What to eat on a calorie restricted diet? - You can eat anything you want of course, but don't think that eating junk food will extend your life. CR has it's protective effects but without keeping nutritional quality of the diet very high you wont get that far and may even be taking a trip to your hospital in a short time or have a considerably shortened life expectancy because of nutritional deficiencies.

When starting Calorie Restriction just try to add certain fruits and vegetables to your diet, if you are not a big vegetable eater then at first you won't have much of a taste for vegetables and they will seem quite bland. Over time as you introduce yourself to new foods you will really begin to like them (I think!). I know that I hated Brussel Sprouts since I was a kid, but now they are just one of my favourites! - It is quite amazing how we can make ourselves like things..

I would aim for at least 7-10 vegetables daily and make sure you have a variety. The best website for finding what foods are considered healthy is this website: Worlds healthiest foods Also make sure that you get good fats from Olive oil, nuts and seeds to absorb nutrients in foods, you should aim for at least 20 - 30% of your calories from fat.

How much should I restrict? - Once you start restricting calories it can be exciting anticipating all these positive effects that are well documented, at least this was the case for me!  I did reduce my calories to too much at first, this for a short while, I never lost more than 1lb per week as I couldn't have been in too much of a calorie deficit since I was a very low weight at the start of CR (BMI 18.5). Although I did make some of the best possible mistakes during the start of CR. I never measured things right at the start using weighing scales, I used cups. I thankfully inaccurately estimated the size of the sweet potato, which is quite calorie dense. I thought I was eating a medium, but in fact the sweet potatoes I ate were large, there for I wasn't restricted as I initially thought. Which in my case was a very good thing. As fast weight loss is not a good thing.

In rodents the evidence shows that the slower you restrict the better, so you should restrict calories in stages, even if you start off on the higher side of the BMI range I would still recommend that you follow it slowly and don't go on a crash diet. If you are already skinny then restrict by 100-200k/cal and see how much weight is lost (if any). If it is more than 1lb per week then add 50k/cal or so. For more heavier people do a similar thing but don't lose more than 2lbs per week. Again, unless you are in immediate danger because of your weight, lose weight slowly.