I’ve been getting into the habit of regularly doing 5 day fasting mimicking diets. I’ve decided to settle on doing one every few weeks, doing the diet for 5 days, followed by 16 days of my normal diet.
At $250 a pop, that started to sound pretty expensive (especially when you factor in how little food you get), so I decided to try making an FMD using foods I sourced myself.
I tried this a couple years ago and failed miserably, mostly because of a lack of measuring things correctly and counting out the calories, as well as the fact that I wasn’t paying close attention to the macronutrients.
So this time I decided to try it again and do it right. I decided to build a similar looking meal plan using soups, olives and crackers. As part of a promotion I had extra Fast bars from L-Nutra so I used those as well.
The Meal Plan
Here is what my Day 2 food selection looked like, and it’s pretty representative of the rest of the days:
On Day 1 I picked an Amy’s soup with higher caloric density, one of the “hearty” branded soups. Of the non-hearty soups, some of their soups are 120 calories a can, and some are 190, so keep an eye on that and adjust portions accordingly.
Results
This DIY FMD worked beautifully! I felt the same types of effects I would feel on the L-Nutra FMD, both good and bad. My blood sugars look fantastic, blood pressure is lower, and I get a little restless at night due to extra energy. And I am 13 pounds lighter than I was five days ago.
The canned soups I am using are much tastier than the L-Nutra powdered soups, and I think their composition is healthier too; L-Nutra’s powdered soups use a lot of potato and rice starch (well, not a lot; the entire soup is usually 110 or so calories) whereas the canned soups are made of veggies and vegetable stock.
I made a fresh batch of gazpacho before my FMD as one of the daily meals and that was a great choice; the gazpacho is absolutely delicious and flavorful. The biggest downside is the lack of a precise calorie count that a prepackaged food item would offer me, which also gives me an excuse to have a little more of it after i’m done with a cup. It was actually really nice to have meals that were made of fresh vegetables (well, ones that I liquefied in my blender anyway).
I do plan to experiment with replacing the Fast Bars in a future FMD; they’re kind of expensive at about $4 a pop and I think I can get similar macronutrients from KIND bars, though I am worried they might not be quite as filling. I may also try making them myself; there is a recipe for making them that looks like it’ll create a good approximation. The Fast Bars that ship by themselves also include cacao nibs in the bars, which ended up being a really tasty addition, so I’d probably try to find those too.
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