Firstly I would like to apologise for not having posted anything for so long, but I have been trying to get my head around the crazy behaviour we are being exposed to everywhere.  We are all entitled to think whatever we like about the current situation, and many of us will have differing ideas about the Virus, is it natural or was it engineered, or is there something more sinister lurking in the background, but for how long are we going to be able to voice our opinions without censorship? Censorship is already happening on some of the social media sites when it comes to vaccines and vaccinations. There is one thing that is abundant at present and that is fear, but why? Why are people being made to feel afraid, maybe this quote from Paulo Coelho throws some light on it “If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.”

In my life there has never been a time when our diet has been more important in strengthening our immune system with a healthy gut microbiome than now. The best way to stay safe around this virus is with our natural defences, our immune system and a little help with some Vitamin c, but how do we tune-up our immune system? The first thing is to cut out sugar in all its forms especially high fructose corn syrup, and get used to reading food labels, just as a pointer there are 56 different names for sugar used on food labels. How can we possibly get round this problem with food labelling, and the answer is simple don’t eat processed food, just single ingredients and make it yourself. So you are going to spend more time in the kitchen but can you really afford to put a price on your health especially now. Just for a minute think about this, why are some of the people exposed to the virus getting sick and dying, and others hardly even getting effected, it has to come down to the strength of their immune system. Of course there are those of us, who are already sick, and the virus is the final straw, but is the virus shown as a contributory factor, or the main cause, and I think we all know the answer to that one.

Let’s just quickly look at what we have been told to do, stay indoors, is that really healthy, or would you be better off in the sunshine boosting your Vitamin D and doing some deep breathing exercises, but of course at the same time keeping your social distancing. Wear a mask whenever you go out, but how do we expel toxins from  our bodies, through bowl movements, urine, sweat, oh yes through our breath, so you breath out expelling toxins, and then you can re-breath them? What about social distancing 2 metres, ok indoors that makes total sense, but outdoors it’s a complete nonsense, what if it is a windy day, then 10 metres might not be enough. I think that in the end we are ALL going to come face to face with this virus in whatever form it would have mutated into, and social distancing or a face mask are not going to save you if your immune system is weak.

We know that our diet plays a big role in strengthening our immune system, but what about the things that can suppress it, well obviously poor diet and a sedentary life style, but also anxiety and stress play a big role. As I said earlier there is an abundance of fear everywhere, and it’s not surprising, every time you turn on a television the news is all negative. We are constantly told how many more people have died, and how bad things can get if we don’t conform and stay at home, all negative, so how about some positive, the numbers who have recovered, or how many that have not got sick at all. This constant bombardment of negativity is causing the stress and anxiety and generating fear, add to that the lockdown and isolation which is totally unnatural and stressful for some especially the elderly living on their own, then people are going to get sick, and the damaged caused by this could generate problems for years to come.

I think it is pretty obvious that we are going to be living with restrictions for the foreseeable future, maybe not to the present level but while we have sociable distancing there are going to be queues, and along with them stress. One of the things we are being told is that there are going to have to be restrictions in place until we have a vaccine? What does this actually mean, I know there are some States in the USA where vaccination is becoming compulsory, but surely while we are still free beings we must have the personal choice as to what we allow to be pumped into us?

I had intended to make the point with this posting, that if we look after our own general health and wellbeing, and strengthen our immune system we must have the right to be able to accept or reject any form of vaccination. With the happenings of the last couple of weeks I want to expand this article to make a few points of my own. The other day I was called a Filthy White Racist because I disagreed with the current slogan Black Lives Matter, but they didn’t want to listen to my reasons why I had said it. What happened to George Floyd is way beyond disgusting, and of course Black Lives Matter, so do Brown Lives and Coffee coloured Lives and Yellow lives, and even White lives, everybody has the right to LIFE If this is going to be a turning point in our history then surely we have to look beyond ourselves, because every creature on this planet has that same right to life. Is it right that someone can demonstrate about human rights, then go home and collect a high power rifle, then go off to the woods and shoot a Deer or any other animal for sport, or a line of men with shotguns killing birds driven into the air by beaters and calling themselves Sportsmen?

There have been millions of voices shouting about the injustice caused to George Floyd, but possibly if only one voice had gone to his rescue, to make the point to those four officers that they were killing him he might still be alive, but sadly we cannot change what has been. What we were yesterday has made us what we are today, there are cries here in the UK about our past and links to slavery, but that is our HISTORY and we cannot change it, and pulling down statues is not going to change anything, it makes far more sense to leave them where they are, and make it clear for everybody what they represent. If you start removing statues and changing the names of Streets, what is next do you start destroying all the books with a reference to this past, then you could trace any surviving relatives and punish them for the deeds of their past relatives?

