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06/02/2025

Food as Medicine: Our Experiment with a Real Food FMD

We often hear the phrase “food is medicine”—but I truly believe food can be far better than medicine.

I’ve been trying to lower Richard’s blood sugar with a low-carb diet. While it helped prevent major spikes, his baseline blood sugar was still too high. We then tried the ProLon 5-Day Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD), which led to some improvement, but even their packaged "food" spiked his blood sugar too much—mine too.

That gave me an idea: what if we created our own version of FMD using real, plant-based food?

I finally had the chance to prepare and test it. The results were beyond what we imagined.

If you look at Richard’s blood sugar data up to May 24th (when we started), it was consistently high. Our approach was this:

Day 1: Slightly higher calories with some plant protein

Days 2–5: Lower calories, fully plant-based

Within just a couple of days, his blood sugar improved dramatically. After the 5-day reset, we slowly added back animal protein—and his blood sugar remained in a good range. We're hopeful this will be sustainable.

The takeaway? While pharmaceutical companies spend billions developing drugs, the right diet may offer a simpler, more effective solution. It's not easy, but this reset brought Richard’s blood sugar to a level I’ve never seen before. It helped me, too—though I had to add some carbs in the beginning because my blood sugar got too low. When we returned to our usual low-carb meals (with some animal protein), my blood sugar stabilized—and even improved.

What we’ve learned:

Be willing to think outside the box. Most traditional advice (even from dietitians) still includes grains. We removed grains and starchy vegetables completely.

The right tools matter. A Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) made all the difference in tracking how foods affected us in real time.

Belief is powerful. You have to truly believe that type 2 diabetes is a dietary disease. Western medicine often focuses on “managing” it with medications, including insulin. Self-education is critical if you want to go beyond management and aim for true improvement.

04/18/2025

Brunch today. Same food. Bacon and egg were buried under in the first picture as if a vegan diet 😋

02/14/2025

Prolon FMD Transition Day: I got up without feeling hungry. I had Spearmint tea. Then I went shopping. At 2pm, I had my light breakfast: half avocado, half tsp olive oil and 3 cherry tomatoes. I had a little hummus and 2 Brazil nuts.

At 3:15pm, I finished my lunch: stir fry garlic, onion, portabella mushrooms, bok choy, red pepper, cilantro and some leftover stir fried green beans. I sprinkled some pumpkin seeds, almonds and pecans on the plate. My blood sugar was doing well, contrary to Prolon soups (spiked over 200), only got to 110 and came down nicely.

BS was 81 at 7:49pm before dinner: Stir fry carrot, celery, tomato, tofu, mushroom. Baked Brussel sprouts. 51g baked sweet potato (weight including skin). Around 9:08am, BS got to 151 and came down.

From ChatGPT, the sweet potato's nutritional fact is following:

Calories: ~44 kcal
Carbohydrates: ~10.4g
Fiber: ~1.3g
Sugar: ~3.3g
Protein: ~1g
Fat: ~0.1g
Vitamin A: ~7,000 IU (about 140% DV)
Vitamin C: ~4mg (about 4% DV)
Potassium: ~190mg
Calcium: ~17mg

I guess my pancreas didn't generate insulin quickly enough, so I still have quite a bit spike, but still way better than the Prolon soup as it contains too much carb.

02/13/2025

My Prolon Experience
1. Due to intermittent fasting (mainly eat 2 meals, rarely snacking), eating Prolon kit is not big deal. I didn't experience extreme hunger or discomfort such as headache or keto flu
2. I basically eat day kit for 2 meals: a soup in each meal, plus EVOO and olives or crackers. Snacking within an hour or 2 before bed with fasting bar and/or choco crisp bar. I was a little afraid feeling too hungry before bed and affect my sleep. I don't like snacking. Hopefully I'll get rid of this habit after back to normal.
3. My sleep was good most of the night except after day 1. I woke up every sleep cycle (1.5hr) and had hard time falling back sleep.
4. My energy level was similar to before FMD. Not much difference in mental clarity. My husband had improved energy and mental clarity, on the other hand.
5. The huge blood sugar spikes (over 200) after each soup scared me. However, it did come down to 70s or 80s in 2 or 3 hours and stayed down in that level. Before FMD, my blood sugar typically didn't spike over 150, but daytime low was about 100. So Prolon got my baseline of 70 or 80 during daytime, which is an improvement. This makes me realize that plant based low calorie diet for 5 days may be beneficial. But I will try this with whole food and without grain and starchy veggies to see if I can get same or better results.
6. My husband is diabetic, but he's not using insulin currently. So he tried Prolon with me at the same time. He was shocked to see how high the blood sugar spikes, but his blood sugar came down too, esp after 2 days. By day 5, his BS went down as low as 110 in his CGM, which he rarely got to that low level. So he had significantly improvement. He became a believer. However, he agreed the carbs and sugar in Prolon kit is too high. I know L-nutra has diabetic program and the kit has lower carbs, but still about 3/4 of carbs of Prolon soup.
7. The concept of autophagy and stem cell generation is very good. And I believe it has some good effects. However, the food is still processed food (maybe semi ultra processed). I think the whole fresh plant based food with low protein and low calories may be good for a few days every 1 or 2 month to reset. But we're not giving up animal protein at least now, but we'll experiment how much is optimal for our health.

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02/13/2025

Prolon FMD D5R1 last food in the box - fasting bar. Very tasty! I am chewing it to death!

02/13/2025

Prolon FMD D5R1 2nd meal: Tomato soup and 2 leftover Almond and Kale crackers. I ate a piece of cracker when I got home as I started to feel hungry. I was going to skip the soup, but too hungry. So I had the last soup with EVOO. I took algal oil. It caused me belch a little bit. A lot better than 1st day. I walked and stretched right after my meal. My BS still spiked almost as much as my first meal. I'm glad no more soups. They all taste good, but not good to my blood sugar.

02/13/2025

Prolon FMD D5R1: Skied for 1.5 hours on blue trails. I started skiing when my BS was about 150. It continued to go down to 70s and stayed down. Actually went down a little far. By the time I got home, I used glucose meter to check and my BS was 63. The rising on the right is because I ate my 2nd soup.

My energy was Ok during skiing. It was even colder than yesterday, but I dressed warmer.

02/13/2025

Prolon FMD D5R1 1st meal: I didn't walk after the meal as I was heading to the mountain to ski. As usual, my BS spiked to the roof. Probably at high of 230.

02/12/2025

Prolon FMD D5R1: Last day! I slept over 8 hours and waking up twice in the middle last night. My BS went down to mainly 70s, but a small window before 70. I didn't feel hungry after getting up. Had L-drink with hibiscus tea as usual. Started to feel a little hungry after 11am. Ready to make 1st meal.

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02/12/2025

Prolon FMD D4R1: My BS got as low as 70 around 10:30pm when I ate the leftover Choco Crisp bar and fasting bar. Ready to go to bed soon and only 1 more day left. My BS got to 110 at most.

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02/12/2025

Prolon FMD D4R1: 2nd meal after came back from skiing. Carrot Ginger Soup with EVOO and olives. I was still hungry. So I ate majority of Choco Crisp bar. I did some Swiss ball stretch, but my BS rose so quickly. At 221, the arrow was still straight up. I started to walk when it came down a little bit at 213.

02/12/2025

Prolon FMD D4R1: I went skiing again today after my 1st meal. It was so cold that the last run froze me. I was so cold that I felt I needed to go inside immediately when sitting on the last chair. My HR occasionally got to zone 4. But my BS stayed low after the spike.