One of my life goals is to help those like me that were born with or others who have developed and diagnosed a disease. Here is how I turned things around and also boosted my other organs, and as importantly, mental health.

14 stones of beefcake – that was me once upon a time. In your 20’s some men especially care about the size of their biceps and pecs and I obsessed about this…especially the pecs (chest) to the point I was able to jiggle my pecs to the beat of music – I have a real talent in this…so sad I know. Bouncing 140kg off my chest with little effort was back then shortsightedly an achievement. I was in good shape but no where near athlete fit.What I didn’t know was that I carrying some heavy internal fat also known as visceral fat. The fat we don’t see but envelope our organs like clingfilm. With one kidney and this must have put extreme duress on it – my yearly blood tests concurred.

Things had to change and fast. So I stripped back my food and lost weight – 3 stones in fact – but I lost muscle mass too. I felt better and I improved my kidney function (mindset and stress removal were also big factors) but after I created Relentless Challenge and started training hard for challenges I knew I had to learn more to reach athlete level.

3 years ago after hours of researching diets and nutrition plans, I kept coming back to one answer – Intermittent Fasting. I had to stop eating breakfast. Luckily I wasn’t a big breakfast fan – toast and almonds was usually enough. I ate my lunch at 12pm and dinner by 8pm. At first I didn’t feel a thing – I was already lean and fit so the changes were not apparent. I then introduced a training session in the morning during the fasting window and 3 months in my body started to transform. I was burning the visceral internal fat like a furnace. 12 months later I was a ripped athlete but more importantly I regained my strength that normal weight loss caused. Even more important was my the function of my Kidney.

(A great infographic on how to use intermittent fasting)

Removing the bad fat around the organ had boosted it’s function much to the pleasure of kidney specialist, my GP and of course me. This really blew my mind and I immediately thought how can I help others with results like this. I then introduced low carb and at times a ketogenic nutrition plan acted like lighter fluid to the process. I still only dip into ketosis/fat adapted energy burning as I need to research more deeply into kidney patients and keto nutrition.

‘But I Love My Breakfast’ I hear so many people say with croissant shaped eyes. Breakfast is a society created meal – the meal eaten the night before is still being used as fuel. Our brains are just wired by society to do certain things and breakfast is one of those. The dinner you eat is enough to fuel you for 24 hours so you DON’T need breakfast. But at risk of sounding like a preacher – this is only my scientific based opinion!

Now I have just been talking about the physiological benefits. The mind and brain – just Wow. Now that the biochemistry of your blood is much improved, the brain benefits from clean nutrition. What you then have is more energy, clarity and better ability to deal with day to day life and the removal of stress. In addition I am still researching the benefits of  how keto nutrition and a fat adapted lifestyle is reportedly rocket fuel to the brain.

(My all time favourite meal)

So for now I can say from personal experience, intermittent fasting has transformed my life, others I know personally and of course my online community of athletes.Relentless Challenge – Relentless Life