How to determine my goal weight?

[AIL]

On Wikipedia I read the following about the "CRON diet", which I believe what this site here is all about:

 

As a male I should get to a point where my body-fat-percentage is 6%-10%.

 

Then I should figure out what my TDEE on that is and then undercut this TDEE by 10%-25%.

 

So let's assume averages:

 

I get to 8% body-fat and then go 17.5% below the calories of what it would mean to maintain my weight at that level.

 

There's obviously a plentitude of online-calculators for the latter but finding out my body-fat is tough.

 

I'm not athletic and my current BMI is 19 which equates 55.5 kg at my height. I think my body-fat is still above 8%.

 

The hard part is figuring out body-fat %.

 

I reckon, that I don't need actual numbers to reap the benefits but it would really help me in order to learn what my new maintenance should be.

 

I have already completely reevaluated my whole relationship with food over the past few months. Ray Cronise, which you probably have heard of, was a great inspiration for me.

 

I feel I am in a good mindset to do whatever is the optimum for the best longevity-results but I don't feel so good about just estimating. I'd really like to have a number of daily average calories, that I can follow and I'd like to know how to determine it.

[Todd Allen]

To figure body fat % I'd suggest starting with skin fold calipers and when you think you are close to your target getting a dexa body composition scan or hydrostatic test for a more precise result.  Then continue tracking with the skinfold calipers for the last few % needed to hit goal.

 

As for CRON diet for optimal longevity, I don't think there is strong evidence for what degree of caloric restriction is best.  My guess is merely attaining 6-10% body fat is a fairly aggressive target.  Further restricting calories by another 17.5% would likely be more severe than all but the most extreme practitioners of CR.  Considering there is the possibility of harm if going too far my inclination is to err on the side of caution.  However, there are more experienced CR folk here and hopefully one of them will give a more thorough/better answer.

[mccoy]

AIL, another method to estimate bodyfat is visual comparison. It is not accurate of course, but DEXA is the only method which is believed to yield some accuracy.

 

 

Also, I agree with todd that 6-10% might be too low of a target. 6-7% is the bodyfat of elite athletes who belong to weight-categories sports. Other olympic athletes who workout for hours a day display 10% bodyfat. Bodybuilders can reach 4-5% bodyfat on the contest day, at the same time risking death because of diuretics and other abuses of all sorts. 

 

 

 

I'm not athletic and my current BMI is 19 which equates 55.5 kg at my height. I think my body-fat is still above 8%.

 

If you don't carry significant visceral fat, that is if you don't have a beer-belly, that BMI seems already to be pretty low.

 

But please read Micheal Rae's concise post on starting CR and get a copy of the longevity diet by Delaney & Walford.

 

https://www.crsociety.org/topic/12481-how-many-calories-should-i-eat-whats-my-goal-weight-whats-my-setpoint-what-cr-am-i/?do=findComment&comment=22200

 

It's clear that CR, beyond the basic concepts, must follow a pretty personal and individual strategy.

[AIL]

I've also thought about optical comparison as a good method.

My problem is just that almost all of the low-body-fat-images for men are elite-athletes or even body-builders, which makes the comparison just silly, as I don't have nearly as much muscle than they do.

I found an image of two men with 10% each where one was muscular and the other not at all. I had less muscle than the muscular and more than the other.

 

But after reading the rest of your suggestions, I think I won't try to go to such an extreme. I think I'll play it save

and stay at or near the underweight/normal-weight bmi-border.

 

Edit: Read the link you gave me.

While it said that it is too individual to give concrete advice, I found something between the lines, that seemed reasonable.

 

"take that as your baseline and restrict Calories to a level that keeps you at least 15% below that"

in combination with:

"somewhere around the middle of the healthy bmi range of 18-25"

 

The middle of 18-25 is 21.5.

21.5 x 1.71² is 62.8

My TDEE for 62.8 kg according to tdeecalculator.net is 1832.

1832 * 0.85 is 1557.

 

That's a good value to work with and was more or less what I was looking for. :)

 

So thanks again!

[AIL]

When I try to figure out which weight I'd get with this amount of calories, tdeecalculator.net seems to fail me.

I had to go as low as 40 kg to get to a point where 1557 was my tdee, which I have trouble believing.

