The first month gets the checkered flag

 

I am a happy man. I have not had a headache since my hangover on the 1st, my joint pains have left, I am super positive and energetic. In fact, I feel so good that it almost feels as if I am on something. I would not have given being a carnivore for only 30 days so much credit, but it is absolutely insane. I've been functioning on ketones this month and it is a super fuel! What I have been noticing the last week was how clear my mind has become, zero brain fog, and also how my eye sight is improving. 

I have not eaten any sugar or simple carbs nor did any alcohol pass my lips. I have consumed no medical product. I have not skipped training once. I did not use any soap products on myself, not on any of my clothing or linen. I have been 100% toxin free for 30 days as far as it was possible for me to regulate. 

I would say that month one was a great success. 

Just look at that blood pressure!!!!! There is no way that can be true on beef, liver, butter and salt? NO MEDICATION!!! It drops steadily week by week. The right food heals!

In four weeks, I have lost 11.8kg or 26.5lbs. I would never have guessed that on the first of January. I have not been hungry as I eat myself until I am 100% full, and the high-fat content keeps me from getting hungry. I have moved my meal from late afternoon to after my training in the mornings. I find I sleep better then. 

This month I will end with 163km walked. I am taking it slow as I am nursing an old rugby knee and old foot discomfort. I have also introduced some weight training which I will increase slowly over the next two weeks. 

I've had so much sun this week, it was around 180 minutes of beautiful vitamin D harvesting. 

470 days left, and I am intrigued by what it holds in for me...

My diet for the week was:

Day 22: 11:15 had pork belly leftovers, braaid a pork chop with my dad with lovely crackling. Two fried eggs. Mozzarella cheese. 

Day 23: 2 x eggs with deactivated yeast and cheese. Bacon crackling. Ox liver fried in animal fat with onion garlic ginger paprika. Double cream plain yogurt. 

Day 24: 9 am warmed up leftover curry chicken with a lot of butter. Had two eggs with double cream plain yogurt. Some of yesterday's leftover ox liver until I was full. 250g steak.

Day 25: 2 x eggs in butter. Bacon in butter. Ox liver  in butter. With salt. 

Day 26: 12am leftover ox liver in butter with 2 eggs. 500g beef mince with onion and butter. 

Day 27: 500g chicken livers fried with butter, onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, masala, 3 eggs. 

Day 28: 4pm leftover chicken livers 400g, beef Biltong, 6 eggs

Day 29: 6 eggs. Bacon. Beef liver and onion. 

Day 30: 8 am: 6 eggs fried with bacon. Ox liver fried in coconut oil with onions, garlic, and jalapenos. 

21 one days of melting fat away

 We are almost through January and it feels like the corks popped yesterday. The good thing about speeding time is the fact that goals are reached in the wink of an eye too. I finished off my third week of 500 days without poison, and if anyone told me before the start that I would be feeling this good after only three weeks I would have rather believed that the Bulls could beat the Stormers!! 

I sleep great, I haven't been nauseous in over two weeks, absolutely zero headaches and I am extremely energetic. What is most astounding is that all the gout in my hands and thumbs have totally hit the road. 

My training is going great. I have not skipped any session. My total for the week was just over 45km and the month so far is almost 112km. I am not tired at all and I am still holding back for the first three months. I am slowly adding weight training and core workouts to my sessions. 

My blood pressure was a great concern. It was super high at the start and I am so relieved with this week's results. It is dropping fast and remember I have not touched any medication of any sort since 2022. It is still high at the diastolic side. It will hopefully hit the correct level. Within the next few weeks. 

I am super chuffed with my progress regarding my weight. In three weeks I have dropped an astounding 10.8kg or 24lbs!!! I am eating plenty of animal fats, meat and little bit of veggies. I must admit to this: the less veggies I eat the better I feel! I will post the 7 meals I've had at the bottom. What is interesting is that I am rarely hungry.

I have broken through the 85kg barrier for the first time many years!

I've had plenty of vitamin D reload in the sun, totalling out at 150 minutes!! Bring on the health!!