Of all the species on this planet we are the only ones that have the ability to make changes for the betterment of all, yet we are the most destructive. We are the only species on this planet that will kill for sport, or torture and humiliate an animal for entertainment and profit, or watch a pair of dogs tear each other apart in a pit so they can bet on the outcome, and still call ourselves civilised? If people want to protest why not protest against modern slavery, for the young women being bought and sold into the sex industry, or the young children being passed around and abused by paedophile rings, or the people being slaughtered because they have differing political views, or religious beliefs, these are all worthwhile causes but I don’t see many wanting to do anything about it. What I am seeing are politicians trying to make political gain out of the current situation, and that just about sums up where we are. If there is truly going to be a turning point then it needs to go way beyond Black Lives Matter, it needs to look at the systematic destruction of the rain forests and wild life habitats, it needs to look at the pollution in our oceans and seas, and the poisons being sprayed over farmlands and our food to produce greater profits, and the injustices that are occurring every day all over the planet. When we start to deal with all of this then we can start to talk about change…..  

The other day as I was coming out of my local supermarket I bumped into a lady from the next road to mine, who follows my posts ever since she lost over 50lbs through an  LCHF diet and fasting, which I had told her about, and now she  looks a good ten years younger. She made two comments about my last article, firstly she said if Diabetes is caused by Insulin wouldn’t it be called Insulin Diabetes, and secondly how can anyone think they can catch Diabetes?

I am going to take the second part of her question first, how can anyone think they can catch Diabetes This is relating to the husband and wife couple who both have T2D Type 2 Diabetes, and the husband said his wife caught it first and then he obviously caught it from her. Today we tend to live in a blame culture, if something goes wrong, or doesn’t work out quite as expected, it can’t be down to us it has to be an outside influence that has caused the problem, Now please don’t take this the wrong way, as I know plenty of people who take full responsibility for all their actions and would never dream of having it any other way, but there also seems to be an ever growing number who can’t. With this particular couple telling themselves that their Diabetes was NOT their doing, to them means they don’t need to change their lifestyle, with at least four pints of cola for her, and four energy drinks for him in about three hours, how could their Diabetes possibly be their fault?

Let’s look at her first question; if Diabetes is caused by Insulin wouldn’t it be called Insulin Diabetes, well for T2D it might describe it better if it was called Insulin Resistant Diabetes. From what I have learned so far in my own research is that although T1 and T2 are both called Diabetes Mellitus they are totally different, almost a complete opposite. In T1D the pancreas is not producing insulin, and with T2D your body is generating too much insulin. Insulin is the body’s fat storing hormone, and the key for getting glucose from the blood into the muscles and tissue where it is needed. T1Ds will always need to inject insulin to survive, even if they choose a ketogenic style diet, which lowers the amount of insulin needed to regulate blood glucose, but without it they can’t get the glucose from the blood into the muscles, but also they can’t store any fat.

T2D this is something I can talk about from my personal experiences, and they have not all been good. Some still consider T2D to be a chronic and progressive disease, and it is with the recognised standard treatment, but that is because what is being treated is the high blood sugar, not the insulin resistance which is a major cause. I can’t say every case of T2D is self-induced but with the modern western diet the majority of cases probably are. I know now that mine was, when you start your day with cereal followed by a couple of slices of toast and marmalade and a coffee, you get a blood sugar spike which plummets by midmorning, so a quick sandwich and a can of drink to keep you going until lunch. Some fast food for lunch then an afternoon snack a carbohydrate rich evening meal, late evening snack then bed. Your insulin levels are going to be high all day, and this high insulin every day over the years causes the insulin resistance.

Insulin is the same as alcohol, tobacco or any drug; the more you have the more you need to get the same effect, as your body builds a natural resistance. I can remember back in those crazy days when it was common for people to smoke, if you had a cold or sore throat and you didn’t have a cigarette for a few days that first one gave you such a hit, but it didn’t last. With insulin there is a quick way to cure insulin resistance and increase insulin sensitivity, and that is fasting, for me it took a five day fast and a week later a fourteen day fast. A real bonus in fasting is reducing the amount of fat stored in your liver, as this fat is a major contributor to insulin resistance. If you are almost your perfect weight and don’t have any problems with your blood sugar, there are still plenty of health benefits from doing a 24 hour fast once a week, and you only have to skip breakfast and lunch, and have your evening meal one hour later than the night before…

Before I get into this article I want to make it clear that I am not a Doctor, Nutritionist or Dietician or even a Health Care Worker. Everything on this site and in the articles comes from my personal experiences in my fight against Metabolic Syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes, and general bad health. Since I was diagnosed with Diabetes I have spent hundreds of hours on research into the causes and treatments of Type 2 Diabetes and Diet. I cannot stress strongly enough that anybody considering making any changes to their diet or trying fasting, or anything else consult their DOCTOR or health care worker first, because if you are on medication changes can be FATAL.

