Startup Fiance

I have been hearing about a lifestyle known as calorie restriction for a few years now. If I remember correctly, I believe my first exposure to this way of living was via a documentary special on Discovery Health or the like. I honestly do not remember much about the show, but I do remember one scene featuring the couple that did CR at the grocery store. Both of them were parsing the aisles, slow as molasses, occasionally stretching their holocaust survivor arms to pick up a cantaloupe or bushel of grapes. They took a moment or two to discuss the merits and caloric deficits incurred by each piece of food they set in their cart, dissecting each item to its smallest particle of sugar, starch or fat. The scene was then cut to the checkout, and after spending $25 and getting one large brown bag of goods, they happily proclaimed that this meager quantity should surely last them well until the end of next month.

People who practice calorie restriction follow a strict diet that only allows them to take in about 75 to 80 percent of what their bodies actually need. What this would mean for a person who could process and use 2,000 calories per day is that in order to practice CR they would need to eat around 1,500 calories per day. The theory behind this starvation diet is that by restricting the amount of calories you are taking in and forcing your body to burn, you are slowing down the processes of aging, and thus, extending your life.

It has been shown in laboratory animals that calorie restriction can extend the life span of many different animals. To date, animals studied include worms, flies, fish, mice and rats. While the specific mechanism is not yet clear, animals on restricted diets do live longer than their counterparts with normal diets. These calorie restricted animals are also much less likely to develop the chronic diseases that become more common in older age, such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Animal-based research has also shown that a CR diet is more important to life span than maintaining a healthy weight and exercising; obese mice that ate calorie restriction diets lived longer than normal weight mice that ate normal diets. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Studies in longer living animals are under way, though these studies will take years to finish. Researchers have reported promising, but preliminary results in monkeys.”

The way all of the information is presented certainly makes it seem as though science as found a simple way for humans to tap into a type of fountain of youth, not to mention a healthy way to maintain that skeleton-skinny model figure we all desire. What the animal studies and information from human participants does not tell us, however, is whether or not this is actually a viable option for helping people to live longer, healthier lives. There are no long term studies that exist with regard to humans that have taken up this practice for an entire life span, nor is their a wealth of knowledge looking into the psychological effects of such an undertaking.

In addition to a lack of applicable information regarding humans living their lives practicing CR, there are a few major topics I take issue with in regards to this extreme form of calorie restriction and control. First, if you are dramatically cutting back on your food and caloric intake, you are going to notice a rapid amount of weight loss within the first few months of the adoption of your new lifestyle. It is exciting to lose weight, but losing weight that quickly is certainly not a healthy proposition.

Yes, you will be losing all of your fat, but your body will also start to use muscle when your fat stores have become depleted. This can be very dangerous for your health, as your heart can be adversely effected by any type of rapid weight loss. If weight it lost too quickly you risk damage to your heart and could experience some of the detrimental physiological manifestations of anorexia such as heart attack and heart failure, not to mention the other scores of problems related to inadequate food consumption such as kidney failure, seizures, diabetes, liver failure, the list goes on and on…

Second, CR (to me) seems reminiscent of psychological disorders, such as OCD, anorexia, bulemia, etc., that are centered around control. Control over the exact number of calories you eat, controlling exactly what nutrients are in your food, control over the surroundings in which you find yourself eating, and finally the belief that CR will give you the ability to control your lifespan and extend it beyond normal, human proportions. While the proponents of CR will claim that they are not starving themselves and will frown upon comparisons of their lifestyle to those of an anorexic, as I mentioned above, the same types of physiological and psychological manifestations take place with both.

Third, in addition to people with eating disorders/OCD-like syndromes and CR lifestyles both exhibiting an extreme concern for what is being put into their body and how others will perceive them, they also show signs of body dismorphic disorder amongst their followers. For example, under no circumstances it is ok for someone that is 6 foot tall to weight a mere 115 pounds, which were the stats for a CR practitioner in an article I read. The acceptance of this sort of gaunt frame is characteristic of a person with body dismoprhic disorder. People taking part in CR will reason that this look is necessary for optimal health, while anorexics/bulemics will reason that they really do not look that way at all, that there is always more weight to be lost.

Fourth, by cutting back on calories in such a drastic way, it is nearly impossible to engage in any sort of physical activity during which calories would be consumed. If everyone adopted CR, we would no longer see marathon runners or triathletes, nor would we be able to bike to work instead of burning fossil fuels. It makes sense right, in order to live longer you need to starve yourself so you are unable to move and be active, but you will have low cholesterol, good blood pressure, be diabetes-free and have little concern about heart disease. Call me crazy, but I would rather not live to see my great-great-great-grandchildren graduate high school if it meant I could eat 2,000 calories a day and jump on a trampoline when I felt like it.

Fifth, calculating proper meal portions that fit within the guidelines of healthy calorie restriction are too complicated. Preparing a dinner involves weighing items out on scales, inputting data into a website or CR software to be sure that all of your needs for vitamins and minerals are being met, and making sure proper portions are always followed; no room for slip ups. While there are certainly a number of low-calorie, natural flavorings out there, the meals are destined to be bland; although, maybe when you are actually starving yourself each day you are able to look past the actual taste of the meal and focus more on the feeling of being fed (which actually wouldn’t be such a bad thing after-all).

Sixth, forget about having much of a social life – at least one that involves joining friends for coctails or enjoying a family dinner. Pretty much the only drinks that CR dieters will consume is Pinot Noir wine, because of its anti-aging properties, and zero calorie beverages like good ‘ol h-two-oh. Being a part of a calorie restricted lifestyle in a world of binge eating is undoubtedly going to lend itself to a more solitary existance, avoiding places where you may be in contact with people who live “the other way”.

Should we all consume less food? Sure, there is absolutely no doubt that we are eating too much, but CR is a much too extreme remedy to even consider as a solution to this problem. People (myself included) really need to re-evaluate their relationship with food, and instead of eating because of depression, boredom or other emotions, we need to use eating for what it was meant for – survival and celebrations. We also need to redefine what we label as food and start making more informed decisions about what we are putting into our bodies as fuel. Just as your gasoline engine would not be happy if you went ahead and threw in some salt water, your body is going to produce a similar effect if you are jamming it full of fast food instead of the fruits and veggies it needs to be an efficient machine.