Longevity & Why I Eat Once a Day Nutrition & Our Hybrid Body

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In the 1950’s, my friend Bill was a very gifted Engineer who made an extraordinary
00:11
car.
00:12
The car’s main fuel source was electricity, and gasoline was to be put in whenever
available.
00:16
It was fine for the car to use gasoline every other day or so, but the problem was
that
00:20
people ran it on gasoline nearly 90% of the time.
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This resulted in the car breaking down frequently, all the while Bill was trying to
tell people
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"Use it the way it was designed!”
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Despite his advice, people continued to theorize about how to properly use the car.
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Bill went bankrupt and left the Automotive industry soon after.
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This situation my poor imaginary friend Bill found himself in is quite like our
modern
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Health Environment.
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How did eating get so complicated?
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Most of us just want to feel good, look good and live a long life.
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You would think by now there would be a straightforward consensus on what our
eating habits should
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look like, but we’re faced with countless trains of thought on the topic.
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Maybe we’re supposed to be doing the ABC diet or XYZ diet or something in between?
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One of the first “diets” was proposed by a man named George Cheyne in 1724.
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Now, on Amazon you can find over 50,000 different books on the topic.
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Like Bill’s car, surely there is a simple way we should be fueling our bodies that
is
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most suitable for its design.
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Obviously we’re not engineered, but we Homo Sapiens emerged around 200,000 years
ago and
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the majority of that time, the food environment could not have been anything like
today’s
01:24
food environment.
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Agriculture didn’t even exist for a good 190,000 years of that time.
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Not even the fruits and vegetables we have today would have been similar as we
hadn’t
01:34
cultivated them to our liking.
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Just 700 years ago here’s what a banana would have looked like.
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So what way of eating did we adapt to?
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The environment would have chosen our diet rather than us.
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Your choices would have been to eat what was available or be dead.
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The idea that our body must have adapted to a certain ratio of macronutrients
available
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in the environment is not novel; and recently has become quite well known due to
the “Paleo
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Diet”.
01:58
However, what I’m getting at is our body would have also had to have adapted to how
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often the food was available – there should be a natural frequency of eating that
promotes
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health and longevity.
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Where to start?
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The logic would be that more nourishment, more food would make you healthier and
live
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longer.
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But let’s take a look at this from the First Principles method as described by Elon
Musk:
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“It’s kind of mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first
principles.
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First Principles is kind of a Physics way of looking at the world.
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And what that really means is you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental
truths
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and say ‘OK what are we sure is true?’ and then reason up from there.
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That takes a lot more mental energy.”
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So what do we know about longevity?
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Other than exercise, the word “superfood” might come to mind.
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Maybe more Omega-3’s or some Red Wine or making sure to take supplements and drink
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less alcohol.
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There are a lot of things that contribute to longevity, but there is one method
accepted
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by science that you can use to consistently increase longevity.
03:01
"If I take any organism on the planet earth from yeast cells to spiders, insects,
rabbits,
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dogs... and I reduce their caloric intake by 30%, they live 30% longer.
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The only organism which has not yet been deliberately tested by scientists are
Homo-Sapiens!"
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Let's start here.
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For some time, the conventional wisdom has been that you need to get 3 balanced
meals
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a day to stay healthy.
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Ever since I was a kid, “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner” seemed as natural as sleeping
03:32
or going to the bathroom.
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Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, I needed a healthy lunch to focus
the
03:37
rest of the school day and being sent to bed without Dinner was child abuse.
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The situation is basically the same in Japan where I now live, as with the rest of
the
03:46
world.
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If we want to reduce caloric intake to increase lifespan, the only choice then is
to eat less
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at each meal, because we need 3 meals, right?
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But where did this 3 meals a day idea come from?
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As Abigail Carroll suggests in her book “Three Squares: The Invention of the
American Meal”:
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Eating three meals a day was basically invented due to culture, When European
settlers got
04:09
to America, they found Native Americans were basically just eating whenever they
felt the
04:12
urge to, rather than at specified times.
