This Week – One of the best holidays of my life!

This week I’ve had a week off work. “Annual Leave”. Or “Holiday” as it is called. If I’m honest weeks away from work did me no favours at all. I would just use it as an excuse to drink more, or similar, and basically make the most of not having to get up for anything and living a pretty lazy, lethargic life for a week or two. Well, not any more it would seem.

This is the first week in years (possibly literally!), that I have not only done stuff with my week off, but I’ve genuinely enjoyed the week! I’ve been out and about, active, moving, smiling, eating well and generally feeling F’ing good about life.

Clocked up the following in terms of exercise:-

• 7km hike
• 17km of running
• 108km of cycling
• 2 hour-long boxing sessions
• 45-minute squash session

This is totally unreal for me, as most of you reading this would know. 100km of cycling?? – that’s 67 miles! That’s like cycling from Lands End to Truro and back.

I also met up with resident expert (!) Ken Walker who has been key in my journey so far, and I’m sure (I hope) he will continue to be. We measured some key body measurements (not the usual ones) and here are some of the improvements in the last 3/4 months.

• Body fat % reduced from 33.1% to 29.6%
• Visceral fat (fat surrounding internal organs) reduced from 16 to 13
• Body water % increased from 46.7% to 49.4%

All three of the above are amazing (I know, I’m biased), but it’s good to see different measures than the usual weight and inches for identifying improvements.

Still a way to go, obviously – guidelines for a healthy body fat (not that government guidelines are something I’m particularly trusting of!) is less than 20% for men aged between 20 and 39, Visceral fat should be less than 13 (well, we’re pretty much there already then) and body water should be between 50 and 65%.

So massive improvements, but still more to go – and these measurements will inevitably improve as this journey goes on. One thing I just have to stress though. Body fat % reduced. Visceral fat % reduced. Body weight reduced…. what have I been eating? – high fat, low carb. This isn’t an accident, this is science, and the joys of keto living. Health guidelines can, and should, be challenged, and I think in the coming years you will see lots of the controversy in high fat diets come into the mainstream and the dietary food pyramid might well be flipped on it’s head, chewed up and regurgitated.