Longo 5 Day Fasting Diet

Beans And Oils Are The Highest In Calories

Another ingredient that is allowed but must be calorie-restricted because it quickly adds up, is beans/legumes. The amount you can have daily is 8oz so if you have two meals a day, you can have half a cup per meal.

I included chickpeas and lentils for almost every meal. I didnt want this to be a tough experience for my mom who was eliminating so many food groups from her diet at once and for the first time. Plus, as I said, I wanted our food to include a maximum of nutrients, and beans do provide that and are properly prepared.

During this cleanse, beans and oils are the highest in calories, so thats where you have to pay attention when counting calories, especially since when preparing the beans, you always need some sort of oil. My choice for oils would be extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil, sesame oil, or maybe perilla oil if you have access to it. Here are the calories in beans and fats :

• 1 cup of boiled lentils 230 calories
• 1 cup of boiled chickpeas 267 calories
• 1 cup of boiled black beans 227 calories
• 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil 119 calories
• 1 tablespoon of avocado oil 124 calories
• 1 tablespoon of coconut oil 117 calories
• 1 tablespoon hemp seed oil 126 calories
• 1 tablespoon tahini 89 calories
• 2 tablespoons hemp seeds 111 calories
• 1 brazil nut 33 calories
• 10 olives 59 calories
• 1 cup full-fat coconut milk 552 calories

What Are The Potential Benefits Of Fasting

The physiological benefits of fasting include anti-aging activity by turning on a process in the body called autophagy, which triggers the body to clean up. In this process, our cells remove damaged contents so they can be metabolized and excreted from the body.

Autophagy is a natural way to get pathogens and abnormal contents in cells out of the body. You can find more background on autophagy at PubMed and Healthline. Autophagy provides anti-aging benefits and potentially even some anti-cancer benefits, because when cells act abnormally and replicate in an uncontrolled manner, thats essentially how cancer develops. Autophagy removes these abnormal or damaged cells before they get out of hand.

So, fasting turns on autophagy and the fasting mimicking diet seeks to engage that process without having to stop eating completely. In short, you still eat food but calories are limited , and in theory you may still get the benefits of fasting.

Its A Popular Practice And Research Shows It Has Real Health Benefits A New Diet That Tricks Your Body Into Thinking Its Fasting May Have Similar Merits

Valter Longo spent childhood summers in Molochio, the village in the Calabria region of southern Italy where his parents were born. It happens to have a high concentration of centenarians. Longo grew up to earn a Ph.D. in biochemistry and to study how food influences longevity. Although based in Los Angeles and Milan, he often returned to Molochio, hoping to discover the life-extending magic of the local diet. Not surprisingly, the village elders reported eating simply and sparingly: vegetables, beans, fruit, olive oil, pasta, and minimal meat.

But that wasnât the whole story.

âWhen we talk to centenarians we often hear, âYou know, we went through moments, through times, where there was just no food at all,ââ he says.

As a young laboratory researcher, Longo starved yeast to tease out how nutrient deprivation affects gene expression and other biological processes associated with longer life. He became convinced that fasting can delay ageing, prevent many illnesses that come along with growing older, and help more of us blow past age 100 by resetting our metabolism and cleaning out cellular debris. But few people will stick to a days-long fast, and extended fasting can cause muscle loss and other problems.

So Longo spent years developing, testing, and fine-tuning a diet that tricks our bodies into responding as if weâre eating nothing at all. It is very low in calories, sugars, and protein, and high in unsaturated fats.

You May Like: Can You Eat Whatever You Want When Doing Intermittent Fasting

Drinks And Supplements For The 5

As you can imagine, optimal hydration is essential every day, but even more, during a cleanse like the FMD. Make sure to drink at least 2 liters of filtered or mineral water every day.

Optimal Electrolyte from SeekingHealth

Adding electrolytes to water is also very important, so the water goes to the cells, where it needs to go. Adding electrolytes to water may support healthy hydration and fluid balance, mitochondrial health, and healthy energy levels, among others.

You can buy H2 Restore from Gundry MD here and save up to $120.00.

We kept coffee in our cleanse, but this can also be an occasion to take a break from caffeine if you want to. Matcha or green tea is ok, but herbal teas are a great option if youre going to give up caffeine for five days entirely. I love tulsi tea, lemon balm tea, and ginger tea made with fresh ginger.

Regarding supplements, you can continue with the usual ones you take, or ask your doctor for recommendations.

Backed By Experts And Doctors

internist-endocrinologist and professor of Diabetologyat the Leiden University Medical Center

Why is fasting good for us?

