Episode 68: Steve Anton talks about diet, exercise, intermittent fasting and lifestyle interventions to improve health

What’s the best way to eat and the right way to exercise to ensure a healthy lifespan? Our guest today is Dr. Stephen Anton, a psychologist who has spent his career researching how lifestyle factors can influence not only obesity, but also cardiovascular disease and other metabolic conditions.

Steve is an associate professor and the chief of the Clinical Research Division in the Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida. In today’s episode, we talk to Steve about his work in developing lifestyle interventions designed to modify people’s eating and exercise behaviors in an effort to improve their healthspan and lifespan.

One of Steve’s best-known papers appeared in the Obesity Journal titled “Flipping the Metabolic Switch.” The study looked at intermittent fasting and suggested that the metabolic switch into ketosis represents an evolutionary conserved trigger point that has the potential to improve body composition in overweight individuals.

Topics we cover in today’s interview include:

The increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome associated with aging.

Why so many hospital health and wellness programs fail.

How fasting and intermittent energy restriction promote autophagy.

The relationship between muscle quality, body fat and health.

How age-related loss of muscle function and mass leads to sarcopenia.

Effects, risks and benefits of testosterone supplementation in older men.

Optimal exercise methods for long-term health.

Therapeutic approaches that potentially can help avert systemic inflammation associated with aging.

Steve’s study that looked at the effects of popular diets on weight loss.

Controversies surrounded calorie restriction as a strategy to enhance longevity.

Show notes:

2:30: Steve talks about growing up in Tampa and playing sports as a kid.

3:53: Dawn asks Steve about his decision to attend Florida State after high school.

4:17: Dawn comments on how Steve bounced between medicine, business, and psychology before finally deciding to major in psychology. She asks if having two parents who were also psychologists played a role in his decision.

5:24: Ken asks about Steven’s experience pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Florida.

6:28: Dawn brings up that Steve became a fellow of behavioral medicine at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. She mentions that Pennington has one of the nation’s premier programs in obesity metabolism and diabetes. She asks if that was the reason he decided on Pennington.

9:33: Dawn asks what prompted Steve to return to the University of Florida.

10:08: Ken asks what is driving the increased prevalence of metabolic syndrome that’s associated with advanced age.

11:19: Dawn brings up how hospitals have tried to promote health and wellness programs for decades, but notes how hospitals are designed to treat people who are sick and injured rather than delivering lifestyle interventions. She asks if Steve can give a summary of what he has learned in looking at ways to deliver interventions.

13:23: Dawn mentions that the traditional treatment and management approaches for type 2 diabetes are relatively ineffective and only reverse the disease in about one percent of the cases.

15:02: Ken mentions that Jeff Volek, STEM-Talk Guest on episode 43, has been a pioneer in researching type 2 diabetes.

16:49: Dawn points out that she and Ken had an in-depth conversation with Dr. Mark Matson about autophagy on episode seven of STEM-Talk. Matson also discussed fasting, and intermittent energy restriction and how it promotes autophagy, which is often described as the body’s innate recycling system. Dawn asks if Steve can elaborate a little on this process.

18:02: Dawn mentions that Steve has written about muscle quality and body composition and the risk of metabolic diseases and functional decline. She asks about the relationship between muscle quality,