14 replies to this topic

[DR01D]

I've been practicing CR for over 2 years by eating 2,000 calories per day. However I'm not sure if my concept of CR is correct.

Could someone please tell me if/when my concept of CR jumps the tracks?

A) Calorie restriction is a diet combined with optimal nutrition.
B) The goal of CR is to put your body right on the edge of a calorie deficit without actually falling into a deficit.
C) There is not a specific number of calories that puts all organisms in a state of "CR". For instance a mouse might be in CR at 200 calories per day, a monkey at 800, a small woman at 1,200 and a 6'5" man at 2,400.
D) The number of calories a person needs depends on multiple factors like physical size, muscle mass and activity level.

Ok.... if that's accurate then is the following example correct?

Example:
A) A person discovers that 1,800 calories puts their body in CR.
B) They add an exercise that consumes 200 calories of energy.
C) They eat an extra 200 calories per day.
D) Their body is still in CR.

So on a very basic level CR is a calorie diet. You can reach CR by cutting calories or by increasing activity.

Is that general concept accurate? Thanks for any input!

[scottknl]

I'll put my responses in-line with your questions:

I've been practicing CR for over 2 years by eating 2,000 calories per day. However I'm not sure if my concept of CR is correct.
>>2,000 calories seems a bit on the high side unless you're a pretty large person. It's better than avg though.
Could someone please tell me if/when my concept of CR jumps the tracks?
>>ok
A) Calorie restriction is a diet combined with optimal nutrition.
>>Almost right. CR is a lifestyle where you combine optimal nutrition with a calorie deficit compared to your body's natural set point.
B) The goal of CR is to put your body right on the edge of a calorie deficit without actually falling into a deficit.
>>Incorrect. You want to create a calorie deficit while maintaining full nutrition.
C) There is not a specific number of calories that puts all organisms in a state of "CR". For instance a mouse might be in CR at 200 calories per day, a monkey at 800, a small woman at 1,200 and a 6'5" man at 2,400.
>>There is no such number. People and animals come in all shapes and sizes. CR has to be created for each animal/person according to their individual circumstances.
D) The number of calories a person needs depends on multiple factors like physical size, muscle mass and activity level.
>>Almost. The number of calories for a given amount of CR severity depends on the individuals physical size and muscle mass. Activity level really doesn't enter into it because CR benefits depend only on what you eat. Not what you do.

Ok.... if that's accurate then is the following example correct?

Example:
A) A person discovers that 1,800 calories puts their body in CR.
B) They add an exercise that consumes 200 calories of energy.
C) They eat an extra 200 calories per day.
D) Their body is still in CR.
>>This is not true. You cannot add and subtract dietary calories and exercise calories to determine your CR level. CR benefits are proportional only to the difference between the what you would normally eat to maintain normal lean mass and what you really eat.

So on a very basic level CR is a calorie diet. You can reach CR by cutting calories or by increasing activity.
>>This is not true. See this message and look up the studies that are referenced:
http://health.groups...ty/message/9613
There may also be some new studies as well. In any case the gist of the matter is that calories determine the CR benefits, not exercise. This isn't to say that you should never exercise, just that the benefits you get will not be the same as the benefits you get from CR.

Is that general concept accurate? Thanks for any input!
>>Cheers. You're welcome.

[Invariant]

B) The goal of CR is to put your body right on the edge of a calorie deficit without actually falling into a deficit.
>>Incorrect. You want to create a calorie deficit while maintaining full nutrition.

Obviously, one cannot maintain a permanent calorie deficit perpetually. It's simple physics. You can have a deficit for as long as you're losing weight. After that you're either gaining or on the edge. By staying on the edge, your body becomes more efficient, reducing caloric requirements.

Edited by Novotropic, 22 January 2012 - 07:51 PM.

[DR01D]

Thanks for the link scottknl. The links in the yahoo thread are GOLD!

Thanks for the input Novotrpic. BTW I was thinking the same thing. The body has to be in balance, it can't run a calorie deficit forever.

[DR01D]

scottknl

The calorie restriction Yahoo group is deceased. Is there a new, popular calorie restriction group or message board? Thanks!

