Simulate fasting to ensure the body its benefits, but without the negative consequences and deprivations that characterize it. This is the philosophy on which the Diet Mima Fasting ™ is based.
It is a 5-day diet program that stimulates weight loss and promotes health and longevity. A protocol designed for those who want to lose weight, purify and regenerate themselves, which helps fight not only body fat but also diseases and aging.
How was this food program born and how does it work? What are its benefits and what are the risks? Let’s find out everything there is to know about the Fasting Mimicking Diet ™.
Fasting Mimicking Diet: what it is
The Diet Mima Fasting ™ or DMD is an entirely vegetable low-calorie food protocol.
It lasts 5 days and provides for a caloric intake of 1150 kcal on the first day and approximately 800 kcal from the 2nd to the 5th day.
This dietary program is designed not only to promote weight loss but, more generally, to promote a process of regeneration and rejuvenation of the body.
It also helps reduce cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure and inflammation.
History
The Diet Mima Fasting is the result of a long basic and clinical research conducted by Valter Longo, professor of Biogerontology and director of the Longevity Institute of the University of Southern California (USC).
The studies of Professor Longo and his multidisciplinary team are focused on the analysis of various genetic mechanisms that predispose to aging and on the identification of therapeutic strategies that can slow down and counteract the onset of important age-related pathologies, promoting longevity .
One of the main reasons for the onset of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, most cancers and cardiovascular diseases is in fact linked to cellular ageing.
Professor Longo, after discovering two of the three metabolic pathways that cause cellular aging, thus embarked on a research path to identify an intervention of great impact that would reduce or reverse biological aging.
The studies conducted, sponsored by the National Institute of Health, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Aging, led to the creation of the Fasting Mimicking Diet.
Fasting Mimicking Diet: principles
The Fasting Mimicking Diet, through a precise balance between the various macro-nutrients (proteins, fats, sugars, fibers) and micro-nutrients (vitamins and minerals), allows you to “fool” the body.
What does it mean? That the body, finding itself in a condition of controlled caloric restriction, behaves as if it were fasting. It thus initiates a cell renewal process by which it eliminates what is no longer needed and replaces it with new, healthy cells.
The effectiveness of the Fasting Mimicking Diet as a slimming diet is based on the fact that, through the simulation of fasting, the body enters a state of ketosis.
That is, it begins to use fats, not glucose, the fuel used in normal conditions, as a source of energy. This alteration of normal energy metabolism, which results in the production of so-called ketone bodies, promotes weight loss.
Benefits of the Fasting Mimicking Diet
The Fasting Mimicking Diet is not a program aimed only at weight loss. It is also functional in the control of some risk factors related to inflammation, ageing, metabolic and cardiovascular pathologies.
Here is a summary of the beneficial effects of this food program on weight reduction and improvement of general health conditions.
- Regeneration: helps the body optimize cell cleansing and stem cell regeneration thanks to the prolonged fasting state.
- Well-being: has a positive impact on the well-being of the body. It also helps maintain healthy blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels, as well as inflammation markers for overall prosperity.
- Nourishment: Provides the body with a combination of micro- and macro-nutrients designed to keep it nourished as it goes through the rejuvenation process.
- Weight Loss: Shown to help people lose an average of 5 pounds of fat and 1.2 inches (about 3 cm) in waist circumference while maintaining lean body mass.
Health benefits
| IGF-1 | STAMINA CELLS | C-REACTIVE PROTEIN | BODY WEIGHT | BLOOD PRESSURE | CHOLESTEROL |
| IGF-1, the marker associated with aging and increased risk of cancer in middle-aged adults was reduced by 14%. | A transient, major and significant increase in stem/regenerative cell markers was observed. | Levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), one of the metabolic markers for inflammation, decreased by 1.5 mg/L to 1.0 mg/L after the participants resumed their normal diet. | The participants lost an average of 2.2 kg. The weight loss came mainly from abdominal fat. | Systemic and diastolic blood pressure decreased from 117.4 mmHg to 113.6 mmHg and from 75.7 mmHg to 72.8 mmHg, respectively. | Total cholesterol was reduced by nearly 10 mg/dL. |
The main effects on health and weight loss
As explained by Alda Attinà, scientific director of L-Nutra, a leading company in the field of longevity nutrition that developed the ProLon diet program, the first and only 5-day Fasting Mimicking Diet, “studies on the Fasting Mimicking Diet have observed that it contributes modulation and maintenance of blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic, at healthy levels.
It also helps control total cholesterol, maintain healthy triglyceride levels, and modulate fasting blood glucose.”
This food protocol is also able to control one of the metabolic markers for inflammation, namely the C-reactive protein.
The studies carried out and currently underway have also allowed us to observe a slight response, thanks to the Fasting Mimicking Diet, to the Mesenchymal stem and progenitor cells, i.e. newly synthesized cells that can support all cellular and tissue functions.
Naturally, there is also a loss of weight during the 5 days of the diet. The effects mainly concern abdominal fat and the reduction of waist circumference and hip circumference.
The Diet Mima Fasting for sportsmen
The Mima Fasting Diet is also indicated for athletes, because it ensures the maintenance of lean body mass, only affecting and reducing body fat in a functional way to support athletic performance.
The protocol of the Mima Fasting Diet, in fact, unlike other types of fasting, brings the benefits of fasting while providing essential nutrients to the body.
In addition to ensuring a source of fuel during the fast, it activates autophagy in the body, a repair process in which damaged cells shed themselves, followed by a stem cell-based renewal period to promote the natural process of rejuvenation throughout the body. body.
For sportsmen, the Mima Fasting Diet is also helpful in counteracting oxidative stress on the muscles.
It is a dietary program to be followed during a period of interruption of training, because physical activity is not recommended during the Fasting Mimicking Diet.
Examples of Fasting Mimicking Diet: the ProLon program
The principles of the Fasting Mimicking Diet are the basis of the ProLon® diet program, the first and only 5-day Fasting Mimicking Diet developed by L-Nutra. ProLon is based on groundbreaking research conducted at two of the world’s leading biomedical and longevity research centers located at the University of Southern California (USC), the Longevity Institute and the Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute.
This protocol is based on a kit that contains ready meals such as soups, bars, crackers, but also drinks and vegetable supplements that allow you to follow the Fasting Mimicking Diet for 5 days. Thanks to this program, the body ensures, by eating, the benefits of a periodic fast.
These specially formulated meals to mimic water-only fasting provide the body with optimal nutrition specifically designed to sustain energy, keeping the body in a protective fasted state.
Benefits include cellular rejuvenation, autophagy, i.e. cellular cleansing and repair, optimization of metabolic markers, excess fat loss, maintenance of lean body mass.
ProLon kit: foods and composition of meals
ProLon is a low-calorie, low-protein and high-fat diet, totally vegetable, gluten-free and lactose-free, which is based on the simulation of fasting.
A typical day of the program is divided into 4 main meals to be distributed over 12 hours: breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner.
The typical breakfast of a Mima Fasting Diet includes a liquid component, such as a vegetable infusion that contains neither theine nor caffeine, combined with a bar, called L-Bar, very fat-rich and very rich in nutrients, based on dried fruit .
Each day of the Mima Fasting Diet has major components. From the second to the fifth day, to soups (the only meals that require cooking), bars, snacks, both sweet and savory, and infusions, another component is added, namely the L drink.
It is a drink formulated to promote intestinal transit without irritating the microbiota and the intestine. It consists of vegetable glycerin, slightly enriched with potassium, and must be diluted, based on the patient’s body weight, using a special dispenser supplied, which…
