Hi everyone! My name is Leslie and I’m the nutritionist here at Alkaline Wellness. I’ll be blogging all about nutrition, gut health, and healthy eating on here more often.
For my first blog, I wanted to do a personal review on ProLon, which I completed last week.
Before I get into my review, you’re probably wondering, what’s ProLon?
Fasting Mimicking Diet
ProLon is the world’s first fasting mimicking diet. Dr. Valter Longo, Director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, researched and developed this diet.
His work revolves around researching various diets which can “activate stem cells and promote regeneration and rejuvenation in multiple organs to optimize health and provide anti-aging benefits.” [1]
ProLon is a 5 day fasting mimicking diet (FMD). An FMD is a diet in which you restrict your calories for a short period of time. This tricks your body into thinking it is in a fasting state, and research shows there are many benefits of fasting.
But true fasting, in which you only drink water, if very hard to maintain, even for a short while. A fasting mimicking diet allows you to continue to eat real foods, but still experience the benefits of fasting.
What Does ProLon Include?
Once you open up ProLon, you will see 5 boxes and a water bottle. Each box contains everything you need for one day of the diet.
Each day’s food varies slightly, but overall you are essentially eating the same thing for 5 days.
This includes a nut bar and tea for breakfast, a soup for lunch along with kale crackers or olives, and a soup for dinner. ProLon also includes 2 supplements you will take throughout the week.
On day 1 you are eating about 1100 calories and on days 2-5 you are eating about 800 calories.
Fasting Mimicking Diet Benefits
According to prolonpro.com, a fasting mimicking diet promotes and maintains healthy levels of:
- Fasting glucose
- C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker
- Insulin-like growth factor 1, a marker associated with increased mortality and DNA damage
- Stem cells and regenerative markers [2]
Overall, a fasting mimicking diet aims to promote longevity (ProLon) and also helps you reduce excess fat, improving your overall health.
My Experience on ProLon
I had a pretty good experience while on ProLon. Let me take you through a run down of my week on the fasting mimicking diet.
Day 1
Day 1 was pretty simple. This day you have the most food you will have all week. I didn’t find myself feeling hungry or missing any particular foods. I really enjoyed the nut bar I had for breakfast.
By the afternoon, I did find myself wanting to snack on something, but not because I was hungry. This allowed me to realize I tend to snack when I’m bored. I’m hoping a week of ProLon will allow me to control my eating better.
The tomato soup I had for lunch and the minestrone soup I had for dinner tasted great! I also had olives for lunch which I didn’t enjoy too much, but I’ve never really been a fan of olives.
Day 2
I woke up feeling pretty tired today, but I’m not sure if that’s because of ProLon or because I stayed up a little late.
Typically I do hot yoga Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but I skipped it today. I was worried I’d feel sick since I wasn’t eating much.
Mushroom soup was for lunch today. I don’t usually eat mushrooms much but I actually enjoyed this soup!
Today I still didn’t feel very hungry. I was tired all day though so that was the only difficulty I was experiencing.
Day 3
I still woke up a little tired today but not nearly as much as yesterday. I’m still enjoying my nut bar and tea for breakfast; I haven’t gotten tired of those yet.
Days 3 and 5 feel like you’re eating the least amount of food because there are two less snacks on these days.
I felt fine until the evening, then I did begin to feel a little bit hungry. But it was nothing too awful that I couldn’t push through until the morning.
Day 4
Today I woke up feeling like a brand new person! I am not typically a morning person, but I was able to wake up and get out of bed today without any issues.
Since the food is pretty similar each day, I did start looking forward to being done with ProLon so that I could have more variety in my diet. But everything I’ve eaten so far has tasted great, so I wasn’t complaining too much.
Even though I woke up with energy today, I still decided not to do hot yoga. I typically eat a good meal an hour and a half before doing it, so I was still worried I may feel sick. I decided to would begin exercising again after I was done with ProLon.
Day 5
I woke up with energy again today which is great. I should also mention that I’ve lost about 1 pound per day while doing this diet.
It’s the last day so I was determined to finish strong! I had a friend doing ProLon with me this week too, so having an accountability parter really kept me motivated and on track.
By today I am definitely ready to eat some new foods.
After ProLon
Now that it has been a few days after finishing ProLon, I’ve found that I have successfully kept the weight off so far. I’ve also noticed that I am able to control my eating better than before.
I don’t have quite as much energy as I had on days 4 and 5 but I’m still doing pretty well!
It is recommended to do 3 ProLon cycles for 3 consecutive months to gain the full benefits. After that, you can do it whenever you feel you need a metabolic reboot.
If you are interested in ProLon, we provide it here at Alkaline Wellness. Contact me at leslie@alkalinewellness.com or call 678-335-5566 for more information!
References
[1] https://prolonfmd.com/fasting-mimicking-diet/
[2] https://prolonpro.com/resources/what-is-the-fasting-mimicking-diet/