How to preserve bone and mass on a low calorie diet. Get the preface for Dr. Greger’s brand-new book, How Not to Diet, by subscribing to his free newsletter at …

49 Responses

  1. The title seems a little misleading. It sounds like there are potential benefits to caloric restriction, and the "pitfall" comes from assuming that one must up their protein to preserve muscle mass (When exercise is all that's needed?) Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. 😕
    Thank you, just the same, Dr. Greger.

  2. People overgeneralize a lot when it comes to calories, the reality is that eating a little bit under your maintenance is not going to kill you or lead to malnutrition if you know what you're doing. I've lost around 20 pounds of body fat on a vegan diet and I ate slightly less then my maintenance calories without losing much noticeable muscle mass, I also went to the gym and did cardio a few times a week. My protein intake was about .5 grams per pound of body weight, nothing crazy.

  3. I can't understand what calorie restriction really means when mentioned in these studies, even more so if you're already in a healthy weight (I'm 23yrs, 5"4' and 117 pounds, which puts me in the end of the BMI chart, so don't think I need to loose weight and yes put on muscle, so CR is actually contra-productive in this case).
    I have experienced only negative effects of CR during my life. 8 years dieting, fasting and exercising 8-9 hours a week brought me to a bad relationship with food and my body, and constant stress, that resulted in disease. and yes I've been plant based this whole time – I still am, but had to let the calorie restriction and overexercising go…

  4. For years I, with a sedentary lifestyle n on a plant based diet wondered why I remained at about 208 lbs. I lowered my caloric intake and within months dropped to 173 lbs! My goal is 150.

    JoseTheVegan on YouTube

  5. VAlter Longo recommends consuming 30g of protein within a half hour of weight training. If you calorie restrict and lift you will need to make sure your protein is sufficient. Also allow for plant protein not being so efficiently absorbed.

  6. I'm 68 and lost quite a bit of weight. Now I'm trying to do resistance once a week along with my daily walks to get the muscle back. Yeah, you look so horrible because your skin gets wrinkly and you lose muscle. It eventually comes back without gaining weight, with exercise. At first, you aren't sure if you look better or worse.

  7. Perfect timing with all these high calorie pushers in the vegan community telling us to eat over 2k no matter who we are lately, which has shown to be very detrimental to me. Just started eating way less and finally I’m feeling like myself again.

  8. Great report! How to convince people that eating less and exercising will help them and get them to do it? Pharmacology: diet pill! Psychology: Motivation!!! Normal human: Ugh, Too much work.

  9. Thank you for covering this. I want to do more research on protien over on my channel. Thank you for showing that exercise is the best for muscle mass. It really doesn't matter how much protien you eat, if you don't use it you will lose it and you definitely will not gain more.

  10. 1:45

    "09 g kg" is a reasonably high protein diet.

    assuming a 65kg person:

    its like 60g protein (eating grains, legumes & veggies) = an "eat everything" diet

    in contrast to "normal" 40g (fruit, potato, rice, veggies) = starchivore diet

    or low 30g (fruit, white flour, fruit juice, few veggies) = rawtill4 diet

    1.7 g kg is like 110g, that is super high, its legumes & veggies, very few grains or fruit = nutritarian diet.
    however especially on a deficit, getting this much protein is difficult even on such a diet.

    i think its important to know, whether 30g (low protein) is truly muscle mass wasting.
    because a caloric deficit can easily involve a low protein (30g) ratio on vegan diets.

    for example: 1800kcal of a "vegan option" hospital diet.
    its fruit, fruit juice, bretzels, potato, rice porridge. 30g protein.
    no legumes, so little protein, unless you tolerate for soy-isolate-laced breads.
    few solid calories, since you opt out of the heavy foods, so you need to fill in fruit juice, to get 1800kcal.
    i am also worried that in cachexia, muscles broken down in exercise are not even ever rebuilt.

    regarding super high protein vs insulin sensitivity: was this vegan protein?

    would a low-BMI, high protein, nutritarian (legumes and veggies eater) end up with insulin problems?

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