Had a Keto holiday this weekend and ate reasonably well but also drank a little more wine, ate too much chocolate than allowed and so boom, I’m outta the keto club again. I started the week with a 16:8 though and plan to continue this. I’m heading into the smoke for appointments and to meet up with friends on Wednesday so I’m going to hold on the monk until later on in the week, possibly wait until next week.

Rest assured I will be doing it though.

I’ve also picked up some weights and a bench over the weekend. All the advice is to develop a lifting discipline when you break 50 years old. Rather than splash for some swanky set of weights or gym set up, I picked up a cheap bench and dumbells and will see how readily I can fold them into my winter exercise routine. They cost me less than a months gym membership so I’m quite happy with that. I also had a couple of 10kg plates kicking about the house so of course these were instantly slapped onto a dumbbell to test my strength, which is ok, but I think I need to build up to curling 20kg before breakfast.

Back on it today. Tempted to have mackerel for breakfast and get those keytones going again. It was another 4am start though. Mediation didn’t come so easy so I hit the rowing machine, had a cold shower and set about some tidying that desperately needed doing.

4am seems to be the new standard. Early starts began around August 2024 when I started to routinely wake up at 5am. It’s great waking up at that time as it provides the opportunity to get shit done without any of the normal interruptions or distractions. It’s often the best part of the day and if there was nothing requiring some focus or attention (or both) I would walk the digs and watch the sunrise when the weather permitted. I recall one particular morning, everything seems rather quiet and still and just before the sun rose over the horizon a warm gust of wind crossed the fields and enveloped me for a moment before continuing on. It really felt that the air was racing ahead in front of the warmth of the rising sun. So much so that I hit Google up to see if there was a name for such a phenomena and apparently there isn’t.

Almost reverted to normal habits and neglected to post anything. I did make a few notes though so this should have been Thursday’s post. Thursday was interesting. Woke at 4am and decided to meditate. It was probably the best meditation I’ve had in about two years. I spent the day with a subtle smirk of a smile on my face all day. Even when standing in the rain, in the dark, directing traffic (because people sometimes appear to be unable to help themselves…or find reverse in their car).

It was also the first full day of normal meals after my 36hr fast. I picked up some Skinny lager which is low carb but I think tyring one of these out and a coupe of other indulgences (two squares of dark choc) kicked me out of ketosis.

Monk complete. Plus an extra three hours. I threw in some gentle exercise on the rowing machine last night and this morning to max out the benefits. I also started my cold showering this week. So how do I feel? Awesome! I feel totally revitalised. I was considering keeping up the fast but I thought it best to not get carried away after the first one of the year. Mentally it feels as if the fasts get easier the more you do. The rest of the family had a supermarket Chinese takeaway last night. Usually I’d have been all over it but to be honest I didn’t feel like I was missing out once I reminded myself it was ultra processed nonsense and busied myself with other things.

So breaking the fast with some bone broth, then have a boiled egg and some mackerel in olive oil lined up along with either Kim chi or sauerkraut. Depending on how I pace myself I might be ready for ribs tonight.

Weight is down to 103kg. I’m happy with that. Need to break that 100kg barrier which appears to have been a mental bump stop previously and I’ve hit it and started to fall off the keto wagon. The intention is to stick to the keto until I’m 90kg. I’m hoping to up the exercise and transition over to the Zoë diet once there. I’m not convinced full time keto is for me.

So keytones were still up this morning. Last food was 5pm ish last night. Time to squeeze a monk fast in before the weekend. This will be my fourth monk fast. If you time it so you sleep off the last few hours it’s easy enough, particularly coming off a year or so of 16:8 intermittent fasting. Not everyday but frequently enough to have built some mental resolve around established eating habits and to have had at least a couple of days where I thought I could carry on fasting for a longer period.

The last couple of times I came off a monk fast I felt awesome. Great energy levels and mental clarity but I timed them so I came off the fast on the Friday and went back to normal food instead of keto on the Saturday. I also messed up the breaking of the fast by eating too much too quick. I expect the benefits dwindle more rapidly in these scenarios so hopefully allowing more time to adjust back into the swing of things and sticking with the keto should render longer lasting benefits.

At the end of the day, I’m aiming to get some autophagy on the go. I need to research how you can tell your in the zone. The Zero app is ok for tracking fasting times but the meal input is not what it could be and this appears to influence how you advance through the various stages. You’re expected to log when you eat which is a pain in the arse. I’d rather enter mine as and when I remember and have time. As a result the app gives a very rough idea of when you might be in autophagy if you forget or not logging your food intake.

No significant weight loss yet either. A couple of kilos but I can lose that in one sitting if you know what I mean, lol.

The weekends are the hardest part. Usually the family are all off doing their thing most of the day and most evenings there’s something going on somewhere. At the weekend we tend to eat together which means me finding keto recipes that everyone will eat. Chicken and mushroom worked last weekend.

I did a little experimentation with food and drink. Whiskey is keto so I tried out a few cheese pairings which were ok but nothing really outstanding. It didn’t effect my ketones though and I was in the pink most of the weekend. I made a curry for Saturday’s main meal with plenty of cream and butter in the sauce. I only had a small portion and a smaller amount of rice but something kicked me out of ketosis by Sunday morning. I was back on track by the afternoon though.

I’m registering between 4 – 8 mmol/L and look to have lost about 2.5kg. Digestive transit is not what it could be though so I need to look into that.

The test strip this morning shows keystones are up somewhere between 1.5 and 4 mmol/L. Hopefully I’m burning off the fat! Another early 5am start although the meditation wasn’t particularly satisfying. Simply too much mental chatter after yesterday’s revelations to allow me to produce the mental blank slate required to get anywhere.