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The Europeans took their lack of defined eating times as evidence that they were
uncivilized
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and had them change.
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In short: The 3 meals a day paradigm is not based off of our biological needs.
04:26
How our environment designed us In a Hunter Gatherer culture it wasn’t surprising
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at all to feast on a big catch, then survive on very little or no food for an
extended
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period of time until they were in need of another big source of fat and protein.
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In fact, the environment up until now would suggest that if we could not do that,
we probably
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wouldn’t be alive to be reading about dieting.
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The Pirahã people, an indigenous hunter-gatherer group of the Amazon Rainforest was
extensively
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studied by an anthropological linguist named Daniel Everett.
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He found they do not eat every day or even attempt to do so.
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They were even aware of food storage techniques yet never used them except to
barter with
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Brazilian traders.
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When questioned about why they do not store food for themselves they explained “I
store
05:10
meat in the belly of my brother”.
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Until the advent of Agriculture, eating 3 meals a day and in some cases even eating
05:17
every day was a near impossibility.
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Some of you may be pointing to the fact that the life expectancy in the Paleolithic
era
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was much lower than now at around 33 years, as a sign that our modern eating habits
are
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healthier.
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However, infant mortality rate was a big factor in bringing that number down.
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You have to understand that one of the effects of modern civilization and
technology is that
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you can be unresourceful or made up of weak genetic material and not die.
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As Doug McGuff explains about the life expectancy back then: “It didn’t really have
anything
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to do with anabolic catabolic balance or long term health benefits because there
were older
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survivors and the fossil evidence of those older survivors based on ligamentous
attachments
06:00
and bony assessment and bone mineral density was: they were extraordinarily
robust.”
06:06
Glucose Metabolism & How “conventional wisdom” screwed us
06:10
The common misconception is that a stable blood glucose is necessary for survival,
which
06:15
would biologically justify 3 meals a day.
06:19
Bear with me through a bit of Biochemistry to understand why constantly consuming
Carbohydrates
06:23
to maintain blood glucose is not only unnecessary but can be a detrimental and
vicious cycle.
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So, After you eat some carbohydrates- Bread, Pasta, Candy, Whatever.
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Glucose enters the bloodstream and insulin is secreted to distribute the glucose
properly.
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Via an insulin receptor, glucose enters the cells to produce energy.
06:44
This can only happen at a certain rate, so to overload the cell with glucose or
have
06:50
glucose sit in the bloodstream, 70 grams can be stored in the liver and 200 grams
in the
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muscle.
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So you have your morning bagel and some Frappa- "Whatever you want, some vanilla
bullshit
07:00
latte cappa thing, you know whatever you got, I don't care." and you’ve stored all
the
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glucose you can store.
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So it has to go into your body fat.
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As well as storing it as energy, your body puts it in your body fat because the fat
cells
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have less complex machinery as the other cells.
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Too much glucose can bind to the proteins and muck up the machinery of the cells in
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a harmful inflammatory process called Glycation.
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It's kind of like pouring pancake syrup into a car engine.
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The problem here is that if your energy levels start to wane, you can't tap the
energy out
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of your stored body fat because the hormone that does that- hormone sensitive
lipase is
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sensitive to insulin.
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Insulin will not allow you to tap body fat for energy.
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If you have a bunch of insulin sitting in your blood from processing a bunch of
glucose
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before and you need energy, you're going to get ravenously hungry and will need to
jack
07:53
your blood sugar up short term with a snack or something to raise your energy
levels again.
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This is why if you’re following the recommended American diet, you’re usually going
to be
08:04
stuck in this loop of wanting to eat every time your blood glucose drops and 3
meals
08:09
a day will feel very necessary.
