenarians credit MEAT and/or dairy products (full-fat)with their longevity:

http://english.people.com.cn/200403...07_136786.shtml

http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categorie..._longevity.html

Woo, better control of blood sugar produces less of an insulin fueled hunger rollercoaster. It's one of the most consistently reported effects of longterm (over two years) low carbing on this site alone. One of the most gratifying effects of over four years very low carbing for me personally is that I eat far fewer calories without any particular effort, yet have continued to replace fat with muscle very gradually, again with no particular effort.

I'm sorry, I just think you're wrong on this. Low carb diets do indeed tend to be lower cal diets without any of the obsessive calorie counting that seems to be the hallmark of high carb CRonies.

I was never obese. But I was constantly hungry eating low fat high carb. I'm sure I could have 'forced' myself to limit calories, but I'm not particularly obsessive about anything. And carb (high G.I. particularly but even low G.I. foods do it too) induced hunger is a force to be reckoned with.

That said, I suppose it really depends on how you define CR. But low carb definitely tends to automatically limit calories. Maybe it will as you suggest eventually run out of calorie reducing puff. But after four years continual low carbing, I'm not holding my breath .

One of the things I suggested to Whoa way back when this thread was just starting to develop some momentum was that the calorie restriction necessary for a particular maximum life span increment will probably be far less on low carb, precisely because it is just a more evolutionarily appropriate diet for this species. He was too busy brandishing his high carb CRonie studies around then, and even just a few posts ago he still managed to come out with the 'I couldn't care less what my caveman ancestors ate' line. So I think he's probably still a bit in the thrall of laboratory pseudo science.

So who knows wether the natural calorie limiting effect of low carb will confer much maximum lifespan benefit. But even if it doesn't, the health and body composition enhancing effects make it a no brainer.

But of course a lot more 'respected' scientists (like our dear Walter Willet for instance) are going to have to publicly admit that the lipid hypothesis was and is a crock before low carb becomes mainstream. Once you've used up your excess bodyfat, low carb is necessarily high fat. Protein as an energy source is not a good idea .

As I've already said many, many times, after that, people like Whoa can restrict their low carb calories till they disappear down the plughole if that's what bursts their bubble.

Paleowomen...

I wish it was true, but a lot of people claimed they were 160 years old and debunked later on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirali_Mislimov
http://www.healthwatcher.net/Quacke...health2004.html

Heres a quote from an article

"The fact is, in the early 1980's American scientists did go to Azerbaijan
with high hopes and visions of discovering factors that slow down aging.
Instead, after careful investigation of the reported ages, they found them
to be off by a generation.
The centenarians were either using birth or church certificates of aunts or
uncles with the same names as their own or there just wasn't any reasonable
proof at all."

Okinawa is only one of the few places that actually has good records for claims on longevity

Thanks for the heads-up on phoney centenarians! But what about the Sardinians? My point is that there are various diets that are associated with longevity. I don't think living on yams with teensy amounts of fish guarantees longevity any more than eating pounds of chocolate and smoking until the age of 110 a la Jean Calment does. My view is that overall, LESS CALORIES "may" be a common denominator that improves odds of longevity. My doc agrees that the current "recommended" daily calories are ridiculously high -- especially for middle-aged+ women who generally have a tougher time losing bodyfat. Just because we can eat "x" amount without getting fat doesn't necessarily mean we should.

3 well documented centenarian populations I know of that are real are:

- Seventh Day Adventist Vegetarians in California has a high number of centenarians
- Okinawans had or have a high number of centenarians
- Sardinians also have a high number, but far less than okinawa



Thats pretty much sums it up, I think that even if you can eat a ridiculous amount of food, is it such a good idea when so many experiments have been done on how just calories alone influence disease. This is in so many different models too. I once seen our old friend TheBear mention that he ate something like 4000k/cal (?) a day just because he can?

Below is from pages 88, 89 and 90 from 120 year diet - roy walford

DR Vallejo's experiment

The high low diet idea was tackled in an experiment performed in madrid. An over 65 population of 180 men and women in an old age home were divided into two equal groups. One group was placed on a diet of 2,300 calories one day and 885 calories the next. The control group recieved 2,300 everyday. Over the 3 years of the experiment the subjects receving the fewer calories spent only 123 days in the infirmary, compared with 219 days for the fully fed, and the mortality rate was also 50% of the control group.