We all eat too much in the Netherlands. Every day at least 3 times and almost everyone still eats everything in between. We are not made for that at all. Those three meals a day have only been available to everyone since the industrial revolution, a few hundred years ago. Before that, we had to survive regular periods without food. Our bodies have adapted to that. Our cells feel when less food comes in and then adapt. They become more energy efficient, stop growing and multiplying, and invest more in maintenance and repair. They protect themselves from damage and start using waste products in the cell as fuel . They clean themselves up. All of this is meant to survive the period of food scarcity.

The use of fasting-mimicking diets

FMDs are formulated in such a way that the body reacts as if nothing was eaten at all. There is a growing body of research showing that regular use of an FMD can contribute to better health. It is also safe to use for healthy people.

Also Check: Does Intermittent Fasting Help Lower Cholesterol

Why I Tried The Fmd With Real Food

I first discovered the Fasting Mimicking Diet while looking for a way to reduce my cholesterol in 2019. Id read Dr. Longos book, the Longevity Diet, and was convinced that it really could make a difference in my cholesterol numbers. But I wasnt crazy about the processed food option or its cost. I did some research and came up with my own plan based on what Id found. Using MyFitnessPal to plan my food for the 5 days, I worked out the macronutrient ratios from Dr. Longos studies, which Ill share below. Then I made a shopping list from that plan, and the experiment began.

Cell Protection With Autophagy

Autophagy is the bodys internal protective mechanism for getting rid of cells that are broken or damaged. Cells replicate at different rates, depending on where they are in the body. Skin cells are replaced every 2 weeks, while red blood cells are replaced every 2.5 to 4 months. The epithelial cells that line the intestinal walls are replaced every 5 days.

Cells are always replicating. In that process, they transfer DNA. Sometimes information gets lost or cells are damaged. If the body is allowed to continue with broken or damaged cells, or ones missing crucial information, the body would rapidly deteriorate! Autophagy is the bodys built-in system for cleaning house of broken, damaged, or old cells with bad information.

A study by Dr. Longo and colleagues from 2015 showed that the FMD plan helped to optimize the process of autophagy. As a result, it has a protective effect on cells and may even help to slow cellular degeneration and aging. Autophagy is also shown to ramp up in nerve cells in response to short-term fasting.

Also Check: What Can You Eat While On Intermittent Fasting

Read Also: A1c Vs Fasting Blood Sugar

Design Your Own Fmd Meals

Want to make up your own DIY FMD based on your own tastes and preferences? You can use MyFitnessPal to add ingredients you like, then check the nutritional pie chart at the bottom. I find that using MyFitnessPal on my computers browser is much easier than my phone, but experiment with both. Youll probably find that the hardest part is keeping that protein so low. Here are some guidelines youll want to keep in mind as you design your own meals :

A Lower Risk For Type 2 Diabetes

Eating ample plant-based foods, like vegetables, legumes, and nuts is a key pillar in the longevity diet. And research published in April 2022 in the journal Diabetologia suggests that a higher total fruit and vegetable intake may be associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes in men specifically .

Meanwhile, a diet high in red meat and poultry may increase your risk of type 2 diabetes, research published in May 2017 in the American Journal of Epidemiology shows.

Also Check: Do Fasting App Coupon Code

The Fasting Mimicking Diet Diy Plan: A 5

So here is our five-day, total DIY fasting mimicking diet plan. For convenience Ive linked all the products you will need directly to the amazon marketplace.

A few notes first:

May Help You Enter Ketosis More Easily

An intermittent fasting protocol like the FMD can be a nice gateway into a Ketogenic diet.

Its a way to get some of the potential benefits of fasting while also helping the body become fat-adapted.

From there you can more easily transition into a healthy, high-fat diet. Its less of a jarring transition compared to going from the standard western diet to full-blown Keto overnight.

Learn more: Intermittent Fasting and Keto

You May Like: What Is The 18 Hour Fasting Diet

Here Are The Health Benefits Of The Fasting Mimicking Diet Plan:

• Killing damaged cells and replacing with newly regenerated cells from activated stem cells

I am especially interested in the visceral fat part.

Im close to 50 and the older I get the more fat my body likes to store on my midsection compared to everywhere else.

All of my friends who are the same age are seeing this as well.

Fasting for 5 days is a way to directly target this stubborn belly fat.

but not eating anything for 5 days sounds nutty.

Dr. Longos studies showed impressive benefits of 5-day fasts.

He even found that fasting for 5 days, was one way to stop the spread of cancer, but the cancer community did NOT want to do this.

He realized that fasting with only water had a 95% failure rate.

People couldnt do it.

The National Cancer Institute believed that Dr. Longos findings were so promising they gave him grants to develop a 5-day diet that could mimic fasting.

Over a period of time, the 5-Day FMD plan was developed.

