No matter who you are, the day still has 24 hours in it. Aside from slowing down the rotation of Earth around the sun, how can you actually buy time?
You can do that by trying a method that extended the average and maximum lifespan of several species: calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. And while there are short-term studies in humans, the lack of long-term longevity-bending studies in people makes practicing CRON an educated guess. But it’s a free anti-aging intervention. You don’t need any medical insurance for that and it may improve your healthspan if not extend your lifespan.
While the restricting calorie part sounds easy, the optimal nutrition part is what scares people from even trying because they think daily tracking software and measuring ingredients are absolutely necessary. And while these could be useful, they are not mandatory. Because life is too short for that.
But before I’ll give you some examples of dishes to include every day to improve your nutrition even if you’re not intent on skipping calories, let me mention that nutrition is not an exact science like mathematics. Which makes counting calories, tracking nutrients and measuring ingredients an educated guess and nothing more.
To sum it all up, the nutrients you will absorb from what you are eating right now will be influenced by the following 3 variables, putting a serious dent on any hype you may read about this or that food:
1. The environment in which your food grew
Let’s say you buy a kilo of apples from the farmer’s market. The apples that grew on the same tree are not all equal. Those that were exposed to light because they grew on peripheral branches synthesized more pigments so they are usually intensely colored. Those that ripened in partial shadow are less intense in color and so they contain fewer phytochemicals. And we’re talking about apples growing on the same tree. But apples grow in all sorts of soils in all sorts of weathers and with all kinds of water. And they are exposed to different pathogens. Do you see how complex it can get?
With animals it’s just the same. They may have completely different diets, different light conditions, a different social status or a different place to sleep. Animals have different life histories. Just like us.
2. The genes and gene expression of your food
There are a myriad of apple varieties and each of them will have different ratios of sugar, water, phytochemicals and so on. Same with animals and any other living being you may consume. For an excellent book on how we tamed vegetables and fruits to contain fewer phytochemicals and more sugar compared to their wild varieties, check out ‘Eating on the wild side’ by Jo Robinson.
3. You: your genes, your gene expression (age included) and your intestinal flora
Last but not least, you have a direct influence over the way you absorb nutrients from what you eat. Elderly people may consume the same dishes as they did during childhood, but they have a different intestinal flora, increased intestinal permeability, fewer teeth and a myriad of other changes in their digestive organs. Absorption of nutrients is different when you’re 5 years old compared to when you’re 80.
So these are the 3 main variables that are almost impossible to control in a well-designed nutrition study which makes me leery of any fads in nutrition. And to sum it all up, optimal nutrition is achieved by variety. Always change things. The more daily variety, the better. Always try a new vegetable, a new fruit, a new type of egg, some new seafood. Eat both land and sea plants and animals. Prepare your salad with at least 5 different veggies/fruits – ideally 10. Your plate should look like a rainbow. If it doesn’t, you’re not varying enough.
For a starter, here are the 4 things to include every day to optimize your nutrition even if you’re not restricting calories. Because once you include all these, you will be almost full and you will consume less of any calorie-laden empty-nutrient foods.
1. One salad – choose at least 5 different types of veggies, the ideal is 10. Your plate should look like a rainbow.
2. One smoothie – it should include 50% fruit, 40% green leaves and the rest may be dietary supplements or nutrient powders if any. If your smoothie would contain 100% fruits, it would be too sweet and that sugar would be easier to absorb than if you’d consume those fruits whole. If your smoothie would contain green leaves only, it may taste bitter. So get the best of both worlds and include green leaves and fruits.
3. One soup – for added nutrition, use broth instead of water. And dried soups on the shelves where you add boiled water don’t count. That’s cardboard dressed as food. Try the real thing – do it yourself or eat it when out in a proper restaurant.
4. One cup of (green/herbal) tea – a source of negligible calories, few nutrients, some water and certainly better for you than most other calorie-laden beverages.
How many of these did you consume today? How about this week? Dare I ask about this month?
Another concept that I find useful to consume few calories and lots of nutrients is the Buddha bowl. This is a vegan dish which you can consume at lunch. By including the following 4 types of ingredients in the same bowl, you get a nutritious lunch spiced with variety:
1. Grains
2. Legumes
3. Nuts/seeds
4. Veggies
While I don’t track my calories or nutrients because I handle stress much better than routine and tracking is boring to me, I am not a beginner in nutrition and I do have some idea about the average calorie and nutrition content of whatever I eat. Speaking of this, I often encounter new ingredients and more out of sheer curiosity, I want to know this kind of information. The tool that I use to gauge the average nutrient data for any new foods is this website: http://nutritiondata.self.com/ You can create a free account there and you can track whatever you eat in an average week or use any of their search tools if you are interested in custom nutrient ratios. And while extremely useful and comprehensive, I take everything I read there with a grain of salt because that data is an average of ingredients measured in USA and I live in Europe.
