Lucius

I've been researching this issue - reading online articles, scientific studies, watching videos etc. and it seems that the maximum amount of 30 g of protein per meal may not actually be a myth but a real thing. It''s obviously not accurate for everyone, the older you are, the more protein you require, and your activity level (athletes can absorb more) and protein source play an important role as well, but a range of 15 g to 40 g of protein seems to encapsulate all possible variables and correctly show how much protein is able to be absorbed from one meal. Here is one very interesting study that deals with this: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23571534_Ingested_protein_dose_response_of_muscle_and_albumin_protein_synthesis_after_resistance_exercise_in_young_men It suggests that 20 g of protein (they used egg protein, 20 g of egg protein contains 1.8 g of leucine) is enough for young men to maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis and any amount in excess of that would result in irreversible oxidation, activating mTOR and possibly accelerating aging. What are your thoughts on this? This might be especially important for people on the OMAD diet, who consume all of their daily protein in one meal. I'm myself currently eating OMAD and may switch to 2MAD solely because of this protein absorption issue.

Update on my diet. I wasn't happy with how much leucine and methionine I was eating, so I've made a bunch of adjustments. As you can see in the screenshot in my first post, my leucine intake was 179% of RDA and methionine intake was 162% of RDA. I've been able to bring leucine down to 148% of RDA and methionine down to 120% of RDA while eating the same amount of calories (it was really hard to accomplish). This is my new diet. Total protein intake obviously went down as well, and now sits at 61 grams. Since I weigh 61 kg, it translates into 1 gram of protein per kg of body weight which I'm very happy about 🙂 The perfectionist in me has already been trying to figure out how to bring both leucine and methionine down to 100% of RDA but as it turns out, to be able to do that I would have to cut foods that are considered very healthy for a variety of reasons and replace them with something like apples, which are an amazing source of low-leucine low-methionine calories. Because I'm not sure which would be healthier, bringing my leucine and methionine even further down or eating a lot of foods considered to have longevity benefits like fava beans, rye, walnuts etc. I will leave things as they are right now and only adjust my diet after I will gain more information.

Exercise type, frequency and duration seem to be very tricky to balance correctly. This TEDx Talk warns very eloquently about the dangers of overtraining.

I've done some research like you suggested and found this study from 2014 https://www.longdom.org/open-access/understanding-the-characteristics-of-oleuropein-for-table-olive-processing-2157-7110.1000328.pdf The most interesting part was this: "The fundamental and most important step of table olive processing is debittering. During debittering processes, the levels of oleuropein are markedly reduced either by leaching or hydrolysis, hence the olive is debittered [6,20]. Keeping in brine and treatment with NaOH are used two main methods in table olive industry. However, these two methods have disadvantages. These disadvantages of brine debittering need a long time (6-8 months) and the final product has high salt content (%5-7). The disadvantages of debittering by NaOH are degradation of other phenolic compounds with oleuropein, nutrient losses caused by washing for removing the excess NaOH from olive and the formation of high amounts of waste water. For this reason, there is a need to develop new debittering methods to produce table olive. New technologies are needed in order to reduce the length of the debittering process and to reduce or complete replace the use of NaOH and the subsequent neutralizing washes or brine debittering processes. As oleuropein is water-soluble, it is extracted from the raw flesh by diffusion when olives are soaked in water or brine during processing. Slitting, cracking or bruising the olives facilitates extraction of oleuropein. However, important to processing, oleuropein is degraded by lye but not in the acid environments created by fermentation" So it seems that there would be a huge difference between eating whole (processed) olives and drinking EVOO, which retains its oleuropein content. I guess the healthiest thing to do should then be to eat whole bitter unprocessed olives 🙂 Which unfortunately most people aren't going to do, because they taste so disgusting, but if they want to make sure that they are eating an absolutely healthy food that hasn't been processed and retained all of its goodness, bitter olives are the way to go.

Allow me to revive this thread and ask one simple question. Why, instead of arguing about whether olive oil is processed junk or a life extending medicine, don't we just consume whole olives? There seem to be no issues with them, except for the fact that they are usually soaked in brine, which is an issue I've been able to circumvent within 5 seconds by googling "olives without salt" and clicking on the first link.

I don't, but I have been on this diet for only a few days. I don't know much about blood testing, how often do you think I should wait before taking a blood test and what specifically would you recommend me to get tested for?

