I have been wanting to try ProLon since I saw Girls on Fiber post about it on Instagram. I had vaguely heard of it but didn’t really understand the benefits or how the ProLon 5 day dietary program worked but after watching Lauren and Chandler complete the fast and reading up on other reviews and benefits, I decided I should give it a shot.
Why I Gave The ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet A Try
If you have read some of my other health and diet-related blog posts, you’ll know I am a sucker for trying new diets and health trends. I tried Sweetkick when it first came out, gave Whole 30 a try, shared my honest review on Blender Bombs and so many other health related reviews. I’ve done juice cleanses and intermittent fasting before but never a fast. And I honestly I didn’t see any results or big changes from intermittent fasting, probably because I was still eating somewhat unhealthy food and just shortening my eating window….oops! So what really intrigued me about the ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet was that it gives you just enough food to keep you in a fasting state so you get the benefits of doing a full fast but you get to eat food. I won’t get into the details about the health benefits of fasting but there is a great Forbes article that explains the benefits of fasting. I also have an autoimmune disease (psoriasis) and was interested to see if it had any affect on that. My psoriasis is very mild so I didn’t expect a huge difference from ProLon.
The photo above is from the ProLon website and it gives you a good idea on where your body is at throughout the fast. Obviously, everyone’s body is different but this is a pretty good outline of what to expect each day.
After reading about the benefits, I was sold. The ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet is not cheap (regularly $249), especially considering you are paying for a very small amount of food that in my opinion was equivalent to something you would get in a hospital. But if you look at the breakdown per day you are only paying about $50 per day, which is not unreasonable considering they send you all the food you need. Plus they have sales frequently so you could probably snag it for like $50 off or get free Fast Bars with your order.
I also try to look at it from the perspective that there has been over 20 years of extensive preclinical and clinical studies to understand what food and nutrients you can still consume while keeping your body in a fasting state so you are also paying for that.
What I Expected To Happen During The ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet
Of course, I expected to be hungry, or should I say hangry. If I am being totally honest with you I do not eat enough in a day, not necessarily because I restrict myself on purpose but if I don’t plan ahead and I get too busy with work, I just don’t have time to make food (another reason why I have a Blender Bomb smoothie every day). So to know I would only be consuming 500-600 calories per day kind of freaked me out and I thought I would be starving the whole time.
I was also concerned with how my sleep would be affected. I don’t know about you but I have gone to sleep hungry before and it is sooooo hard to fall asleep when you are hungry. Plus I am a light sleeper and it’s hard for me to fall asleep period so I was worried this would make it worse.
Before starting ProLon I decided I wasn’t going to take any of the vitamins I typically take and that I was only going to take what was necessary. Of course, speak to your primary care physician before starting ProLon and do what is best for you. The only medication and vitamins I was going to take were my birth control, allergy medicine, Adderall, and melatonin. Since I wasn’t going to take magnesium for my headaches, I was afraid was going to make them come on full force but I wanted to stick to the ProLon guidelines as closely as possible.
And of course, I also expected to lose weight. Anytime you are going to restrict your calories like this, you will lose weight but I was interested to see how much would be water weight vs actual fat that I would be able to keep off.
The Day Before I Started ProLon
Since I knew I was starting ProLon the next day, I went a little crazy with the food. I ate fried mac n cheese balls, french fries, cookies, Tijuana Flats, and chips with guacamole. Looking back that probably wasn’t the best idea for me to eat a ton of salty foods since that would cause me to carry a lot of water weight but you live and you learn!
ProLon Day 1
- 9:15 am Ate nut bar, it tasted good
- 12 pm Now hungry so made butternut squash soup. It tasted bland so I added dash of spices and made it a little better
- 1:15 pm Hungry again but going to hold out for a other hour to have a snack
- 2:30 pm Ate crackers and olives (I HATE olives), the crackers would have tasted better with cheese
- 4:15 pm Decided to do a 20 minute Barre Peloton workout
- 4:30 pm Ate the second nut bar and it tasted fucking delicious
- 6:30 pm Finally dinner time. Ate the black bean soup and it was weird. The taste was bland, it was like water and some black beans. The chocolate bar was not bad but I’m not a huge chocolate fan so there’s that.