My diet for week three:

15 Jan: 17:00 spinach flash fried with onions tomato garlic and coconut oil. Tacos: shells made with melted cheddar cheese. Filling beef mince with garlic ginger onions, salsa tomatoes onion basil, sauce double cream plain yogurt with lemon juice paprika. 

16 Jan: 18:00 baby marrows fried in coconut oil with onion tomato garlic ginger and dressed in double cream plain yogurt. Chicken breast fried with coconut oil and onions. 

17 Jan: 1 pm (ate earlier to have a longer fast tomorrow)bacon, 2 x eggs fried in bacon fat, spinach quick fried in onions tomato garlic ginger and bacon fat/butter dressed in double cream plain yogurt. Leftover mince and chicken heated up. 

18 Jan: 15:30 two fried eggs in salted butter. Spinach flash fried with onions tomatoes garlic ginger in leftover fat from yesterday's beef mince dressed in double cream plain yogurt. I love this and will eat it every day! Ox liver fried in coconut oil with onions garlic and ginger with lemon juice and vinegar. 

19 Jan: egg on avo with cheese, fried chicken livers in onions paprika garlic ginger. Fried cabbage in coconut oil and salt. Leftover beef liver from yesterday. Blue cheese.

20 Jan: 14:30 ate two eggs in coconut oil. Made chicken butter curry in onion garlic turmeric paprika ginger cinnamon fried in butter. Double cream yogurt.

21 Jan: 16:30 pork belly on bbq with salt pepper and lemon juice. Green beans in full cream underneath the pork to catch and cook in the dripping delicious fat. Some Greek salad. 

Finding the rhythm - week two

During the second week of my 500 days journey, everything settled into normal mode. I was feeling stronger and stronger, I am extremely positive and I was starting to look better. My nausea and insomnia disappeared and I was looking forward to the future. 

After week one I lost 6.3kg which was obviously more than I have anticipated. I guess if I can keep on dropping around 1.5kg per week I will be very happy. 

The guy in the picture is slowly melting away. What I hated most about being overweight, was not the always being hot part, not the getting sick often part, not the constant feeling shit part, but the absolute below-par quality of life I was living. I was never a dude who could just sit still and watch others play, yet there I was sitting like an old man constantly observing and not participating. If I did it was only for a few moments. Also during this time, my knees went bad, my shoulders deteriorated and I began getting pain in my thumb joints. No more. 

I wanted more. I was better. Hence the 500 days!

This was a great week. I woke up early each day. I did all my training, which totaled almost 39km of walking! See pic below. My knees already feel better and so does my shoulder. I will slowly start introducing weight training during week three. 

I am eating like a champ, and I am still 100% clean on my food. I will post my 7 meals at the bottom. 

I am overflowing with vitamin D and I guess it also contributes heavily towards my positive attitude. 

I was very concerned regarding my very high blood pressure. When I took it this week it is slowly starting to drop. I am taking absolutely no medication. 

 

 As you can see it has dropped quite a bit and I am much more positive about it!!

Looking at the before/after pics, I am so pleased at my progress over just 14 days! I am on the right track and I am slowly starting to feel 17 again!

My weight has been dropping steadily too:

During week 1: 95.4 - 89.1= 6.3kg. 

During week 2: 89.1 - 86.8= 2.3kg

Total: 8.6kg in two weeks. 

My training for the week. It can be viewed in more detail on Strava under Jacques Redelinghuys. 

My diet was as follows:

Day 8: 3 pm braaid a pork chop with thick fat, homegrown green beans slightly fried in fat with salt, garlic, and lemon juice. 2 fried eggs with garlic, cucumber tomato salad with double cream yogurt, and apple cider vinegar as dressing. 

Day 9: 6 pm green beans lightly fried in fat with onions and garlic. Ox liver marinated in double cream yogurt milk and vinegar, fried with onions and garlic. Cabbage salad with little bit of carrot, raw onion vinegar garlic salt and spices.

Day 10: Food: 3 pm grilled 3/4 chicken, creamed spinach at Padstal pub with my brother during sparkling mineral water. 

Day 11: 7 pm beef mince fried in beef fat with onions, garlic, and tomatoes. Homegrown green beans and a cucumber/tomato salad. 

