7 ms·

Calorie restriction in humans builds strong muscle and stimulates healthy aging

110 points by rstocker99 3y ago

tekla 3y ago
[flagged]
- jjeaff 3y ago
  yep, and alcoholics should just stop drinking and drug addicts should "just say no". Depressed people should just "stop thinking negative thoughts and go exercise". You should start a life coaching business!
- blargey 3y ago
  Calorie restriction, the topic of the article, is significantly less food than what would otherwise be considered a healthy diet eaten by fit, low-BMI people.
polishdude20 3y ago
Any calorie based study when it's self reported should be highly suspect of being false.
- fortran77 3y ago
  One of my favorite studies, an oft-replicated and cited study, tracks several hundred people who claimed to be "diet resistant". Using a technique invloving "doubly-lableled water" they were able to determine that every single person in the study who claimed to be diet resistant was overreporting their exercise and underreporting their calorie intake: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199212313272701 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199212313272701 Of course, this was a study of obese people. If you're doing a study on healty-weight people who are trying to build muscle, you may get far fewer people who will lie.
  - zen928 3y ago
    Is it supposed to be surprising that someone having weight issues would have issues reliably tracking the impacts of actions that would lead to their weight? Have any similar "favorite studies" on hand about alcoholics who underreport alcohol use and overreport abstaining? Punching down is a favorite pastime of mine too btw :)
    - fortran77 3y ago
      > Have any similar "favorite studies" on hand about alcoholics who underreport alcohol use and overreport abstaining? Thank you for your genuine concern! Unfortunately, I don't. I track weight loss studies because I had struggled with weight gain and obesity. I am fortunate to have never had a problem with alcohol. I hope you can find the help you need.
    - sn9 3y ago
      It's not punching down. It comes with frustration that these garbage studies mislead people who have been struggling with their weight by discouraging them from internalizing the simple facts that lead to effective and sustainable weight loss/maintenance/manipulation. You see them cited all the time by people who've grabbed onto the next diet fad in hopes of achieving what bodybuilders and athletes who compete in weight classes have known for decades.
- InSteady 3y ago
  Participants also lost weight and muscle mass in this study. 12% calorie restriction and 10% weight loss maintained over 2 years (avg weight reduction of 7.5 kg vs 0.1 kg weight increase in control group), of which 71% was fat loss.
livueta 3y ago
I did a bit of a double-take at the headline because it seems to imply that one can grow stronger while calorie-restricted, which is contrary to common practice around strength development - caloric surplus is generally understood to be necessary for muscle growth. I've only read the abstract, but the title as I interpreted it seems misleading: > One study showed that individuals on calorie restriction lost muscle mass and an average of 20 pounds of weight over the first year and maintained their weight for the second year. However, despite losing muscle mass, calorie restriction participants did not lose muscle strength, indicating calorie restriction improved the amount of force generated by each unit of muscle mass, called muscle specific force. So even if force per unit increased, overall mass decreased and total strength was unchanged. I guess the title is technically correct but the implication is off. This might be better phrased as "calorie restriction in humans doesn't incur as much muscle/strength loss as previously thought", which is still an interesting result.
- alexey-salmin 3y ago
  Increased power over weight ratio does count as "increased strength" IMO. You will run and bike much faster for one thing.
  - e12e 3y ago
    Might not wrestle better in open weight class, chop as much wood or shovel as much snow or dirt, though ?
    - idopmstuff 3y ago
      Wrestling seems like exactly the wrong thing to cite here, since it's generally not done in openweight, and if you're wrestling in traditional weight classes then what's described here is hugely beneficial - you can drop a weight class but not lose strength.
      - ibejoeb 3y ago
        > you can drop a weight class but not lose strength. Exactly. This aligns to strategic weight cutting. Once you go up and then go back down, you feel stronger than you were for about as long as you continue regular training.
atum47 3y ago
12% reduction of what? The basal metabolism? Were the people overeating before? How many calories on average?
- ec109685 3y ago
  Read the article.
- cko 3y ago
  I never get this "calorie restriction" term. What does it mean? I have a BMI of 20. Should I reduce my intake by 12%? When do I stop reducing? I want to live longer. I would also like to build some more muscle, ideally to a BMI of 22. What if I gain 10lbs of muscle then restrict?
  - woleium 3y ago
    Read Roy Walford out of UCLA on the CRON diet
  - InSteady 3y ago