I was invited to a barbeque the other day, and although I was fasting I decided to go, as being around food when I am fasting doesn’t bother me. A husband and wife couple came over and asked if I was the guy who wrote about weight loss and type 2 Diabetes, and I told them I had a website that covered weight loss and diabetes, and they told me I should be ashamed of myself for printing lies and putting out false information and hope to people who are already suffering. My friends holding the barbeque knowing this couple both suffered from type 2 Diabetes, recommended they have a look at my site which they did. On their next doctors visit they asked him about controlling their Diabetes with diet, and he told them “rubbish, total nonsense, never heard of anything so silly, it’s a chronic and progressive disease, so you just keep taking your medication and you will be fine”. I tried to explain that all the information was from personal experience but they didn’t really appear to be listening. What the husband said next totally threw me, as he told me his wife caught it first, and she obviously passed it on to me, and that is how they both ended up with it. I was totally stunned, at the fact they appeared to be perfectly normal people, yet had no knowledge of Diabetes, were obviously not getting any relevant information from their doctor, nor did they seem bothered about it, and just put it down to bad luck.

The wife was a big woman, probably bordering on morbidly obese, but her husband didn’t really appear to be that much overweight, but while we had been talking he was on his second energy drink that gives you wings and she was on her second pint of cola. She was already injecting insulin but he was still taking Metformin tablets twice a day, and they truly believed that because they were being medicated sugar was not a problem!!! I felt like saying for f***s sake change your doctor, but it really is not his fault, I think if you are diagnosed with a so called chronic and progressive disease you owe it to yourself to at least learn about the basics of the disease and the effects it can have on your general health and wellbeing  The trouble with this couple was that they accepted their situation, and as far as they were concerned could do nothing about it anyway, and really were not interested in what anyone else had to say. With this sort of ignorance there has to be a price tag somewhere down the road in the form of complications, but unfortunately it is the already stretched resources of the NHS that have to pick up that bill.

As I started to walk away a woman came over and said I hope you don’t think I am being rude but I heard what you were talking about, and I have been told I have Pre Diabetes. I asked her what her doctor advised and she said, she just told her to come back in six months and get another blood test. What I really don’t understand is that here in the UK Diabetes and its associated complications costs the NHS around £10 Billion every year, so why don’t they give people who are so called Pre Diabetic a leaflet or information booklet telling them what dietary and lifestyle changes they need to make, to STOP them becoming fully Diabetic in the first place. Helen she has said I can use her name, has found out some information on type 2 Diabetes but was not aware that you could stop it in its tracks by making some diet and lifestyle changes. There does seem to be plenty of information about how to live with it, but not that much about how to prevent it or reverse it. I know it’s easy to oversimplify things but as I said to Helen, stop putting sugars into your body and burn off what is already there and you’re on the right path to prevent full blown Diabetes.

By the time a doctor says you have Pre Diabetes it is not the start of a problem, the problem would have been smouldering away in the background for years, I never had the chance to sort things out at the Pre Diabetes stage, I only go to know when I had the full Monty, metabolic syndrome and type 2 Diabetes, and then not knowing anything else I went the pharmaceutical route, but it can NEVER CURE your condition only manage it. Type 1 Diabetes is different and not really covered here, but I will say that one guy at the barbeque with type 1 went from 110 units of insulin a day to 30 units purely by working with his doctor, and changing his diet to LCHF (low carb high fat). There is a problem with pharmaceuticals and type 2 Diabetes, the meds can get the excess sugar out of your blood and force it anywhere it can in your body, usually as fat, but it leaves your blood with high insulin levels circulating and that is just as bad as high sugar. This is just a vicious circle, a human merry-go-round with more and more sugar being crammed into your body as fat and no amount of pharmaceuticals are ever going to get rid of it.     

So how do we get rid of the sugar stored in our bodies especially if you are Pre or type 2 Diabetic, and more so if you are male because it is a double edged sword!!! It doesn’t matter what you do diet wise if you are producing insulin you cannot burn stored energy, so you need to cut the carbs and raise your fat intake to control your insulin level and prevent any spikes. Now for some bad news for the guys, if you are storing fat around your belly and organs as visceral fat, it causes the body to produce oestrogen the female hormone which suppresses our testosterone levels even more than the natural loss with age, which makes losing weight even harder. There is no easy solution, no magic potion where you can lose 50lbs of belly fat by next Thursday, or some miracle lost ancient formula that dissolves fat overnight, the only thing that I have found that works is a combination of diet and fasting. So now we come to the title Fasting, Fasting, and more Fasting, But Why? And the why is to get rid of the stubborn visceral belly fat and in the process greatly improve our health.