 

Either the calculator is wrong or the approach as suggested by Micahael R.

There's no way that 40 kg or 13.7 BMI is feasible.

 

I simply cannot imagine that eating at 1557 kcal would get me that low. And I guess the point that the tdee-calculator is missing is exactly what happens in calorie-restriction: A slowed down metabolism, slowed down cell-replacement and thus slowed down aging.

[mccoy]

AIL, these are my suggestions which seem to be reasonable, and of course, my disclaimer is that I'm not a medical professional nor nutritionist and that is advisable to consult a generic physician before taking up such interventions.

 

The above being said, since  the 1600 kCal starting point seems to satisfy at least the first part of the relevant theoretical framework, you might start up with that.

 

Then you should monitor daily simple parameters such as bodyweight and correlate it to calories consumption. Also, in your case you should add measuring waist or a caliper to monitor bodyfat, of course if weight goes down and waist and caliper go down you have a loss in bodyfat, conversely you have a loss in other tissues which is not always advisable.

 

Exercise is useful to limit loss of muscle mass, and some of it can be used to increase your total caloric intake (pls refer to the other thread by Michael Rae on CR and exercise: https://www.crsociety.org/topic/12482-cr-and-exercise/?do=findComment&comment=22215).

 

If your BMI goes below some value as 18, a common lower bound in non-extreme CR practitioners, then you can promptly correct your caloric intake and correct the trend. As long as you practice optimum nutrition with enough dietary aminoacids and micronutrients + extra supplements, this seems like a safe way to go.

 

And of course CR-ON is more than mere calories, it's dietary quality, macronutrients ratio, micronutrients amounts and phytochemicals diversity,  which is discussed to a great extent in this forum.

[AIL]

I have things happen to me, that defy my previous understanding of what running a calorie deficit will do to me and it makes me pretty excited in the sense that I think that it is working.

 

I of course need more data over a longer period of time but when this trend continues, I am pretty excited.

 

And I really want to hear from you, if you observed similar effects.

 

So what happened is: I maintained for the past week. On an average of about 1000 kcal.

Normally I could explain this with water retention after very salty meals or bowel movements missing in action. But this hasn't been the case.

 

So I am looking for other probable explanations. One was body temperature. I measured half an hour ago and it showed 35.8°C. I will measure again before my meal and expect it to drop further.

 

If this is the case and not just some weird mix of coincidence, then I think I am where I want to be. Tdee and brm calculators apparently can't cope with Cr and the mechanisms that actually do lower the metabolism.

 

Let's see if I can maintain this weight for a longer period without changing the regimen. If I can, I would stop worrying about determining a Gw, as I probably already reached a weight, where my body downregulates temperature rather than losing more fat.

[mccoy]

...

 

And I really want to hear from you, if you observed similar effects.

 

I believe that's the body's setpoint (or one of the settlepoints) regulated by the leptin-hypothalamus feedback. It appears to work efficiently in preventing bodyloss, oftentimes.

 

I observed it in my wife's case, where a 40% CR did not result in further weightloss. Actually, by seeing the pattern of her weight trend, it's evident that there is a mechanism pushing the weight up whenever it goes down. A clear, regular zigzagging pattern. Hard to believe.

 

Is there evidence for a set point that regulates human body weight?

 

 

 

Is leptin a feedback signal of body weight regulation? What is the evidence for asymmetric control?

During the last 15-20 years, the progress in our understanding of the neurobiology of appetite and satiety has led to the characterization of fascinating networks of hormones, peptides, and monoamines as part of the appetite control system. However, endogenous control of energy intake is still not completely characterized and external factors (i.e., the obesity-promoting environment) may override endogenous controls. It is unknown at present how biological factors (e.g., hormones) combine with external factors (e.g., food supply) to control food intake. In addition, the impact of metabolic adaptation on energy and macronutrient intake remains to be characterized.

