Evolve My Life ™

Up until recently I never thought that fasting was a great idea.  I would never go a day without food.  I assumed that I would burn muscle and cause damage to my body.  It was my understanding that all I had to do was eat the right foods to make my body the best that it could be.   Food either works for your body or against your body.  It will help your body recover and grow stronger.   The wrong foods will create inflammation and oxidation.  I have been eating about once every 3 waking hours for the last 20 years.

Over the last year, I started to hear some good things about intermittent fasting and decided to give it a try.  I liked some of the results that I got from doing it.  Not too long ago I also found out about some of the benefits of fasting.  Which lead me to a particular type of fast that allows for a minimal amount of food throughout the day.

I am still learning about fasting, so I am far from an expert on it.  But I am starting to understand it. After hearing about these benefits, I decided to give it a try.

The fast that I just finished takes place over the course of 5 days.  On the first day you have 1000 calories and 750 for all of the other days.   It’s called the ProLon Mimicking Dietand it has been the subject of clinical testing at USC.  It is backed by 25 years of research.  It is beneficial in rejuvenation and regeneration. Their studies show that it will also protect you from muscle loss.  It puts your body into a survival of the fittest mode.  The weak are destroyed while the strong flourish and get stronger.  When there is little food available your body will do what it has to in order to survive.  Your body burns food for energy, but once that is no longer available it will burn fat or muscle (The ProLon fast protects muscle from being burned).  It also kills off aging and damaged cells, and activates stem cell renewal.   The weak cells won’t survive and your body will function better.  Not only that but you can also expect a decrease in blood glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure and inflammation.  And the fast will activate stem cells.

I started this fast on a Monday.  Actually, the last thing that I ate outside of the products Prolon provided was on Sunday night. I’ve been pretty excited about trying this out and seeing if I notice any major differences.  Going into this fast, I had been eating like crap for about two weeks.  Normally, I eat pretty clean with an occasional cheat.  I guess I fell into a binge mode and when I decided on doing the fast, I figured I would wreck my diet until I started.  I also skipped the gym for almost a week. This put me into a pretty bad funk.  I felt like crap and was getting depressed and gained a few pounds.  Eating this way for a two-week period definitely had an effect on me mentally and physically.  Now I am expecting this fast to make an even more dramatic impact.

On day 1 of my fast, I went to the gym on an empty stomach.  I ate my first meal with which was far from filling, although it was very tasty.   I am really not use to eating so little and I eat much smaller portions than I use to eat.  Dealing with such a small amount of food over the course of 5 days actually takes a lot of will power.  I have also had the will power to make transformations in the past and even compete in body building competitions.  This is a little bit different but it still takes the same mental approach as a transformation.  I’m hungry and I want to eat.  But I also want to make my body heal.  If this fasting thing truly works, than there is only one way to find out. If you want it bad enough than, you will deal with the hunger for just under a week.

For the most part on day 1 I felt pretty good.  I ended up going to bed around 9 pm, because I was getting tired.  I probably had the best sleep that I have had in over a month.  I woke up feeling refreshed, but hungry.  I made it into the gym and had a decent workout.  I felt good but didn’t have a whole lot of stamina or strength, so I changed up my workout up a little bit.

On Day 2, my food was cut down to 750 calories from 1000.  To tell you the truth there really wasn’t that much difference in the amount of food I ate.  I think it was about a crumb or two less.  I’m hungry and I’m drinking a lot of water, but I do feel good, although I have been a little agitated today.  My morning workout was pretty similar to the day before.  I felt good in the gym but was low in strength and stamina.

On Day 3, I had another great sleep.  Went to bed early again.  Woke up a couple of times during the night but fell back to sleep pretty quickly. Woke up feeling great.  I was pretty surprised, because I wasn’t very hungry.  My stomach was empty and I could eat, but just didn’t feel like I was starving.  I had a pretty good workout.  Once again my stamina and strength were down. After my workout I ate my first meal, which was around 250 calories.  500 left for the day.  I had gotten a little bit hungrier since I got back and had my first meal and continued to get hungrier throughout the day.  Unlike the day before, I wasn’t agitated.  Coming into this program made me think about basically starving myself for 5 days wouldn’t be easy.  On the other hand I have cut my food back quite a bit for some competitions, so I knew I could do it.  Going into the third day on Wednesday morning, I knew that I wouldn’t have a problem getting through Friday.  I was already considering when I would do a fast again.

