Health & Fitness
Here’s the Lazy Way to Fast-Mimicking Diet
A fast track to fat loss effortlessly
Introduction and Context
I keep imagining and asking myself What if We Can Package Fasting as a Therapeutic Tool considering the remarkable benefits of time-restricted eating as new medicine and preventative measure for metabolic diseases? I am not the only crazy one.
Fasting naturally has some side effects as it stresses the body for adaptation. However, I found practical ways to reduce the side effects of fasting by trial and error. Now, after being fully fat-adapted, I enjoy both intermittent and long-term fasting from five to seven days effortlessly and reap many benefits.
Possibly you have heard about a fast-mimicking diet if you are into fat-loss and defined abs like me. This particular diet [or some call it lifestyle] is so popular that even boring scientific papers in peer-reviewed health journals use this term within a metabolic flexibility and longevity context.
In this article, I provide a few best practices and shortcuts for a bespoke fast-mimicking diet from my experience and observations from other successful fat losers. If you read this piece with an open mind, what you learn from this story might be a game-changer in your research pursuits.
I consider myself only a messenger and do not give any health advice as usual. It is the readers' responsibility to find the correct information and create a customized regime suiting their lifestyle. Readers may use the perspectives. As we know, our favorite search engine provides the service for free.
An outspoken longevity research professor with a sexy Italian accent (according to my female friends) created the “fast mimicking diet” and made it so famous that everyone knows about it nowadays, and many people swear by it. He is not just a pretty face, by the way. Let me briefly introduce him in his own words.
“Dr. Valter Longo is the Edna M. Jones Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences and Director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California –Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Los Angeles, one of the leading centers for research on aging and age-related disease. Dr. Longo is also the Director of the Longevity and Cancer Program at the IFOM Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy.”
If you google his name, you will come up with countless scientific publications that can blow your mind. I reviewed many of those papers and gained valuable perspectives into a fasted state. In addition, his knowledge of longevity is precious. I want to be like him when I grow up academically and commercially.
What I like the most about Dr. Longo is his humanistic approach. He does not want people to suffer. On the contrary, he wants people to lose fat without sacrificing pleasure. He believes food is essential, so he created this cheat way, or fake fast, as my son calls it. He lost a few kilos with a fake fasting program but got them back as a carbs addict. He did not get my fat genes.
By the way, the “Fasting Mimicking Diet®” is a registered trademark, so I used the phrase with a hyphen just in case. I have no affiliations with any mimicking diet programs. I should have patented mine, but it is too late.
What is a fast-mimicking diet?
The short answer is any diet that your body thinks and feels like fasting can be named a fast-mimicking diet. Nothing spectacular. It is just tricking the body.
However, the devil is in the details.
When I reviewed the scientific papers of Dr. Longo, I was amazed by the nutritious precision he puts into his ideas.
However, Dr. Longo commercialized this idea under a program. You can find it on his website. If you want to read his insightful papers, you can search for his name in Google Scholar or Pubmed.gov.
“The Fasting Mimicking Program is a five-day fasting program based on healthy natural products and ingredients. Your body, however, does not recognize that it is being fed. This state causes the body to enter a fasting mode. Scientifically developed and clinically tested, this nutritional breakthrough was invented at the University of Southern California. Led by Dr. Valter Longo, the USC Longevity Institute brings together multidisciplinary aging research in order to enhance human healthspan.”
You can gain more insights about this type of diet from a credible paper published in the Annals of Translational Medicine open, access journal free. “Fasting and engineered diets as a powerful tool in the medical practice: an old approach in the new era”.
Like many people, I tried a fast-mimicking diet once to encourage my son, but unfortunately [with due respect to Dr. Longo], it did not work for my lifestyle. Therefore, I created my way of a fast-mimicking diet. I called this bespoke lifestyle “The Lazy Way to Fast-Mimicking Diet”.
Let me explain why I call it “the lazy way” and what it includes to fast-track fat-burning.
The Lazy Way to Fast-Mimicking Diet
Why did I need to use a bespoke fast-mimicking diet?
Honestly, there is nothing wrong with Dr. Longo’s fast-mimicking diet program. It simply did not fit into my lifestyle for three reasons.
The first reason
The first reason is I don’t eat any plant foods. But I respect those who eat them. I used to be a vegetarian for several years and even vegan for a while. But, unfortunately, not eating animal products created havoc on my health. Besides, plants hated me.
I changed my ethical perspectives and focused on my health as advised by a primary healthcare practitioner (a functional medicine doctor), who informed me that I lacked critical vitamins such as B12 and good-quality proteins. These deficiencies caused me muscle loss and bone density at a young age. Vitamin B12 deficiency concerned me a lot as my father died from a motor neuron disease that initially started with a vitamin B12 shortage.
However, I agree with Dr. Long, who has good reasons to include plants in his program. He wants to ensure people get the required vitamins and minerals when eating less. His portions are small.