    It just means eating 12% fewer calories than your baseline to maintain your current weight. So if you eat 2,500 calories per day to keep your weight and activity levels, bump it down to 2,200 and keep it there. I have heard that it is possible to build muscle while "cutting" (calorie restricting) but it's going to be much slower and probably more uncomfortable. Note that this study was a 12% restriction maintained for 2 years. The metabolic and inflammatory benefits persist long after the calorie restriction period in animal models, and this study seems to show the same genetic pathways are getting upregulated and downregulated in humans as we have seen in the animals that benefit from longer lifespan after calorie restricting. When you put on 10 lbs of muscle, presumably your baseline will be slightly higher than it was prior to that (extra muscle requires extra calories to maintain), but still less than what it took to put that muscle on quickly and efficiently. I have no clue how much you should expect that difference to be, I'm sure many a bro scientist has opinions on it, some of which may be reasonable. Bulking and cutting is a classic technique in bodybuilding, however, typical cuts go on for a few months at most as opposed to 2 years. One major takeaway from this study is that on average, you will be just as strong as when you started calorie restricting even though you will have lost muscle mass. It is theorized that your muscles will have become more efficient, so if you put on more muscle after a long period of calorie restriction you will be considerably stronger than if you had skipped the calorie restriction and just added the muscle. Food for thought.
hardwaresofton 3y ago
> They found that during a two-year span, the goal for participants was to reduce their daily caloric intake by 25%, but the highest the group was able to reach was a 12% reduction This feels like something the royal we should be talking about as well. It’s clearly really difficult to restrict calories/eat less in the US. It’s unclear if this is a US only phenomenon or not but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  It's not hard to restrict calories in the US if that's what you've always done, but if you grew up eating a lot, it's hard to stop eating a lot. Doesn't matter where you are in the world, it's just hard to change your lifestyle long-term.
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  > It’s clearly really difficult to restrict calories/eat less in the US Just came back from a 3 weeks trip to the US. I found it easy to control my calorie intake by just skipping a meal or two and avoiding sodas and sweets. It was much harder to eat something reasonably healthy while being on the move though. I'd be curious to check my cholesterol level before and after the trip.
- bratwurst3000 3y ago
  Little anecdote… my friends and I are mostly from Europe and travel a lot and eat food from all over the world… we are mostly not fat. So the only country where we gain weight without doing anything else are the USA. It’s like magic. And yes it’s the food and you people don’t walk anywhere. Not even a block. Still love your culture.
  - NoPicklez 3y ago
    Then here in Australia I'm seeing a massive increase in people using electric scooters rather than walking
knodi 3y ago
Does any one find hard to eat a lot of protein (150g) in a 8 hour feeding window? I hate to live off of protein shacks.
- cgh 3y ago
  Roughly 40g/meal for me, plus one 30g snack (usually a shake).
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  Do you really need that much protein though?
  - woleium 3y ago
    That’s quite a contentious question, there aren’t that many good studies, and they are difficult to do well
    - lemming 3y ago
      It’s really not: https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/ https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/. There is tons of quality research quoted on examine.com, and the results around protein are very conclusive. The short answer is that the recommendations are for much higher protein intake than most people think, and than most standard food will give you.
      - sfn42 3y ago
        That site you linked says people with active lifestyles can need as much as 3g/kg, if you weigh 80kg that's 240g of protein a day.
        lemming 3y ago
        Their recommendations are always a range, and for athletes the recommended range generally tops out at 2g/kg. But the recommendation can be higher for people with very strict body composition requirements, especially when trying to lose the last bit of fat when you are already very lean (e.g. bodybuilders before a show, action movie actors etc). But the range for most people is pretty wide, and it’s not a requirement, it’s just that you’ll probably get better results when gaining or losing weight if you err higher. But yeah, even the minimum is a lot, and it’s hard to achieve without building all your meals around protein.
StanislavPetrov 3y ago
> One study showed that individuals on calorie restriction lost muscle mass and an average of 20 pounds of weight over the first year and maintained their weight for the second year. However, despite losing muscle mass, calorie restriction participants did not lose muscle strength, indicating calorie restriction improved the amount of force generated by each unit of muscle mass, called muscle specific force. If people lost 20 lbs in the first year of a 12% calorie restricted diet then that means that this study took place among people who were already obese (which seems extremely relevant). Anyone who is in good shape and not 6'8 is in no position to lose 20 lbs without serious risks to their health, aside from vastly decreased muscle strength. It is interesting, but not very surprising, that obese people with atrophied muscles don't lose "strength" by cutting calories and losing some muscle mass, which is very low to begin with.
- Schiendelman 3y ago
  I'm not sure of your math. I weigh 180 at 5'9". That's well under obese. If I lost 20 pounds, I'd be just under the midline of healthy.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Yeah they're pretty far off.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

