What is a Fasting Mimicking Diet?

Guest : Renee Fitton

october 20, 2025

Steve Washuta

Steve, welcome to the Trulyfit podcast, where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I'm your host. Steve Washuta, co founder of truly fit and author of fitness business 101, on today's episode, I interview Renee Fitton. You can find everything about her at f, i, t, t o, n, nutrition on Instagram. She is a registered dietitian. She's the Director of Education of El nutra, and she considers herself a longevity dietitian. Specifically, those are just some of her bonafides. Today, majority of the conversation is going to be around fasting, mimicking diets. What are they?

Steve Washuta

How are they different from traditional fasting diets? There are supplements and companies that can handle your dietary needs when you go into these diets, and why that's probably your best bet. Rather than trying to do it on your own, we go into the science, but also the practicality behind a lot of this. You know, Renee has good tips on not only how to go through the process of this, but you know, if you're struggling, let's say with the process of fasting, things that you can do. It was a great conversation.

Steve Washuta

Again, you can find everything about Renee at F I T, T O N, nutrition on Instagram, with no further ado, here's Renee. Renee, thank you very much for joining the truly fit podcast. Wanting to give my listeners and audience a little background on what it is you do day to day in the health and fitness and wellness industry. Absolutely.

Renee Fitton

So my name is Renee, as you mentioned, I am a longevity dietitian. So people often ask, What the heck is a longevity dietitian? And how do you get such a title? Well, I am a registered dietitian, but my master's degree is in longevity nutrition. I graduated from USC health span nutrition program, one of the only programs in the world that focuses on not just nutrition, but nutrition for living healthier, longer, and so that is my educational background. For over a decade now, I have been working in longevity nutrition.

Renee Fitton

I co founded a nutrition tech company that helped individuals find the right nutrition protocols for them, and then once we figured out what the right nutrition protocol was, how to pair them with the right restaurants, foods, products, etc, that matched their unique needs. Today, I am the Vice President of growth for El nutra. They are the makers of fasting mimicking solutions, as well as longevity nutrition across the board, and so I support with education to now 10s of 1000s of healthcare practitioners, millions of individuals who are leveraging these nutrition solutions on the day to day, and getting the opportunity to do cool Things like this, and sharing the science and background of fasting and fasting mimicking to the world.

Steve Washuta

Well, there's a lot there. I think the lion's share of our conversation will revolve around fasting, mimicking diets. But I want to go back to one of your expertises in longevity. It sounds sometimes when I hear that term, that people are just focused on sort of the biohacking end, right, the supplemental end. But I imagine when you're learning about this, there's more to that. As far as the, let's call it the the emotional end, the what you do day to day, the stress and things of that

Renee Fitton

nature. Absolutely, when we look at longevity, there are a handful of pillars that we consider. So nutrition is actually just one of those pillars. And within that nutrition pillar, there are a lot of things that we can talk about, supplements and that kind of some of those biohacking aspects of nutrition are just one of them.

Renee Fitton

We also have other pillars for longevity that we are very importantly paying attention to, and some of them are less common, like or commonly thought of, like community and social relationships, stress management, sleep. Of course, exercise is a big one too. But you know, these are all things that kind of play into the longevity world, and it is important that when we think about longevity, we don't just hyper focus on one specific thing that we consider the balance and the net of the whole

Steve Washuta

fasting with food is something that Prolon talks about. And I love that term, because it's what I call, like oxymoron marketing, right? It's a great tagline, because when you first see it, you think, hmm, I need more info. Or are they pushing my buttons here, right? How could somebody possibly fast with food? So I love that whoever made that turn for the marketing, if that was you, you know, congrats to you, but explain how that terminology actually makes sense from a scientific

Renee Fitton

standpoint. Absolutely So importantly, what we need to recognize is that the term fasting that we use that is like kind of our dictionary definition of fasting, that is not eating any food, is our dictionary definition of fasting, and that is totally fine and all well and good, but when we look at the cellular level of what fasting is, we have to look at our cells definition of fasting. Testing, and that is essentially determined based off of whether there are enough nutrients, enough of specific types of foods present to tell ourselves to grow.

Renee Fitton

And if you think about it, that's really like, why we eat for energy to grow, right? And our cells are really their definition is not, is there any food, or is there no food? It's, is there enough of the right type of food? And so that's our cellular definition of fasting. And that's really what we are taking advantage of when we fast with food, is we're choosing the specific foods that live below the threshold, live below the radars of these cellular, what we call nutrient sensing pathways.