[Brett Black]

Fundamentally, calorie restriction involves consistently maintaining a calorie intake below a particular reference calorie intake level. The choice and definition of this reference level has varied between different people and different studies. In most cases the reference level is kept constant. Usually the calorie intake is also maintained at a level that is sufficient to prevent death/damage from starvation.

Probably the most common way to define/set the reference level is to simply equate it with the "natural" level of calorie intake that is observed when food is made constantly freely available(aka "ad libitum".)

In some cases the reference level is set lower than the ad-libitum level since ad-libitum feeding can lead to overweight and obese animals/humans and it is widely held that overweight and obese subjects may not be a suitable benchmark against which to define/contrast calorie restriction.

The definition of "overweight" and "obese" in both humans and animals is essentially arbitrary however, and there is disagreement about exactly how to define the reference calorie intake level. Some suggest the reference calorie intake level varies by individual, and this idea is often referred to as the individual's "set point." The set-point is commonly defined as the "healthy" "natural" weight that is maintained by ad-libitum eating during early adulthood.

A) Calorie restriction is a diet combined with optimal nutrition.

Usually. In many/most human CR practitioners(and in CR studies in monkeys, and often but not always in rodents), caloric restriction is paired with so-called "optimum nutrition" which involves meeting at least RDA intakes of all essential nutrients.

B) The goal of CR is to put your body right on the edge of a calorie deficit without actually falling into a deficit.

No. See my opening paragraphs.

C) There is not a specific number of calories that puts all organisms in a state of "CR". For instance a mouse might be in CR at 200 calories per day, a monkey at 800, a small woman at 1,200 and a 6'5" man at 2,400.

Commonly this would be held to be the case, but it depends on the definition of CR which actually varies somewhat - as described in my opening paragraphs. Also, many of the benefits of CR proven to occur in animals have not been proven in humans and thus, from this perspective, humans may arguably not even be capable of entering the CR "state" no matter their calorie intake.

D) The number of calories a person needs depends on multiple factors like physical size, muscle mass and activity level.

Yes. For an individual to maintain(or lose or gain) weight the number of calories needed will be significantly influenced by the factors you have mentioned.

Ok.... if that's accurate then is the following example correct?

Example:
A) A person discovers that 1,800 calories puts their body in CR.

How do they discover this? In humans, from a physiological perspective, there is no standard universally agreed-upon way to know if CR has been initiated, let alone that it is a discrete state, or even that humans can attain it. Some suggest identifying CR by measuring bodyweight, some suggest measuring calorie intake, some suggest measuring various other "biomarkers", but currently from a physiological perspective and long-term-outcome perspective no one knows if any human is actually "CR'ed."

B) They add an exercise that consumes 200 calories of energy.
C) They eat an extra 200 calories per day.
D) Their body is still in CR.

So on a very basic level CR is a calorie diet. You can reach CR by cutting calories or by increasing activity

No. Probably the best current evidence relating to such a scenario involves rodents. To the best of my knowledge(and I could be wrong, and I don't have any studies to refer to right now), the current evidence is that CR'ed rodents' lifespan is fundamentally a function of calorie intake. In other words, it's all about calories in. Thus, if calorie intake is increased for any reason at all, including to offset the increased energy expenditure of exercise, lifespan will be reduced.

[scottknl]

B) The goal of CR is to put your body right on the edge of a calorie deficit without actually falling into a deficit.
>>Incorrect. You want to create a calorie deficit while maintaining full nutrition.

Obviously, one cannot maintain a permanent calorie deficit perpetually. It's simple physics. You can have a deficit for as long as you're losing weight. After that you're either gaining or on the edge. By staying on the edge, your body becomes more efficient, reducing caloric requirements.

The calorie deficit is relative to your consumption at your "set point". In a lab setting the set point is determined by having a group of control animals that eat an ad-lib diet and have stable body weight at that level of consumption. For people we usually take your weight at late teenage or early twenties before you've built up a large roll of belly fat, but after growth has finished, to be the set point. As you drop your calories, your body changes the way it uses the energy and how much is being stored in adipose tissue. The result will be another stable weight point at a lower weight with lower calorie consumption. For example I was 190 lbs for many years and was consuming about 2500 calories per day. I cleaned up my diet, adopted CRON, and added some additional exercise to drop down to 155 lbs consuming 1750 calories per day. I've been at this new weight for almost 3 years now. Both points were stable body weight points for me, and thus at each point I was maintaining calories in = calories out. Note that I didn't just sit around the house and be hungry at the new weight. I have the same job and leisure activities, but perhaps a little more exercise.

