Although the idea that it does is well-established in the collective subconscious, it looks like common wisdom today is settling on “no”.
I’ve recently read (but of course already forgotten where) that we actually exercise more today than 30 or 40 years ago.
My personal experience is that it’s possible to lose weight through exercise, but it’s certainly not a given, as it’s easy to eat more because the exercise makes you hungry and/or you feel that you can afford to eat more. Also, when you go well beyond what you usually do it’s common to actually weigh more the next day. Often, then there’s notable weight loss the days after. I attribute the delay to fluid retention from swollen muscles and joints. Alternatively, if you sweat a lot and fail to rehydrate, you may see weight loss the next day but bounce back the days after. But last year, I tried to cycle 20 km/day. When my bike was out of order for a few weeks, I lost the same amount of weight as when I was doing my 20 km every day.
On the other hand, biking has definitely been a major factor in my weight loss. I gained a Freshman 30, and lost half of it back the following summer biking to work. Then this past year or so, I’ve lost most of the rest of it, again biking a lot.
Here’s the actual study and the error bars reported. Note for “normal weight” individuals 95% relative risk for mortality rate with no healthy habits confidence interval is 1.25–3.81 (mean 2.18) and with one healthy habit it’s 1.90–3.83 (mean 2.70). The mean may be higher in the latter but there is no significant difference between the two. Even two healthy habits is in about the same range. Normal weight no healthy habit or one healthy habit ad pretty much even three both are about 2 to 3 times the reference norm of normal weight with four healthy habits and both less than half the relative risk of an obese individual with no healthy habits and a just a bit less than an obese individual with one healthy habit. Normal weight with three healthy habits does pretty good too. Normal weight, overweight, or obese though … those who still have all four healthy habits have good odds.
Lower “normal” BMI (under 22.5) being a negative predictor of mortality without known disease at study onset and well in advance of when any disease should be having an impact is pretty well established. Some, but not all, of the effect is due to the overrepresentation of smokers in the lower BMI group. Maybe some mental illness is overrepresented there as well. It may be a marker of other risk … but it may be that high normal to low overweight BMI often has more lean body mass and possibly is correlated more with higher levels of physical activity. The known limitations of BMI as a tool …
As far as exercise … the impact there may be less immediate calories burned than what it does to the brain receptors over time … currently mainly thought of in terms of leptin resistance/sensitivity.
Eat a healthy plant-rich diet and exercise regularly, and you may live longer. Or you may die before that guy at work that drinks to excess, smokes and fools around with wanton women. It’s a crapshoot, and there are no magic superfoods/supplements with “rock hard” proof to extend longevity. And those people living on South Sea islands with supposedly long life spans who cook everything in coconut oil have far different genetics and lifestyles from you.
And ask yourself what “longevity” means. Is it living to 75 and still being able to do everything you want to do, or lasting until 95 with the final 20 years of your life spent relatively helpless in an extended care facility?
To get back to the OP, some study showed that when mice were fed a diet equal to 1,200 calories a day for a human, they lived to an age equal to a human age of 120.
Is it worth living to 120 to subsist on 1,200 calories a day? Life is to be enjoyed in my book, and food is one of life’s greatest pleasures. I would NOT enjoy having to eat no more than 1,200 calories a day.
It’s incorrect to say “equal to 1,200 Calories a day for a human”, or “equal to a human age of 120”. Better would be to say “equivalent to…”, but that’s still not correct. How do you determine the equivalence? By some standards, the oldest lab mouse ever is roughly equivalent to a 30-year-old human. Do the advantages of that Calorie-restricted diet extend to the truly impressive ages humans routinely reach? The only way to find out is to study humans who eat very little, and see how long they live… But as mentioned above, that’s a very difficult experiment.
Your link merely reiterates what we mostly all know: the single substance (in this case resveratol) taken out of the whole food as a supplement is no panacea.
This in no way disputes the health benefits associated with low to moderate alcohol consumption. Now maybe it will turn out that that level of alcohol use is more of a marker for social connections … I don’t know … but that study does not inform.
As to the rest, you are aware, I know, that the diets and habits associated with longer lives are also associated with less disability and cognitive decline as we age.
Unless what you are saying is the whole since SOME people don’t have the good outcomes bit …
That’s not easy to answer because it’s hard to know in advance at which point life is no longer worth living. But I guess I’d take 10 years in good health over 20 bedridden years.
However, your dilemma is problematic on another level, because you assume that bad (but enjoyable?) habits will kill you quickly while living clean will result in a slow demise. That’s far from given. If you get cancer, it can be over in a year or two, but there’s also people who get chronic lung problems from smoking and have to walk around with an oxygen tank the last 20 years of their lives. And overeating can give you diabetes which can lead to blindness and amputations without actually killing you. If you want to make sure you don’t have to live though your final years you should probably use a more direct method.
As for the hungry mice living to a ripe old age: this is one example where the evidence that this applies to humans is very sketchy.
I now eat about half what I used to eat until a couple of years ago (maybe a little more, but not much) and going down to 1200 kcal/day would be reducing that by half again. That doesn’t sound like fun. If I knew for sure it would work I might do it, but the evidence is all over the place and I’ve seen a few photos of people living like that. They looked like Steve Jobs in his final days. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do that to myself on purpose.
(Although if you get to live twice as long by eating half as much, you still get to eat the same amount over your lifetime!)
It’s more than far from a given; it’s pretty clear that the opposite is true for exactly why you posit. Those bad habits now take fairly few years off your life but they clearly make the years you have more likely to be more filled with dementia and physical disability.