Day 4, I had another great night of sleep.  I actually use a Whoop to monitor my recovery through HRV (Heart Rate Variable).  It tracks strain, sleep, and a number of other things.  Last night I hit REM and Deep Sleep longer than I have since I got a Whoop. Usually, I get less than 20 minutes of both combined.  Wednesday night I had over an hour of REM and 25 minutes of deep sleep. I did wake up several times, but I felt great when I woke up and actually was up before 6 am, which is not something that I typically do.   Some of the other things that I noticed on the Whoop were my resting heart rate, was 45, which is about 8 beats lower than my normal resting heart rate. My HRV was 57, which is close to the highest it’s ever been since I’ve been tracking it.  My recovery was 96%, which was almost 3 times higher than it was on Monday when I started.  Recovery obviously changes every day.  At this level my body is ready to take on a lot of strain. What all of this is telling me is that this fast is working.

When woke up, I wasn’t very hungry.  I got some light cardio done at the gym.  My energy and strength were lower than usually.  My head seemed a little out of it until after my cardio. For the rest of the day I felt great, but my hunger increased as the day went on.

Day 5 my sleep was pretty good but not as good as the other nights, while fasting.   My Rem and Deep Sleep were better than prior to the fast.   I continued to wake up earlier than usual.  I got into the gym early and had a pretty good workout.  I still lacked strength and stamina but it was the best workout of the week.  Kind of weird since I was on the last day of my fast.  Hunger is not that much of an issue today.  It came on kind of strong after my workout, but after I had my little bits of food it went away.  I have been drinking a ton of water, which is pretty normal for me. My resting heart rate continued to be close to 45 beats per minute.   Middle of the day my energy seemed to climb.  By the time I went to bed I still felt great.

Day 6 I woke up earlier than the previous and was a little tired, since I was up too late the night before.  I ended up going back to bed.  I had a better sleep than prior to the fast, however it wasn’t as good as the two previous nights.  I did have a decent amount of REM and Deep Sleep.  This was a transitional day.  A day that starts off with soups and juices.  Add in some pasta and a little bit of fish or meat later in the day.  You don’t want to take in too much animal protein.  My breakfast was bone broth with hemp seeds.  Later I had some almonds.  Lunch was black bean pasta.  And I went to a friend’s restaurant for some Pho (Vietnamese soup with meat and noodles).   My energy level started to climb as the day went on.

One of the other things that I started to notice on day 5 and through day 6 (transition day) was that my usual aches and pains weren’t bothering me.  I am interested in seeing how I feel in the gym on Monday morning.  I did have a good amount of inflammation in my body going into this fast and I do notice that there are points on my body that seem to have either lost or greatly reduced the amount of inflammation.  The fast does activate stem cells and regenerate cells and tissues and decreases inflammation, so I would think that this is what is helping me with my old aches and pains.

On Sunday, I woke up much earlier than I planned to wake up.  I was up late and ended up having less than 5 hours of sleep. I would have gone back to bed, but my energy and alertness was through the roof. I was thinking that I should have been tired.  The short amount of sleep that I had was amazing.  All throughout the day my energy level felt almost euphoric.  And I am not feeling any of my aches and pains at all.  Up until about 2 nights ago have a pretty decent amount of pain in my right knee when I am sleeping, because of a torn MCL.  It bothers me at certain points during the day, mostly based on position or movements and then at night while laying in bed (not typically the entire night. Usually, starting up in the middle of the night).  At least for now the pain is gone.  Obviously, some of these injuries are still there, but with reduced inflammation and stem cell activation the pain has subsided.  I am even tempted to try running on it (haven’t been able to run for close to 2 months).

Because this fast is supported by credible research I had some pretty solid expectations.  So far I have been blow away by the results. Later this week, I will be getting a blood test that I can compare to my results from about 2 months ago. Back then I did have high Cholesterol and high Triglycerides.

All of the food that is provided for the diet matches the nutritional ingredients, which is supported by the 25 years of research.  As far as the food goes, they have these crackers and bars, which are really amazing.  The only thing that sucks is that when I ate them, I wanted more.  The bars blow away most of the other bars on the market when it comes to taste.  And I am not just saying this because I was really hungry when I was about to eat.  I don’t eat soup very often, but I do really like theirs and I looked forward to eating them.  They provide several different kinds of soup.

