I want to find out what it looks, feels, and tastes like to commit to the ultimate in dietary trade-offs: a lifetime lived on the brink of starvation, in exchange for the promise of a life span longer than any human has known.
This article totally creeped me out. Imagine how totally obsessed, and ultimately uninteresting, one would have to become in order to maintain this sort of lifestyle.
[photo credit: http://seventytw0dpi.deviantart.com/gallery/]
casa azahar 
Just trying to understand what is so creepy to me about all this … and I think it’s simply the very extremist behaviour that seems to preclude any genuine human ‘warm and fuzzy’ comfort feelings, as it is all about control.
Also there is a definite sense of these people thinking they are an elitist group; the half-starved who have turned what looks to me like a serious psychological/emotional illness into something they can pretend to be based on science and feel extra special about.
The only thing different about them and other anorexics is that they make sure they get their minimum daily nutrition, using all the latest high-tech gadgetry they have to ensure this.
But I mean … weighing arugula? Taking off two leaves of it and substituting that with something else to come up with the ‘perfect’ low-calorie meal? 🙄
To me they all sound rather pathetic. Rationalizing like crazy (does being a 6’4″ half-starved male rake with orange skin sound attractive to you?) and also very pathetic how they felt they had to go on about how great their sex lives were.
Above all it just sounds so self-absorbed and selfish. I can’t imagine these people caring about anything other than their own personal food obsessions. Their own personal physical whatever. If I’m honest I guess I have to say that these people frankly disgusted me.
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I wonder if these people actually do live longer………..
… or if it just seems like that.
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No wonder Adam said the food was bland. How can you cook food and not taste it? But if you are seriously CR, tasting would screw up your calorie count.
I simply don’t have time for that kind of attention to my intake. Besides, on the described regimin I would not have had the meal we had tonight: Dessert was Strawberries and Mangos with a touch of Grand Marnier over sponge cake with whipped cream. This was after chile verde and refried beans as a main course.
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I read that article from top to bottom. I wasn’t that interested in torturing myself the way described. Except apparently it is a GREAT way to lose weight.
What came to mind as I read it was they have a book out to tell people all about the CR diet. There are 1400 people practicing this regimen. Out of how many millions of people in America, 1400 people? You have to ask the starving person in the Sudan who is on the CR diet perforce: are you trying to change your life so you don’t HAVE to eat this way, or are you wanting to stay on this diet forever until you die of starvation?
And what is so great about living to 120?
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az, have you joined the http://www.deviantart.com site?
There’s some great stuff on there.
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That’s just what I’ve done, alji, though I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet (if anything). Someone else had my name though! 😡
http://azahar-svq.deviantart.com/
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Actually, these people are basing their weirdness on some scientific studies begun by Dr. Roy walford, who used to be at UCLA, and then he was one of the people they locked up in that Biosphere thing in Arizona. They really got to try out starvation, as their “closed system” that was supposed to mimic how it would be to be on a space station, didn’t work.
In experiments, rats who have their calorie levels reduced are healthy in rat old age and more active than rats from the same litter who eat a “normal” calorie diet for life. They’ve also done this with monkeys, with the same result.
However, no one can ask the subjects how they liked it… 😕
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Well quite. Which is why I agree with the idea of an extremely restricted life seeming longer, whether it actually is or not. And also wonder why anybody would want to live until they were 120.
I know from personal experience that keeping oneself ‘on the edge of hunger’ most of the time does keep you more alert in some ways. But you also do end up obsessing about the food you allow yourself to eat, when you will eat, how much, etc., which kind of gets in the way of relating to the other important things in one’s life.
It is actually a very selfish and self-centred way of being … it excludes most people and most things you can do with them.
Notice that most (all?) of the people in this article were couples involved in the same thing. Hard to imagine living with someone this extremely obsessed about food intake … it actually sounds boring beyond belief.
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