Most of the recent research on body weight regulation is based on the idea that brain centers, including those located in the hypothalamus, receive peripheral signals reflecting energy and fat stores. Early parabiosis studies gave the first strong evidence that genetically obese mice lacked a secretory signal from adipose tissue which represses food intake [34]. One relevant homeostatic signal in body weight (or fat mass) regulation is the prototype adipokine leptin [35,36]. Leptin is derived from fat cells in proportion to fat mass, and one of leptin’s tasks is to send signals regarding levels of fat mass (or changes in fat mass) to the hypothalamus, which in turn regulates both a decrease in energy intake and an increase in energy expenditure. This is an example of proportional feedback control, as food intake and energy expenditure are adjusted in proportion to the difference between plasma leptin concentration and its set point value [1]. However, present evidence suggests that leptin does not primarily protect the body against an increase in fat mass but instead defends the body against fat loss, thus operating in cases of negative energy balance only (i.e., there is an asymmetric or threshold response to leptin at low concentrations only) [2,37,38].

[paula]

So I am eating the RDA of protein (meat and plant), the Mc Doug all level of fat (or more sometimes with protein), and for carbs mostly vegetables, about two fruits a day (more when seasonal berries or fruit tempt me), and a few grains, beans, dairy and treats to provide nutrients and satisfy hunger I eat on a two day rotation, emphasizing one macronutrient at a time. Rotation Haylie Pomroy style. I continue to reduce weight now down to BMI 17 or so without eating less. Will I stabilize? So far I am down 30 pounds since 2007. Should I be concerned? T3 is normal. all blood tests for disease or deficiency are normal. WBC are slightly low and have been all my life. I have adapted well to the change over a long period of time. My blood pressure runs about 156/73 pulse 55. Exercise the same or less as I age.I feel like just letting it happen, but I want to know it will stop at the right time. Any suggestions?

[AIL]

Near the end of June I decided to go to maintenance and keep my Bmi between 18.5 and 19.0.

An issue like you, Paula, describe to me is almost unimaginable. Without a conscious effort to limit my intake I would rapidly gain weight. I've seen it happen.

I do 20:4 and would still quickly go above 19.0 despite the limited eating window. So I additionally do 600 kcal days whenever my weight exceeds it. In practice that happens twice a week so pretty much 5:2 is necessary to maintain.

 

If your weight still drops without conscious restriction, I would say keep an eye on it and if you think it might become problematic maybe do conscious overeating to keep your self above whatever you set at your minimum.

[mccoy]

Paula, my suggestion is the same as AIL, besides you can try and boost the insulin signal, which is an anabolic signal, plus the global mTOR signal. You should eat an abundance of simple, healthy sugar: sweet fruit, honey, raisins, dried fruit, plus an abundance of protein and fats. Healthy food, as much as you can without feeling bloated, or just a little bloated. Not too many vegetables otherwise you get sated in advance. Plus some exercise, to boost hunger and muscle anabolism

[AIL]

You say "few of us are doing cr at all as compared to just healthy weight maintenance".

 

The question is still: How do I know whether I do Cr or weight maintenance?

 

I clearly did cr while I was losing weight. But I obviously can't do that for ever. There's got to be a point where further weight loss is no longer feasible. I arbitrarily decided that point to be at 18.5 bmi. So I am currently maintaining between 18.5 and 19.0. This does still require efforts of reducing my calorie intake below ad liberate but the question is : Does it count as Cr or is it just maintenance of a healthy weight?

[Saul]

BMI doesn't tell you much. Do the bloodwork recommended on the CR Society home page.

[mccoy]

You say "few of us are doing cr at all as compared to just healthy weight maintenance".

 

The question is still: How do I know whether I do Cr or weight maintenance?

 

I clearly did cr while I was losing weight. But I obviously can't do that for ever. There's got to be a point where further weight loss is no longer feasible. I arbitrarily decided that point to be at 18.5 bmi. So I am currently maintaining between 18.5 and 19.0. This does still require efforts of reducing my calorie intake below ad liberate but the question is : Does it count as Cr or is it just maintenance of a healthy weight?

 

AIL, have you read Michael's Rae sticky on practical CR?

 

He says:

 

1. determine your ideal weight when you were in your early twenties.
2. subtract 15% from that weight
3. The above is the upper bound of CR (less than 15% it isn't CR, just weight manteinance as you say).

For example, I should loose 10 kg to be able to say I'm in fully-fledged CR (even though mild CR): 66 - 15% ~= 56

 

I would also do the bloodwork as per Saul's suggestions, since the drop in weight required is not negligible.

