On one of my other websites, “Eat Like an Italian," I devote the content to discussing the rationale, benefits, and practical applications of a Mediterranean diet. There are some recipes and such, but the focus is more about the health aspects of mimicking the eating habits of our Italian friends... and also how their food choices fit into an overall healthier lifestyle.
The site also has a podcast, where I try to break down some of the individual components of this healthier approach to life and eating.
A recent episode I entitled “Starvation,” and I meant it in both literal and figurative sense. In the figurative sense, I meant to imply that we're all a bit "starved" these days for our lives before Coronavirus; the social interactions, the stress-free grocery shopping, the big dinner parties—we all crave those things right now.
But I also meant starvation in the literal sense, because that's where this strange journey has led me. As a result of the lockdown, I finally made good on a promise to experiment with fasting as part of an overall nutritional plan.
Of course, this concept is nothing new; fasting has been around for a long time. However, in many cases “involuntary starvation” might have been a more accurate term (even in the modern world, alas). The challenges of finding food has historically been a natural deterrent to over-eating.
This is actually a cornerstone of the Mediterranean Diet. In a geographic area where they grew nutritionally dense food, but cultivating and gathering the food was hard work, the quantity of food was typically scarce. Good food was appreciated more because it wasn't so easily accessed.
Not so anymore. In economically developed countries, over-abundance is a much bigger problem than scarcity. We hardly need reminding that obesity and diet-related pathologies are the number one cause of death in the developed world. Heart disease, diabetes, and even most cancers can be traced to unhealthy lifestyle choices. In other words, they are all preventable, to a large degree, by controlling our diet and lifestyle.
So if you're interested in this topic... that is, to discuss what it really means (in a traditional sense) to "Eat Like an Italian," then listen to the podcast episode where I chronicle my experience with the Fasting Mimicking Diet, as proposed by Dr. Valter Longo (yes, he's Italian, of course).
Alla vostra salute!
Listen to the episode, and follow along with the transcript below, if you'd like.
Welcome to the “Eat Like an Italian” Podcast, where we will discuss the rationale, benefits, and practical application of a Mediterranean diet.
It's been a while since I've recorded a new episode, and I think you all probably can figure out why. This Coronavirus has really interrupted all of our best laid plans, but in some ways, has forced us to focus on the important daily routines that we often skim over in our otherwise busy lives.
I titled this episode “Starvation,” and I meant it in both literal and figurative sense. In the figurative sense, I meant to imply that we're all a bit starved right now for our lives before Coronavirus; the social interactions, the stress-free grocery shopping, going to the gym or cinema—we all crave those things right now.
But I also meant starvation in the literal sense, because that's where this strange journey has led me. I'll skip the backstory for now because I want to jump right into my personal experience with the Fasting Mimicking Diet.
Perhaps you've already heard about it. I'd become familiar with the work of Dr. Valter Longo about a year ago. And ever since then, I've been threatening to try his fasting mimicking diet. In a nutshell, here's what it's all about:
Dr. Longo and his associates at the University of Southern California had known that there's been previous research that suggested severe caloric restriction is one of the… well, maybe the only proven method of extending lifespan. And not only lifespan, but healthy lifespan. Also noted is that this protocol can reverse such things as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. It has even been tested in treating cancer; not as a sole therapy, but as an adjunct to chemotherapy or radiation.
2:35
So, he knew this, and they did some experiments with it and confirmed some of these previous experiments. However, they also noted that this is a very difficult protocol to maintain, because this starvation diet is severe caloric restriction, meaning no food at all for periods of time—only water for a day, three days, a week… sometimes even a month under strict supervision of a doctor in a clinical setting—had just miraculous effects on all these chronic diseases. Indeed, seemed to reverse the process of aging, or at least significantly slow it down.
But again, he noted that this is a very difficult protocol to follow. So he started to work with different ways where he could create the same metabolic results without the extreme dieting because he knew that people just couldn't follow this. It's just impractical to ask people not to eat for days at a time.
So he came up with his “fasting mimicking diet,” which is to say, it's not a total fast, yet the metabolic and biochemical events that happen are still in line with what happens during fasting.
He figured that what he had to do was severely restrict the calories but not to the point of discomfort because he knew that people wouldn't do it. He wanted to make something that was doable, yet still created the same condition.
He came up with this five-day plan, where on the first day you would consume somewhere around 1100 or 1200 calories. This is probably about half of what most people should be eating in a day and maybe a third of what most people actually do eat in a day. 1100 to 1200 calories on the first day then about 700 to 750 calories the next four days. Not only was it the calories that were reduced, but also the type of food that was consumed. He made this a complete vegan diet. Obviously, no dairy, no meat, no animal protein in any way.