Checked my weight log from the scales and I was around 107.7kg with 31.8% body fat when I started. Today’s weigh-in had me at 106.1kg and 30.8% body fat. I’m not going to read anything into that other than hope it’s the start of a downwards trend. My target weight when I first got a Fitbit way back in December 2018 was 90kg. I hit 100kg just before this Xmas but the regular feasting and drinking took it’s toll. No more of that though!

So we’re heading into the weekend. Family time. This is where it gets difficult. I may relax the 18:6 fasting a little so I can eat meals with the rest of the gang. I’ll be springing some keto surprises on them and hopefully with a bit of discipline will be head first into a monk fast come Monday. Bring on the autophagy!

Yesterday went well. I had a lot of self-doubt about jumping straight back in to keto with the Dr Boz sardine fast and 18:6 intermittent fasting but I made it through. And I did blow the dust off the rowing machine and row for 10mins at a decent pace without it killing me. I found the hand weights too as I have a HIIT routine stuck in the bookmarks of a browser on a machine somewhere that I want to try. And I need to find my rowing gloves.

It didn’t quite carry on into today though. I ditched the sardines (sorry Dr Boz) and had sausage, egg and avocado with butter for breakfast (I forget where the weekly menu that that came from went) and sirloin, broccoli and asparagus for the later meal again drenched in butter. I find the sardines tough, even though I like fish and I figured that with the weekend coming up so quickly it made more sense to stick to more enjoyable keto meals and if I wasn’t producing decent keytone levels by Sunday I could go for “3 days of the ‘Dines” then.

So no signs of ketones when testing yet. Not tested the blood pressure either, although I have historical data to act as a baseline. And the weight? 107.5kg! Thank you Santa Claus! Sleep was pretty good mind.

I was up at 4am this morning though. Decided to meditate. It was a really energising meditation. 30mins of guidance and what I though was another 10mins of clarity but when I checked the clock 90mins had passed. I hadn’t gone back to sleep at any point so not sure what to make of it other than it put a smile on my face for most of the day.

It’s not the first time I’ve experienced a difference between actual time passing and perceived time passing whilst meditating. There have been at least of couple of meditations in the early days where my perception of time was both faster and slower than the clock suggested. Long experiences occurring in the blink of an eye and chunks of real time whizzing past in what felt like mere seconds.

It’s nice to actually have a worthwhile session once again. I’d been thinking that the medication I’m on had totally blunted the benefits I’d experienced prior to starting them. That was rather soul destroying as I had developed a heart warming connectedness with the world and found nothing much annoyed me anymore. Think “I am he as you are he as you are me. And we are all together…” It was great. Even terrible and inconsiderate drivers didn’t invoke the usual road rage. We were all connected and they were just another part of me having a bad day.

I can’t say the last session bought that feeling back in full, which is no surprise as it took about a year of daily meditation to get there, but it’s nice to know that I’m still capable of clearing my mind, especially with all the crap that’s going on in the world at the moment (I’m writing this as of 8 January 2026 so think Venezuela, Renee Good in Minneapolis, threats about Greenland).

Strangest thing to happen so far this year? The fact I’m trying to cultivate healthy eating and exercise habits and a regular writing discipline and I stumble across a video on YouTube on Rudolf Steiner’s view on why the first 90 days of each year is fundamental to the rest of it. Maybe it wasn’t synchronicity. Maybe the algorithms are just pretty good and we’re all being surveilled far more closely than we realise.

After dabbling in intermittent fasting, keto, the Zoe diet, and trying a few monk fasts towards the end of last year I decided it is time to stop dabbling and get serious. With an indulgent 2025 Christmas behind me, I am starting to go full keto over the next couple of days, 18:6 intermittent fasting initially building up to regular weekly monk fasts.

From a technical aspect, I’m using the Zero app to track my fasting window. I’ll be using a Fitbit Aria 2 to monitor my weight (no longer available but the latest Fitbit scales are available here – no accompanying watch though, more on that later perhaps). There’s an Omron M7 Intelli for keeping an eye on my blood pressure. Ascensia Bayer Ketostix for keytone level monitoring and various keto recipes from here, there and everywhere.

I’m finding the advice of Dr Annette Boswell aka Dr Boz useful. In fact I’m kickstarting my keto off with her 3 day Sardine challenge. Last time I tried this, I had a normal keto meal, fasted until the next day, 6 hours on the sardines, 18 hours fasting again and my keytones were up and I was burning fat.

On top of the diet, I plan to factor in some exercise. Being born in the late 60s means I’ve started to notice a loss of strength across the board. Up until September last year I had been mountain biking for 10 to 15kms three or four times a week. An illness had me laid up for a couple of weeks in September and I lost the habit. It is my intention to factor in some lifting at some point but as I write this I’m staring at a rowing machine that’s going to be my initial weapon of choice while it’s dark, cold and wet outside but I’m going to need to summon up the gumption to knock the dust off it first.

What are my goals?

Weight loss. Better energy. Better sleep. Better metabolism. Self-healing through sustained periods of autophagy.

Ultimately I want to get myself off the meds I found myself on last year. There’s four in total at the moment. I’m also taking a number of supplements which I’ll talk more about later. I’m toying with the idea of logging weight, blood pressure etc. but we’ll see how I feel about sharing that as I go.

I also wanted to start writing. Blogging about my attempts to be more healthy and take on my various ailments seemed a simple way to get started. (Initially I had this as “my health journey” but I almost puked when I read it back!)

There’s other stuff to throw in about meditation, yoga, mental health and generally getting your mind right so your ass will follow but we’ll see where my meanderings take us.

Peace. Out. Disco.