Renee Fitton

I like to think of them like alarm bells on the cellular surface, like double oh seven laser beams that we are just kind of staying below. And if we choose the right foods, and we have the right amount of those foods, we can eat and still stay in this fasting mode, and what our body does is it will turn on repair pathways instead of growth and building pathways. That leads

Steve Washuta

probably into my next question. So you know, things like mental clarity and digestive health and heart health and weight loss, management and scan and all the things that, let's say, a fasting study would show you, and I assume we'll get into this too. Are fasting mimicking studies different than a fasting study? Are they the same thing because they're achieving the same goal?

Steve Washuta

We'll get into that. But what would be the difference between me or anybody eating what is considered a very healthy diet from both a micro and macronutrient standpoint, but more traditional eating three or four times a day, 14 to 15 times my body weight and grams calories, as opposed to me fasting. Why does the fasting help, rather than if I'm getting the same amount of micronutrients that I would from a normal eating routine?

Renee Fitton

Yeah, so this is really critical. Well, one, let me just make sure that I'm clear in a fasting mimicking, you are still going to be calorie reduced. So you're not going to get like 2500 calories of food. You're going to be like closer to the 1100 to even as low as about 800 calorie mark. So it is still reduced calories, because there is a threshold where no matter what you eat, it's going to trigger those alarm bells. So let me just make sure that I'm fair and clear about that.

Renee Fitton

But importantly, when we do live below those thresholds, what we see is something called autophagy. Now autophagy is just a a word to describe literally, self eating. And that kind of sounds bad, but it's a wonderful thing. Self eating only the junk that accumulates in our cells over time. So autophagy is kind of like an internal vacuum cleaner for our cells. It finds the stuff that accumulates over time, and it gets rid of it, anything that is no longer serving our body, serving ourselves, it will hunt that specific stuff down and get rid of it.

Renee Fitton

Now, autophagy is only really able to be optimally turned on and really like pulled the throttle on when we go into a fasted state, and that's because what autophagy needs is something called hermetic stress, aka positive stress. And when we eat a regular, balanced, healthy diet, our body is getting incredible nutrition, and it's a wonderful thing, and we recommend doing that about 355 days a year, right?

Renee Fitton

So pretty much every day of the year, with the exception of the days that we're going to do prolonged fasting, because it helps our body build and grow and support muscle and all the wonderful things. But we do need to take time to do deep spring cleaning. And that's what this fasting period does. It allows our body to get enough of this positive stress, to turn on this deep cellular cleanup processes and clear out the waste for this period of time.

Steve Washuta

Does the food choice matter in that stress? And I say that because I mean, if it's too healthy, which sounds really weird, but if the food choices are so healthy, how is it creating any stress?

Renee Fitton

Oh, so this is really cool. So it is, yes, all of the food that you'll see in a fasting mimicking diet is quote, unquote, very, very healthy, right? So it is all plant based, lots of vegetables, lots of fiber, nuts and seeds and things like that. So yes, they're healthy foods, but there's not enough of them that our body's like, oh, I can use this to use it to power building a lot of things.

Renee Fitton

And so because I don't have enough of. It. I'm just going to use this to just do the bare bones minimum to keep me going and and I'm going to focus on giving my body enough of this kind of push to go search for more food. If you think of it like from an evolutionary standpoint, our we didn't always have food around, right? And so our bodies, when we didn't have enough food, had to kind of set a bit of an alarm that said, hey, there's not enough nutrition here to keep us going for a very long time.

Renee Fitton

So we're going to give you a little bit of an energy boost. We're going to give you a little bit of stress and, like, kind of internal fear in our body to be like we need to go hunt down more food. So there's a lot of things that happen in the body. One is, it'll spend time on repair, clean up, rejuvenation, so that when food is ready, we can build from a stronger place. But other things that we see happen is that we see some of the stress hormones go up.

Renee Fitton

So people will say, Oh, wow. Like I felt really alert. I felt really awake. It was totally not what I thought I would feel when I'm in a fasted state. I thought I'd be tired and groggy. But your body is is actually activating this alertness to say, go get more food. Make sure that you have the energy to go find more food, because at the end of the day, that's where we are going to be our healthiest.

Steve Washuta

You're trying to find that sweet spot. If the volume is too high, you're not there to create that hermetic stress if, if the food choices are Too bad there's too much stress. I get that. I guess my next question would be, does your body then get too acclimated to that in which you need to then maybe Institute something else.

