Are you interested in losing weight or living longer for better? This article gives you a snapshot of the what, why and how of inducing a fasting state with Prolon. Prolon is a pre-packaged all-in-one plant-based meal program for 5 days. I am not sponsored by Prolon so this is an independent review.

Let me explain: autophagy is the body’s natural way of recycling old, damaged, redundant and aging cells. When food is in abundance, this process is not optimised. When we fast, there’s less food and the body has to prioritise which cells grow and develop, and which ones to recycle. It’s a bit like pruning your garden to promote new growth and development: pruning like autophagy removes damaged and redundant cells. For more info, check out my article on fasting here.

What’s in the fasting mimicking diet?

Day 1

Result: 1 cm decrease in waist circumference. Food was satisfying: I felt full for 3 hours after eating.

Side-effects: Slight headache in the evening ?Too much fluids. Stomach grumbling in the evening. Taste/flavour of product: Not sure about the L-energy bar (rather sweet to my liking). Enjoying the kale crackers and olives (I have a savoury tooth) although wasn’t sure about sunflower oil in the crackers (I would have preferred olive oil which is less toxic)

Summary: Effort so far resulted in 1 cm decrease in waist circumference. Yay!

Day 3

Going on a ‘packaged’ low-calorie diet was harder than I thought, I miss eating real food: fresh fruit and veggies and meat!! And I’m not even half-way there…..

This means you really need a big WHY to sustain the Fasting Mimicking Diet.

What would be your why?

I had a scan a while ago that showed signs of fatty liver. With my family history of diabetes, if I continued as I did, I was guaranteed to have type 2 diabetes in no time. This is a condition that I would not wish on my worst enemies. My paternal grandfather suffered a stroke and my maternal grandfather had one of his legs amputated.

So what’s the urgency?

Fatty liver is a sure sign of chronic inflammation. The immune system is sending its soldiers to the liver to water-hose the inflammation. When it does this, it releases a lot of chemicals and over the long-term, can damage our body. That’s why chronic inflammation causes structural damage like scarring and physical damage to the liver (fibrosis).

Here’s the thing: inflammation is at the root of nearly every chronic health condition, including diabetes, heart disease, dementia and cancer. And like many chronic conditions (if you have one, you could be a walking time bomb).

But wait, how do you know whether you have chronic inflammation? The body is remarkably apt in smoothing out wrinkles and putting out fires. Some of you may not realise that you have a chronic condition unless you have signs and symptoms. For most, the symptoms are too ‘vague’ to seek help. So the best thing you can do to your body is to give it as much support as you can.

Now listen up

You know what you should and should not eat. How exercise is important. Why not getting enough sleep makes you grumpy. Or were you feeling guilty about over-eating last night’s dinner?

So find out your WHY and seek support to help you reach your health goals. As a gift, I am offering my complimentary ‘Control Diabetes Naturally & Reduce the Risk of Serious Illness’ (valued at $37) webinar to you. To sign up, go here.

Luckily for myself, I have been researching a couple hacks up and thought I could experiment with the Fasting Mimicking Diet myself.

Fasting and diabetes

Back to metabolic disorders (any condition due to poor breakdown of food to energy causing diabetes and other chronic conditions), Professor Taylor and colleagues discovered that in people with diabetes, the pancreas looked abnormal compared to someone without diabetes[i],[ii]. When the pancreas is over-worked, churning out more and more insulin to meet the demands of increasing sugar (from eating too much carbohydrate, proteins or fats), the fat shifts from under the skin. And what happens to the pancreas? To preserve itself, the pancreas goes on strike and stops functioning.

The blessing of chronic disease

This is a warning in itself and an opportunity to break this viscous cycle of self-destruction.

We think of the diagnosis of chronic conditions as pesky, as signs that your bodies are turning against us when in reality they’re incredible helpful clues about something going wrong deep within. It’s time to see the hidden blessing; to respond to bring back health and reclaim our lives!

Day 4

Dare I say it: the mushroom soup mix was disgusting. The mushroom was so pulverized it tasted more like cloudy salt water with a sprinkle of herbs.

Side-effects slight headache eased of. Stomach grumbling eased off. These symptoms improved with time

Results: a total of 2cm decrease in waist circumference, weight 0.6kg decrease

This makes it all worthwhile. I have struggled to reduce my waist circumference. Seeing that waist circumference is a good indicator of how much fat one stores, this is a big win and worth all the headache (forgive the pun)

Now I’ve just got to remember my WHY to go through today and have 1 more day to go. Can’t wait

Best way to lose weight?

Day 5

Cannot believe I’ve made it this far. Looking forward to saying good bye to packet soup and energy bars. It look like days 2 & 4, 3& 5 had the same food. Day 5 did not have the chocolatey L-crisp bar.

Summary of Results:

Weight loss: 1.3kg

Drop 2 cm in waist circumference

Day 6

Can I sustain this? As per Prolon’s instructions I went easy and had rolled oats/spinach and 1 egg for breakfast and the ultimate Chinese comfort food lunch and dinner: chicken congee. I think if I continued to have awareness of portion size, I may be able to keep the momentum going!

Weight loss tips

Incorporate more herbal tea for antioxidant effect. Interestingly, the herbal tea selection are ones I can find in my garden: mint, hibiscus, lemon peel and lemongrass. So I have no excuses.

Be comfortable with not having a full stomach. The program has made me realised that I can achieve my health goals and ‘live well’ on less food.

I was worried about constipation seeing most of the foods were shelf-life stable rehydrated foods or processed. This was not a problem although day 5 was the first time that I experienced this.

This exercise was an experiment with 5 day prepared plant-based plan; to see whether I would recommend it to clients. While the results are impressive, I feel that I would much prefer to cook from scratch with fresh food and veggies. For others who prefer a short-cut, Prolon may be a useful tool so yes, I would recommend it to the right client, at the right time.

I hope you enjoyed this article. Please let me know in the comments box below if you have any questions or have a topic that you want me to write about.

Signing off for fresh food and veggies!!

PS: If you would like to watch me talk about the Prolon review, you can find it here
Finally, get my complimentary Top 3 supplements to boost your immune system here

References:

[i] Lim EL, Hollingsworth KG, Aribisala BS, Chen MJ, Mathers JC, Taylor R. Reversal of type 2 diabetes: normalisation of beta cell function in association with decreased pancreas and liver triacylglycerol. Diabetologia. 2011;54(10):2506-2514. doi:10.1007/s00125-011-2204-7

[ii] Taylor R, Al-Mrabeh A, Zhyzhneuskaya S, et al. Remission of Human Type 2 Diabetes Requires Decrease in Liver and Pancreas Fat Content but Is Dependent upon Capacity for β Cell Recovery [published correction appears in Cell Metab. 2018 Oct 2;28(4):667]. Cell Metab. 2018;28(4):547-556.e3. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2018.07.003