"Anti-aging" Author: Yu Guoliang
In the previous section, we talked about the mystery of aging and reverse growth of the human body, and how Yu Guoliang summarized a set of best anti-aging methods through a five-year reverse growth experiment, which is simply "keep your mouth shut, open your legs, and sleep well". Next, let's talk about how to "keep your mouth shut".
Read the mystery of the body's energy
In modern society, a very important purpose of "keeping your mouth shut" is to achieve weight loss and slimming together with "opening your legs".
As the saying goes, it's hard to buy a thousand dollars to be thin when you're old, and proper thinness will make people look young. Because it not only makes the body more beautiful, but also reduces the burden on the organs in the body, improves the quality of sleep, and makes the body energetic and energetic.
The essence of weight loss is actually energy management, "keep your mouth shut" is to reduce the energy inflow of the human body, "open your legs" is to increase the energy outflow, the inflow is less than the outflow, we will consume fat and lose weight. This is the law of conservation of energy and energy metabolism conversion of the human body.
We can understand the energy system of the human body as a reservoir, eating food is equivalent to filling water into it from the water inlet, and there are two water outlets, one is to output energy to support various activities of the human body, and the other is to discharge metabolic waste from the body. In general, the energy input and output of the human body are comparable and are conserved.
So, how does the human body output energy to support our various movements? Some of the food we eat is converted into energy for the moment, and the rest is stored in the form of glycogen or fat. There are two forms of metabolism involved here, one is called sugar metabolism, which is to quickly convert carbohydrates into energy; The second is lipid metabolism, which is when glycogen is consumed before body fat begins to break down and convert into energy.
It can be seen that the key to losing weight is to speed up the digestion of fat stored in the human body.
So, why does the human body get fat? Especially after people reach middle age, the body will become more and more obvious. This is because as we age, our metabolism slows down, and the energy required for various activities in the body is correspondingly less than when we were younger.
Survey data shows that as early as 2016, the number of obese people in China has surpassed that of the United States and has become the world's first. By 2019, the size of China's obese population has exceeded 250 million, and it can be said that the proportion of obese people in mainland China is already very high.
So how do you measure whether a person is fat or thin? The World Health Organization has devised a universal metric called the Body Mass Index, or BMI for short, which is equal to the square of your weight (in kilograms) divided by your height (in meters). A BMI between 18.5-24 is normal.
Of course, each person's body size is different, the skeleton size is different, and the genetic situation is different, and the range of BMI should also be appropriately adjusted, for example, Yu Guoliang controls his BMI between 20-22. He is 1.78 meters tall and has a BMI20 that means 63.4 kilograms and a BMI22 that means 69.7 kilograms.
Also, the BMI is not as small as possible. Now some people regard sickly thinness as beauty, and many movie stars and Internet celebrities have also lost weight to the skin. But science is talking about overdoing it, and things must be reversed, and what we want to pursue is healthy and thin, not skinny.
Therefore, for most people, if you want to resist aging and reverse growth, the first thing to do is to lose weight, that is, to "keep your mouth shut", reduce the body's energy intake, reduce carbohydrate intake, and put the body in a state of "hunger". At this time, the fat in our body will start to burn, and the slimming can really achieve results.
Slimming down doesn't mean being hungry
The principle of "keeping your mouth shut" is very simple to say, but without a set of scientific methods, many people still can't persevere, because the taste of hunger is too hard.
So, is there a relatively easy way for us to enjoy the comfort of good food while also easily dropping the scales? The answer is yes, and it's "intermittent fasting."
Intermittent fasting is a healthy pattern in eating. It will not only regulate "what we eat", but also solve the problem of "when to eat", that is, by changing the time of eating, we can get enough nutrients without fat accumulation due to overnutrition. At present, there are two most popular methods, namely the "5:2 fasting method" and the "168 intermittent fasting method".
The so-called 5:2 fasting is to eat and drink normally 5 days a week, and then, choose only 500 kcal of food every day for 2 days. What is the concept of 500 kcal? Generally speaking, in order to maintain normal life activities, the daily calories provided by food should be between 5000-7500 kJ, that is, 1200-1800 kcal.
Helen Bond, a British nutritionist, once created a "Food Calorie Guide" to make the otherwise invisible and intangible energy units clear at a glance. 500 kcal means 5/4 chocolate croissant, or less than two blueberry muffins, 23 Brazil nuts, 5 medium bananas, 5 scoops of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and more.
In addition, there is a more detailed introduction to reference foods in the book, and interested book lovers can open the book and take a look.
Then, in contrast, if you stick to only this little food for two whole days, the "168 intermittent fasting method" will be easier, because it means that you can eat and drink normally for 8 hours a day, and only drink water, tea or coffee for the other 16 hours without calories.
We can determine the 8 hours we can eat according to our habits, such as 10 am to 6 pm, or 11 am to 7 pm. As a businessman, Yu Guoliang often needs to attend dinners, so he set himself a schedule of 12 noon to 8 pm, which is relatively more generous.