There are many points at which you can be stable in weight. Not just one solution to the problem. You can be gaining, or losing, or stable (or dead!!!).

[scottknl]

scottknl

The calorie restriction Yahoo group is deceased. Is there a new, popular calorie restriction group or message board? Thanks!

Yes try http://CRSociety.org

[Invariant]

B) The goal of CR is to put your body right on the edge of a calorie deficit without actually falling into a deficit.
>>Incorrect. You want to create a calorie deficit while maintaining full nutrition.

Obviously, one cannot maintain a permanent calorie deficit perpetually. It's simple physics. You can have a deficit for as long as you're losing weight. After that you're either gaining or on the edge. By staying on the edge, your body becomes more efficient, reducing caloric requirements.

The calorie deficit is relative to your consumption at your "set point". In a lab setting the set point is determined by having a group of control animals that eat an ad-lib diet and have stable body weight at that level of consumption. For people we usually take your weight at late teenage or early twenties before you've built up a large roll of belly fat, but after growth has finished, to be the set point. As you drop your calories, your body changes the way it uses the energy and how much is being stored in adipose tissue. The result will be another stable weight point at a lower weight with lower calorie consumption. For example I was 190 lbs for many years and was consuming about 2500 calories per day. I cleaned up my diet, adopted CRON, and added some additional exercise to drop down to 155 lbs consuming 1750 calories per day. I've been at this new weight for almost 3 years now. Both points were stable body weight points for me, and thus at each point I was maintaining calories in = calories out. Note that I didn't just sit around the house and be hungry at the new weight. I have the same job and leisure activities, but perhaps a little more exercise.

There are many points at which you can be stable in weight. Not just one solution to the problem. You can be gaining, or losing, or stable (or dead!!!).

I'm not a native speaker, but I'm pretty sure the word "deficit" means that you expend more than you consume (analogous to a financial deficit where you spend more than you make). Nevertheless, your point is clear and I would like to point out that I didn't mean to imply that one would be in CR at a high but stable bodyweight.

[DR01D]

Is there scientific evidence that indicates that it's necessary for people/animals on CR to lose their muscle mass for the health benefits to kick in? I know that some people on CR are very thin but does this necessarily have to be the case?

For example here is a theoretical comparison of 2 people on CR. Assume that all relevant factors are equal or proportional.
Subject A) Consumes 1,500 calories per day, weighs 150 pounds, height 5'10".
Subject B) Consumes 1,800 calories per day, weighs 180 pounds, height 6'2".

In theory both subjects enjoy equal benefits from CR.

What if scientists developed a medical treatment that caused Subject A to grow 30 pounds of tissue (primarily muscle)? He now weighs 180 pounds just like Subject B. The extra mass causes him to increase his calorie count to 1,800 per day, just like Subject B.

Unless muscle interferes with CR I don't see why Subject A would lose the health benefits of CR. He increased his caloric intake proportionally to his increase in mass which still keeps his body right on the edge of starvation.

In the real world couldn't people on CR lift weights, eat slightly more calories (200 per day +/-) and still be in the same health zone more or less? They'd be a little larger but physical size shouldn't matter.... I don't think.

Every relevant CR rat study I can find uses cardio to test exercise. However cardio is very different from strength training. For starters cardio burns a lot more calories than strength training. In addition cardio significantly revs up resting energy expenditure, weight training doesn't.

Edited by DR01D, 24 January 2012 - 04:45 AM.

[Brett Black]

DR01D, you have to realize that CR is at the very early experimental stage in humans. There's only very limited scientific evidence for health benefits of CR in humans, especially medium-to-long term. Detailed knowledge like how various body compositions might interact with CR in humans is completely non-existent.

As far as I'm aware, even in rodents, data about this particular issue is sparse, and it has not generated particularly common discussion in the papers from the CR field.

Maybe you don't realize it, perhaps you're not yet knowledgeable enough about such things, but I think the bulk of your previous post could be accurately described as "extreme speculation lacking any kind of evidence." I'm not trying to be mean at all, quite the opposite, I'm just trying to give you an accurate appraisal - the truth. The reality is that none of the questions you posed can be answered with anything much beyond extreme speculation.