This WILL NOT work for everyone, I have spoken in person, on the phone and by email to people who want to fast but just can’t do it, and they ALL have one thing in common, they are high carb eaters. If you are a sugar burner fasting is going to be pure torture, you might be able to go for 24hrs but it will be very uncomfortable, because your sugar supply will run out in about 12hrs, and your body is going to be screaming for more sugar, and you will get some serious hunger pangs. There is no free ticket here, you are going to have to make some dietary changes in order to become fat adapted. Once you are fat adapted when your body runs out of sugar to burn as energy it automatically switches to burning stored body fat, which is what we are designed to do, by producing ketone bodies, which is a much better fuel than sugar. The problem is these days a lot of people just eat too much, breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, evening meal, television snack, and some have a snack before bed, their bodies are constantly digesting food, and some wonder why they have no energy?  

So how do you go about becoming fat adapted or metabolically adapted as it is more usually referred to, well it’s not a switch that you can just turn on but is a process. The first step is to cut right back on your carbohydrate intake especially the ones that quickly convert to sugar, also totally cut out any high sugar drinks, fruit juices and soda’s and stop adding any sugar to tea or coffee. Any kind of fast food is out, also ready meals and processed food in general and any wheat based products, it’s not rocket science you just need to get back to eating proper food. Once you have become fat adapted you can concentrate on fasting and this is a case of the longer the better. Every time you fast the first 2 days are the hardest so it pays to go as long as you can comfortably to get the most benefits, and 7 days is a good start. There is no way I am saying it’s easy but the benefits always out way the effort, because the aim here is to improve INSULIN RESISTANCE which is the key to reversing Type 2 Diabetes and Pre Diabetes, and to rid yourself of belly fat and that lethal build-up of sugar.

I believe we are on the verge of a medical revolution we already know that Type 2 Diabetes can only be reversed by diet, as pharmaceuticals can only control it at best. Dementia and its most common form Alzheimer’s has no cure using pharmaceuticals only short term management, but reports going back to 2008 show much better results using diet, C8 MCT oil, and organic coconut oil, with the ketone bodies being able to pass through the blood barrier and feed the brain, and fasting helping to clear the plaque tangles. Even certain cancers are being assed for treatment with diet and fasting because they need sugar but cannot survive on fat, and some of the treatment available now can have worse side effects than the disease. With the global explosion of Type 2 Diabetes and Alzheimer’s you would expect it to be common knowledge that natural remedies appear to have better results than those from the pharmaceutical companies, could it be down to the fact that there are no vast profits to be made from natural and free remedies?   

If you are Pre Diabetic or already Type 2 Diabetic I recommend you watch this video by Dr Jason Fung https://youtu.be/ZEr9AjjL3No   There have been two things that have changed my life health wise, the first was watching a series on-line by Naomi Whittel called The Real Skinny On Fat, which made me rethink everything I had read about diet up to that point. The second was Dr Jason Fung and his approach to treating Type 2 Diabetes which instantly made total sense.

Until next time I wish you the best of health…

With all the conflicting information floating around at present how do we make the right decision about our diet? This has to be down to what you need, or what you are looking for is it for health, longevity or fitness, and I am including obesity and weight loss in with health. I must stress that the information on this site is based on the successes and failures I have experienced in my personal fight against obesity and diabetes, and any changes you might think of making to your diet or fasting should only be done after consulting your doctor or health care worker, as any changes while you are on medication can be extremely dangerous.

Low Fat and No Fat, I spent years on the low fat route after I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, back in late 2003 and it was no fun. Every time I saw the doctor or dietician, it was the same mantra carbs are good fat is bad, and I would keep saying but my weight is going up. I would keep getting the same answer, you must be eating too many calories and not exercising enough, it’s all down to calories in against calories out, so just eat less and move more. At this time I was doing a three mile power walk every night before I went to bed regardless of the weather, and I was still not really losing much weight, but even more worrying was the fact that my blood sugar was getting worse. I was getting to the stage where I was dreading going to see the doctor, because I would get the same lecture, you’re not sticking to your diet, or exercising enough, you must try harder. I was following my doctor’s advice to the letter so what was going wrong? Plus the amount of medication I was on kept going up, 2 medications for diabetes twice a day, and 2 for blood pressure twice a day and a statin for cholesterol just in case.

I realised that I needed to understand diet a lot more than I did at that time, so I spent a lot of my spare time in my local library, this was around 2004 and a lot of information was finding its way onto the internet but nothing like what we have today. One thing that I had kept seeing was when the fat is taken out of food, sugar or a sugar substitute, often high fructose corn syrup is added, but this just didn’t make any sense, you already have a problem with blood sugar, and you are recommended to make it worse, putting even more strain on your pancreas. This was starting to give me some questions for the doctor on my next visit, obviously there was an explanation but not being a doctor I must be missing something obvious.

What about the carbs, because I kept being told carbs are good fat is very bad, but which carbs because they are in everything, including some dairy, beans and pulses which are proteins. Could this be a case of The Good The Bad and The Ugly, because all carbs are definitely not equal, and this is where a lot depends on your end goal. Being diabetic I decided to keep away from the carbs that raised blood sugar, I mean how could these possibly be good for someone already suffering from high blood sugar, but I kept being told that carbs are good and fat is bad. Whole grains, how often have you been told how good whole grains are for you, now is that before the wheat is sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate) a couple of weeks before harvest, to kill the plant and increase the yield? With the way that the grain is processed today very little of the goodness in the grain remains compared to when it was harvested naturally and stone ground.