Compared to the 5:2 fast, the 168 diet is milder, and it is better to eat enough for 8 hours a day than to be hungry for two whole days. What's more, during the 16 hours of fasting, the human body is mostly asleep and has less need for energy. In our sleep, the burden on our bodies has quietly begun to lighten, and excess fat has begun to burn.
So, why does fasting promote fat burning? This brings us to the principles behind fat production and metabolism. When we eat, our insulin levels increase, converting excess energy into liver sugar, which is stored in the liver, and once it is full, the liver converts liver sugar into another type of energy, which is fat, and transports it to the rest of the body. There is no upper limit to how this energy can be made, in other words, if you don't control your diet, you can gain weight indefinitely.
When it comes to fasting, the whole process is reversed. Insulin levels drop, alerting the body to start burning stored energy; In the beginning, the body extracts liver sugar from the liver and breaks it down to provide energy for glucose molecules. When this energy is exhausted, the body will begin to break down the fat, and this is when the slimming project will officially begin.
Of course, adopting the 168 diet does not mean that you can overeat within 8 hours of normal eating, but rather eat in moderation and make sure to eat lean meats, eggs, dairy products, vegetables, nuts and legumes every day. For example, Yu Guoliang himself mainly cooks high-quality meat, accompanied by fresh vegetables and a small amount of grain.
Finally, it should be said that weight loss should be a long-term system engineering, and it is necessary to lose weight little by little in a balanced way of body and mind, so that the effect is better. Those quick weight loss methods that claim how many pounds you can lose in a month often make us fall into a state of constant hunger, which not only hurts the body, but also easily triggers revenge eating, which in turn leads to weight loss failure.
Pros and cons of the ketogenic diet
Now there is a saying on the market that if you want to lose weight, you must control your appetite and have to have clear soup and little water. But Yu Guoliang mainly eats meat, and every morning after getting up, although it is a 16-hour fasting period, he often makes himself a cup of "bulletproof coffee" to replenish the energy needed for work and exercise in the morning.
The so-called "bulletproof coffee" is like body armor, which can effectively resist the attack of obesity. It's made with a cup of coffee infused with unsalted grass-fed butter and organic coconut oil, then poured into a blender to balance out the flavor of hunger.
Hearing this, some people may ask, how can people who eat meat and drink oil lose weight, is this science? The answer is yes, which brings us to the weight loss mechanism of the ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, low-protein, high-fat diet, so that fat provides more than 70%-80% of calories.
And the aforementioned "bulletproof coffee" is actually a regular item of ketogenic diet therapy. The organic butter and coconut oil in Bulletproof Coffee are an introduction that not only provides the energy needed for life, but also helps the body quickly enter a short-term ketogenic state, which is to supply the body with the energy it needs to move by burning fat.
The key to the ketogenic diet is ketones, which are intermediate products of fat metabolism. As mentioned earlier, the human body has two metabolic modes, and when the stored glycogen is depleted, the human body will switch from glucose energy supply mode to ketone energy supply mode. The ketogenic diet not only promotes fat burning, but also has a good regulatory effect on blood sugar and lipids.
Therefore, in order to lose weight effectively, in addition to strict fasting within 16 hours, we must reduce carbohydrates as much as possible even within 8 hours of normal diet, especially processed carbohydrates such as pizza, refined bread, and polished rice, which can be digested quickly and bring high blood sugar load, which is a taboo for weight loss.
Of course, this "168 intermittent fasting method" is not a ketogenic diet in the strict sense, because Yu Guoliang does not want to completely give up the pleasure of food. The authentic ketogenic diet is based on nuts, olive oil, avocado, egg yolks, butter, lard, and cheese, with small amounts of red meat, poultry, fish, and seafood.
You'll notice that you don't see carbs at all. Because the ketogenic diet requires that the total amount of carbohydrates throughout the day be limited to 50 grams or even 20 grams, which is the amount of 1 small potato or 20 grapes; And it can't include fresh milk, yogurt, fruits, even if you want to supplement vitamins, you can only eat green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, etc.
Yu Guoliang thinks that it is okay to eat the ketogenic diet once or twice once in a while, such as frying steak with good butter, but he is not used to eating it every day. And the ketogenic diet also has some drawbacks, such as carbohydrates contain dietary fiber and trace elements, people who do not eat carbs will be fatigued, and constipation.
Also, people with diabetes, liver disease, and kidney disease should also be cautious. Because the ketogenic diet converts fatty acids into a large number of ketones, if it exceeds the capacity of extrahepatic tissues to utilize, it will cause ketones in the blood to rise, which can lead to ketoacidosis. There is also literature that shows that the ketogenic reaction puts some pressure on the kidneys.
Therefore, after the expected weight loss goal is achieved, we should suspend the 168 diet and resume normal three meals a day. As the saying goes, weight loss is easy to maintain, so we need to maintain a healthy and balanced diet and not eat and drink. Of course, if the weight regain is too large, we will have to revert to the 168 diet.