It’s Umbria in May, and I’m lying in a room overlooking the lush, undulating hills, reading my book, stomach rumbling. You think a tale of a delectable pasta lunch before taking to a hammock for a snooze is coming next, right? Wrong. My stomach rumbling is part of the reason I’m there; rather than gorge myself as is the norm when in Italy, I am here at the SHINE Regeneration Retreat to be hungry or, more officially, to try a fasting-mimicking diet under the supervision of a nutritionist to trigger something called autophagy.
Literally meaning ‘eating itself’, through this process old cells are broken down and recycled in order to form new cells. It has been hailed as the answer to everything from reducing the symptoms of long covid to nixing tiredness to losing stubborn fat. Its proponents talk about the huge effect it has on the body, and how it offers it a spring clean of sorts. Michelle McKenzie, the nutritionist who designed it and is overseeing our diets on the retreat, tells me, “Autophagy means self-eating, and it’s like a recycling plant, taking the waste and damaged cells which aren’t functioning as well, then using them to make new cells and proteins.”
