Happy New Year! If you’re like me, it’s time to hit the ground running in terms of changing routines with the goal of being more fit in 2023. As I’ve done for the last five years, I am starting off January with a fast. This year, it’s the ProLon fast, which I’ll begin Sunday, January 8th, after dinner until that Friday, the 13th.
If you tried ProLon before and hate the soups, they have a whole new line of soups designed by customers. I’ve tried them and they are seriously superior to all previous soups ProLon has put out. Just be sure to select the “Gen3” soups at checkout.
The benefits of fasting are something I’ve written about more extensively before here. These include the proliferation of stem cells after three to five days which can go to places in your body that need repair; autophagy, or the death of older or dysfunctional cells to make way for new ones; mitophagy, similarly, is the death of older or dysfunctional mitochondria to make way for healthy mitochondria; and improved microbiome, as bad gut bacteria die off, to make way for a healthy, more diverse assortment.
With December’s holiday parties, I have a few extra pounds to shed as well. Weight loss, while not the main benefit of this diet, definitely occurs. Over the five-day diet, I typically lose five pounds. Dr. John Gildea did the diet last year and lost eleven pounds.
Fasting is also amazing for longevity. “It’s the skinny rats that live the longest,” I remember hearing a medical researcher saying to me in 2005 over dinner. But the tie between fasting and longevity really began to be understood in the mid-2010’s with the research of Valter Longo. Longo is the Director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California and showed in a 2014 publication that yeast, worms, and mice have a substantially longer life span when forced to fast.
Dr. Longo is the creator of the ProLon diet. The ProLon fasting mimicking diet is, as the name implies, a diet that tricks your body into thinking it is doing a water fast while eating specific foods. Following this diet results in the above benefits you receive from fasting while still taking in 700-1000 calories each day.
The exact way this diet allows for fasting mimicking is proprietary. However, since it is vegan, it is deficient in the amino acid methionine, which is in all animal products and is likely a key in the diet’s success.
Additionally, it has calorie restrictions of 1000 calories the first day, and 700 calories the other four days. Lastly, the L-drink is vegetable glycerin, which you drink each day and is likely an important part of the “secret sauce.”
And there’s one more thing: the benefits of fasting reduce as you age. So, don’t wait! If you’re interested in doing the ProLon, it’s pricey, so look around on the internet for a coupon code. I got mine for about $160.
If you want to fast, but don’t want to pay the money, then I’d suggest a three-day water-only fast. If you want to do ProLon “on the cheap,” you can eat avocado, olives, macadamia nuts and this soup I’ve shared before. Just count your calories and make sure they are under 800 per day. The ProLon diet has capsules to take as well. One is a multivitamin and the other is a fish oil. So, you can take both of those as well. Lastly, if you have BrocElite and BerbElite handy, I’d suggest taking one each of those in the morning and evening. The BrocElite will add to the fasting benefits, and the BerbElite will help appetite suppression as well as move you into ketosis quickly.
If you are planning on joining the fast for the first time, we have a Facebook group that you can request to sign up for. I will be posting each day of the five days and will respond to any questions there.
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