I carefully went through all common (and uncommon) whole grains and picked the one that had the lowest combined content of leucine and methionine. The winner was rye. It has actually 10% less methionine than lentils. But then lentils have more than twice as much protein, so you are right that they are a great source of low-methionine protein. The reason why I want to eat at least some grains is this study from 2015 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429593/. Conclusion: These data indicate that higher whole grain consumption is associated with lower total and CVD mortality in U.S. men and women, independent of other dietary and lifestyle factors. These results are in line with recommendations that promote increased whole grain consumption to facilitate disease prevention. Though it is obvious that I won't be able to follow all these recommendations at the same time. I don't know which is going to more negatively affect my longevity, eating more leucine and methionine or eating less whole grains and beans? Another thing I could do is stop eating pumpkin seeds altogether (they are responsible for 41% of my leucine and 48% of my methionine intake but also for 63% of my zinc intake) and just take a daily zinc supplement. This might be the best way to solve this dietary puzzle and I'm going to go do some research on zinc supplements right now.

Optimal health is equivalent to being immortal (defined as immune to aging), not suffering from any health complications and experiencing a mental state of constant happiness. Until we as a society figure out how to achieve these three things, no one should be fooling themselves with the fable that they already did reach optimal health. If you are aging, you are dying. No dying person should be considered healthy. Unfortunately, people are being brainwashed since birth to accept that aging is something "natural", whatever that means, and the result is that instead of focusing all our efforts on researching aging and developing technologies that would slow it down and eventually even halt it and reverse it, we waste money on things that have a lower priority. It is amusing and sad at the same time. Everybody wants to live forever (given that they would be healthy and would enjoy their life), but cultural indoctrination is strong. Future generations will obviously be much more cognizant of this and prioritize longevity more strongly, and when looking back into the past at what their ancestors were doing with their limited time, they'll shake their heads in disbelief and ask themselves *How could they have been so stupid?* But that's just the cycle of life. Future generations are always smarter than past generations. Though sometimes, I wish evolution worked a little faster.

These past few days, I've been working hard on rebuilding my diet and this is the final result. The composition in terms of types of foods and calories is the following: Fruit - 36%, 818 kcal Nuts and Seeds - 25%, 555 kcal Whole Grains - 15%, 338 kcal Vegetables - 11%, 249 kcal Legumes - 11%, 242 kcal Healthy Sweetener (Blackstrap Molasses) - 2%, 46 kcal Spices - <1%, 3 kcal (will be more in the future, I just haven't decided which ones I like the best) And in terms of macronutrients and calories: Carbs - 69%, 1559 kcal Fat - 21%, 463 kcal Protein - 10%, 228 kcal (The percentages add up to 105% instead of 100% like they should, because Cronometer is being weird, but you still get the idea. I've already sent them an email about it. Update: They replied that not all carbs and proteins have 4 kcals per gram and not all fats have 9 kcals per gram, so their calculations are correct. I adjusted the percentages) With this diet, I am trying to achieve several different things at once. Follow Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen (I haven't added any exercise to Cronometer because I am still not sure about the right duration and frequency, but the best type seems to be swimming due to it being low impact, placing only minimal stress on your joints) Have my protein intake as close to the 0.8 g/kg RDA as possible (I am 22, 183 cm/6 feet and currently weigh 61 kg/134 lbs so I should be eating 49 g of protein). Have my leucine and methionine intake as close to the RDA as possible. Not eat too little fat. I consider anything below 10% as too little. Get 125-150% of my RDA for zinc, because I'm vegan and bioavailability of zinc from plant foods is low. Get at least 100% of RDA for all the other vitamins and minerals (I take the B12 supplement only once a week, the other three are taken daily). Get most of my vitamins and minerals from whole plant foods. Not eat too many oxalates to avoid kidney stones. However, as you can see from the first screenshot, I wasn't quite able to bring my protein to less than 69 g (which in my case is equivalent to 1.1 g of protein per kg of body weight) and something similar happened with my leucine and methionine, they are sitting at 179% and 162% RDA respectively. Here is a detailed breakdown of foods that contribute to my higher-than-I-would-like intake of protein. I honestly don't know how I am supposed to optimize this diet. If I eat less fava beans (which have the lowest leucine and methionine content of all legumes as far as I know) I won't get the benefits that Dr. Greger talks about here. If I eat less pumpkin seeds, I won't hit my 125-150% RDA target for zinc. If I eat less rye, which is the only whole grain in my diet, I won't get the benefits he writes about here. So I guess I should cut something from the bottom of the list, like walnuts (even though there's this article), probably not kale, sweet potato, red cabbage, dates, bananas or kiwi and replace them with some protein-free alternatives (which will be hard). Another thing you probably noticed is that my sodium intake is pretty low. I changed the default sodium target in settings from 1500 mg to 500 mg based on this Wikipedia article (and its source) but I'm only 95% there. Do you think it's necessary to reach the 1500 mg? When I researched it, it looked like 1500 mg was the upper limit more than an RDA. Also note that I am eating all this food in OMAD (one meal a day) as breakfast to reap all the benefits that come with TRF (time-restricted feeding). I'm open to all suggestions on how I should optimize this diet. If you noticed that I am doing something wrong, like eating too much of a certain vitamin or mineral or, on the contrary, eating too little of something, please let me know. If you know some really cool spices that I should include in my diet, I'd like to hear about them. The same goes for supplements and beverages (I need some that won't break my fast though). Thanks for reading 🙂

