Weight loss, health and longevity

If you have a weight problem, you are not healthy. But the opposite is not always true: you can be blessed genetically, as the result you can tolerate a lot of bad foods without gaining weight, but your health could be still suffering without the manifestation of overweight.

Being health requires a holistic approach that often includes good nutrition, stress control, good sleep and exercise, of which nutrition is the most dominant factor. If you eat the right wholesome foods, you won't have weight problem. But you need also pay attention to the other 3 aspects to be healthy.

Most health conscious blogs I read are about one of those 4 legs of being health. A lot of things people in this community are doing -- even though they sound like strange according to conventional wisdom, are actually backed up by sound medical research, and I am quite sure they will become mainstream in 10 or 15 years.

Longevity, or more specifically, the retarding of the rate of aging, is still a very unsettled field. For one thing, it's not a natural phenomena. While if you just follow a hunter-gatherer or Paleo diet, you genes will take care of your body and you will be healthy. It's natural in that you genes want you to be fit you can reproduce. Longevity, however, is quite a different story: why would nature want you to hang around once you have passed your prime time? Evolution does not work this way: you are just a burden on food supply if you don't help pass down the genes.

So far the only proven way of slowing down aging is calorie restriction. But who wants to live to 120 years old when you are always hungry? That's why a lot researcher are trying to unravel the underlying biology of calorie restriction so that we can live longer without the starvation. And this is a very exciting field, with a right mix of science and speculation, it's just plain fascinating, and I enjoy the reading in this field tremendously.