Everything made from refined wheat flour is out, bread, pasta, cakes, biscuits, so where does that leave us, well white rice and potatoes also convert to sugar very quickly and raise our blood sugar levels. So now we can see that if you are diabetic or have high blood sugar but still below the base line for diabetes, low fat and some carbs are not such a good idea, they will actually make things worse. Before I move on let’s talk about potatoes, white rice and pasta. Potatoes if you boil them, and I always leave the skin on just give them a good scrub, let them cool and put them in the fridge, I usually leave them for 24hrs before I use them, they would have changed into resistant starch, which feeds the gut bacteria. Pasta and white rice are very similar, once cooked let them cool and keep in the fridge for at least 12hrs and they become resistant starch and are great for feeding the gut bacteria, and make a good base for a healthy salad.

Let’s look at some of the good carbs, although I say I use a LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) eating plan I do eat a lot of green vegetables, cauliflowers, all types of onions, spring onions, mushrooms and bell peppers. By cutting out the carbs that where raising my blood sugar, but still eating green carbs I have managed to lose around 100lbs which proves you don’t need extremes but a sensible balance to get your weight and blood sugar under control, but I have also done a lot of longer fasts. I do eat too many carbs for a ketogenic diet plus I still enjoy some fruit on a daily basis, but I still find myself at times in ketosis even when I am not fasting. I try and keep to fresh organic whenever possible, but sometime I have to result to frozen when it comes to Brussels Sprouts because of availability, as they are one of my favourite vegetables along with Broccoli.

What about fat, I have to admit that for years I used to use vegetable oils, well it has to be healthy doesn’t it, made from vegetables or so you would think, oops!!! Once I realised how the oil was extracted and how toxic it was, what I had went straight in the bin and I have never used any since. I have been told many times that margarine is the healthy option especially if you are diabetic, but if margarine is made from vegetable oil with hydrogen molecules added to make it into a solid, how can that be healthy. I have now gone back to the fats I knew as a lad, butter, lard, tallow, plus now I use a lot of Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil but only for dressings not cooking. One of the things you don’t really get anymore is beef dripping, when we used to have a rolled joint of beef it had plenty of fat on it which you would save in a bowl, and when it cooled you had a layer of light coloured fat on top, and some dark jellified dripping under it.

If the old fats where so bad for us, that they would clog up our artery’s and give us heart attacks, why was it not happening in the 20s, 30s, 40s and early 50s, and how is it that our general health has become far worse since we gave them up in favour of vegetable oils and margarine type spreads. These old fats only became criticised after American President Eisenhower had his first heart attack back in 1955. Dr White his personal physician and his friend Ancel Keys, who was a physiologist who studied the influence of diet on our health, concluded that it was caused by dietary saturated fat and here started the slippery slope to today’s health problems. One of the things that were never even considered at that time to being a contributing factor was that President Eisenhower smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. How the times have changed, we now know what cigarettes can do to our health, but unfortunately we are only just discovering the overall damaging effects that the recommended modern diet is having on our health.

With obesity and type 2 diabetes now almost a global pandemic everywhere that follows the recommended healthy modern diet, it has got to be obvious that something somewhere has gone terribly wrong. I fully understand that I could be pilloried for even thinking this, but is it just possible that under the constant ever increasing high pressure on the food industry to make even greater profits, money now comes before our general health and wellbeing? In conclusion I am personally going to stick with a diet made up of quality fruit and vegetables, organic where possible, grass fed free range quality beef, free range organic chicken and eggs, and the old fats that I have mentioned, until someone can show me solid unequivocal proof that what I am doing is wrong. Not being a doctor, dietician or even a health worker, I can only go by how I personally feel health wise, and when I was type 2 diabetic following the recommended diet, taking a bucket full of pharmaceuticals, most of the time I used to feel like crap. Since I have changed my diet, and not using pharmaceuticals, which cannot cure a dietary disease anyway, I feel great, more energy no more debilitating headaches, clearer thinking, and best of all I really love my food….

The other day I was visiting a friend of mine when his daughter arrived, this is someone who I had not seen for about ten years, and I was quite shocked at what I saw. She is about 5 feet 8 inches tall so not short for a woman, and she had never been overweight, but now she told me she was around 275 lbs. suffers from Type 2 Diabetes, has high blood pressure and cholesterol, neuropathy in both feet, and also has angina, and she is only 36 next month. The crazy thing is that she knows her weight is slowly killing her, but she is more afraid of the results of losing the excess weight.