Two Venerable gentleman

The renaissance italian gentlemen Luigi Cornaro, a member of the minor italian nobility, led a gluttonous life that resulted in dangerous ill health at age 37. On his doctors advice he adopted a very temperate dietarily restricted regimen, which seems to have been equivalent to about 1500 calories per day. the diet was also of good quality, considering the primative state of nutritional science at that time. He wrote "the art of long living. He died in 1567 at the age of 103. A few hundred years later DR. A Guenoit, president of the paris medical academy, elected to follow similar regimen. He died in 1935 at the age of 102.

(link to a site on luigi here: http://chetday.com/calorierestrictiondiet.htm )
I have an ebook or something of his book somewhere around on the computer if anyone wants to read about his life.

The last one is just anecdotal evidence... but still interesting, and consistent with what happens on CR.

oh here it is online

http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/020...105cornaro.html

THANKS WHOA! Excellent link re: Luigi

I LOVE his "2 cardinal rules": 1) Eat what agrees with your digestion (quality); and 2) Eat as little as possible (quantity).

So simple, yet profound. There is no dictating that one must be a vegan or gargle with lard etc etc to be healthy -- rather tailor the calorie restricted regime to YOU. I know that certain foods are "trigger" foods for me --ie they create insatiable hunger, binging followed by extreme fatigue. Carbo dense foods tend to be triggers for me -- whole grain, whole tubor or not -- they are triggers. Hence I would my personalized diet to animal proteins & natural fats, but limit carbs to non-starchy veggies, tiny amounts of lower sugar fruits. Someone who does well on carbos ie doesn't get ravenous or bloated or sleepy might choose whole grains or tubors as the bulk of their calories. My husband loves yams and can eat one and feels stuffed -- he also can only stomach very lean meat -- I am the opposite (give me rare, fatty meat!) but we are both thin and have similar lipid profiles. I would say just eat whole, natural foods that agree with YOU, personally. If it's impossible to limit yourself to smaller portions of a particular food -- perhaps it's NOT the best thing for you to be eating in the first place. I think many of us binge on foods we have food allergies or intolerances to -- Atkins and Richard Mackarness and H.L. Newbold wrote some interesting things about food addictions/allergies and bingeing.

Any others interested in the potential benefits of hypocaloric diets need only do a google search on "hypocaloric diets and health/cancer etc". You'll find some fascinating stuff!

Luigi's story was particularly interesting to me because he implemented his changes at mid-life -- which is particularly relevant to many of us on this board.

Thanks again for the links Whoa and for setting me straight on the faker centenarians. Next time my motherinlaw says I look "awful, just awful" because my face is "too thin" -- I'll tell her I lied to her son about my age. I'm really 40 years OLDER than I told him -- that would make me older than her and so she should shut up and respect her "elders."

kneebrace,

What you are talking about is the difference between over eating and normal eating. Most people are over eating, therefore in comparison, LC seems low cal. It's natural to over eat if your metabolism doesn't work. However, once we have wasted excess carb supply, on low carb we eat normal amounts of food, because our metabolisms work correctly.

There is a temporary calorie restriction with LC which goes away once body fat is normalized (assuming one permits the process to happen by trusting their body and their hunger or lack of hunger). When we weigh a million pounds and are easily feeding off of our carb stores (read: body fat) then yea, there won't be much appetite. Why would the healthy body signal hunger if it has plenty of energy around it's hips and belly? It won't. Hunger with weight gain only happens on carbs because carbs make it so that the body can't get at its fat for energy. This is a sickness. Normal weight people stay normal weight people by eating when hungry and not eating when not hungry over a continuum; their body controls this process from feedback sent from energy indicators (body fat, energy consumption). The difference between the healthy thin person and the obese, carb sensitive person is that hte latter cannot burn their body fat well, therefore, the signal to eat less is not received correctly. They endlessly accumulate body fat, because metabolically speaking their body is too unhealthy to burn it off (therefore it might as well not be there, as it is not available as a substrate to fuel metabolic reactions).