I'm thinking of adding 36 grams of ground poppy seeds to my OMAD because they are an excellent source of calcium and a decent source of zinc. Has anyone here done their research on them and could tell me whether there are any health risks associated with them? I'm planning on eating them every day.

I guess I'll have to always check what database I am pulling the data from when using Cronometer, although my diet won't be changing on a day to day basis so I can just do it once for my OMAD and be done with it. Btw I haven't seen any other nutrition tracking app besides Cronometer mentioned on these forums, is there any specific reason for that?

I need a trustworthy source where I can look up amino acid contents of foods. Is Cronometer trustworthy? Just googling something like "fava beans amino acid content" isn't usually very helpful, and I don't want to be getting my numbers from 20 differents websites at once for 20 different foods, that would skew them like crazy. Any ideas?

Thanks for sharing that Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. I had no idea Nick Bostrom wrote something like that, it should be required reading in every school, so that people would finally stop accepting death as something inevitable and instead get inspired to start working toward achieving immortality, which we as humanity will definitely achieve at some point. But the sooner it will be the more lives will be saved. Like Nick Bostrom writes in the story, achieving immortality even 1 year sooner would mean tens of millions lives saved.

I'll order one and report back with the results 🙂

I have no idea. What is the easiest way to find out?

I've read studies where people who ate a high-glycemic meal for breakfast ate more calories at lunch, than people who ate a low-glycemic meal. The conclusion was that high-glycemic foods promote hunger, whereas low-glycemic foods are more satiating. Now, I eat OMAD (one meal a day) every single day and most of the food is in the form of a smoothie, which obviously raises its glycemic index. I actually prefer this, because it makes it easier for me to eat that much food in a single sitting. I don't think I would be even able to eat OMAD if all my food was in a solid form. My question is: Is there anything bad about eating mostly smoothies or just eating high-glycemic foods in general (for example eating instant oatmeal instead of regular oatmeal)? I carefully watch my caloric intake every day, so overeating is not an issue in my case.

Fair enough. From what I've read here though, not many people believe anymore that CR works for life extension. And since this forum is called CR Society, that probably hints at something. I'd happily practice CR my whole life if the data on it was more solid and there was a good chance that I will get some 10-15 extra years. But because there's so much uncertainty and I want to take my quality of life into account as well, I'll pass up on CR for the time being until more convincing studies emerge. Quality of life is something I feel others seem to forget about. Is it worth it to practice severe CR your whole life for the benefit of life extension that is not guaranteed? Do they not think they would be happier if they didn't have to keep themselves looking skinny all the time? Plus the lower libido must definitely be a blow to one's ego (5-syllable rhyme not intended). I agree with Dean Pomerleau's approach of leading a healthy, obesity-avoiding (CM as you call it) lifestyle instead of practicing CR, mainly because I have not seen anyone provide sufficient evidence as to why CR should have a good chance of extending one's life. After reading his book, it seems pretty obvious that he developed FMD (fasting-mimicking diet) only because he wanted to make fasting more appealing to the masses. But FMD doesn't seem to provide any extra health benefits over a traditional water-only fast. And funnily enough, I would even argue that water-fasts are easier to do than FMD because on FMD, by eating low amounts of calories every single day, you are constantly triggering a feeling of hunger in your body. Whereas during a classical water-only fast, the hunger pangs stop after a few days.

That's good news for me because my concern is IGF-1 getting too high, not too low, once I up my protein intake. Longo also recommends to not go over the RDA level of protein (0.8 g/kg/day) but I believe that most if not all of the harmful effects of an increased protein intake are from animal protein and plant protein that has an amino acid profile similar to that of animal protein. I still haven't decided which specific amino acids I am going to restrict but methionine, leucine and cysteine have all been mentioned on this forum numerous times.

Hey McCoy, I'm curious if you've found out what your IGF-1 level is? I'm going to experiment with weightlifting and an increased protein intake as well and then have blood tests done to see if my IGF-1 has risen to an undesirably high level or not.