It started for her when a relationship went sour and she turned to comfort eating fast food, and the trouble is here in the UK now you can get just about any fast food delivered to your door, and that includes McDonalds, and the only effort you have to make is a phone call. The weight soon started to pile on, making her more depressed, resulting in even more comfort eating until she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes five years ago. I have known her since she was a baby, and as a teenager she was always drinking large bottles of cola, but she was always really active so no weight problems, but the sugar would have been doing the damage in the background.

You might be wondering what anyone would be afraid of when it comes to losing weight, well its loose sagging skin. The problem was she had watched a couple of programs on the television where they had lost large amounts of weight and had to have the surplus skin surgically removed, and she felt the whole idea was totally disgusting and dangerous. I showed her that I had lost over 100lbs. and no loose skin in sight, because I mixed diet with fasting, and when you do the longer fast, 5 days plus your body uses the surplus skin for energy through autophagy. I could tell she was interested in what I was telling her, and she certainly was not happy with the situation that she was now finding herself in.

She does have a big advantage on her side and that is the fact she is very capable of cooking to a high standard, and she understands the concept of real food. This all took place at the beginning of July, and I spoke to her on the phone yesterday 2^nd of August and she sounded like a different person. Change can never happen overnight, but she has cut out fast food and is cooking real food again, and has done her first 72 hour fast, and is planning on a five day fast in the next couple of weeks with the help of her doctor. If you can get your doctor on side it makes things so much easier I had a lot of opposition when I started fasting, my doctor even made a note on my medical record that she had advised me against it, but changed her mind when she saw the results. The really good news was that in a month, taking into account the time it takes to make changes, she has already lost 12lbs and is sounding really confident about her future.  

It is amazing how quickly things can start to change when you get back to eating real food, and cutting out all the processed high sugar crap. The thought of making major changes in our lives can be far worse than the changes themselves, but as we see and feel the benefits of these changes it makes the effort totally worthwhile. I think the lesson to be learnt here is not to accept the first thing you see, but to do some research and find if there is another way, because you will often find that there is, and often it can be far more acceptable than you first thought.

Until next time I wish you all the very best of health…

 I am not talking about getting caught out in the rain, or standing in a shower, no I am talking about hydration, or more importantly dehydration. I have always tried to drink the recommended amount, which here in the UK is about 1 to 2 litres in winter rising to 2+ litres in the summer, but this is just a rough guide, and because I drink around 2 litres every day I must be on the safe side, well no.

After I switched to a LCHF diet and lost a lot of weight in a fairly short period I decided that the last 60 lbs. would be lost more gradually over about twelve months, and I was losing around 11/2 lbs. per week so I was well on target, but then it suddenly stopped. Several other things started to change around the same time, for me the worst was getting constipation again, something that had not happened since I stopped eating any wheat products, and eating more of a plant based diet. The first thing I think about when it comes to constipation and hard stools is a lack of fibre, and not getting enough exercise, and with my leg problem exercise is something I am not getting enough of, so problem solved or is it?

Two other problems I was suffering were a general lack of energy, and headaches, again something I had not been having problems with since I changed my diet. The other problem that goes with a lack of energy and a headache is your ability to be able to concentrate on a task. I tried to back track to see if I had changed anything subconsciously but all I came up with was that I was eating a few more roasted almonds as I keep a bowl on my desk, but my basic diet had not changed. Diet wise the only changes I have made are to increase the amount of Turmeric I use and also I have started using Cumin as an antioxidant, but that can only improve things not cause complications.

Sometimes it’s easy to miss the obvious because if it was not my diet causing my problems what was it, and the answer was temperature, the weather had got warmer and it had made quite a big temperature change in my work room with my equipment on, especially my flat screen monitors. All I needed to do was up my water intake to a minimum of 3 litres a day and in a couple of days everything was back to normal. What threw me was the fact that I didn’t feel thirsty, but the rise in temperature, combined with eating more almonds, which are dry so they are taking water from your body. It doesn’t take a lot to cause problems, so if you start feeling tired or you are getting headaches drink a glass of water and wait fifteen minutes and see how you feel, chances are you will feel better. What I do now is have a 1 pint glass of water with me and drink it over about an hour; you don’t want to gulp down too much at once as it just dilutes your body’s electrolyte. So you are better to drink more than you need rather than not enough, and even a gallon a day is not too much.

Wishing you the best of health until next time

No! No guys not that, how many times a night do you get up to have a pee, if it’s more than once then read on. There was a time when I was getting up every couple of hours, and I am lucky in that I can get back to sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, but I was still feeling knackered in the morning. The sad thing is that I thought it was one of those problems that you get as we get older and you just have to accept it. For me it got worse during the day, as I would suddenly get an urgency to pee, and it really was urgency as it was almost impossible to hold it. This was a real low point, the thought of becoming one of those old guys who is incontinent, with a failing memory in a home somewhere, stuck in a chair staring out of a window dribbling all day was just not the future I had in mind. I was starting to get some serious short term memory loss, which is really frightening when you live alone, but I will talk about that in another article.