- 8pm Thankfully not hungry and going to bed early
Day one is when you have the most amount of calories so I expected this day to be one of the easiest. Plus I still had food in my system from the day before so my tank was in a good spot. Compared to the other days, this one was in the middle in terms of difficulty, but I was still kind of craving cookies since I had some the day before.
ProLon Day 2
- 6am Slept okay, woke up a couple times but wasn’t hungry when I went to bed so that’s a win
- 8:30am Ate the nut bar. I created a strategy…take a tiny bite, do some work for 5-10 minutes then take another small bite
- 12:15pm Lunch is tomato soup. Surprisingly wasn’t bad but would taste better with a grilled cheese. I decided to cut up my olives and eat them with the soup so the flavor wasn’t as strong
- 3pm Ate chocolate bar because couldn’t eat the olives by themselves
- 3:30pm Still hungry
- Stomach was gassy in the afternoon
- 7pm Ate dinner and I was still hungry after.
- Started getting a headache in the afternoon and seemed to be getting worse at night so I took Tylenol PM
On day 2, I was definitely starting to feel hungry. I wasn’t sure if my headache was from not eating enough or if I was just getting a headache, which wouldn’t be abnormal for me. I wanted to give my body time to adjust to less food so I didn’t workout.
ProLon Day 3
- 6am No headache and I slept like a rock (thanks Tylenol PM)
- 6:30am Very hungry but going to hold out on eating for a little longer
- 8:30am Ate the nutbar…using my strategy again
- 10am Already hungry again
- 12:15pm Made my soup for lunch but saving the crackers for a snack later
- 2:50pm Cracker time..I was getting hungry so this mid afternoon snack really helped
- 6pm Ate the bean and spinach soup, wasn’t that bad
- 7:30pm Kind of hungry, I think I ate dinner too early
- 9:20pm Fucking hungry, all I keep thinking about is the nut bar I get to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning
This day was by far the hardest for me. I think because I finally had all the food from the weekend out of my system, it was really running on empty so I had no energy for anything. My headache started to come back in the afternoon. Even though I had a full nights sleep, I feel exhausted and like I couldn’t really do anything because I didn’t have any energy.
ProLon Day 4
- 6am Not starving but a little hungry, oddly feel like I have some energy even though yesterday was terrible
- 8:30am Did 20 minute Peloton Pilates class and did not die
- 9am Finally get to eat the nut bar and it was fucking delicious
- 9:40am Have been super busy with work so I’ve only eaten half of my nut bar
- 1pm Lunch time and thinking of eating olives is making me gag….not sure how I’m going to eat these.
- 2pm Started feeling gassy and feeling bloated
- 3pm Ate chocolate crisp
- 7:15pm Ate dinner and I was kind of hungry, not starving like I expected to be
- 9pm Spoke too soon, hungry and still bloated
Today I felt much better than yesterday. I couldn’t run a mile if my life depended on it but I don’t feel as weak as yesterday. Which is odd considering I have like no food in my system.
ProLon Day 5
- 6am Woke up again not starving but feeling hungry
- 9am Time for my nut bar. For some reason I feel super excited, probably because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel
- 10:20am Headache is coming back
- 2:30pm Late lunch today and still have a headache. Since it’s later than normal I’m going to also eat the crackers
- 3:30pm Headache is worse, feel nauseous but not from being hungry
- 6:50pm Time to eat dinner, my last soup thank God.
This was the easiest day for me. I believe it was because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and knew that I would be able to eat again in less than 24 hours. I did get a weird burst of energy on the last day, which I wasn’t sure if it was because my body was adjusting to the minimal food or again, I was just excited to be eating again. It was weird how I got a random feeling like I wanted to vomit, didn’t thankfully, but very weird.
Post ProLon Day 1
- 9am Drank my usual morning bone broth
- 11:30am Ate a big ass Blender Bomb smoothie bowl, loaded with granola. Still no headache thankfully
- 6:30pm Wasn’t really hungry so I just ate a peanut butter banana smoothie and some cashews
- 10:30pm Went to bed
- 11:30pm Odd that I still up can’t fall sleep
- 1:30pm Why the hell am I still awake
- 3am Finally fell asleep
I really wanted to follow the guidelines for the ProLon fast so I followed a mostly liquid diet my first day post ProLon. I wasn’t really craving anything (except for that peanut butter and banana Blender Bomb smoothie) and honestly didn’t eat a ton because my body had been used to eating such little food throughout the week. Even though I was able to, I didn’t workout so my body could adjust to eating food again. I did have a terrible time falling asleep this night. I’m not sure if that is because my body was adjusting to food again or what but I seriously only got like 4 hours of sleep and I was soooo tired the next morning.