 

For those who have been chronically lean, let's say 60 in their twenties: 60-15%= 51 at least. CR would mean emaciation. But such emaciation, according to Michael Rae, would be beneficial anyway.

[AIL]

Ah, I must have missed that. It seems I'm almost there, then.

 

In my early twenties I weighed 64 kg. *0.85 is 54.4 kg.

 

My current weight is 54.8 kg and I tried staying below 55.5 kg. Now if I downregulate that by 1.5 kg as to stay between 52.5 and 54 I should be in Cr zone.

[paula]

I just don't see that the suggestion that your BMI will stabilize eating the same (calorie restricted) things that you always did.  Setpoint never seems to arrive.  So in that case the rotation is the best way.  On Wed and Thursday I can limit carbs, just for those two days.  Nothing sweet.  In order to sustain this I eat tons of protein.  Friday through the weekend is when the vegetables are less appealing and I tend toward rich foods.  Mussels, muffins etc.  And of course my mega waffle.  That seems closer to a sustainable calorie restriction/intermittent fast (of a type).  And closer to the type of religious fasting that has been part of life in the Mediterranean up until the last century.

 

Thanks for all your help.  The BCAA supplement is fun and I continue to build muscle

[mccoy]

Thanks for all your help.  The BCAA supplement is fun and I continue to build muscle

 

I'm glad the gym routine is working, but you should be gaining weight, not loosing it, unless you had a lot of concealed fat tissue before and muscle is replacing it (but pls note that muscle tissue is denser than fat, weighing more at the same volume).

Anyway, CR considerations appear to be different from fitness & optimal weight considerations. Before joining this forum, a BMI of 17 seemed pure emaciation to me. But quite a few people exhibit those low BMIs remaining pretty healthy and energetic. Maybe a specific thread, more detailed than the one existing would be needed, on CR and low BMIs.

I cannot speak with cognition because my own experience with CR, far away in the past, did not involve optimal nutrition nor I followed the suggested rules to loose weight gradually and it was a disastrous one.

[AIL]

I'm now convinced that the bmr that is used in most calculations was determined by how many calories were actually burned as compared to how little calories would have been required.

 

I think this is a result of the circumstance that glucose more or less always gets burned just for flat out beeing there. The leftover just goes poof into thermogenesis.

 

So the actual caloric requirements are those of what is measured when you don't consume glucose. And I guess they are indeed lower than what is commonly believed to be your bmr.

 

Yesterday I re-watched the Dr. Nun Amen Ra video, that I had a really hard time following the first time as clueless as I was back then. This time I could actually understand and appreciate most of what he was talking about. Unfortunately the guy who made the interview understood almost nothing and thus failed to ask more interesting questions about details mentioned by Ra.

 

I would especially be more interested in the parts about avoiding glycotoxicity and how much of his caloric requirements he thinks are provided by Autophagy. He mentioned that it was a significant amount.

 

I'd like to see someone like Rhonda Patrick or Ray Cronise talk to him and have a little scientific chit-chat.

[AIL]

There actually is a fitting threat for this topic in Cr practice... I actually did read the formula but I interpreted it as being to determine calorie - intake rather than goal weight.

Maybe it makes sense to merge it into that. It is called "how to determine your goal weight".

[Michael R]

When I try to figure out which weight I'd get with this amount of calories, tdeecalculator.net seems to fail me.

I had to go as low as 40 kg to get to a point where 1557 was my tdee, which I have trouble believing.

 

Nearly all online calculators predicting one's weight/weight loss from one's energy intake and vice-versa are complete jokes: the only one based on rigorous science is the NIH Body Weight Planner. Even then, I wouldn't get hung up on it: 10-15% below setpoint (not "ideal") weight is not a goal, but a somewhat squishy threshold, and you should explore your actual weight loss rate and weight in response to changed energy intake empirically, not by starting off with a calculator. Start by cleaning up your diet and allowing your weight to drop naturally (unless you start losing weight too fast), and then just restrict your energy intake to the point that you find tolerable.

[AIL]

This approach, while it sounds like it makes a lot of sense sounds difficult to realize for me from a psychological perspective.