4:50
This was going to be high in fat, low in protein and low in simple carbohydrates. So that was the other thing you need to do a completely eliminate sugars, as well. As much as possible, I mean, obviously, there's always a little bit that sneaks in there, but you try to eliminate the sugar to almost zero and the protein is kept very low. And so you're down to this diet that basically consists of a nutbar of his own formulation, various soups that he has created, some nuts, some types of crackers that are very low in glycemic index, olives, and herbal teas that have, you know, beneficial effects of their own in addition to being non-glycemic.
Then there are some supplements he added like vitamins, algal oil, electrolytes to help just boost the body because you're missing some important nutrients during this diet. So it's really impossible to get everything that you need from this diet, so the supplements are necessary, but this is only five days. And then you gradually return back to normal diet the six days supposed to be very slow returned to normal. You don't want to overtax the body on the sixth day because you know, it's not used to it after these five days of, of metabolic starvation even though your stomach doesn't necessarily feel the extreme hunger pangs that it would under total fasting, it's still not, metabolically, your body isn't ready to jump back into a, big steak dinner with a side of pasta and all that so you have to ease back into it.
I've always wanted to do this, and he has a proprietary diet plan that you can purchase online called Prolon, p r o l o n. And it's everything you need ready to go out of the box with all these nut bars and soups and snacks and, and things, teas electrolytes that you need to complete this five-day plan. It makes it foolproof if you just follow it and don't cheat. You know, the problem is, it's expensive. It's about $250.
Now during the course Coronavirus pandemic they're offering half price on this, so it's still $125, still quite expensive. But if you follow it and it works it's certainly worth it. My problem was, I just I wanted to find a way to do this a little more naturally so I wanted to use something I wanted to you know, basically copy the diet without purchasing the plan and you know, wasn't really the price tag so much it was just I felt like if this is something that can be done, then we should all be able to do it at home.
So I went about and created my own you know, you know listing some show notes exactly how I did that but I found a comparable nutbar that you can buy separately. I made my own soup starting with a broth, just a vegetable broth that you can buy, you know any grocery store. Nuts, of course are nuts, you know, really mean just almonds, plain almonds, some seaweed crackers that I found that were actually quite good. And olives, and herbal teas can be found everywhere; supplements and all that, again, very easy.
It really wasn't difficult to recreate his diet with my own ingredients found at the grocery store. Well, I haven't been grocery shopping really, I've been ordering everything online through Amazon Prime at Whole Foods. And but I was able to do that very, very easily. And it cost a lot less than $250 or even $125.
I did it and I want to share my experience with it with you with this plan, and just give the general impressions overall. It wasn't too difficult. I expected it to be harder. There were moments when I did feel hungry in between meals, meals, such as they are they're really not meals so much as they're just sort of, you know, eating something to satisfy the hunger. But it wasn't that hard.
I mean, again, there were there were moments when it was harder than others, but I can’t say that it was stressful or mentally difficult in any way. Day one was especially easy. You're allowed to have more calories on day one so it's about half what I would normally but it was enough to keep me keep me full. I will say that I did do one cheat perhaps that I had that he does not recommend is as I did drink my regular coffee. Now he says that if you must drink coffee, you can have one cup in the morning and that's it. He says coffee interferes with the process somehow and so you know I did I did have my coffee every morning.
9:42
Beyond that I kept full also by instead of drinking regular water sometimes I would have some a can of carbonated water. You know those ones you can buy, zero calorie carbonated with a little bit of natural flavoring like lemon or lime or something. Any store has those various brands. And so that kind of helped to keep full.
And so day one was pretty easy. It didn't feel any different than a normal day. Day two, it got into the tougher diet and that that was probably the hardest day because it was a kind of an extreme shift. But I still felt okay. It took a lot of mental focus, but not in a discomforting way, just had to concentrate. And I would say that wasn't too hard.
Days three and four got a little easier. And day five, I started to get a little anxious, I was ready to go back to normal and I'm recording this on day six, by the way, so this is fresh in my mind. I wanted to do this while I was still thinking about it. So overall, it wasn't bad.
I want to make one other comment is that my sleep was varied. After the first couple of days my sleep seemed to improve. And then these last couple days, especially last night, I didn't sleep well, in effect, I woke up about 5:30 in the morning, couldn't go back to bed. But I don't know, maybe I didn't need to sleep because I was getting the proper nutrition or something. Or it could be, you know, we're all getting little less sleep these days, with stress from the coronavirus and being out of our normal routine. So I can't speak to that directly.
11:36
But I just wanted to note that energy levels in general, I would say energy levels have been good. I think towards the end, I did feel lower energy. I was getting tired at the end of the day, and wasn't really able to focus much after you know, four or five o'clock in the afternoon. Then I would try to do some work after dinner and I really had a hard time doing that. So that's something to note. I just think my body's not used to it and I this is not something—and this is a really important point—this is not a protocol for daily life. He recommends once a quarter for healthy people to help just reverse the effects of aging.
And for just general well-being to sort of reset your metabolism and, and here's why I want to make it a real important note. And maybe the one reason that I did this, my weight is pretty good. I mean, six foot four, I weigh about 190 pounds. I did. I was about 193 or 194. Before I started this diet five days ago, six days ago, and I lost about three pounds during the course of this diet. Maybe a lot of it’s water. I don't know but I mean, it wasn't an important part of it for me, losing weight, although for many people It does.
