Eat Less, Live Longer

By Anca Ioviţă

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.

• You found out about the calorie restriction experiments on many animal species and you wonder whether it would work in humans too.

• You made up your mind to safely try restricting your daily calories for a possible slowing of aging and a longer lifespan.

• You understand the importance of getting an appropriate quantity of nutrients, yet you have no idea how to make good choices in food stores and restaurants.

• You may have a chronic disease or you may be in a certain stage of your life like childhood, pregnancy, breastfeeding and you wonder whether it is safe to try calorie restriction at all.

• You are more interested in nutritional principles than in counting calories, vitamins, proteins or in following rigid recipes and set menus.

• You wonder whether dietary supplements are necessary at all.

• You wonder whether a magic pill could mimic the effects of calorie restriction.

 

There is a fine line separating calorie restriction with optimal nutrition from starvation. Don't cross it. Read this book instead.

VISIT MY BLOG AT

LONGEVITYLETTER.COM 

AND SIGN UP TO RECEIVE NEW UPDATES ON MY NEXT BOOK COMPARING THE AGING OF SPECIES FROM THE SIMPLEST TO THE MOST COMPLEX

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anca Ioviţă
• Release date: Feb 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507041130

Book preview

Also by Anca Ioviţă

Eat Less, Live Longer

EAT LESS, LIVE LONGER  

YOUR PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CALORIE RESTRICTION WITH OPTIMAL NUTRITION  

ANCA IOVIŢĂ

Eat Less, Live Longer

Your Practical Guide to Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition

Copyright © 2015 by Anca Ioviţă. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

Disclaimer

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. The reader should regularly consult a physician in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

Although I am a physician, I am not your physician. Reading this book does not create a patient-physician relationship among us.  The information presented in this book is general in nature and it may not apply to your specific situation.

Dedicated to the two wonderful people who gave me life and to my lifetime partner who made it worth living

Table of Contents

Introduction

Less is More for Rodents. Is It the Same for Humans?

How Do You Choose Quality Food?

Which Food Choices Provide the Most Nutrients for the Least Amount of Calories?

How to Turn Quality Ingredients into Amazing Dishes

Calorie Restriction for the Long Term

How to Choose Dietary Supplements

Are There Alternatives to Calorie Restriction?

The End

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Introduction

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.

Now few people worldwide are aware of the experiments in calorie-restricted animals started in the '30s and still going on today. These lab animals had their lifespan increased not only through calorie restriction, but by keeping the same levels of essential nutrients as their controls. In other words, they had more nutrients per calorie consumed compared to their controls. This is an important fact I want to underline. Starvation did not prolong their lives, calorie restriction with optimal nutrition (abbreviated as CRON) did.

Less is more for rodents, but what about people?

Since mice have short lifespans, researchers didn't need decades to prove calorie restriction works. We regularly live up to 60-80 years old, depending on our genes and lifestyles. As such, the few human trials on calorie restriction took place for short amounts of time and these compared the biomarkers of aging correlated with longevity. For direct survival data to be collected and compared, longitudinal studies are needed – studies that would monitor people on the long-term until they naturally die and observe their aging rate.  

Since most of us will not live long enough for these expensive studies to be made and because it is a dietary intervention accessible to all, many volunteers have sprung up. Skipping a few calories here and there is easy, but what about the optimal nutrition part from CRON?

It looks simple in theory, but when faced with the myriad choices inside a supermarket and the contradictory nutritional data from our readings, it is all too easy to feel overwhelmed and lost.

I was in that position many years ago. I was always on a restricted diet in terms of calories because of my tight budget. Restricting calories was the easy part. Now I wanted to make better choices in terms of nutrients.

This book informs you how I implemented the optimal nutrition part in my day-to-day life – use what you deem fit, skip the rest. In the following pages you will see how I implemented the CRON principles based on my medical background, a list of helpful books that I referenced and my own trials and errors.

Enough about me. Here is a summary of what I presume about you:

you found out about the calorie restriction experiments on many animal species and you wonder whether it would work in humans too

you made up your mind to safely try restricting your daily calories for a possible slowing of aging and a longer lifespan

you understand the importance of getting an appropriate quantity of nutrients, yet you have no idea how to make good choices in food stores and restaurants

you may have a chronic disease or you may be in a certain stage of your life like childhood, pregnancy, breastfeeding and you wonder whether it is safe to try calorie restriction at all

you are more interested in nutritional principles than in counting calories, vitamins, proteins or in following rigid recipes and set menus

you are on a tight budget. Even if you have enough money today, life fluctuates, and when your income drops, you want to still be able to make excellent choices in terms of nutrition

Basic Principles of Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition

Life is a gamble. Even though this guide is aimed at increasing longevity, no one can predict all of the factors influencing  one's lifespan. In my experience with calorie restriction, I am full of energy for my myriad activities and hobbies. I have practiced  this during intense study, while working a full-time job and during social activities. I admit I tried counting calories and nutrients with specialized software, but I lost my patience soon after.

I now guide my gut according to the following principles:

our knowledge is limited and nutrition is a complex science, so variety is the best defense against nutritional deficiencies. Make sure to include both plant and animals sources. Keep the proportion between land food and sea ingredients at least to 1:1  

include at least one salad and one smoothie every day. They will get you into a habit of eating fresh vegetables and fruits daily. Step two is to complement with a soup and a cup of tea. Once you get to eat all these, little place is going to remain for calorie-laden foods.

delicious food is colored. Salmon is bright pink. Salad is green. Blueberries are well…blue. Accustom your sight with naturally colored ingredients and you won’t have second thoughts about getting all the nutrients that you need.

what you can absorb is more important than the nutrients existing in your food. Variety is the best tool here as well. Eat a balanced diet composed of raw, cooked and fermented foods. Newly introduced foods on the scale of human evolution like grains and dairy are best consumed fermented (Fallon, 2001).

vote with your money. Choose quality food and train yourself to recognize it. It is much better to skip a meal than to eat junk. Don’t support shady companies, especially when it comes to the food from which you will build new cells and maintain the ones you already inherited.

eat only food you can recognize as whole ingredients. You don’t know how much fish meat was included in a portion of fish fingers, but you can

Reviews for Eat Less, Live Longer

[Scarlet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great reading! Useful information that people often don't speak about but that has great value.

[dan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

it made me quit bad nutrition habits and now I apreciate more the real food!