Steve Washuta

Because eventually, if we keep doing the same thing over and over and over, right, we're eating those same foods we're doing at the same timeframe. In the timeline, there won't be stress, right? Because the body will find a way to, like, get back to homeostasis, so to speak. That's

Renee Fitton

really interesting. So I would say maybe yes and no. So first of all, in general, these prolonged periods of fasting that we're talking about days three or five or so days, some people do them even longer. But when we do these fasts, our body doesn't necessarily ever get used to not having food in that it will drop stress significantly or no longer trigger autophagy, but what does happen is that our body runs out of fuel, and that is a a stress that is not even hermetic anymore. It's actually just a negative stress.

Renee Fitton

So there is certainly too much fasting that can be done, and that's why we I recommend keeping it to about five days at a time and only about three to four times a year, because too much stress, even if it's a positive, hermetic stress, can be a bad thing. So it's not so much that the stress diminishes, but that the stress no longer is positive. If that makes

Steve Washuta

sense, sure, sure. I want to go into possibly looking at studies are there again. I think I mentioned this before. We didn't get into this. Would you look at a study and all the benefits that come from fasting, standard fasting study, and then be able to attribute all of that to the fasting mimicking diets? Could you just kind of do a one for one, because you're saying it does the same thing in your body or with somebody else who maybe promotes fasting and not fasting, mimicking pushback on that,

Renee Fitton

I think that there's certainly going to be pushback. I have worked and I've been on panels with people who are big proponents of water only fasting, and they're like, No, you're going to get even better and deeper results with water only fasting. But there are a couple of things that that we have to say. One, we've never really been able to do a head to head water only to fasting mimicking in humans, there is one example that I've been able to find in mice where they did they did this trial in individuals with irritable or sorry, inflammatory bowel disease, and they did regular diet, water only, fasting and fasting mimicking.

Renee Fitton

And actually, what's really interesting is that the fasting mimicking in this population did even better than water only fasting. Now this may be a unique case, right? Because we are in this case, needing a little bit of this prebiotic fiber, and all the wonderful benefits that the food gives to allow for, also the growth of the gut lining and all of the things that are broken down here. So there's the combination of the stimulation of stem cells and rejuvenation that comes from fasting, with the nutritional component of fasting mimicking that is actually even more additive.

Renee Fitton

Now, I cannot make claims that that's going to be true in humans. I cannot make claims that that's going to be true in every case. But there's certainly a case to be said that fasting mimicking for some populations might actually be even better than water only fasting. Now there may also be cases. That say that water only fasting could get you even more results, but you are risking a little bit more by going that way, because water only fasting has higher safety concerns, has also obviously harder adherence, so a lot fewer people are even going to try it.

Renee Fitton

And then we also get a little bit worried about muscle loss, because even though there is some natural protection from your body, even in water only fasting, when we add nutrition through fasting, mimicking your body obviously has nutrient sources to protect your muscle.

Renee Fitton

So there's, you know, it's, it's, it's, unfortunately, something that I can't answer with 100% certainty. I am a big proponent myself of fasting mimicking over even water only fasting because of the safety and adherence benefits that it offers. But I also wouldn't say like water only fasting is bad by any means.

Steve Washuta

Sure, and I'm the furthest thing from a study say guy, because I can poke a hole in any study that's ever that's ever existed in the history of studies. So I do think at some point we need to use some common sense. And to me, there is, you know, a common sense avenue to say, wouldn't if we could do a lot of the positive effects, right? If we can have our body be tricked into this, that that is proven through fasting, yet we can still have a little bit of, you know, some caloric need for a body to help in the other areas.

Steve Washuta

Why wouldn't that be advantageous over simply water? I mean, to me, it makes no sense, but also to each their own right, if somebody wants to try one or the other, maybe you can do a self experiment, right, an anecdotal experiment on yourself to see if one works better, and maybe they even work good interchangeably, right? Maybe there's some way in which you can do water fasting in certain instances, right? When maybe it's a Sunday, you don't have much going on, it's easier on your energy levels. And then maybe, you know, some of the other days of the week, you're actually integrating more of a fasting mimicking

Renee Fitton

diet, absolutely. And I can tell you just from experience, I have worked with hundreds of people that have done both, I would say the vast majority of people, once they've done water only fasting and fasting mimicking, they're fasting mimicking for life, because they're like, why would I do the hard one? If I know that this easier option is going to get me the same results, and they know, just from the way that their labs are coming back, their body is responding that they are getting the same results from the fasting mimicking protocol.

