Calorie Restriction Diet

[beezy]

There's been a lot of talk going on about how that eating "drastically less" can endure your lifespan.

They call it the Calorie Restriction Diet, and New York Magazine wrote this piece October 30.

"The 1,800 daily calories I’ve been consuming fall well short of the minimum 2,500 recommended for adult males, and two months on this caloric budget has shrunk my 43-year-old, five-eleven frame from an almost officially overweight 178 pounds to a high-school-era 157. Friends and loved ones, I’ve noticed, have started sounding more concerned than impressed when they see how much weight I’ve lost, but here within the charmed circle of tonight’s dinner party, I don’t feel so much scrawny as trim—dashing, even. Standing around the kitchen’s broad butcher-block prep table with these five world-class calorie restricters, I recognize our thinness as sophisticated and sane, the height of a slender, Nick and Nora Charles sort of elegance."

Is it me, or is this just silly? CR seems to be a competitive fetish of nutrition and portion control, but it's not so bizarre to think that you ought to watch your caloric intake.

Salon wrote this rebuttal today, asking if it's worth it if we're hungry all the time. I'm trying to lose a lot of weight by eating 1700 calories a day, plus the outflow of a stringent gym regimen. I'm (mostly) not hungry, and I'm certainly not starving. I don't eat everything that's available to me (fast food, prepared food, fried food, frequent dessert), but I'm still eating out 2 or 3 times a week, and not ordering the salad with dressing on the side.

Thoughts?