110 points by rstocker99 3y ago

tekla 3y ago

[flagged]

jjeaff 3y ago
yep, and alcoholics should just stop drinking and drug addicts should "just say no". Depressed people should just "stop thinking negative thoughts and go exercise". You should start a life coaching business!
blargey 3y ago
Calorie restriction, the topic of the article, is significantly less food than what would otherwise be considered a healthy diet eaten by fit, low-BMI people.

polishdude20 3y ago

Any calorie based study when it's self reported should be highly suspect of being false.

fortran77 3y ago
One of my favorite studies, an oft-replicated and cited study, tracks several hundred people who claimed to be "diet resistant". Using a technique invloving "doubly-lableled water" they were able to determine that every single person in the study who claimed to be diet resistant was overreporting their exercise and underreporting their calorie intake: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199212313272701 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199212313272701 Of course, this was a study of obese people. If you're doing a study on healty-weight people who are trying to build muscle, you may get far fewer people who will lie.
- zen928 3y ago
  Is it supposed to be surprising that someone having weight issues would have issues reliably tracking the impacts of actions that would lead to their weight? Have any similar "favorite studies" on hand about alcoholics who underreport alcohol use and overreport abstaining? Punching down is a favorite pastime of mine too btw :)
  - fortran77 3y ago
    > Have any similar "favorite studies" on hand about alcoholics who underreport alcohol use and overreport abstaining? Thank you for your genuine concern! Unfortunately, I don't. I track weight loss studies because I had struggled with weight gain and obesity. I am fortunate to have never had a problem with alcohol. I hope you can find the help you need.
  - sn9 3y ago
    It's not punching down. It comes with frustration that these garbage studies mislead people who have been struggling with their weight by discouraging them from internalizing the simple facts that lead to effective and sustainable weight loss/maintenance/manipulation. You see them cited all the time by people who've grabbed onto the next diet fad in hopes of achieving what bodybuilders and athletes who compete in weight classes have known for decades.
InSteady 3y ago
Participants also lost weight and muscle mass in this study. 12% calorie restriction and 10% weight loss maintained over 2 years (avg weight reduction of 7.5 kg vs 0.1 kg weight increase in control group), of which 71% was fat loss.

livueta 3y ago

I did a bit of a double-take at the headline because it seems to imply that one can grow stronger while calorie-restricted, which is contrary to common practice around strength development - caloric surplus is generally understood to be necessary for muscle growth. I've only read the abstract, but the title as I interpreted it seems misleading: > One study showed that individuals on calorie restriction lost muscle mass and an average of 20 pounds of weight over the first year and maintained their weight for the second year. However, despite losing muscle mass, calorie restriction participants did not lose muscle strength, indicating calorie restriction improved the amount of force generated by each unit of muscle mass, called muscle specific force. So even if force per unit increased, overall mass decreased and total strength was unchanged. I guess the title is technically correct but the implication is off. This might be better phrased as "calorie restriction in humans doesn't incur as much muscle/strength loss as previously thought", which is still an interesting result.

alexey-salmin 3y ago
Increased power over weight ratio does count as "increased strength" IMO. You will run and bike much faster for one thing.
- e12e 3y ago
  Might not wrestle better in open weight class, chop as much wood or shovel as much snow or dirt, though ?
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    Wrestling seems like exactly the wrong thing to cite here, since it's generally not done in openweight, and if you're wrestling in traditional weight classes then what's described here is hugely beneficial - you can drop a weight class but not lose strength.
    - ibejoeb 3y ago
      > you can drop a weight class but not lose strength. Exactly. This aligns to strategic weight cutting. Once you go up and then go back down, you feel stronger than you were for about as long as you continue regular training.

atum47 3y ago

12% reduction of what? The basal metabolism? Were the people overeating before? How many calories on average?

