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.”
While that sounds great, I have a slight qualm about reaching the state of autophagy. “The quickest way to trigger it is by fasting,” says McKenzie. You may think fasting is old hat, that most of us now know that it’s beneficial to routinely add little pockets of the day where we refrain from eating, but McKenzie isn’t talking about just any old fasting. “Autophagy is triggered at around the 17-hour mark and reaches its peak at 72 hours.” Ouch.
Fortunately for me, as an avowed eater of three meals a day, a clever man called Dr Valter Longo came up with a fasting-mimicking protocol, aka a way to eat thrice daily while your body still thinks it’s only getting water, which McKenzie has adopted for this retreat. The food is minimal and portions are miniscule. We’re talking a handful of blueberries and nuts for breakfast, and soups or stews for lunch and dinner. The food is delicious, but I leave each time thinking I could do with another portion. This is strictly forbidden, because each of our rations have been weighed and measured to make sure they come under the threshold to keep the body in fasting mode. But, still, better than just water, I tell myself. And, besides, I really want all those touted benefits.
In a bid to reassure myself that being this level of hungry is worth it, I look into autophagy and find mixed results. Doctor Frankie Jackson-Spence tells me that while “autophagy is a process that goes on in the body naturally as part of normal regeneration of cells, the idea of it clearing out suboptimal cells to improve wellness or fight disease has only actually been seen in animal studies”. I keep digging and come across The effect of fasting or calorie restriction on autophagy induction: A review of the literature, where the conclusion finds that “autophagy… plays a crucial role in normal function and hemostasis of cells, leading to an improvement of health” — in animals again, mind, though it sounds promising nonetheless.
Personal trainer Sophie Allin, who is always researching holistic health and who has steered me through many programmes, offered the following advice, “It’s so important to listen to your body. Yes, I find fasting has lots of benefits and can, for example, help those on a journey to lose weight because the body burns fat stores — but what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another.” Her words ringing in my ears, I decide that the only way to find out whether autophagy is for me is to keep going, so I firmly shelve ideas of carbs and cheese, and decide to bury my head in a book for five days while I relax.
This, by the way, is precisely why I have chosen to attend this retreat rather than attempt autophagy at home. While I’ve learned that intermittent fasting is perfectly manageable as I go about a rather hectic and busy life, autophagy doesn’t happen by accident; it requires forethought, planning, and downtime — none of which I thought I’d manage in London while at work. That’s where SHINE steps in. You fly out to the estate in Umbria for the week alongside five to eight other guests, and let the team do all the leg work while you walk around feeling a bit cross and flat and, in my case, quite emotional.
I ask Carla Octigan, founder of SHINE, whether this blanket of feelings engulfs everyone who undertakes this programme. “Some people breeze it, others panic. We wrap you up, fill you with electrolytes, and send in a body worker to help you through the day.” The treatments courtesy of those body workers she mentions I find hugely settling, with the massages, osteopathy, and kinesiology helping to punctuate the day rather than snacking.
I persist through the five days and, as predicted by Carla, by the end of it the gnawing hunger has abated, and in its place is oodles of energy, and a sense of feeling calm and settled. And, yes, my jeans are looser — which is bound to be the case when eating less, but nonetheless it serves as a reminder that something as simple as eating smaller portions of balanced meals does really help to shift fat and that, if that’s your goal, it might be a sound place to start before trying anything as drastic as, say, Ozempic.
After my return, I find I didn’t fancy sweet things at all, my appetite directing me towards similar foods to those served on the retreat. So I ate those sorts of things. Repeatedly. Four months later, and I’m very pleased with the results. First, my skin has more bounce, my hair more sheen, the whites of my eyes look whiter, and my nails are stronger. But, more astonishingly, my energy levels are consistently high throughout the day. While many of those are of course the cumulative result of those healthy habits, the retreat set me up to make those changes, and the autophagy worked magic at kicking things off. In fact, I could go for round two. See you in Umbria in 2024.