It was around this time that I was making some major dietary changes, cutting out all wheat products including pasta, plus potatoes and rice, basically all the carbs that effect blood sugar and insulin. One of the other things I did was to stop eating any processed food as there is always added sugar, so it was single ingredients all the way, plus I stopped drinking any kind of soda. When I changed to the Low Carb High Fat diet I also started fasting, one day at first then three days, then five and right up to twenty eight days this February. When you are doing water fasting you can drink green tea, and I enjoy Jasmine Green Tea as it tastes ok even when it’s got cold, and I use a very large mug which holds nearly a pint, so on fasting days I can drink a couple of pints of tea. At this point the biggest change I had ever made was my diet to Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) and suddenly I wasn’t getting up so much at night, and the urgency to pee during the day had dramatically improved. I found out that when I was fasting I could drink black coffee and as I have been a coffee addict for years that became my drink of choice, the only difference is when I was not fasting I have it with double cream. I started to notice that I was getting up more at night again, because some nights I had slept right through, and others I had got up once, but now it was back to two or three times but I was still ok during the day. I started drinking at least one mug of green tea every day, and I sleep through the night again apart from the odd night when I might get up once.

A friend of mine was having the same problem although he is only in his early sixties he did live a highly inflammatory lifestyle, fast food, lots of soda style drinks and ready meals. He started drinking green tea every day, and although things didn’t get any worse they didn’t really improve very much. I persuaded him eventually to cut out fast food, and drink water instead of soda for one month, and things did improve quite quickly, enough to convince him to make the changes permanent, and to ramp it up another couple of notches. He is now on a healthy low carb grain free diet, and has lost about 25lbs without trying, and now sleeps right through just about every night. Although green tea is really good for your prostate, and a very good antioxidant you also have to make some healthy dietary changes to get the full benefits, and it’s surprising how quickly you start to feel better, and want more.

Wishing you the best of health until next time…

I had not intended this being the next post, but the article I have been working on for the last six weeks is far from finished, and it’s turning out to be far more complicated than I ever envisaged, but as soon as it is completed it will be posted.

The numbers I am referring to in the title are the ones that change once a year on your birthday. The generation before my own born in the late 1930s and early 40s were basically conformists; they behaved in a certain way and dressed according to their age, and what was expected of them. Luckily for me and my generation that all changed, with the youth revolution of the 60s we found ourselves with more freedom than ever before. I am now 70 and I still love driving fast whenever possible, and love pushing the envelope in whatever I do. I don’t feel any different now to when I was in my fifties, actually that is not strictly true, when I was in my late fifties I was on a lot of medication for high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and of course a statin for my cholesterol, and a lot of the time I felt like crap. Roll forward fourteen years, and I am 125 lbs. lighter with no medication in sight, and life has begun again, well almost I still have a leg problem to solve, which I am determined to do this year.

 I have no intentions of putting any sort of restraints on myself; I still have too many things I want to do, and before you even think it, one of them is definitely not to climb Mt Everest, far too bloody cold, and if I wanted to go to 29,000 feet I would rather do it in a glider, at least you can wrap up warm. I know in my own case decline moved in rather slowly, I also had the tomorrow syndrome, you know you are gaining a little weight and not exercising quite as much as you should, but you are definitely going to do something about it tomorrow. The big problem with Tomorrow Syndrome is that when it becomes today there is always something more important to take care of and that can be as simple as your favourite show or film on the television. One that got me a lot was when the day takes longer than expected, and rather than cooking you decide to stop off for some fast food. The trouble with fast food is it usually has a bun with something in it, of course large fries followed by a hot apple pie, and possibly a chocolate milkshake, sound familiar. This meal will set you up for one thing, to flop into a comfy chair as soon as you get home, and as the sugar spike starts to drop crawl into the kitchen in search of something sweet to eat.

If you want to live long, but also live healthy you can’t afford to put things off until tomorrow where your health is concerned. With things like type 2 diabetes, it can be years in the making, and then suddenly bang and it’s got you, then things can really start to go downhill. I was talking to a friend when he had just been diagnosed with Type 2, and he said “I don’t know what all the fuss is about, it’s only type 2 so how bad can that be.” Type 2 Diabetes is a KILLER; given half a chance it will destroy you from the inside out. I have covered this in previous postings but what I will say is that if you are unlucky enough to be diagnosed with it, you will be told that it’s Chronic and Progressive, the prescription pad will come out, and you are already on the slippery slope. Type 2 Diabetes is a dietary disease and cannot be cured with pharmaceuticals, only by changing your diet. The reason I have covered this again is to make the point, if you are gaining visceral belly fat you cannot afford to wait until tomorrow. The article that I mentioned at the beginning of this post covers this topic, visceral fat, estrogen levels in men, and what I am having difficulty getting figures on is the link to prostate cancer, but as estrogen levels raise so does the incidence of cancer. That alone should be enough to make all you guys determined to rid yourself of that belly fat.  