Renee Fitton

But yes, if you are, I mean, I personally have also tried doing both, and because I started with fasting mimicking, I was able to do probably, I did probably five to maybe even, like, seven rounds of fasting mimicking before I even bothered trying water only fasting, and I made it just over 24 hours water only fasting, because I was like, why

Steve Washuta

am I doing this? I have I know that fasting mimicking is is gonna give

Renee Fitton

me the same results, and this sucks, so I didn't even make it past about 36 hours.

Steve Washuta

I don't blame you. We've been talking a lot about the science, but let's get into maybe more of the practical side, right? The tangible side. I find Renee on the internet. I listen to what she says, Wow. This is great. I think this is for me. I go through the process of ordering Prolon. It shows up at my doorstep. Walk me through the process. How does somebody

Renee Fitton

get started? So this is, if you're a generally healthy person, you are, you get the kid, and you are off to the races. There's very limited, if any prep work involved. That is how this program was designed, so that you can grab it and go. You don't have to go pick up any groceries. You don't have to pick up you don't have to do any prep. You don't even have to change your diet in preparation for it. So some people do like for example, we recommend up to two cups of coffee a day.

Renee Fitton

So if you're a 10 cups of coffee, kind of person, even five, you might want to give yourself a week to kind of wean down to the two cups of coffee a day, so that that's comfortable if you eat a lot of carbohydrates in your day to day, and you've never fasted before, you might want to try and start getting your body to a little bit less carbohydrates, a little bit more of a ketogenic state, so that your body's burning fat for fuel a little bit on your own before doing A fasting mimicking diet, because you're going to go straight into this ketosis, this fat burning stage about on day two.

Renee Fitton

And if your body's never really done that before, if you've never fasted for maybe 16 or more hours, then that can, for some people, be a little uncomfortable. So while you absolutely don't need to do those things, you totally can now, once you start the kit is like, I mean, it's so simple. Either is a menu card if you want to follow along. But all you need to know is that every single day is in its own individual box. You take your day one box.

Renee Fitton

I like to open it, dump it out. I will have my breakfast, lunch, dinners, snacks. Supplements, teas, even a chocolate bar at the end of the day, absolutely everything that you need to kind of just go through this seamlessly. You can eat them in whatever order you want, but there's a recommended order, just like based off of what most people do.

Renee Fitton

And then you just kind of eat that. And then you do that every day for five days, and you just watch the transformations unfold. There are so many benefits. So whether you're doing it for weight loss, which a lot of people kind of come for, they usually stay for all the other benefits, right?

Renee Fitton

So the alertness, the energy, the the skin health benefits, the changes that they see in their labs when they go back to the doctor, the improvements we see across all metabolic markers. I'm talking blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar or inflammatory markers. I mean, you name it. There are so many great benefits there. So, yeah, that's kind of the the nuts and bolts of it. It's pretty straightforward. Are

Steve Washuta

there any other medical indications that come to mind for people who might want to just stay away or need to talk to a physician prior to going on this

Renee Fitton

absolutely yes. So the major call outs are going to be people with a history of syncope, meaning fainting, people who have any end stage like failure conditions, we're talking heart failure, renal failure, etc. Obviously not a good fit. I generally recommend anybody who is, you know, on like medications for a condition, just like, check with your doctor just to be sure. But now there's really great programs for individuals, for example, with type two diabetes, to actually reverse diabetes with fasting mimicking.

Renee Fitton

There's a great company called L nutra health that adds doctors and dietitians to supervise you and guide you all via telehealth from the comfort of your home. So it makes it really, really simple if, if you do have any safety concerns that you want to be mindful of, and you can even get a free consult if you're not sure. So that would be that group. Anybody who's pregnant or breastfeeding shouldn't do it. Anybody who's under 18 shouldn't do it, and anybody who has a history of eating disorders should probably avoid it. So those are really it. The the Prolon kits specifically have a lot of nuts, and so anybody with an allergy to nuts generally can't proceed.

