The Longevity Diet: ‘How to live to 100 . . . Longevity has become the new wellness watchword . . . nutrition is the key’ VOGUE

by Dr Valter Longo

confining all meals and snacks to within eleven to twelve hours or less a day. The efficiency of this method has been demonstrated in both animal and human studies.6 Typically you would eat breakfast after 8 a.m. and finish dinner before 8 p.m. A shorter eating window (of ten hours or less) can be even more effective for weight loss, but it is much harder to maintain and may increase the risk of side effects, such as developing gallstones and possibly increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. You should also not eat within three to four hours of going to sleep. Practice periodic prolonged fasting: People under age sixty-five who are neither frail nor malnourished and are free of major diseases should undergo two periods of five days a year in which they consume a relatively high-calorie fasting-mimicking diet, or FMD. Most religious groups—including Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists—have practiced some form of fast, though some of these practices have been modified or abandoned over time. Muslims practice fasting during the month of Ramadan, but in modern times the daytime fast is often accompanied by overeating at night. During Lent, Christians used to undergo a month of severe calorie restriction ending in a week of fasting, but this practice, too, has largely been abandoned today. In chapter 6, I discuss the remarkable effects of five-day cycles of a fasting-mimicking diet on disease risk factors and the optimization of healthy longevity. Follow the eight po...