As any personal trainer or dietitian will attest, the best way to increase general fitness for most people is to cut back on the food, but can cutting back on the calories increase your lifespan and healthy years besides just losing a few pounds? While most associate healthy eating with a lack of obesity diseases, there is a substantial amount of research that says a lack of eating actually decreases the aging process.

One article goes so far as to say that every unnecessary calorie avoided increases your lifespan by 30 seconds. While this statistic might be a little hard to believe, there is hard evidence that reducing calories will slow the metabolism. Unfortunately, eating a lot and exercising it off doesn’t seem to result in the same life extending aspects, even though exercising has its own benefits. Interestingly enough, both of these theories seem to hold true to the health adage that fitness is 80% diet and 20% exercise.