 

When I had a goal weight in mind, I was able to make just about anything tolerable as long as it didn't cause hypoglycemia. With the current perspective of maintenance, I tend to only consciously limit myself once my weight exceeds the maintenance threshold. The remaining limitations are a result of doing a 20:4 regimen and trying to stick to whole foods rather than overly processed ones. No calorie counting was necessary since over a week and my weight has been rather stable.

 

I think that the 20:4 regimen by itself is already rather favorable by inducing Autophagy on a daily basis and I want to figure out whether I could do more in terms of boosting longevity or if I already am doing the significant part. If I were to reduce calories more, I would prefer doing so by skipping a day completely every now and then rather than reducing the intake during my meals. I could do that if I were made to believe that it is worth it.

[mccoy]

....If I were to reduce calories more, I would prefer doing so by skipping a day completely every now and then rather than reducing the intake during my meals. I could do that if I were made to believe that it is worth it.

  

Well, your degree of belief in this case is fundamental. The decision is highly subjective. In my case, even though I agree with the basic principles of CR, I simply have this foible that I'm not very inclined to loose weight and muscle mass and look emaciated. That would probably trigger a psychosomatic mechanism which would be detrimental to my longevity, so I prefer to stick to an healthy lifestyle with an high BMI, relative to CR averages. Valter Longo versus Luigi Fontana.

[Burak]

I'm on the team Valter Longo. As far as I remember, there is not a single advice from Longo that I don't implement. Plant based plus 2 servings of fish a week (P/F/C = 10-15/35-40/50-55), some high quality regional (PDO) cheese occasionally, meats on special occasions, and more importantly don't make it too difficult, enjoy life. I will also do FMD when I gain enough weight to feel comfortable.

 

For the last couple of months, I have been finally gaining weight by literally drinking EVOO and stuffing my stomach with nuts. Hurting butt while sitting on a hard surface is not fun! Most of the weight gain was on the upper legs, exactly where I need it, and no noticible change in waist circumference, another plus. I speculate that if you eat excess calories in the form of healthy fats without spiking insulin, you don't get the negative effects of weight gain and develop nice tight looking fat and muscle mass.

[Michael R]

When I had a goal weight in mind, I was able to make just about anything tolerable as long as it didn't cause hypoglycemia.

To be clear:

 

When you say "When I had a goal weight in mind," do you mean you used to be on CR, or what?

 

When you say "I was able to make just about anything tolerable as long as it didn't cause hypoglycemia," are you saying that you did in fact occasionally enter into actual hypo on whatever this previous regimen was?

 

With the current perspective of maintenance, I tend to only consciously limit myself once my weight exceeds the maintenance threshold.

How is that different from "hav[ing] a goal weight in mind"?

 

The remaining limitations are a result of doing a 20:4 regimen and trying to stick to whole foods rather than overly processed ones. No calorie counting was necessary since over a week and my weight has been rather stable.

A week, of course, is not at all a good measure of the long-term effects on energy balance.

 

 

I think that the 20:4 regimen by itself is already rather favorable by inducing Autophagy on a daily basis

I will say this again: autophagy is a routine cellular metabolic activity: inducing it is not, in itself, a health benefit.

 

and I want to figure out whether I could do more in terms of boosting longevity or if I already am doing the significant part. If I were to reduce calories more, I would prefer doing so by skipping a day completely every now and then rather than reducing the intake during my meals. I could do that if I were made to believe that it is worth it.

Eating a whole foods diet and maintaining what I assume is a healthy anthropometry is already reducing your risk of dying prematurely of age-related disease. Based on preliminary evidence, isocaloric 20:4 probably is too. Certainly, however, there's no evidence that any of this retards the aging process. (And, if you haven't seen them, please see this post showing that intermittent fasting only slows aging to the extent that it cuts Calories, along with this followup post — and, because the link is buried, here on Longo's study).

 

Whether you could do more by cutting Calories depends on whether CR works in humans or not. We don't, of course, know the answer to that question: I still think the evidence tends that way, but we're certainly in a state of greater uncertainty than we were in 2009-11.

[mccoy]

Whether you could do more by cutting Calories depends on whether CR works in humans or not. We don't, of course, know the answer to that question: I still think the evidence tends that way, but we're certainly in a state of greater uncertainty than we were in 2009-11.

 

Michael, why that? Conclusions on recent studies on monkeys or what?