I’ve been aware of and researching CR since the 80’s. I have been on several CR lists, know personally many CRON practitioners and have been on CR myself for many years.
Of all the claims about the CR(ON) - Caloric Restriction Optimal Nutrition - diet, you managed to come up with a new one! The claim that transitioning to a CR(ON) diet will be less healthy than your current healthy ad libitum diet. That’s a new one!
I really cannot come up with how that can possibly be true.
I suspect you might have an inaccurate conception about what a CR diet is. In short, a CR diet is a diet that limits calories, as in a straight DR (Dietary Restriction) cut in quantity of whatever it is that you are consuming currently, or more commonly as practiced, of restructuring your diet to limit it to a given level of calories while maintaining an optimal level of macro and micronutrients amounts. This necessarily means consuming more nutritionally dense food, as you must fit all the nutrients into fewer calories. This generally means consuming the healthiest foods available. Note, CR does not imply a necessarily lower volume of food, only lower calories, which generally means more plants and fewer animal based foods, and almost complete elimination of processed foods. You may have to/wish to add select supplements.
On the other hand you are right to think carefully before embarking on CR. There is no sugarcoating this: CR is a very complicated and difficult lifestyle - yes, lifestyle… which is why I ultimately gave up on it after many years. I had no issues staying on the diet itself, but the social and practical aspects eventually proved too much. You cannot travel and vacation freely and explore. Your social life becomes restricted and difficult. It’s expensive. Unless your partner is on CR with you (as my wife was), it can be a source of stress and complications. It is time consuming and demands great discipline - the shopping, the prepping, the measuring, day after day. As my professional obligations increased, I simply could not spare the necessary time and I didn’t have the kind of wealth to hire a team a la Brian Johnson. In short, I decided that I spent too much of my life tending to the mundane practice of CR, with not enough time left to actually live my life. If I wanted to really be on CRON, not half ass it, that is. As if all that weren’t enough, it takes time to actually experience the full suite of benefits, like 2-3 years minimum - and those 2-3 years can be worse psychologically than your ad libitum life, before you reach the promised land of long term CR. That said, the benefits - as I experienced it - were spectacular, not merely physically, but psychologically; I was razor sharp, lightening fast and focused, resilient and felt bulletproof; all my senses seemed in hyper drive; food was delicious and hunger not an issue (disclaimer: 1. only true for long term CR 2. not true for everyone - for many, hunger remains an issue, even with good diet design).
I mentioned CR, because it is factually relevant to your question. This doesn’t mean it’s practical. In fact, to put it bluntly, being on real CRON (not the half-assed efforts that sometimes are claimed to be CR), demands a unique personality. At its height, the number of CRONies in the US, was about 1500, and most of them read the list/site. You do the math.
Could CR resolve your issue? Yep. Would you be able or willing to go that route - frankly, very doubtful.
Final tidbit. Historical/environmental evidence, hints. Highly counterintuitive - at times of starvation, the numbers of people with anxiety and related disorders like depression, drop drastically - you’d think the opposite… and yet. Even in times of extreme stress, like war, you don’t have the numbers of depressed/anxious people as in times of prosperity and peace. The brain, when stressed by very constrained resources cannot spare the cycles for unproductive rumination and free floating emotions and psychologically wasteful states like anxiety. The signals that trigger anxiety states demand energy the brain cannot spare as it must prioritize life preserving activities. In CR experiments with animals, a pretty universal finding is that the animals are more physically active than controls even though have fewer calories to operate on. Paradox. This is explained evolutionarily by greater need for food seeking abilities and sense sharpening. They must perform better to find food. This heightened state prioritizes productive behaviors, and eliminates wasteful behavioral patterns including unproductive anxiety. Like the CR studies in rats I cited in another post, where CR resulted in less anxious behavior patterns and brain activity. These effects are real.
But note one universal thing: however wonderful the benefits may be, however sharp the senses and capable the body, no animal or human would voluntarily choose to drastically limit calories, experience hunger, be on CR. Human beings are a bit different because of our intellect. We can and do choose to fast, often regularly. And, very, very rarely we choose to go on CR long term as a lifestyle. YMMV.