A question that comes up again and again is how much calorie restriction is needed to gain any healthspan or longevity benefits. The body weight versus height is easily quantified by the Body Mass Index (calculate your own BMI value here). And when it comes to the lowest mortality data in people, the sweetspot seems to be a BMI of 22.5-25. And depending on your BMI, you may need to add or skip calories until you reach your optimum weight! Do that slowly at a rate of 1kg or 0.5 pound per week.
To wrap things up, this was a short introduction to calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. Because who said time can only be saved when the purpose of longevity research is to buy time. And while CRON may only slow aging – it won’t actually reverse it or prevent it – this method is free and it works on many different species. And no, you don’t need to count calories, track nutrients or measure ingredients. Unless this is what you want. Start with the 4 daily dishes I mentioned and build from there.
Anca Ioviţă is the author of Eat Less Live Longer: Your Practical Guide to Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition ,The Aging Gap Between Species and What Is Your Legacy? 101Ways on Getting Started to Create and Build One available on Amazon and several other places. If you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to sign up to receive updates on longevity news and novel book projects!
Don’t miss out on the Pinterest board on calorie restriction with optimal nutrition where she pins new recipes every day.
https://www.pinterest.com/longevityletter/eat-less-live-longer/
Or the Comparative Gerontology Facebook Group where you can join the discussions on how species age at different speeds and what could be the mechanisms underlining these differences!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/683953735071847/
Eat less, live longer – your practical guide to calorie restriction with optimal nutrition
There is a fine line separating calorie restriction with optimal nutrition from starvation. Don’t cross it. Read this book instead.
During my third year of medical school I stumbled upon an online article about calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. I read about an apparently simple diet intervention that prolonged the average and maximum lifespan of laboratory animals such as yeast, fruit flies, worms and mice. At that time, I wasn’t aware that such experiments were already done on non-human primates too. Honestly, I dismissed it as a curiosity, an intervention that could have some effect in simple organisms such as fruit flies, but something which would never work in complex beings like us. It just seemed too good to be true.
Time passed and proved me wrong. Given an early childhood fascination with the limits of life extension, I studied engineering and medicine in an attempt to radically prolong human lifespan. After a short stint of research in neural prosthetics in a German lab, I realized implanting artificial devices into the human body is not a long-term solution. I returned home where I started the medical residency in geriatrics, the branch of medicine specialized in age-associated diseases.
A funny thing happened then. Reading about theories of aging is one thing. Daily caring for people 3-4 times your age is a completely different thing and I started to connect the dots. I noticed some people aged like wine and others aged like vinegar. According to their skinny frames and detailed lifetime stories, it looked like calorie intake had something to do with it. That’s how I got started in typing the first words for this book.
The determination of “optimal BMI of 22.5 – 25” was skewed at the low end due to “strong inverse associations with respiratory disease and lung cancer”. It appears, therefore, that careful attention to avoiding lung disease (and, I would add, osteoporosis) would allow one to enjoy added benefits of lower BMI, as long as one stays above 18.5:
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html
There are more basic problems with BMI as a health indicator:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822141948.htm
Waist-to-hip ratio may be a better predictor of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality:
https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/waisttohipUNM.html
Yes, BMI is not perfect. But it’s the best known way to quantify normal weight so I gave that as an example.
I wouldn’t decrease BMI less than 22 (but what am I talking here? I’ve always been (unwillingly) at a BMI of 17-18) because you may prevent osteoporotic fractures (not necessarily osteoporosis as a disease) by proper medication, vitamin D3, weight-bearing exercises and paying attention not to fall in the first place, but how do you prevent respiratory diseases apart from not smoking and vaccines? If you’d live in a bubble, you’d get bored 🙂
I just remembered that I did have a respiratory disease , maybe 12 years ago: pneumonia. I know it was bacterial because the diagnosing doctor prescribed Zithromycin, which did zap it. Because of this history, my primary care physician move up my pneumonia vaccination, normally delayed until age 65, by six years. I wonder of a pneumonia vaccination might be advised for anyone who maintains, willingly or otherwise, an ultra-low BMI?
An ultra-low BMI is not conducive to longevity, nor is it enough protection towards common infections. I’d definitely talk to your doctor about any vaccinations you could take.