The topic of starvation and its relationship with CR, which you have referred to several times, has been frequently discussed in CR literature. However, even here, to the best of my knowledge, there is no consensus amongst the experts that caloric restriction (in rodents) is intrinsically connected to starvation or a starvation response.

[DR01D]

DR01D, you have to realize that CR is at the very early experimental stage in humans. There's only very limited scientific evidence for health benefits of CR in humans, especially medium-to-long term. Detailed knowledge like how various body compositions might interact with CR in humans is completely non-existent.

As far as I'm aware, even in rodents, data about this particular issue is sparse, and it has not generated particularly common discussion in the papers from the CR field.

Maybe you don't realize it, perhaps you're not yet knowledgeable enough about such things, but I think the bulk of your previous post could be accurately described as "extreme speculation lacking any kind of evidence." I'm not trying to be mean at all, quite the opposite, I'm just trying to give you an accurate appraisal - the truth. The reality is that none of the questions you posed can be answered with anything much beyond extreme speculation.

The topic of starvation and its relationship with CR, which you have referred to several times, has been frequently discussed in CR literature. However, even here, to the best of my knowledge, there is no consensus amongst the experts that caloric restriction (in rodents) is intrinsically connected to starvation or a starvation response.

NEWS FLASH!

Simple, theoretical question leads to troll alert, hehe

[scottknl]

Is there scientific evidence that indicates that it's necessary for people/animals on CR to lose their muscle mass for the health benefits to kick in? I know that some people on CR are very thin but does this necessarily have to be the case?

For example here is a theoretical comparison of 2 people on CR. Assume that all relevant factors are equal or proportional.
Subject A) Consumes 1,500 calories per day, weighs 150 pounds, height 5'10".
Subject B) Consumes 1,800 calories per day, weighs 180 pounds, height 6'2".

In theory both subjects enjoy equal benefits from CR.

What if scientists developed a medical treatment that caused Subject A to grow 30 pounds of tissue (primarily muscle)? He now weighs 180 pounds just like Subject B. The extra mass causes him to increase his calorie count to 1,800 per day, just like Subject B.

Unless muscle interferes with CR I don't see why Subject A would lose the health benefits of CR. He increased his caloric intake proportionally to his increase in mass which still keeps his body right on the edge of starvation.

In the real world couldn't people on CR lift weights, eat slightly more calories (200 per day +/-) and still be in the same health zone more or less? They'd be a little larger but physical size shouldn't matter.... I don't think.

Every relevant CR rat study I can find uses cardio to test exercise. However cardio is very different from strength training. For starters cardio burns a lot more calories than strength training. In addition cardio significantly revs up resting energy expenditure, weight training doesn't.

Subject A as a 30 lbs heavier body builder would likely die sooner than Subject A without the extra weight if the studies in animals translate to humans. More calories = more death. No cheating allowed by nature.

Or put another way Subject B would live longer than Subject A if both were at the same weight. In reality the genetic make up might play a very significant role in real life span. Personally, I believe that you can make up for a lot of genetic disadvantage with good lifestyle and diet.

All of the animal studies on exercise have confirmed that exercise doesn't extend the max life span. Even if they're healthier as a result of the exercise, eventually the oldest animals in each group die at about the same time. Only restricting calories and a couple of drugs have proven to actually extend max life span. The drugs have side effects.

[DR01D]

I posted a story link in this thread several days ago but I got an automated message that said a moderator had to approve it first.

To the moderator, please take a look at my message. Thanks!

[Cephalon]

If CR benefits are closely tied to IGF-1 than each calorie and especially each muscle building gram of protein and energy delivering carbohydrate must count, no matter if you fuel your muscles with it or your belly. Additionaly musclebuilding itself raises anabolic hormones, which are lowered by CR diets. Anabolic hormones and growth factors trigger tumor genesis and are belived to accelerate ageing in general.
More muscles lead to a higher metabolic rate, which in turn might speed up ageing through increased cell turnovers. At least CR is known to reduce metabolic rates.
Pro muscle building would speak, that muscle mass increases insulin sensivity if I remember correctly.