If belly fat is starting to build up you have got to make changes, and it’s going to hurt but if you don’t act it only becomes far more painful, and you can trust me on that because I have been there. You can easily find yourself in a situation where it’s like a runaway train, whatever you try and do diet wise it’s not shifting that visceral fat which is continuing to build. Now is the time to look at your diet and be totally honest with yourself, because what you are doing is NOT working. Two things you have to look at are, sugar and white carbs, mashed potatoes, white rice, pasta and bread, because these carbs convert to sugar rapidly and spike your insulin levels (the fat storing hormone). The recommended maximum amount of sugar for adult males is 30grms per day, and women 25grams and ONE average 330 ml can of soda has 36grams of sugar, and that is before you have eaten anything!!! Sugar is in everything, breakfast cereals, processed food, canned soups, and the obvious ones cakes and breads, and the worst thing is sugar isn’t always called sugar, there are 61 different names used in food labels. It doesn’t take rocket science to live a lot healthier, avoid vegetable oils, use single ingredients, eat meat from grass fed animals, avoid fast food as much as you possibly can, and if you are still following the low fat mantra, take a look at how much sugar is in it, you could well be in for a shock. Changing lifetime habits is never going to be easy, and if you are happy to get sick and die before you need to just keep doing what you do now, but if you want to live to a good old age and remain healthy you have got to make changes!

If you still need a little inspiration to go the extra half mile it’s not hard to find. Dr John Bergman in his video Arthritis Is Reversible shows pictures of a woman working out on the parallel bars, the only unusual thing here is that the woman is 96 years old, plus in the same video he shows a body building group where the minimum age to join is 75, and these guys are the real deal. Dr Caryn Zinn a New Zealand registered Dietician, who strongly believes in a Low Carb Diet and fasting for longevity, says she would be happy to die when she is 98, by being knocked off her mountain bike while racing through a forest, and why not, if you don’t accept restrictions. This guy is my favourite Dr Joseph Maroon a world leading Neurosurgeon, who at 71 is still taking part in high level Triathlons, and The Iron Man competition, and that has to be one of the hardest challenges you can put yourself through at any age, let alone at 71. The only way anybody can reach peak performance at any age is with the right diet; otherwise you will never be able to reach your full potential.

Dr John Bergman, Arthritis Is Reversible

Dr Caryn Zinn – ‘…On Fat and Fasting’

Dr Joseph Maroon – The Dr Maroon interview starts at 1:06:03 but if you have not seen this video before you should watch all of it.

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Completing the 28 day fast in February ended up being a real anti-climax. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but in the end I did lose just over two stone in weight, and a task that would normally take me about seven days I managed to complete in four, so mentally I was more alert and focused. Now looking back I think I could have got the same or even better benefits from doing much shorter and easier fasts. It does depend on what you are trying to achieve, if you want anti-ageing and growth hormone, the best results are achieved with one meal a day, fasting for around 23 hours, but if you are looking for maximum weight loss you want to go for 72 hours or longer. I have done 5 day, 7 day, 10 and 12 days and the 28 day, I still have about 4 stone that I want to lose, and I am considering trying 3 days of fasting and 4 days eating, on a four week cycle. This is something I will be covering at a later date after I have tried it and I know the results weight wise as well as health wise.

Health is something that everyone is interested in, especially as we get older we want to stay as fit as possible. It was to this end that while I was doing my 28 day February fast I started doing some research into the reason that some guys are finding it so hard to shift that stubborn belly fat, and it has turned out to be far more complicated than I first imagined. I still have a lot of work to do before this article is going to be ready, but I think it is the most important research that I have done so far, and when it is complete it’s something that every guy out there really needs to read, so keep watching guys….

I am now already five days past my previous longest fast of twelve days, and at the moment I can’t see any reason that I won’t be able to complete the remaining eleven days. I have said previously that weight loss was not my main reason for this fast, but I am totally surprised at the amount of weight I have lost so far, 2st 2lbs in seventeen days, and that amount of weight you really feel the difference. The reason for fasting was to try and see if autophagy would repair the nerve damage and hip problems in my left leg. When I started this fast I could only lift my leg a couple of inches, now I can lift it about twelve inches and relatively pain free, and that’s a first for around three years. So what else has happened, well my skin has improved and my blood pressure is now quite stable at 120/80 and considering where it used to be is great. It’s not all been plain sailing though, day’s 13, 14, and 15 I didn’t feel that good, having headaches and feeling rather lethargic, but it turned out I just needed to increase my water intake, and I am now feeling pretty good. I have been doing a half hour upper body workout every other day, but I am now increasing that to every day and possibly increasing it to forty-five minutes. For the next entry I shall be giving some thought to re-feeding as that time will be getting close, until then I wish you all the very best of health.