ec109685 3y ago
Read the article.
cko 3y ago
I never get this "calorie restriction" term. What does it mean? I have a BMI of 20. Should I reduce my intake by 12%? When do I stop reducing? I want to live longer. I would also like to build some more muscle, ideally to a BMI of 22. What if I gain 10lbs of muscle then restrict?
- woleium 3y ago
  Read Roy Walford out of UCLA on the CRON diet
- InSteady 3y ago
  It just means eating 12% fewer calories than your baseline to maintain your current weight. So if you eat 2,500 calories per day to keep your weight and activity levels, bump it down to 2,200 and keep it there. I have heard that it is possible to build muscle while "cutting" (calorie restricting) but it's going to be much slower and probably more uncomfortable. Note that this study was a 12% restriction maintained for 2 years. The metabolic and inflammatory benefits persist long after the calorie restriction period in animal models, and this study seems to show the same genetic pathways are getting upregulated and downregulated in humans as we have seen in the animals that benefit from longer lifespan after calorie restricting. When you put on 10 lbs of muscle, presumably your baseline will be slightly higher than it was prior to that (extra muscle requires extra calories to maintain), but still less than what it took to put that muscle on quickly and efficiently. I have no clue how much you should expect that difference to be, I'm sure many a bro scientist has opinions on it, some of which may be reasonable. Bulking and cutting is a classic technique in bodybuilding, however, typical cuts go on for a few months at most as opposed to 2 years. One major takeaway from this study is that on average, you will be just as strong as when you started calorie restricting even though you will have lost muscle mass. It is theorized that your muscles will have become more efficient, so if you put on more muscle after a long period of calorie restriction you will be considerably stronger than if you had skipped the calorie restriction and just added the muscle. Food for thought.

hardwaresofton 3y ago

> They found that during a two-year span, the goal for participants was to reduce their daily caloric intake by 25%, but the highest the group was able to reach was a 12% reduction This feels like something the royal we should be talking about as well. It’s clearly really difficult to restrict calories/eat less in the US. It’s unclear if this is a US only phenomenon or not but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
It's not hard to restrict calories in the US if that's what you've always done, but if you grew up eating a lot, it's hard to stop eating a lot. Doesn't matter where you are in the world, it's just hard to change your lifestyle long-term.
yodsanklai 3y ago
> It’s clearly really difficult to restrict calories/eat less in the US Just came back from a 3 weeks trip to the US. I found it easy to control my calorie intake by just skipping a meal or two and avoiding sodas and sweets. It was much harder to eat something reasonably healthy while being on the move though. I'd be curious to check my cholesterol level before and after the trip.
bratwurst3000 3y ago
Little anecdote… my friends and I are mostly from Europe and travel a lot and eat food from all over the world… we are mostly not fat. So the only country where we gain weight without doing anything else are the USA. It’s like magic. And yes it’s the food and you people don’t walk anywhere. Not even a block. Still love your culture.
- NoPicklez 3y ago
  Then here in Australia I'm seeing a massive increase in people using electric scooters rather than walking

knodi 3y ago

Does any one find hard to eat a lot of protein (150g) in a 8 hour feeding window? I hate to live off of protein shacks.

cgh 3y ago
Roughly 40g/meal for me, plus one 30g snack (usually a shake).
yodsanklai 3y ago
Do you really need that much protein though?
- woleium 3y ago
  That’s quite a contentious question, there aren’t that many good studies, and they are difficult to do well
  - lemming 3y ago
    It’s really not: https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/ https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/. There is tons of quality research quoted on examine.com, and the results around protein are very conclusive. The short answer is that the recommendations are for much higher protein intake than most people think, and than most standard food will give you.
    - sfn42 3y ago
      That site you linked says people with active lifestyles can need as much as 3g/kg, if you weigh 80kg that's 240g of protein a day.
      - lemming 3y ago
        Their recommendations are always a range, and for athletes the recommended range generally tops out at 2g/kg. But the recommendation can be higher for people with very strict body composition requirements, especially when trying to lose the last bit of fat when you are already very lean (e.g. bodybuilders before a show, action movie actors etc). But the range for most people is pretty wide, and it’s not a requirement, it’s just that you’ll probably get better results when gaining or losing weight if you err higher. But yeah, even the minimum is a lot, and it’s hard to achieve without building all your meals around protein.

StanislavPetrov 3y ago

> One study showed that individuals on calorie restriction lost muscle mass and an average of 20 pounds of weight over the first year and maintained their weight for the second year. However, despite losing muscle mass, calorie restriction participants did not lose muscle strength, indicating calorie restriction improved the amount of force generated by each unit of muscle mass, called muscle specific force. If people lost 20 lbs in the first year of a 12% calorie restricted diet then that means that this study took place among people who were already obese (which seems extremely relevant). Anyone who is in good shape and not 6'8 is in no position to lose 20 lbs without serious risks to their health, aside from vastly decreased muscle strength. It is interesting, but not very surprising, that obese people with atrophied muscles don't lose "strength" by cutting calories and losing some muscle mass, which is very low to begin with.

Schiendelman 3y ago
I'm not sure of your math. I weigh 180 at 5'9". That's well under obese. If I lost 20 pounds, I'd be just under the midline of healthy.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Yeah they're pretty far off.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]