Post ProLon Day 2
- 7:30am Woke up feeling bloated and tired since I only got 4.5 hours of sleep
- 9:30am Hour flow yoga class
- 10:45am Ate breakfast, my first real food in a week.. some home fries, 3 scrambled eggs, avocado and roasted tomato
- 3pm The lack of sleep is getting to me and I am starting to hit a wall
- 4:30pm Will be going to sleep early and not really hungry so ate a couple of crackers
- 7:30pm Can’t keep my eyes open so going to sleep early
Even though I only got 4.5 hours of sleep, I still went to yoga the next morning and did an hour long flow class. Surprisingly didn’t feel weak or light headed and it was nice to really stretch my body. Afterwards I had a light breakfast with eggs, mixed veggies and potato hash. It kept me full for a pretty long time since I didn’t eat much the rest of the day other than some crackers for dinner.
My Results
I weighed myself the day after I finished the ProLon fast and I had lost almost six pounds. It was more than I was expecting but I was really interested in seeing how much was water weight and how much was actual fat. I have a smart scale, you can purchase mine from Amazon, so I was able to track a couple other important metrics other than just weight which you can see below.
You can also see that on my third day after ProLon I gained back 1.6 pounds which I think was water weight so I think it’s safe to say I lost 4.2 pounds of fat from the fast. In addition to the weight I lost, I also didn’t have as strong of cravings for sweets and bad food. I think I was just so hungry for food in general, the sound of a hard boiled egg was making my mouth water. Even as I am writing this over a week later, I still am not craving sweets like I used to. This was the biggest thing for me, once I am not craving sweets anymore and have been able to give my body a reset, it’s easier for me to maintain a healthier lifestyle and eat healthier foods.
When it came to my psoriasis, there wasn’t a noticeable difference on my skin and my psoriatic arthritis wasn’t having a flare up so I didn’t really notice any difference there. I know when it comes to cellular clean up, that is something I can’t see or really know if it was effective my body does feel like it has a clean slate and I am not tired and groggy like I was before ProLon.
What Can You Expect From ProLon
Expect to be hungry. You are restricting your bodies caloric intake so it’s expected you will be hungrier than normal. Along with that is weight loss so you will probably lose weight, both water weight and fat. You’ll probably not have enough energy to work out and if you do, it will probably be something low intensity like going on a walk.
Tips For Completing The ProLon Fast
I wanted to share some tips on how to make your ProLon fast go as smoothly as possible. I definitely do not recommend pigging out the day before starting the ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet as that will make it harder on your body to adjust to the diet. The next time I do it, I plan on eating a healthy diet the day or two before starting so it won’t be as hard on my body.
If you can do it with a friend or someone else in your house, I also recommend that. Doing it with someone else will allow you to talk to someone going through the same experience as you so you can support each other and complain when you’re on day 3 and all you want is an entire pizza.
Try to keep tempting foods out of the house. Its hard enough to do a fast let alone when you’re surrounded by food you want to eat. This will just make it easier for you to stay focused and not think about all the foods you want to eat. Out of sight out of mind.
Spice up your life! To be honest the food is very bland and tastes like hospital food but you are able to add spices to make the soup taste better. They were seriously a Godsend.
Would I Do ProLon Again
Funny enough, I had ordered my second ProLon Fast before I even opened the first one up. Even though I wasn’t sure what to expect I had heard, and not just from the ProLon website, that doing the fast on a regular basis is a great reset for your body. My plan is to follow the ProLon recommendation and completing monthly cycles for three consecutive months, then once every quarter or six months.
Now that I know what to expect and have completed the ProLon fast once, I’m hoping future fasts wont be as bad. But I have heard from people who have done multiple fasts that each one is different. First time, maybe day 3 is the hardest and then the next time, day 4 is the worst. I plan on doing another follow up blog post once I complete my second ProLon fasting cycle in October so keep an eye out for that!
I hope this blog post on the ProLon 5 Day Fasting Mimicking Diet was helpful and if you are on the fence about it, you’ll give it a try. If you’ve tried it or are giving it a try, leave me a comment!
*If you make a purchase using the ProLon affiliate link, I will get a commission.