It does help that for me, it was it was this nagging issue I've had with tendinitis in my in my right foot. I used to be a long-distance runner and I developed kind of a chronic tendinitis that flares up, and sometimes it's pretty painful. Other times it's just there and kind of nagging it doesn't really hurt but it's sort of just stiff. And I noticed that about a year and a half ago when I when I changed my diet significantly to really follow a Mediterranean Diet protocol that gradually over the period of a couple of months that that inflammation that pain in my tendinitis went away.
And then it came back during this coronavirus lockdown, especially when it just started. After the first couple weeks, I just got, you know, out of my good habits, and I started eating bad I started drinking too much wine. And that thing, that tendinitis, came back and it was really uncomfortable.
So my goal for this fasting mimicking diet was to see if I could reduce that inflammation that tendinitis and happy to report, it's worked. I have about a 90% improvement in five days on tendinitis that I swear, a week ago. Every morning I would get up and it was hard walking down the stairs. I mean, it's not like I was crippled, but it was uncomfortable. Extremely stiff, somewhat painful…and that is completely gone.
14:03
You know, I still am aware of it, because I'm just always aware of it now, but it is not uncomfortable at all I can walk, I can run, I can walk up and down the stairs with no discomfort to some very minor stiffness. So I'm going to say it's 90% better than it was just a week ago. So that was my goal, and I achieved that goal.
And you know, everyone wants to claim a miracle cure all these different kinds of diets. And I think it's worth noting that the fasting mimicking diet, the keto diet, paleo diet, intermittent fasting, all these things sort of have the same goal.
I'm not a molecular biologist, I do have a degree in biochemistry, but my knowledge is, I'm sure, outdated. And I don't want to get too deep into the science, but they say what this fasting state has is it affects the mitochondrial DNA.
The mitochondria are the little energy batteries in our cells. And one of the things that causes aging is when these, the DNA of these mitochondria start to denigrate, and the telomeres, which is, again, we're talking about DNA replication, these telomeres are something that sort of facilitate that process. And when these things start shortening, then there are errors that occur in the DNA replication and these errors result in, a breakdown of the of the DNA and the aging of the cells and consequently the aging of the body.
So, that's my short version of what happens here and what all of these diet regimens seek to overcome. So when you when you sort of starve the mitochondria, they go into this survival mode, and I guess this is how they it sort of “cleans up” the bad the fragmented, the bad DNA, and it replaces it with good DNA or good DNA fragments and good DNA replication.
So, again, that's my simplistic view of it. And I don't think it's super important that we understand the mechanism. But we can say there's plenty of research to support all of these protocols who have the goal to achieve the same thing, which is to improve the replication of the mitochondrial DNA, which in turn, slows the aging process.
So I think this fasting mimicking diet is sort of a shortcut to that without having to drastically change your lifestyle. However, it should be noted that, you know, you can't just do this once a quarter and then go to eating junk food and eating whatever you want. And you know, drinking too much, staying up late, and smoking, all those bad things. You can't do that. It has to be combined with a normal healthy lifestyle, which is a lifestyle within reason, just the basic Mediterranean diet. You can enjoy most things.
And you can celebrate once in a while if there's a birthday or a holiday or a Sunday family dinner, go a little beyond what you think is ideal diet and have some of these things that are just fun and delicious. And don't worry about that. which is different than cheat days, by the way. So cheat days are these sort of scheduled days where you can eat whatever you want. And I think that's a really bad philosophy. I think people shouldn't do cheat days. You should celebrate meals once in a while where you're going to cheat, but those should be for specific reasons. That shouldn't be the reason itself.
So you got to get over the mentality that I'm going to eat all good. All week long. I'm going to eat great and be healthy and all that so that I can cheat on Saturday. And that's just I think that's the wrong approach to dieting in general because it sort of misses the point. It's supposed to be a lifestyle. Not a punishment and reward system. So that's my take on that. But yeah, I mean this this fasting mimicking diet I think for a lot of people, this would be the right approach. It's worth trying.
It worked for me and I'm going to put some resources on the website where I talk about it a little more in depth. I talk about my what led me to this point and how you can you know, do the same thing at home. I'll put down what I did you know how I recreated the Prolon diet, which is the one that Dr. Longo sells, with just stuff you can buy at your local grocery store.
So I hope this is helpful. You know, I don't know if you certainly have to do this under a diet a doctor's supervision, or at least a doctor's consent. I don't think there's anything particularly dangerous about it for normal healthy people. But if you do have a chronic condition, diabetes especially, you have to be careful of your sugar levels and all that. So you probably should consult a physician before trying this. I'm not a dietary physician or nutritionist, and I'm not giving you this as medical advice, but just as my experience what worked for me and you can think about researching it for yourself and trying it out.