I'm sorry but once you get down to an ideal weight, one should NOT be consuming 1000, 800, etc cals per day anymore. Think about it; if low carb were healthy, then why would it result in anorexia (lack of appetite) that could be life threatening? That isn't the hallmark of a healthy diet.
If appetite continued to be suppressed to nothingness, even when below normal weight... What would regulate energy balance? What would guard against famine? Seeing as your whole argument is that LC is an evolutionarily correct diet, this certainly doesn't make a whole lot of evolutionary sound sense (that LC diets will produce calorie restriction even at a healthy weight).

Again I'm speaking from experience here.
When morbidly obese, I couldn't keep down food. I was nauseas all the time, in deep ketosis, and shedding weight like crazy. I did not think of food at all.

When I was under 110/low teens, it was the exact opposite. I couldn't stop thinking about food. I had a constant, constant hunger; it was similar to being on carbs. I actually started to doubt any of this was real and I was just an "emotional eater " all along (or destined to be fat).

Gaining 10 pounds has put me more in a normal state where I don't think about food all the time and stuff but I still do have a healthy appetite and consume 1600-1800 cals on average. I err more toward the "very hungry" side, but then again, I am also thin for my body type, and really sleep deprived lately (which has the effect of making the body behave as if lower weight metabolically / hormonally speaking).
I have little doubt that if I gained a lot of weight I would return to that 'No appetite" place... but then again, isn't that my body's way of telling me I'm too fat and should eat less? Assuming I am healthy, if I have no appetite, that means my body fat is my primary fuel, which means my body fat is likely excessive or on the generous side. The body is not eager to give up stored body fat if feedback signals tell the hypothalamus that we don't have much body fat to spare. The body experiences a stronger and more frequent hunger sensation as a result.
Think about this logically:
If low carb is an evolutionarily sound diet, then low carb cannot possibly be a CRON diet, as CRON is not an evolutionarily sound behavior. It is not evolutionarily sound to *allow* starvation and physical compromised state to the point where one is as physically fit as an elderly/infirm person, can't defend from predation, and can't reproduce (even IF one had desire/ability to successfully initiate the act).

I know that my allergies just totally went away after going on, and I bet the same happened for some of you when your weight loss started? Or at least they were less severe?

Anyway heres the paper on how restricting calories does its magic. I must say though, omega 3 also had a big effect before I started CR... but never quite eliminated hay fever.

Allergies and CR, interesting paper below.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pi...92&blobtype=pdf

Caloric restriction has been shown to alter a broad range of immunological end points in both
experimental animals and humans. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of
short-term moderate feed restriction (25% reduction) on allergic immune responses in Brown
Norway rats. After 3 weeks of acclimation to their feed regimens, rats were sensitized and 2 weeks
later challenged with house dust mite (HDM) antigen via intratracheal instillation. Feed restriction
resulted in lower levels of antigen-specific IgE in serum and reduced antigenspecific lymphoproliferative
activity in pulmonary lymph nodes. Feed restriction also attenuated pulmonary
inflammation, as evidenced by lower levels of lactate dehydrogenase and total protein, decreased
infiltration of neutrophils and eosinophils, and reduced secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokine
tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. In addition, feed restriction
decreased TNF-α secretion in serum and decreased mRNA expression of TNF-α and interleukin-
6 in pulmonary lymph nodes. We conclude that feed restriction strongly dampened the allergic
immune responses to HDM in rats and that this attenuation was associated with decreased
expression and secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Key words: allergy, asthma, dust mites,
eosinophil, feed restriction, IgE, immune response, inflammation, lung, T lymphocyte, tumor
necrosis factor-α. Environ Health Perspect 108:1125–1131 (2000). [Online 1 November 2000]



Oh and thank you for your recent posts wooo. It's nice to see well thought out responses



I don't think i'm that bad... but obviously I do face bigger risks of someone taking advantage because of my very small frame. But I can run away faster...

whoa this is a dumb question but my mother told me(my mother thinks she knows everything )that the reason the okinawas lived a long time was that they eat coral calcium(she is trying to get me on this stuff) any truth to that?