The biggest negative with the ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet is that they provide you with several meals of olives.  I honestly, despise olives.  I could be eating a salad and if someone slipped some olives into, they ruined it for me.  Olives are definitely on my top 10 foods that I hate.  They might even be number one.  There has to be something that they could replace them with.  I found it kind of funny that they mention in a video something about “if you don’t like olives…”  They didn’t say that about anything else, so I guess I’m not the only one complaining about them. They are high in fat, which is something that you need while doing this kind of fast.  I ended up eating them, but I would throw them to the back of my throat, while trying to avoid my tongue.  Gag on them a little and then swallow them.  So if you like Olives than you will love the meals with them.

The other negative is their APP.  I haven’t been able to use it, because they have a high level of security on it.  I don’t really get what they are protecting. I signed up and it asks me to create a password.  As I am creating the password, it starts making suggestions. (Something that I have never seen to this extent.) “Add another word.” So I add another word.  “Add another word.”  What the hell, I already have 27 letters.  So I add another word.  Add a number.  Add a symbol.  Who the hell cares about my fasting diet enough to hack into this stupid app?  By the time I got done with my stupid password, I forgot what I wrote.  I do know that it was something like F@@@MUTHAF@@EATS@@@ .  So now that all of this is created I get an email to verify my account.   I figured the email would come right away.  WRONG.  It showed up the next day.   Well by now I have forgotten the password.  So I clicked the forgot password button.  Stupid email doesn’t show up until about 10 hours later.  I have sent in several requests.  I attempted to login again and it says. Account not verified. WTF.  I honestly think that they know people are starving on this fasting diet and they want to piss them off with some stupid app that probably doesn’t exist.  I think that there are benefits to being pissed off while starving.  It must accelerate the speed of the neurons firing in your brain.

The ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet is backed up with a 25 of research at USC.  Their Phase 2 Clinical Trial proved that the Diet treats aging and reduces risk factors for multiple age related diseases.  Maintain healthy levels of Blood Glucose, Triglycerides, C-Reactive Protein, Stem Cells, IGF-1.  Decreases body fat percentage.  Mostly Visceral fat.  Protect Lean Body Mass.  Improve skin and energy levels.

To tell you the truth, I originally believed that you could go out on try to replicate this diet on your own.  But based on the years of research I don’t think it would be that simple.  It’s not just that they provide the convenience of providing you with everything that you need.  They have the research to back it all up.   I will personally stick with something that is proven with years of research.    I will definitely recommend it and I do plan on fasting again next month for 5 days and the following month for 5 days.  I am going in for blood tests next week so that I can see if there is a difference in any of my blood markers. .  I will also continue to bitch and moan about the Olives.  As for the App, I have actually contacted the company and they are planning on changing it and making it more user friendly.  That was pretty impressive that they responded on that so quickly.  I guess I can add, great customer service to my review.

If you are interested in trying out ProLon, it costs $249.  You get a discount when you buy more than one.   When I purchased it, I quickly realized that over the course of 5 days I would probably spend about $150 for food if I ate at home the entire time.  About $60 more if I went out to eat twice.  No matter what my health is more important than spending dollars on something that will keep me from spending money on drugs to control any of my biomarkers.  And you can’t put a price on feeling great.

My experience with fasting has been minimal, but because of the benefits, it has also been exceptional.  Which leads me to giving ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet a review of a 5 Star rating.

Here is the link for more info on ProLon and to order: ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet

If you decide that you would like to try the diet they do have a list of people that they say should not do it:

Who should NOT be on a Fasting Mimicking Diet?

• Children under the age of 18, or people who are elderly and frail
• Women who are pregnant or nursing
• Individuals who are allergic to nuts or soy
• Individuals with a Body Mass Index (BMI) <18 or >40
• Individuals diagnosed with serious medical condition or disease, unless approved in writing by a physician appropriately trained to treat that condition
• Individuals who have been severely weakened by a disease or medical procedure
• Individuals who are taking medications which may not be safely consumed with a calorie restricted diet
• Individuals with Diabetes (type 1 and type 2), cardiovascular disease and cancer, unless approved in writing by a licensed physician. ProLon should never be combined with glucose lowering drugs, such as metformin or insulin
• Fasting is prohibited for individuals with certain metabolic disorders including those affecting gluconeogenesis (in vivo glucose synthesis)
• Individuals with a history of significant cardiac disease, particularly uncompensated congestive heart failure NYHA grade 2 or more or LVEF <40% on any prior assessment
• Individuals with a history of syncope (fainting) with calorie restriction or other medical co-morbidities
• Individuals with special dietary needs that are incompatible with the ProLon meal plan
• Individuals with liver or kidney disorders that may be affected by the very low glucose and protein content of the diet

Click here to order: ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet