How Caloric Restriction Contributes to Your Longevity
Of all the things we can do for ourselves to prevent aging problems, cutting calories rates at the top of the game. Recent strides in understanding genetics and the biochemistry of aging has revealed that the best way to add years onto your life expectancy is to restrict calories that put on weight and age the body and mind.
Since most people have a problem with sticking to a highly caloric restricted diet for more than a few ways, further research reveals that intermittent fasting can offer the same results as caloric restriction, but able to complete with less discipline.
With this plan, you can practice fasting for three to five days at a time and the benefits of restricting calories on a daily basis continue – even though it’s not a good method to lose weight.
Most people tend to compensate for the three to five days of fasting by gorging on food after the fast and gain all the weight back. Another plan that seems to have more lasting benefits of weight loss is caloric restriction for five days and then resuming your normal diet plan.
You don’t feel that you’re starving and aren’t uncomfortable – and maintain your normal energy level. Most researchers agree that calories are the single ingredient, which indicates whether a person will live a long life – or not.
If you’re getting the necessary nutrients, caloric restriction can extend your life, help you lose unwanted weight and prevent or slow down some debilitating diseases. A diet designed to provide the nutrients you need to increase longevity will include restricting protein and consuming fat calories.
On day one of the calorie restricted, 5 day diet plan, 1,090 calories are consumed and on days 2 through 5, 725 calories are consumed. So, the diet tends to be mostly fat. Avocados (2 per day) are recommended on this short diet plan.
In studies using middle-aged mice who were given the calorie restricted diet for 4 days, two times per month, lived up to 11% longer than mice who were fed the calorie-restricted diet plan.
Another unexpected advantage of the mice-test was that their cognitive and memory levels were increased and they kept more lean muscle mass and less visceral fat. The mice tended to perform on a higher, more energetic level and had lower fasting blood sugar.
More studies are being conducted to see if a calorie restricted diet can work for humans to increase longevity and help prevent age-related diseases such as arthritis, heart disease, strokes and type-2 diabetes.