The benefit that jumped out at me was this

The body continues to focus on burning belly fat, long AFTER returning to a normal diet.

Shifting the body into an abdominal/visceral fat-burning mode, which continues after returning to a normal diet

So the Fasting Mimicking Diet Plan is like hitting the reset button.

This diet is a way of killing damaged cells and replacing with new healthier cells.

Your body also switches to target belly fat even after this 5-day period.

Dr. Valter Longo has some controversial viewpoints.

BUT

Prep And Planning: Helpful Steps Before Starting Fmd

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Benjamin Franklin

FMD is a complex diet, since its components are interconnected and have a small margin of error:

Calorie count

• Day 1: 10-16 calories per kg of body weight
• Days 2-5: 7-11 calories per kg of body weight

Macro composition

• Day 1: 10% | 56% | 34%
• Day 2-5: 9% | 44% | 47%

Measurement

• If you want to know what is actually going on and if the diet is effective you need to measure.
• The more the better. Weight, body composition , blood glucose levels, ketone levels, etc.

Energy levels

• Your energy levels are changing due to an adaptation in metabolism

All of the above need prep and planning.

Read Also: How Long For Fasting To Lose Weight

The Results From This Diet Plan

First, lets talk about the results of the Fasting Mimicking Diet study.

Its titled:

Fasting-mimicking Diet and Markers/risk factors for Aging, Diabetes, Cancer, and Cardiovascular Disease.

• 100 people were involved in the study
• 50 subjects ate normally for 3 months
• 50 subjects did 3 5-day rounds of the fasting mimicking diet

The subjects who followed the fasting mimicking lost an average of 5 pounds and the majority of this weight loss came from abdominal fat.

They also lost 1 inch off of their waist on average.

Here are the results of a woman who used the 5-day ProLon Fast.

• When she started the fast, she was 165.2 pounds.
• At the end of the fast, she was 158.8 pounds.
• So she lost around 7 pounds in 5 days.

Like the subjects in the experiment, it also seems that the majority of her weight came off from the abdominal region.

For people who have stubborn belly fat, this could be something that they should try.

Is Fasting Mimicking Safe: Potential Risk Factors

Prolonged fasting can cause complications for some people. Please do not start a fast without talking to your doctor if you have:

• Blood pressure issues
• A BMI less than 18

Please also consult a doctor if you are:

• Under the age of 18
• Protein-deficient

Finally, if you have a nut or soy allergy, please take special careas alwaysto check labels and substitute foods. If you adjust a fasting mimicking diet to avoid nuts and soy, please have your doctor review your proposed menu before you begin.

Also Check: What Is The Best Fasting Diet

What Is A 5

Before I start, I wanted to briefly mention the potential benefits of a 5-day fasting-mimicking diet, which, as the name suggested, is a 120-hour prolonged nutritious, low-calorie fast, mimicking the benefits of a water fast. These benefits are:

• resetting metabolism

As Dr. Valter Longo and Dr. Steven Gundry suggest, we could do this fasting regularly: every 8 to 12 weeks. For healthy individuals who are already following a healthy diet all the time, twice a year should be enough. However, it really depends on a lot of factors, so I would recommend reading The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo, PhD or watching some of his more recent podcasts or interviews, like this one on The Dr. Gundry Podcast, published in May 2022.

Dr. Valter Longo is very cautious regarding DYI fasting-mimicking diets. He advises medical supervision. Please do not make any drastic changes in your diet without consulting with your doctor, especially if:

• you take medication like insulin, statins, steroids, immunosuppressants etc
• you have diabetes, low blood pressure, cancer, or other medical conditions
• you have a history of eating disorders
• you have a very low BMI or are underweight or frail
• you are over 65 years old

A little hunger and lack of energy are normal side effects of this diet, possibly a light headache, but anything other than that, please stop and add more food to the plan. Make sure you drink plenty of water, a minimum of 2 liters per day.

Diy Fast Mimicking Diet

However, there are multiple reasons why one might opt for a do-it-yourself fast mimicking diet. Thus youll need to know the macronutrient and caloric restrictions in order to emulate it.

To quote the specific section in the paper:The human fasting mimicking diet program is a plant-based diet program designed to attain fasting-like effects while providing micronutrient nourishment and minimize the burden of fasting. It comprises proprietary vegetable-based soups, energy bars, energy drinks, chip snacks, chamomile flower tea, and a vegetable supplement formula tablet. The human FMD diet consists of a 5 day regimen: day 1 of the diet supplies $1,090 kcal , days 25 are identical in formulation and provide 725 kcal .

Then in Valters book The Longevity Diet, he goes into more detail for how to perform a fast mimicking diet:

Recommended Reading: How Much Weight Can I Lose From Water Fasting