Steve Washuta

Staying on the practical side, if somebody struggles right away, maybe they order it. They're excited, and there's like, I really struggle. I'm I'm hungry. I don't think this fasting is for me. What are the tips that you give as an RD, let's say to you know people you're working with, your clients, your patients, to say, you know, from a psychological perspective, how do we block these things out? Do I fill time? Do I eat in a different manner? Do I eat slower? Do we eat faster? What are the what are the tips that you

Renee Fitton

give people? For sure, there are, there's actually so many tips, and I should say that generally, we personalize them on the individual but for most people, they're more simple than you think. Staying busy, as you mentioned, is a big one. So some people will think, I should clear my calendar. I'm fasting this week, but I advise, you know, keep all your meetings for work, I stay busy. You can still leave the house, you can still run errands.

Renee Fitton

You're still going to be able to do all of those things. And if anything, it makes it easier, because you're you're busy, you're distracted. You know, doing it with a friend, so not doing it alone is really valuable, because then you know whether you're doing it with a significant other or a friend, even if you're doing it with somebody miles away, you can FaceTime while you both have your your breakfast bar, your afternoon soup, or whatever it is that you guys are having.

Renee Fitton

And it does make it a little bit easier, obviously, staying hydrated movement. So while we don't want to do super crazy workouts, going for walks, stretching, letting your body kind of flush everything out. It goes a long way. There's a lot of things that are already in the kit that will help you with that too. So we have something called the l drink, and you pour that out based off of your weight. The more you weigh, the more you will add.

Renee Fitton

And I recommend that people make that in the morning, I recommend that they add it to you. You get a hibiscus tea. So I recommend to brew the hibiscus tea, make that, let it cool off. Add it to your l drink, beverage that you poured out for your weight. Add some ice and have that as a second drink that you just kind of SIP throughout the day, it's really good for for hunger, it's good for energy, and it's also good for muscle protection. So having that throughout the day is really helpful, too.

Steve Washuta

My tip I'm not a registered dietitian, is golf, because you're so focused you. You're out there for four and a half five hours, right? If you the whole driving to the course, coming home, it could be six or seven hours of the day. You're really focused on what you're doing. You can drink water on the course, and you're having fun. So when I golf on like a Sunday, I can fast with no problem. I'm not thinking about it at all.

Steve Washuta

And you're not, and you're, you're typically nowhere near food, right? Yes, you're, you're, you're, unless you're coming through hole nine and you're, there's like a halfway house. You don't even have access to food, so you don't, you're not thinking about it. So it's a great way to start your fasting journey. If you were somebody who is a golfer, uh, start on the golf course. And also, it's not like a strenuous sport, right? You're not going to pass out from swinging a golf

Renee Fitton

club. That's a really cool idea. I love that we actually have some, some pro golfers that have even done testimonials for for Al nutra and prolonge. So I definitely think it, it aligns.

Steve Washuta

Let's go into possible competitors. You don't have to talk about them, but yeah, if there are, are there competitors? What do they possibly do different than you do if there was a if there was a competitor, if you were comparing yourself, how would you say that your company stands out, or that prolong stands out from whether it's at the scientific standpoint, or whether, again, it's the protocol and the practical standpoint,

Renee Fitton

for sure? Well, so we don't have competitors because we have 130 patents. So it's really hard to break into the fasting mimicking as a product space, but I will say that you can, you can use Dr Valter Longo, who's the founder of Al nutra. He wrote a book called The longevity diet, and there is, you know, kind of his outline of what you would do if you wanted to try and make your own now I you know, so we do have some people that say,

Renee Fitton

Well, maybe I'll just try and do my own kit, and that, I think, would probably be the closest thing to a competitor in the fasting mimicking space. Now we do generally advise that people, you know, proceed with caution, because our nutrient sensing pathways, they are very finicky. They are very peculiar. They know exactly what they need before they turn on and off. And if you're doing it yourself, you are going completely non validated, right?

Renee Fitton

So you no longer have the certainty that you have the exact nutrients to live below those nutrient sensing pathways. So generally, what you see if people are doing it themselves is that they have to have even less calories, even less food, so that they don't trigger those pathways. And plus, like, I'm just, you know, it's very reasonably priced, by the way, the Prolon kits and l Nutri health kits, which are within the family right of the company, they are about the same cost that you would spend on food for five days. So it's not like it's a huge cost either.