08:12
Even Medical Doctor Peter Attia fell victim to this: “Despite exercising 3 or 4
hours
08:18
every single day and following the food pyramid to the letter, I gained a lot of
weight and
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developed something called ‘Metabolic Syndrome’ “
08:26
Ketosis to the rescue If you stop eating glucose for about 10 to
08:31
12 hours, your glucose stores will deplete and your body will start breaking down
fat
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so that the liver can produce something called Ketone bodies.
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Ketone bodies produce energy for your cells through similar pathways as glucose but
are
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much more stable, efficient and don't cause complications like we just talked
about.
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You may have heard of this Ketosis state referred to as “Starvation Mode” in
school, but
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this by no means suggests you are about to starve.
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I particularly dislike this term because it suggests that glucose/carbohydrates is
our
09:02
body’s primary fuel source, when in fact it is possible to live entirely without
carbohydrates.
09:08
"Humans have absolutely no requirement for Carbohydrate.
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Not 1 gram do we require.
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We have this fabulous liver that produces as much glucose as you require."
09:19
Case in point: A 456 pound 27 year old man in Scotland fasted an incredible 382
days
09:26
consuming only water and vitamin supplements.
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He lost 276 pounds and completed the fast with no ill effects.
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He was technically in “Starvation mode” this entire time and his body was using his
09:39
stored body fat for energy.
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Quick note: Ketosis and Diabetic KetoAcidosis are NOT the same thing.
09:48
Several years back, when I first heard about low carb diets, I was skeptical and
frankly
09:52
when I heard my close friend’s mother was trying the Atkins diet, I was worried for
09:56
her.
09:57
However, after understanding the biochemistry behind it, I started doing the ‘Paleo
diet’.
10:01
I felt great in general, had a better physique with less effort and much more
stable energy
10:06
levels.
10:08
The downside was it got kind of annoying to have to plan my meals so much, so I
would
10:12
cheat a lot here and there.
10:14
The Benefits of Fasting Even after people were in environments where
10:18
they could eat much more frequently, the concept of fasting for health benefits has
been around
10:23
for some time.
10:25
An Egyptian Pyramid Inscription from around 3800 B.C. reads “Humans live on one-
quarter
10:31
of what they eat; on the other three-quarters lives their doctor.”
10:36
Plato apparently fasted for greater mental efficiency, the “Luther of Medicine”
Philippus
10:41
Paracelsus called fasting “the greatest remedy” and Mark Twain suggested fasting
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to be more effective than any medicine.
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The Romans even found that they cure people who were possessed with demons by
shutting
10:53
them in a room without food.
10:56
To simplify an incredibly complex process, aging in essence is the result of
cumulative
11:01
damage to your DNA.
11:03
Professor of Genetics, David Sinclair and his team found that not eating stimulates
11:08
the Sirtuin proteins which are directly responsible for DNA repair.
11:15
Professor of Neuroscience Mark Mattson, at John Hopkins University Neuroscience
showed
11:19
how fasting promotes the growth of new neurons in the brain.
11:22
This explains why fasting has been linked to the prevention of neurodegenerative
diseases
11:26
like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
11:29
This information got me excited about Intermittent fasting.
11:32
With intermittent fasting you’re not eating for 16 hours of the day which gives
your body
11:37
time to deplete the glucose stores and start burning fat as well as reap the
benefits discussed
11:42
above.
11:44
So many sources are pointing to the key here being that whether you are doing
extended
11:48
fasting, intermittent fasting or simply eating less, you are giving your body a
chance to
11:52
deplete its Glucose stores and dip into ketosis, leading to the health benefits
discussed.
11:58
I was keen on the fact that I could get similar effects to Paleo with more leeway
in my diet.
12:03
The problem with Intermittent Fasting was I found with myself craving food outside
of
12:07
the 8 hour eating period, and I still had to be somewhat strict with what I ate
(although
12:12
not as strict as my 3 meals a day regimin)
12:15
Upton Sinclair who was born in the the late 1800’s and lived to the swell age of
90,
12:20
published a book in 1911 called “The Fasting Cure”.