Regrettably, my genetic makeup is not compatible with plants. My auto-immune condition sees plants as foreign materials. Consuming plants creates too much allergy, inflammation, and bloating. In addition, my gut was in trouble when eating too many veggies and supplementing with fiber. As explained in this story, I even had an awful leaky gut and only fixed it by going zero carbs and zero fiber.
Besides, you won’t believe this, but I hated too much burping and farting caused by broccoli, cabbage, celery, cauliflowers, turnips, onions, garlic, and all other veggies with high fiber that I consumed to get my required calories.
It was so embarrassing at work. I even asked my doctor about my disgusting condition, and he laughed at me and said they were natural; everyone did them.
But when I stopped eating plants and not taking any fiber supplements, I never experienced burping and breaking wind again. My stomach, gut, and other internal organs are working as well as my artificial intelligence robots nowadays.
The second reason
The second reason is I cannot eat as prescribed by someone.
Besides, I have to listen to my body for genuine hunger signals.
As mentioned in my previous posts, I am on one meal-a-day lifestyle. Sometimes, I forget and eat a meal every three days.
The third reason
The third reason is my body and brain need lots of high-quality fats.
70% of my calories come from healthy saturated fats. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the more saturated fats I ate, the better the cholesterol profile I got.
When I was on vegetarian and low-fat diets, I was not eating any healthy saturated fats, not even mono-saturated fats, not even fish and egg yolks. And my cholesterol was hitting the roof.
My trusted medical specialist taught me that our body creates more cholesterol when we don’t eat cholesterol-including foods. It is a natural process, and cholesterol is essential for every cell. It is necessary for hormones too. No wonder my testosterone was so low when I was on low-fat diets.
Due to low testosterone, instead of fixing my hormonal problems, my family doctor prescribed me Viagra, and my wife found it in my secret cabinet. It was so embarrassing.
Honestly, everything in a low-carb diet was embarrassing for me. It was as if innocent plants were cursing me for consuming them without defense. But, I digress, back to a fast-mimicking diet.
Even though I don’t follow Dr. Longo’s program, I introduced it to my family members and close friends as they love plants. It was a pleasure to see it worked for them. I supported and celebrated their success.
I mentioned these three reasons to set the context because they helped me to design my lazy fast-mimicking diet. There may be many people like me as I met some of them, even celebrities like Mikhaila Peterson and Amber O’Hearn. Like me, they don’t eat plants due to their health conditions. You can check their first sad later exciting stories on Youtube. Their stories resonated with me as I exactly felt like them.
Two Fast Tracks to the Lazy Way Fast-Mimicking Diet
I call it lazy because you don’t have to shop for groceries as much as you do. You don’t have to spend too much time preparing food.
And you don’t have to spend too much time eating and digesting.
Believe me! Using this lazy diet, I gained a lot of time for fun activities that fast-tracked my fat-loss journey. My body loved this lazy style.
1 — Skipping a meal
As you guess, the first one is skipping one or more meals gradually. Let me share how I did it. It is not as awful as you might think.
I started this method by skipping breakfast, as it was the easiest one for me. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like eating in the morning. So much joy comes to my heart when I wake up for another day on this earth. I just want to enjoy those blessings. Unfortunately, when my stomach is full, I don’t feel as grateful as I need.
After not eating breakfast for a few months, I noticed that my bulging belly started shrinking. I lost a few inches without losing weight. My lean muscles stayed steady.
Since I was so busy at work and pumped with excitement in my metallic toy garden, I did not feel like eating lunch after a while. But, honestly, if my colleagues didn’t remind me, I would not even know it was lunchtime.
To make them happy, I joined them but took a cup of solid coffee without milk and sugar. Caffeine gave me enough energy. But I don’t drink coffee anymore. I replaced it with cold showers. I also enjoy half an hour's walk around the river close by to my workplace. When I walk, I don’t feel hungry.
After a few months of not eating breakfast and lunch, [of course, no snacks either], I lost a few more inches from my belly. I don’t want to repeat myself to keep this story at a reasonable size, so you can check this story on why I don’t eat snacks anymore. I explained the order behind my madness.
What did skipping two meals do to me biologically?
It brought something I had never tasted in my life before. I heard a lot about this mysterious thing and even studied it in my cognitive science classes but never experienced it before.
Surprisingly, I was peeing ketones. My urine smelled so fruity. Seeing my favorite color, purple, in ketone sticks gave me enormous pleasure and motivation for fat loss.
I immediately ordered a ketone blood monitor from E-bay with an express post. It arrived the next day. OMG! My blood ketone level was showing 1.5 nmol. I already had a glucose monitor as I was almost pre-diabetic when I was a vegetarian. I explained it in this story.
Being in ketosis opened the lazy path to my fat-loss journey. I became a genuine fat loser.
