Diet until you get to your ideal weight

Researchers at Cornell University have found that mice on a lower calorie diet live longer than mice on a higher calorie diet. More important, they found that switching from a higher caloric intake to a lower one eliminated up to 70 percent of all genetic signs of aging that the higher calorie intake mice had earlier displayed.

What I believe this means for humans is not to reduce your calorie intake to a paltry 1200 calories per day, but to reduce your body fat percentage to as low as possible, while having a slightly higher than average muscle mass, and to keep yourself as lean and mean as possible for the rest of your life. What this means is keeping yourself at 6-12 percent body fat if you’re a man (6 to 12 percent of the total body weight is composed of fat), and at 12-18 percent body fat if you’re a woman.

Of course, women can have a higher body fat percentage than men, and remain healthy, because a woman’s body is built to account for possible child bearing.

I believe that if you follow The Best Lodging Diet, and the accompanying exercise program, you’ll be going a long way towards ensuring that you’ll increase your life span by five years or more, even if you’re currently seventy years old. You’ll be able to attain the aforementioned body fat percentages, which will make you to envy of others you encounter. The lower body fat percentages of five percent for a man, and 12 percent for a woman will give you the body of a cover model, if you also follow the exercise program I lay out. However, as long as you fall at less than 12 percent body fat if you’re a man, or 18 percent if you’re a woman, then you’ll still be among the very leanest of all Americans, and you’ll have a nearly ideal body that everyone will notice.

The above body fat percentages are ambitious indeed, but you can and will have the body of a cover model if you follow The Best Lodging Diet, and you will improve your health in the process.

It should be noted that as long as you are at 17 percent body fat or less if you’re a man, and at 24 percent body fat or less if you’re a woman, you are still considered “healthy.” I believe that you need to strive to attain at least this standard of body fat percentage for your health, and I believe that The Best Lodging Diet is the least painful way to get to this level of leanness.

So follow through with The Best Lodging Diet to reach your ideal weight, then follow The Best Lodging “Maintenance Plan” to maintain your ideal weight, and follow through with the exercise program that I lay out for you. When you’ve lost all excess unneeded fat and have progressed to the Best Lodging Maintenance Plan to maintain your ideal weight, you’ll be eating nutritionally healthy food on an eating plan that is formulated to engender a prolonged lifespan, especially when you also make an effort to exercise for at least an average of 22.5 minutes per day (45 minutes every other day). Although you'll eat healthy, you'll also have a junk food reward so to speak, after you work out. You'll be able to eat refined carbs (candy, cookies, etc.) as long as you have just previously exercised.

For men, 17.5 percent body fat is considered healthy, or “ideal.” Women, as mentioned above, can have a body fat percentage of up to 25 percent and be considered healthy, or ideal. So it appears that the CDCP defines ideal with these body fat percentages in mind.

However, my definition of “ideal” is having a body that could appear on the front cover of an exercise/nutrition magazine, which for men would be to have a body fat percentage of between 5-8 percent, and for women, between 12-15 percent. Men should not go below 5 percent body fat, except for a brief time if they’re in a body building competition, or similar competition. Reach these levels, and you can enjoy a prolonged life just like the rats in the Cornell study did.

You’ll also draw stares of admiration from both sexes if you reach these body fat percentages AND if you follow the weight training and cardiovascular training program. If you don’t do the exercise, and try to reach these body fat percentages, you’ll look scrawny, and have saggy skin. On the other hand, I can assure you that unless you are using steroids, or some other dangerous banned substance, that you will not get big and burly if you’re a woman, and even men won’t get big either because this is a fat loss program, not a muscle gain program.

You will reach these levels if you follow The Best Lodging Diet. However, you should at least progress to the CDCP level of ideal body fat. Keep in mind however, that using my definition of “ideal” would increase the statistics of obese and overweight people to well over 80 percent.