12:23
The book was inspired by the personal accounts of 250 people who cured some ailment
with
12:28
extended fasting.
12:30
The ailments ranged from colds, headaches, constipation to arthritis, valvular
heart
12:34
disease and cancer.
12:36
Dr. Alan Goldhamer spoke about how in 2012, a 42 year old patient cured her cancer
(stage
12:41
3 follicular lymphoma) with a 21 day fast.
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All this opened me up to try my first week long fast... but I ended up around the
4th
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day even though I didn’t feel particularly bad.
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While I missed my goal and I didn’t really feel all that different afterward, over
the
12:58
following days I started to notice something.
13:00
I used to enjoy eating some refined sugar crap here and there, but after the fast I
13:05
wasn't so interested.
13:06
It was like it reset my eating preferences.
13:09
Around this time I came across a book called "Kuufuku ga hito o kenkou ni suru" -
by Dr.
13:14
Yoshinori Nagumo.
13:16
The title means ”Hunger makes people healthy”.
13:18
And it provides an incredibly compelling argument for limiting yourself to one meal
per day.
13:23
It touched upon many of the things I’ve talked about here, some things I didn’t
13:27
and it dispelled some worries I had like malnutrition and whatnot.
13:31
(Also, It was easy to trust him since he’s 30 years older than me and looks younger
than
13:35
I do.)
13:36
I decided to try eating once per day for 2 weeks.
13:40
For 3 weeks prior to starting, I had been showing my little sister around Tokyo
while
13:44
eating basically anything and everything that looked good.
13:47
I started the Nagumo plan the day after she left and the first three days were
definitely
13:52
the hardest.
13:53
When the clock hit around 11AM, I realized I wasn’t getting the joy from eating
that
13:57
I was used to around this time of day and started really wanting to eat.
14:02
My stomach didn’t particularly hurt, it was the equivalent of not being able to
play
14:05
video games when getting home from Middle School.
14:09
Around 4PM was when I was convinced that I was really hungry and needed to eat.
14:13
Waiting another 30 minutes until 4.30PM to eat was like pushing through a last set
of
14:17
squats.
14:18
The next two days were slightly easier, and come the 4th day I realized I wasn’t
looking
14:22
at the clock thinking “Ah...Only 4 more hours to go!”.
14:26
A week later I decided to put the diet to the test by doing a 50 kilometer bike
ride
14:31
to Atsugi from Tokyo.
14:34
I hadn’t been working out all that much and a usual bike ride for me was about 3
kilometers.
14:38
It was unsurprisingly difficult, but I never felt really physically weak.
14:44
I had hunger pangs earlier than normal, but I didn’t feel like I had less strength
from
14:48
a lack of food.
14:49
This made me decide to stick with eating once per day.
14:52
It’s been a month since I started and I feel great in general, my energy levels are
14:57
very stable, I feel more focused and surprisingly I have less problems with hunger
compared
15:01
to Intermittent Fasting.
15:03
Even if I don’t eat the healthiest meal I can now feel confident that my body will
15:07
have more than enough time to empty out whatever excess glucose or toxins I
ingested.
15:12
(The only time I do crave unhealthy food is when I’ve had some alcohol.)
15:17
Looking back, it’s hard to imagine having to pile so much food into my stomach
throughout
15:20
the day.
15:21
Other than the health benefits, one other reason I do this is the same reason Steve
15:25
Jobs wore basically the same thing everyday: It makes choosing easier and it frees
my brain
15:31
up to focus on other things.
15:33
At least For myself, the amount of new information I get only changes my behavior
by a small
15:38
factor.
15:39
For example if I increase my knowledge about the detriments of alcohol by say...
15:44
60% maybe I’ll cut my intake by 30%.
15:48
With this article alone I’m not expecting you to suddenly start eating once per
day,
15:52
but hopefully you can start giving your body a break and eat when you need to, not
when
15:56
the clock says you should.
16:00
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16:02
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16:07
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