My body did not need mimicking as it was in the actual fasted state naturally. Ketosis only happens when liver glycogen is consumed, and the body starts burning stored fat as fuel. Even my blood glucose came from amino acids (protein) and fat as I was on zero carbs diet. They have fancy names like gluconeogenesis and lipolysis. If you are into fat loss, you will love these fancy terms as they are the secrets to fat loss and having unlimited energy in your life. Besides, our ancestors survived using these natural mechanisms during famine and disasters without knowing the terms.
By the way, some readers do not believe in the zero-carb and zero-fiber diet as they believe every food includes them. But the secret is cutting plants, as explained in the story titled revealing my unusual diet, which has no plants as initially started as an elimination diet to fix my allergies and autoimmune condition. Then they believe me.
By the way, I should say near-zero carbs as some organ meats like the liver has negligible sugar. But eating half a kilo of the liver does not take me out of ketosis as 70% of my calories come from healthy fats. I never fry or burn them. I only cook in a low heat oven.
When my body was in ketosis using gluconeogenesis and lipolysis to keep perfect blood sugar and excellent insulin profile, I became a different person. My family members thought that I took secret zen lessons. I was not agitated, not angry, extremely patient, tolerant, and even compassionate toward those who severely criticized and rejected my academic papers.
2 — Eating High Fat Foods and Moderate High-Quality Protein
How does it relate to laziness?
As you know scientifically, one gram of fat includes nine calories while one gram of carbs only has four calories. So you can get your required calories with less effort.
As a bonus, when we get many calories from healthy fats, we don’t feel hungry every two to three hours. We feel satisfied and energetic. No insulin spikes, so no blood fluctuations either. When blood glucose is steady, and when the body has plenty of energy, we don’t feel hungry. Even without feeling hungry, we fast. Isn’t that a lazy and easy way?
So a high-fat diet is the most effective and easiest way of mimicking a fast. We eat plenty of fat, and we are still in the fasted state, as evidenced by ketones in the bloodstream. When we are in a fasted state, our body does not produce insulin. When insulin was sleeping, our body loves burning fat, including from our abdominal areas. In a very short time, we can notice our shrinking belly, butts, and love handle.
Ketosis is a fast track to losing belly fat. You don’t have to cut your calories as calories have nothing to do with fat loss. Instead, the hormones that determine losing fat, especially from the abdominal area.
If you don’t believe me, ask Eliza and even recently, the senior editor of ILLUMINATION-Curated. They have been there and done that successfully.
When I was on a low-carb diet as a vegetarian, eating six times a day, my body fat percentage was 25%. My cholesterol was in the danger zone, my blood glucose level was fluctuating like Christmas trees, my cortisol (stress hormone) level was hitting the roof, and my belly resembled a pregnant woman. And worst of all, my inflammation and allergies were almost killing me. I hated limping at work. As a 25-year-old man, I was feeling 90 years old.
After skipping two meals and eating my favorite healthy fats, chops, and juicy steaks to satiety, I lost substantial body fat, especially from my abdominal area. As a result, my body fat was less than 10%, and my muscle quality was over 90% in the DEXA scan.
When I used these two lazy fast-mimicking lifestyles, my body got fat-adapted, so I started using actual body fat as energy. When I was in the fat-adapted state, my leptin and insulin started working at an optimal level. The body knew when it needed nutrition. So it is not every two to three hours but only after 24 to 48 hours. I even tried seven days without eating anything except drinking salty bone broth. It was euphoric for me. I experience this euphoria every three months. A large amount of ketones is the elixir for my brain.
Final Words
By being lazy, I transformed my life. I shared my journey to transform my life with simple hacks in a book that once became a best-seller. Not anymore, as I distributed thousands of copies for free and published them on multiple online platforms free.
Now, I shared the chapters of this book on this platform so members can read it for free. It is a great pleasure for me when I receive inspiring feedback from my readers. Those tangible benefits are more precious than the miniature royalties of the book.
I also shared my exciting stories in a publication called Euphoria on this platform. Some stories resonated well with many readers. They even contacted me via my website. I love sharing my knowledge and experience as I don’t want anyone to suffer as I know the pain of suffering from obesity, leaky gut, inflammation, allergies, chronic stress, anxiety, and even brain fog. Excessive belly fat carries lots of toxins.
Through this lazy method, I even lost my loose skin. Another natural phenomenon called autophagy helped it.
I hope my lazy method gives you some perspectives. I love achieving more with less effort.
The lazy, fast-mimicking lifestyle may not be for everyone, but even some aspects of it can inspire my readers to research and find the best solution for their needs.
If you have specific questions and require clarification on my approach, I’d be delighted to reply and give you relevant resources from reliable and credible sources of the body of knowledge. I have a scholarly background and know where knowledge is hidden.
Here’s a humorous story about losing weight with fun.
Please note that this story is not health, diet, or nutrition advice. I shared my personal experience for information only. If you have symptoms of digestive issues or weight concerns, please consult your healthcare professionals, such as your primary healthcare practitioner and qualified dieticians and nutritionist.
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I aim to increase the hormonal intelligence of my readers and write about various hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, glutamate, and histamine.
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