Steve Washuta

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. If you're going to be reducing your your caloric intake, right? You're now in a caloric deficit of some sort. It the nutrient ratios, the micronutrient ratios, the macronutrient ratio, all of that matters so much more because you're getting less right, and even the timing of those things, you guys have a proven pathway right? We you've seen it work already. So to test a new protocol while reducing your calories to such an extent is, is a risk. It's a big

Renee Fitton

risk. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and especially because if you go outside of the Prolon kits or the L Nutri health kits, you aren't getting some of those extra kind of scientifically validated pieces like the l drink, like you can't, you don't get that anywhere else, which are the prime pieces for the muscle protection. So you run the risk of, you know, this has been studied in now 47 plus clinical trials that and it is using this specific kit in the vast majority of them, or some version of L nutras Fasting mimicking kits.

Renee Fitton

And so going and deviating from that runs the risk of not getting the benefits that you see in the trials. And if you're doing this like you kind of want to make sure you're getting those benefits. So the alternative is also water only fasting, which is the safest, next safest, to make sure that you're not going to trigger those nutrient sensing pathways, and then you have the downside of the safety effects of having no food. So, you know, you you have to kind of weigh the benefits, pros and cons.

Steve Washuta

Do you have any fun anecdotal stories of people who've used the product, whether it's yourself or your clients, who saw big gains, or, I shouldn't say, gains, positive effects in one area or another?

Renee Fitton

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I have. So there have been over a million people that have have done fasting mimicking with Prolon. I have probably walked 1000s of people through I get testimonials every single day of incredible changes. I have to be careful about what I share, because these are unique testimonials, and we don't want to say prolon's going to do this for everybody.

Renee Fitton

But I have seen people who have had rashes or even like mobility issues that just could not be changed, and then they fast, you know, one or two or three cycles, and all of a sudden they've regained that, that mobility or the rash is gone, and you see this just even after five days in people's skin health.

Renee Fitton

So I recommend that everybody take a picture of even just their face on day zero and then on day six, and you will see a noticeable difference in the inflammation in the face, in the skin texture and the hydration people look like, visibly younger, even just in those first five days I got, of course, there's incredible weight loss stories. We have people who have lost, you know, hundreds of pounds.

Renee Fitton

I just had some a woman send me a testimonial video where she starts crying at the end, because she's just so grateful for the results that she's seen. In terms of her energy levels. She said, You know, she was, she was so exhausted and and she felt like she always had to choose, you know, am I going to cook dinner for the kids, or am I going to go and ride the bikes with the kids? And she had to pick between the two all of the time.

Renee Fitton

And she did one round of Prolon, and her energy level skyrocketed back to, like, her 20s level of energy. And she fine. And she lost 13 pounds. She didn't even, like have 13 pounds to lose. She looked she looked incredible. And so, I mean, the results are really, again, very full body, whole body, and they are really coolly unique to the individual's needs. You know, I notice mostly skin health benefits, like I get, like, a little bit of bumps on the back of my arm.

Renee Fitton

And after my five days, they disappear. And if I wait too long before my next round it I noticed that they they start coming back and and that's where, clearly, my body needs to clean other people's bodies. Maybe they notice drastic improvements in their a 1c and their blood sugar. We've had people fully come off of all of their diabetes medication, go into true remission, lose significant amount of the right kind of weight, right?

Renee Fitton

They're keeping their muscle, they're losing fat, and they're now able to run around with their grandchildren. So I mean, I could go on for days and days and days and days with testimonials, but it is. It's truly the best part of my job is getting to hear the winning stories.

Steve Washuta

Well, now I have the hardest question of all. I can tell you that I've never heard a good answer, an answer that moved me, and I've never heard a bad answer. Meaning, as much as I think about this topic, I've kind of been swayed to both sides, but I've never narrowed down one thing that I think is the right answer. So don't feel no pressure here. No pressure. How do you feel about the landscape of people giving out nutrition information who may not have your background? Meaning, if you go online, anybody who is a coach, there are personal trainers, there you know, there's licensed dietitians, there's registered dietitians, there's people with certifications, but not necessarily degrees.

Steve Washuta

There's people with degrees that have not actually worked with, people everybody is giving nutrition advice. How do you feel about that landscape if you could control it? If you were the Department of Health and Safety or something, and you had some control over it, how do you think you would potentially navigate either stopping flow of information, or would you not make any changes?

Renee Fitton

That is such a good question. I think what we need to recognize is a couple of things. So I'll use my example, as a registered dietitian, of some of the things that they've put in place to justify kind of giving you that check of approval. And it's, it's multi pronged. It's not just, did you study this information? Because, as you mentioned, that's just one small part of the puzzle. It's also, how many hours have you done of real life work in this space?

