AN OVERVIEW OF THE FASTING MIMICKING DIET.

This article will provide an analysis of a diet based on calorie restriction and its ability to promote metabolic and cellular changes in order to allow you to learn more about it. It is important to start stating that the human being is programmed to withstand periods of dietary restriction. The evolution has led to a gradual change in the mechanisms complexes that regulate energy homeostasis.

From different data, calorie restriction can promote metabolic changes that can positively influence oxidative damage and inflammation, optimizing energy metabolism.  Fasting is the most extreme form of calorie restriction and it involves abstinence from food, but not from water. It can be done in intervals, such as intermittent fasting, or periodically as a prolonged fasting, if it lasts more than 2 days. In humans, consumption of a strict amount of kcal/day for 2 days a week showed positive effects on various parameters of metabolic health.

The discovery of Fasting Mimicking Diet.

Professor Valter Longo, director of both the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California and The Program on Longevity and Cancer at IFOM in Milan, after discovering two of the three metabolic pathways that cause cellular aging, undertook a study together with his research group in order to identify a major impact surgery that would reduce or reverse biological aging.

The studies carried out, sponsored by the National Institute of Health, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Aging, have led to the creation of a plant-based dietary protocol, easy to use and proven effective, called Fasting Mimicking Diet. This food program aims to keep the body in a state of fasting while eating. Experiments conducted on murine model have shown that cycles of FMD contribute to a modulation in their life span (health span).

Fasting Mimicking Diet plan in detail.

While mimicking a food-free condition, the FMD  nourishes the organism through a food protocol entirely vegetable, gluten-free and lactose-free. Its precise nutritional formulation is the result of about twenty years of research.

Every day Fasting Mimicking Diet has a very specific nutritional profile. The five-day protocol is low-calorie and low protein, with about 1100 kcal in 1° day and 700 kcal from 2° to 5°day, of which 9-11% are vegetable proteins, 44-46% lipids, mainly unsaturated, and 43-47% carbohydrates. During FMD, the content of simple sugars does not reach 10%.

The objective is to obtain the periodic flection of metabolic pathways typical of calorie restriction. In healthy subjects with an active lifestyle, FMD may be repeated after 6 months, but with increased criticises for metabolic health or irregular lifestyle FMD may be done more frequently, under evaluation of the referring nutritionist and/or doctor.

Fasting Mimicking Diet benefits ad effects.

With the Fasting Mimicking Diet, you can get many benefits while enjoying food, such as:

-Enhancing performance, feeling greater focus, clarity and energy, through the benefits of a leaner body;

-Fatting focused weight loss, while protecting lean body mass;

-Enhancing cellular renewal through triggering cell-based self-repair and autophagy, the clean-up of aging and damaged cells, and promoting rejuvenation from within;

-Keeping metabolic health, in order to support overall wellness.

Periodic calorie restriction and lasting changes in our daily diet can greatly affect our body’s ability to grow old healthy.

In the field of nutrition science, there are many lines of action that can be applied to the subject. FMD is able to elicit all the positive effects of water-only fasting, which occur on a wide range of topics related to longevity.  Moreover, each FMD cycle is alternated with a daily diet mostly pescatarian, vegan-based, rich in legumes and dried fruits.