Fasting for weight loss, decreasing waist size and increasing lifespan

Resetting your relationship with food could decrease your waist size, improve your lifespan and help you age healthily.

Leftovers or take-out? Check out the frozen food aisle or the fresh aisle in the supermarket? Grab a snack or hang on to supper? These days our food decisions are fairly straightforward, but earlier on in our evolution, diet decisions carried a lot more weight (no pun intended). Walk 10 miles east in search of woolly mammoths, or spend all day trying to spear fish, for example.

Longevity.Technology: Early man had to be able to function without food for extended periods of time, storing energy in order to release it when necessary, so this ability is hardwired into our DNA. However, with food in abundant supply in the developed world, we are able to enjoy three (or sometimes even four) square meals a day and as many snacks as we can cram into our 21st century pockets – but we’re not doing our prospects for being healthy as long as possible any favours. It’s time to rethink your relationship with food and reset your eating habits. It’s time for a nutritech revolution!

The benefits of fasting have been well documented; the cells in our bodies use the nutrients and energy in food for growth and repair. However, when food is scarce, cells slow their growth rate and instead enter a protective and recycling state, using the process of autophagy to clean out and recycle the old or sub-optimal internal components and debris in our cells. This energy-conserving, growth-minimising state is achieved by down-regulation of nutrient sensing pathways, including insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), the target of rapamycin (TOR) and protein kinase A (PKA).

Fasting for weight loss

Being overweight carries innumerable health risks and can have a negative impact on your chances of a healthy life. Fasting = less food = fewer calories = weight loss, but this is a significant oversimplification. Fasting promotes weight loss in other ways. When you fast, insulin levels drop sharply, which encourages fat burning. In addition, the level of the stress hormone norepinephrine increases, stimulating the release of fatty acids from fat cells into the bloodstream so the body can use them as fuel source.

This process of burning fat is called ketosis, and it releases chemicals called ketones – words often associated with weight loss. Ketosis has an added benefit, too; in the brain, ketones trigger the release of an important molecule called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF plays an important role in brain health, so ketosis is being studied for its role in supporting brain function.

Fasting for healthspan

Oxidative stress – too many damaging free radicals – is is known to be involved in the process of aging. Reducing calorie intake and fasting can lead to reductions in oxidative stress markers; less oxidative stress means healthier aging [1].

Time magazine dubbed Dr Valter Longo “the fasting evangelist” when it included him in its inaugural list of the 50 Most Influential People in Health Care. This was due to his substantial research in the field of fasting, calorie restriction and healthspan, where he demonstrated that fasting can positively impact health and healthy aging [2].

Permanent fasting results in death, which is the opposite of longevity, and too long without food, or not enough calories can result in malnutrition, which is also bad news.

Dr Longo started his research by putting yeast cells into a fasting state, showing that they lived longer and were more resistant to stress. He studied this phenomenon in animals, finding similar results, and applying this research to humans, and exploring how fasting could positively impact human health, he found that people were not able to or didn’t want to fast. Knowing that fasting put a stress on the body that could have positive impacts on health at the cellular level, in addition to healthy aging, Longo wanted to create a fasting-mimicking diet, one that would put the body in a fasting state while still allowing people to eat.

The fasting-mimicking diet

We don’t function well when we’re hungry – brain fog, feeling cold, irritability… these are not synonymous with wellbeing. We have to balance the benefits of fasting with the practicalities of daily life, and that’s where L-Nutra comes in. Forget faddy diets that prove impossible to stick to: L-Nutra’s aim is to reset your relationship with food and experience many of the pros of fasting without the cons of starving yourself. It’s fasting – but with food.

ProLon^® is a 5-day meal programme that helps your body reset and rejuvenate, triggering the body’s natural processes of intracellular clean-up and cell renewal. Designed to trigger many of the benefits that can be achieved by a prolonged fast, L-Nutra’s patented recipe nourishes your cells in stealth mode, so it is not detected by your body’s food-sensing system.

Click here to get your kit.

Fasting-mimicking is safer than straight fasting – and it’s easier too. It can be hard to break the eating habit and harder still to ignore the rumbles from an empty stomach. Pro-Lon, which is gluten-free and primarily plant-based, helps keep the hunger pangs at bay, while maintaining a fasting state, meaning cellular rejuvenation can get underway.

But it’s not just about what you eat, it’s about when you eat, and the ProLon programme is designed to keep you on the right fasting schedule with an easy-to-follow plan. Following the plan a few times a year can have real benefits in terms of healthy aging and weight loss; in fact, ProLon has been shown in tests, when used for three consecutive months, to help people lose an average of 5 lbs and 1.2 inches of waist circumference [3].

Weight loss is a key goal for many, especially with a new year looming; but a more holistic approach is required. ProLon is designed to help you reconnect with healthy eating, working in harmony with the way your body is designed to function, while taking advantage of its incredible natural ability to rejuvenate. Lose weight, age healthily, feel better, be well.

Or, as L-Nutra itself told us: “Our goal with every product is to enable you to live a better, fuller life throughout your years. We are leading the way to using the science of nutrition to improve healthspan and healthy aging.”