Severe calorie diet

Greg Adams can fit his lunch in the palm of his hand: a half-cup of mixed nuts.

Mark Schneider waters down his breakfast orange juice to shave calories. He weighs less than he did in high school.

Diana Hou prepares her dinner of vegetables using so little oil and seasoning that her husband and sons fired her as the family cook. "They said I didn't use enough grease," she said.

Buoyed by studies proving lab animals live longer when fed less, such proponents of "caloric restriction" learn to get by on anywhere from 900 to 1,800 calories a day. They hope to live years — if not decades — longer.

"The idea of living a long time appeals to me. I hate the idea of not seeing what happens next," said Schneider, whose usual lunch is a cup of low-fat, artificially sweetened yogurt and a banana or apple. "People look at me and say, 'My God, if I ate what you ate, I'd be starving.' But I don't feel hungry."

Caloric restriction is now a hot topic of research, but not because its severe diet is ever expected to gain broad use. After all, the mythic "Fountain of Youth" holds allure as something we consume, not as something from which we abstain.

Rather, it offers scientists tantalizing clues about how and why we age.

Undernourishment somehow retards the aging process, although by what mechanism is unclear. If scientists can figure that out, they'll gain insights into the very heart of aging — and perhaps be able to develop a pill that mimics the diet's benefits.

"We're trying to explain the slowing of something we don't understand," said Richard Weindruch, a University of Wisconsin professor of medicine who studies caloric restriction in laboratory animals. One theory is that it might slow aging by reducing the damage to tissue caused by free radicals, a byproduct of metabolism.

One is tempted to call caloric restriction extreme dieting, but that misses the point: It's not about losing weight. It's about reducing the amount of food the body processes.

And it isn't a diet to be abandoned once a goal weight is achieved. True believers intend to eat this way for the rest of their lives.

Proponents of caloric restriction are rabid about monitoring their nutrition as well, taking daily vitamins or, like Adams, using computer software to keep track of even the most obscure micronutrients.

Caloric restriction as a means of achieving longevity was first noticed in research laboratories at Cornell University in the 1930s. It has since been studied — and proven — in monkeys, dogs, rats, mice, fruit flies, earthworms and even yeast.

For humans, however, such diets are an unproven gamble. There has been no 30-year study of human beings — and given the impossibility of controlling every morsel research subjects would eat, there probably never will be. However, a six-month experiment studying 48 people who got all their meals at the lab hints that caloric restriction will work for humans as well.

"We are the first wave of a human experiment," said Bob Cavanaugh, a North Carolina landscaper who volunteers as spokesman for the Calorie Restriction Society.

That study confirmed another finding: People who eat a lot but exercise it off do not see the same anti-aging benefits.

Caloric restriction practitioners must have enough tenacity to endure the stares, jokes and hunger pangs that accompany it. Many turn to the society's Web page (www.calorierestriction

.org) for moral support.

"It's not very easy to practice," said Hou, 54, of Hamilton Township, N.J. "People keep telling you that what you're doing is not correct. They laugh at you. So I try not to tell people what I eat."

She had been heavy as a child growing up in Taiwan, which she attributes to the decade she spent in an orphanage. "You weren't supposed to waste anything. I was conditioned to finish what was put in front of me," she said.

Caloric restriction has helped her keep her weight steady (109 pounds for her 5-foot-2-inches height) as she moves through middle age. Eliminating all MSG and aspartame made her less irritable, she said. Now that her sons are grown, her husband prepares most of his own meals, and if he buys ice cream — which she can't resist — he hides it in a paper bag.

Adams, 48, of Moorestown, N.J., was prompted to change his diet by an alarming cholesterol reading of 240. Using software developed by the guru of caloric reduction, the late Roy Walford, he gradually came up with a diet that provides him with sufficient nutrients on 1,660 calories a day. (The average man eats about 2,500 calories a day.)

He also decided to keep down cost and inconvenience. He knew if the diet were too expensive or time-consuming, he wouldn't stick with it. What he came up with can be made with a can opener and microwave.

When he began his regimen in 2002, he weighed 250 pounds — clinically obese for his 6-foot height. He has now lost 50 pounds, and his cholesterol plummeted to 151. His doctor was amazed. He wants to reach 165, his weight when he left Marine boot camp in 1976.

Along the way, however, Adams had to turn his back on food as a source of pleasure. Chocolate bars exert a particularly strong siren call, so he tries to associate them with something unpleasant, like hog droppings. He splurges one day a week on takeout food from the local Indian market, which he trolls for new spices to add variety to his Spartan fare.

In the process, he and his wife, Cathi, had to negotiate how they would handle meals. He usually fasts on Mondays, but at her insistence, he now eats a small salad for dinner to keep her company.

"Growing up as one of five kids, we would sit around the dinner table for hours. For me, a meal is a social thing, with a bonding aspect," she said.

That bonding does not take place at breakfast, however, when Greg eats a hot, filling gruel of wheat and oat bran, wheat germ, blueberries and cinnamon.

"For the longest time, I couldn't even sit at the table with him because it looks so repulsive," Cathi said. "I thought, 'I'm going to lose weight and all I'm doing is watching him eat.' " It's a bother cooking for one, she said, but Greg often compensates by bringing home a takeout dinner for her.

When faced with a social obligation involving food — a wedding, or taking a co-worker out to lunch — he attends, choosing his food carefully. He then skips a meal the following day.

Diana Hou, however, is already down to two meals a day. When co-workers go to lunch together, she doesn't go. "I usually don't explain. I just don't go," she said. She recently returned from a tour of China, where she carried around nuts and an emergency cucumber to eat in case the hotel buffet didn't have any low-calorie offerings. She takes vitamin supplements as well.

By contrast, Schneider, 54, of Haddonfield, enjoys eating out — in small portions. "My wife and I consider ourselves foodies. We love going to new restaurants. My wife's a fantastic cook.," he said. He enjoys a good steak now and then.

He doesn't measure his food as carefully as other caloric restriction people, relying instead on his daily weigh-in to keep track. When his weight goes up, he eats less; when it's too far down, he eats more. He now weighs 135, more than 20 pounds less than when he started caloric restriction. (He's 5 foot 10.)

With their obsession over every little calorie, those on caloric restriction can appear to be anorexic. They vehemently reject that comparison, citing the movement's insistence on proper nutrition.

And unlike anorexics, they really enjoy the limited food they eat. Adams insists those on calorie restriction don't demonize food — rather, they demonize "empty calories."

"Food ought to be enjoyed," said Schneider, who no longer derives such pleasure from fast food. "Take McDonald's. People always ask, 'Don't you miss that?' The answer is no — but they just don't get it," he said.

source:www.statesman.com