Maximizing life expectancy/enjoyment

Ignoramus20526 wrote:
:: After returning from obesity to normal weight (223/177/180) due to a
:: eat no crap/eat less/exercise more approach, I am now thinking about
:: health in general. What I would like to know is, what are the things
:: that a person can do to maximize their life expectancy/enjoyment of
:: life via various natural means (no meds). I want to be clear that I
:: want the maximum life expectancy multiplied by enjoyment of life. So
:: any regimen that makes me live longer but makes me miserable is not
:: something that I would like to consider.
::
:: I will appreciate references to some non-kooky books that do not
:: advocate spending money on programs affiliated with their authors.
::
:: I am not interested in having an "extreme body", squatting 500 lbs,
:: etc etc. However I am interested in being fit, agile, strong, and
:: flexible.

Have you read Pavel's books? They might be of use in some of these areas.

::
:: My current thinking is that the cornerstone of such an approach is
:: doing lots of low intensity aerobic exercise such as walking, plus
:: calisthenics based strength training.

I think this is highly personal. One may decide to engage in bicycling,
swimming, yada, yada, yada...if you aske me, lots of low intensity aerobic
exercise such as walking is boring as hell. But if that floats your
boat.....

Another cornerstone is staying
:: within the normal weight interval. The third cornerstone is eating
:: only natural and healthy food, according to some definition. To me it
:: means eating no heavily processed foods and no sugar. The fourth is
:: to have a stable life and to not work too much.

eating no heavily processed foods and no sugar, all the time? Well, your
cup of tea....I'd shoot for 90% or so, myself.

::
:: I am aware that there is some scant evidence that living on calorie
:: restricted diet (1500 or so calories per day all the time) also can
:: help one live longer. But smoehow I have a feeling that such a life
:: is either impossible or not satisfying to me. Right now I eat about
:: 1900-2000 calories per day, walk 100 minutes per day, and my weight
:: is relatively stable for the last 3 weeks. I can live on that but
:: not on much less, I think.
::
:: Does anyone have any comments or book suggestions?

Just eat well, move often & sometimes fast, lift heavy, and rest and play
well. And when you figure it all out, write your own book.

Roger, you can try calorie restriction which has proven to extend
lives of some animals by about 50%. Scientific American did an article
about this.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...mber=1&catID=2

Excerpt:

Our hunt for cr mimetics grew out of our desire to better understand
caloric restriction's many effects on the body. Scientists first
recognized the value of the practice more than 60 years ago, when they
found that rats fed a low-calorie diet lived longer on average than
free-feeding rats and had a reduced incidence of conditions that
become increasingly common in old age. What is more, some of the
treated animals survived longer than the oldest-living animals in the
control group, which means that the maximum life span (the oldest
attainable age), not merely the average life span, increased. Various
interventions, such as infection-fighting drugs, can increase a
population's average survival time, but only approaches that slow the
body's rate of aging will increase the maximum life span.