This is an excerpt from the 28-DAY RESET GROUP FAST program.
First, forget everything you thought you knew about nutrition. Much of what we are going to cover will challenge conventional wisdom around diet. What we’re about to cover is a nutritional framework developed by Dr. Peter Atti that incorporates intermittent fasting, time restricted feeding and a low-carb, whole-food diet.
We use three very simple but powerful nutritional strategies to help you adopt a healthy lifestyle and become fat-adapted:
- Time Restricted Feeding (TR)
- Low-Carb, Whole-Food Diet (no grains, sugar or industrial oils) (DR)
- Extended fasting (aka Intermittent Fasting) (CR)
Please watch Dr. Peter Attia’s short video (4:25) to understand the nutrition framework we are about to implement (image above). It comes down to three forms of restriction: What you eat or don’t eat (i.e., dietary restriction or DR), how much you eat (i.e., caloric restriction or CR), and when you eat and don’t eat (i.e., time restriction or TR). Virtually all of the dietary schemes you can think of can be distilled into these three elements in some combination. We use all three in a sustainable and strategic way.
Time Restricted Feeding (TR or TRF)
One of the simplest and most impactful things you can do to prepare for an extended fast like the ProLon FMD and improve your overall health is to consistently practice TRF (often confused with Intermittent Fasting).
In other words, compress your daily eating window to six to 12 hours, meaning you eat all of your calories for the day during those six to 12 hours, and for the remaining 12 to 18 hours, you’re fasting. The most common is a 16:8 (16 hours fasting, 8 hour feeding window.) Water, black coffee and unsweetened tea during the fasting period is fine.
This means you don’t have to eat three square meals each day. In fact, two or even one large meal is fine. As long as all the calories are within the window you chose. But avoid eating large meals 2-3 hours before bed.
Example: you finish dinner at 7pm on Monday and you don’t consume calories until Tuesday at 11am (16 hour fasting window) and you eat all you calories within 8 hours (ending again at 7pm).
This is your base and should be done for at least three weeks leading up to an extended fast.
Most people will become metabolically flexible (aka “fat-adapted”) after this protocol, which is the ability to easily burn fat or sugar as fuel.
Even if you eat high-quality food, if you’re grazing for 16 hours a day, you’re sabotaging your health and body composition. TRF may even allow you to get away with a diet that isn’t entirely ideal, as it blocks many of the harmful effects of a poor diet, likely because you’re regularly activating autophagy (the cleanup of aging & damaged cells). That’s right, merely changing the meal timing and restricting the number of hours you eat produce huge benefits even in the same person eating the same meals.
According to a recent study, TRF may also help with motivation to engage in voluntary exercise. And if you can exercise BEFORE you break your fast, you may burn more fat, even if it’s just light exercise like a 20 minute morning walk (double bonus!).
If you’ve never practiced TRF before, start at a 12 hour window and see how it feels (slight hunger is normal) and progressively work your way to a six to eight hour window. Females tend to do better with longer feeding windows, like 10-12 hours.
TIP: Earlier meal timing can result in more lipid oxidation (fat burning) according to a randomized crossover trial. So if your goal is weight loss, try to eat an early dinner or avoid it all together.
If you need help tracking your eating window and would like to journal your fasting journey, the Zero app is very helpful.
Low-Carb, Whole-Food Diet (DR)
We will dive deeper into what the next 21 days of eating will look like and why we chose this style of eating. Ultimately, this low-carb, Paleo-style diet eliminates most processed and high-carb food that can keep your body dependent on using sugar for energy.
Being dependent on sugar can prevent your body from “tapping“ into your fat stores for energy. It can also cause the transition into ketosis (fat-burning) during the 5-day fast much harder, both physically and mentally. I consider the diet we’re about to implement “Paleo Lite” vs strict Paleo because full-fat dairy and legumes/beans are optional. It’s also less restrictive and easier to comply with.
If you’re looking to reduce or eliminate inflammation or autoimmune issues, it’s best to eliminate all dairy, grains, legumes and soy products for the next 28 days.
Ultimately, fasting is easier when you’re low-carb.
Extended Fasting or Intermittent Fasting (CR)
Using extended fasting (24+ hours) like ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet on a recurring basis (such as every 6 months) is true Intermittent Fasting (i.e. intermittently fasting throughout the year).
This low-calorie 5-day meal plan providing the perfect ratio of micro and macronutrients to nourish the body, fight hunger and protect lean body mass, without taking your body out of the fasting state. You’ll get the benefits of a 5-day fast, but with food!
The ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) mitigates the burden and danger of water-only fasting, by providing a tasty and convenient, safe dietary program that does not require ongoing lifestyle changes, such as long-term dieting.
ProLon meals come in 5 small boxes (one for each day) that include plant-based energy bars, soups, a variety of snacks, drinks, and supplements, all studied and carefully designed to nourish your body and support healthy levels of metabolic markers, cellular rejuvenation, and healthy aging.
ProLon is the first and only clinically tested, doctor recommended fasting meal program. Over $36 million and 20 years of extensive studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and conducted at the Longevity Institute and Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute of the University of Southern California resulted in the development of the first FMD® (ProLon®) which stimulates:
- The body’s protective and stress resistant mode
- Autophagy for the clean-up of old and damaged cells
- The body’s natural process of cellular clean-up and cell renewal
Learn more about ProLon here: https://antifragile.fit/prolonfmd/
For a deep dive on CR with scientific references, see Dr. Peter Attia’s article on Calorie Restriction.
Fasting and low-carb support each other. Rather than a vicious cycle, it’s a virtuous one. Fasting promotes fat-adaptation by upregulating fat-burning mitochondria, spurring the creation of new mitochondria, and reducing your reliance on sugar. Fat-adaptation makes going low-carb easier, because you’re really good at burning body fat and don’t get so many sugar cravings. Going low-carb makes you even better at burning fat and builds even more mitochondria, which is a prerequisite for fasting for extended periods of time.
Wow, that was a lot! But don’t worry, I’ll walk you through this 
Check out my Step-byStep Guide to Start a Fasting Lifestyle. It’s a comprehensive guide to the most potent tool for optimized health, longevity and performance
Join the next 28-DAY RESET GROUP FAST.