Renee Fitton

So have you actually worked with people? Have you actually seen this in practice? That's another piece of it. And then there's, can you show me in kind of a final, culminating, larger research paper, or something that you that you can apply what you've learned over here in practice, and that was done over the period of a grand total of two years. Now I know that people who have not gotten my certification, I know a lot of people who have spent way more than two years trying to uncover the science of nutrition for much longer, and probably know a lot more than people who have just graduated with.

Renee Fitton

My credentials, and I certainly don't devalue that by any means, and I think that we shouldn't be solely, you know, we don't just want to rely on people with a credential, but we also need to have some sort of, I guess, like qualifier to be able to say, Yeah, I can trust this person, and at the end of the day, I think it's experience and time, and those are things that you have to earn, just like anybody's trust on anything, right?

Renee Fitton

And I think it's cool that you brought up, for example, testimonials like, let's let's see what you have been able to achieve, what you have seen with your belief systems. Another thing that I think is really critical is somebody who can be educated in another direction based off of changing information. Nutrition is a changing science. It is not hard and fast, and it is something that is constantly evolving. And the more time we have under our belt, the more we see how humans respond to the food environment, the more the food environment changes.

Renee Fitton

We have to be able to change our perspective. And so that's the other thing that I like. If I were to kind of give somebody a seal of approval, they have to be able to recognize that people are unique and that things change with our environment and time. So I don't know I could go on for days with this, but it's a good question, and I think at the end of the day I would I would say it's a combination of time, experience and proof in results. Yeah, I

Steve Washuta

think it's a great answer. And I think also defining what some terms are inside of the nutrition world is very important, because, you know, health and vanity are two two different things. I know a lot of people who you know, I'll put them up against you if, if you want them to put 30 pounds of muscle on somebody, that doesn't mean that they're healthier people, right? That doesn't mean that they that they're looking out for that person's health interest and their long term health and wellness.

Steve Washuta

That just means they know how to put them on a caloric surplus with the right macronutrients, and they'll give them the right lifting program to gain weight. That's completely different than, than, than the health component, right? So there can be a vanity component when people consider themselves experts in but if you don't have somebody above you, right? If you're not, if you, if you are a coach of some sort, and you're not reaching out to a Renee to maybe learn underneath, or at least have your client to see them to say, like, are we also making sure that this person is staying healthy and that we're worried about their long term health and wellness? I think that's a problem and not and conflating health and vanity with with nutrition is what I see a lot in my industry.

Renee Fitton

I could not agree more, we I usually use the term double bottom line. So yes, you can maybe see results in one avenue, but if you are seeing results here, and you're not supporting your overall longevity long term, then you are you really supporting your health, right? And so certainly with bodybuilders, where we we see some, you know, push in one vertical we may be seeing a detriment in another.

Renee Fitton

And we also see that with significant weight loss, or even, you know, I've been talking about calorie restriction a lot, but there is a bad side to calorie restriction too, especially if it's done too much, and we see muscle wasting. So, you know, there is absolutely a a critical component to measuring as many aspects of health as possible and making sure that we are not over, prioritizing one vertical over you know, kind of what we talked about, like the multiple pillars of health and longevity.

Steve Washuta

Renee, this has been great information. Can you give my listeners and audience a direction as to where to go to find more about El nutra and you yourself and Prolon and anything else that you think of that is important to point them towards?

Renee Fitton

Yes, absolutely. So if fasting mimicking sounds interesting to you, I strongly recommend checking out one of two companies. One is Prolon. We mentioned them. They are kind of the general health longevity, maybe a little bit of weight loss, a little bit of metabolic health. Angle that is going to be P, R, O, L O N, life.com so Prolon life.com if you have a medical condition, especially type two diabetes, pre diabetes, if you're on any medications for blood pressure, cholesterol, etc, then you probably want to check out L nutra health. So that's L, dash N, U, T, R, a health. Do. Dot com.

Renee Fitton

And if you have any questions about anything that we chatted about today and you want to connect with me, please do so the best and fastest way is via Instagram at fittin nutrition. That's f i t, t o n nutrition, or you can check me out on my website, Fitton nutrition,

Steve Washuta

I will put all the links in the description. My guest today has been Renee Fitton. Thank you very much for joining the truly good for Trulyfit podcast.

Renee Fitton

Thank you so much.

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