Sorry for not responding earlier. Life got in the way, plus I wanted to do some more research on the topics I brought up here. I've read through a good portion of older posts on this forum, including all posts where protein restriction is mentioned. This is what I've picked up. CR is basically equivalent to avoiding obesity, so it's not necessary to severely restrict calories and keep oneself looking skinny. As long as I am not obese, I am practicing CR. With regards to PR (protein restriction), this study was often mentioned: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673798/ PMID: 18843793. Its obvious flaw is that it compares vegans on an RDA-level protein diet (0.76 g/kg per day) to (presumably?) omnivores on a high-protein diet (1.73 g/kg per day). I can't understand why are vegans being compared to omnivores, since it allows for two possible conclusions to be drawn about the IGF-1 levels. Either the IGF-1 levels are lower in the vegan, RDA-level protein group because they have been consuming lower amounts of protein. Or they are lower because they have been consuming protein exclusively from plant sources. That is a very important distinction for all vegans who would like to know whether they should restrict their protein intake or not. Are diets high in protein bad for longevity? Or just diets high in animal protein? I'm planning on starting weightlifting very soon to finally build some muscle, so I'm especially curious about these questions. If anyone on this forum knows about a study where they compare two vegan groups, one on a low to moderate-protein diet and one on a high-protein diet and measure their IGF-1 levels, please let me know, I'd love to read it. I'm 22. Interesting, I've always seen recommendations to lift weights 4-5 times a week. Why do you think lifting only twice a week is superior? I'm currently eating OMAD (one meal a day), so I'm planning to eat my only meal of the day right after I finish my workout (within 30 minutes). I've already done some research on working out in a fasted state, which I will be doing, and it seems that the sooner you eat your meal the better. One thing I'm still not sure about is whether I am going to be able to absorb all the protein if I will eat all of it in a single meal. Need to do some more research on that. I'm planning to read his book very soon. I've recently read Valter Longo's The Longevity Diet which didn't impress me much, so hopefully Fontana's book will be better.

I used this body fat calculator https://www.calculator.net/body-fat-calculator.html and got 10.3% then looked at some images of people with different body fat percentages on Google and 10.3% seems to be accurate. I've been practicing CR for the past 3 years without even intending to do so. I've been going through a stressful period in my life and started skipping meals which eventually led to a loss of appetite and me going from 70 kg (154 pounds) down to 60 kg (132 pounds). But now I would like to start lifting weights and put on some muscle to not look so skinny anymore 🙂 I'm assuming CR can be practiced even when one is trying to build muscle and eats a caloric surplus, as long as he stays within a healthy BMI and body fat range, is that correct? Do you think that 0.8 g/kg of protein will be sufficient for building some decent amount of muscle? I care more about the longevity benefit of a low-protein diet than about building as much muscle as possible, so if 0.8 g/kg works decently enough and I will see progress on my body while still getting the longevity benefits, I will be happy. Thanks for all the advice, I will download the Cronometer app, start tracking my AAs and try to keep my intake of the ones connected to the mTOR activity as close to 100% of RDA as possible.

Is having BMI of 22-24 equivalent to practicing moderate CR?

Is there a consensus on this forum which of these three increases lifespan the most? I have read a bunch of studies on these topics and it seems that as time evolved, scientists went from believing that CR increases lifespan to believing that CR is unnecessary and that PR alone increases lifespan to now playing with the idea that only restriction of certain amino acids increases lifespan. I'd like to get some practical advice from people who have researched this more than me on how I should optimize my diet. Is CR out of the question? Is PR necessary and how much should I restrict? Or should I restrict only certain AAs like methionine + BCAAs (leucine, isoleucine, valine)? I'm vegan btw, so all of my protein comes from plant sources.

How do you figure out what your natural set point is? What if someone intentionally ate less or more calories in their early 20s and now they have no idea what their "natural" weight would have been?

But if I eventually stop losing weight and maintain then I'm no longer restricting calories because 1800 kcal per day is my new maintenance level. At that point, even if I let myself eat ad libitum I would still eat roughly 1800 kcal beacuse anything more than that would feel like too much food for my body weight. How exactly am I restricting my calories then? I'm just maintaining a certain weight/BMI/caloric intake. If I wanted to keep restricting I would need to substract 20% from 1800 and then after 1440 kcal per day would become my new maintenance level if I wanted to keep restricting I would need to again substract 20% from 1440. So how can you say that this diet is not about reaching a certain BMI/weight when you very clearly do stop restricting at some point? Thanks for answering my other questions though, I'll read through the forum some more and check out your website as well.