Day 12: 18:00 ox liver fried in coconut oil with onion, two eggs, spinach, cucumber, and tomato salad with Apple cider vinegar. 

Day 13: dried wors and full-fat cottage cheese. Beef mince fried in coconut oil garlic and onions with paprika and.  Baby marrow fried in coconut oil with onions garlic tomatoes and double cream yogurt. Cucumber tomato salad with Apple cider vinegar. 

Day 14:14:30 lamb on spit, lots of fat. Greek salad with heaps of olives and feta cheese! It was divine. 

My total time in the sun was more than 3 hours. 

Looking forward to the third week and thank you for following my journey. 

Be strong, live hard. 

Tri

The first week - 500 Days

We exited 2022 with a memorable party, playing beer pong and loud music, drinking some fine whisky and wine. Probably much more than what health advisors would recommend, that's for sure! Just before midnight Jolene made us some coffee and I asked for a double tot of Jack Daniels with mine, as I knew my journey would be a long one. As I started sipping on the hot joy, we realized that the countdown to midnight has begun, and just before they shouted ‘happy new year’, I took one last sip and flicked the full cup of coffee mix out on the grass. A waste I know, but such was my seriousness with not cheating even in the most insignificant way. 

The 5-day fast:

The following morning I wasn't feeling too well, a hangover to kill a bull was fighting me. I just had to wait on father time to deal with it as I was not to consume anything. I started my 5 days without any food or drinks, only water. I jumped on the scale and it clockedd me at 95.4kg or around 210 lbs. 

It was a cloudy day and we just cleaned around the house a bit and watched some movies. Later the afternoon we took the dogs for a 3km walk, as one if the rules are to train for 500 consecutive days for at least 30 minutes. 

I had to take some before pictures, which look a bit shitty taking in account the crap physical shape I am in. I will post them nonetheless because they will look very different in a few weeks. 

Just to show in what bad shape I was for the last few years, here is my blood pressure:

Any doctor would certainly faint to see how reckless a life I was living. I was putting everything on the line with this challenge, and I want to see if I could turn my health around by just healthy living, eating and exercise. The day went okay and the hunger wasn't too bad. I was drinking my electrolytes (salt, potassium chloride, bicarb of soda and Epsom salts) mixed with 2 liters of water. 

Ons day two I woke up at 5am and was a bit tired as I battled to fall asleep. I was feeling much better and the hangover was something of the past. I was feeling hungry and just sat outside when the others were cooking. I went out wearing just short pants, and on a lovely sunny day, I got great sun exposure 15 minutes front and 15 minutes back. I did my 3km walk and weighed in at 91.5kg, 3.1kg down. 

Day 3 I was feeling very energetic and I felt great. I mowed the lawn, cut down some tree branches, went for my 3km walk and got my tan in. I weighed in at 90.6kg, 4.8kg down. 

On day 4 I was a bit nauseous, could have been from alcohol withdrawal, but nonetheless I wasn't too concerned. I completed my training and vit D reload. I broke through the 90kg barrier with 89.5kg, 4.8kg down. 

The last day of fasting has arrived and my mind started playing it's games. I knew I was going to eat the next day and oh boy I was suffering! My energy levels were really low. I nebulized with saline as I do every day. Did my training, unfortunately it was cloudy and had no sun exposure. My weight was 88.4kg, 7kg down. 

Then day 6 came! Eating time! I really battled to fall asleep during the fasting phase, hopefully it will improve within the following days. I did my walk although it was raining, lovely!

With the re-feed I gave myself a 6-hour eating window. I didn't want to just shove down a lot of food as my intestines were totally empty and they had to start up again slowly. I had some cheddar cheese which I chew until it was totally liquid before swallowing. Then I wanted an hour and had some scrambled eggs. I felt very good and my stomach comfortable. Three hours later I had ox liver with green beans and spinach. I was a happy man. 

The last day of the first week has arrived. Food is amazing and I was feeling revitalized. Now I was on a one meal a day eating plan, with only one hour within which I could eat. 

Food: 18:00 mealtime. Pork chop, two eggs, green beans with garlic, tomato + cucumber salad with double cream plain yogurt + apple cider vinegar. 

I did a 5.4km walk. Here are the weeks training:

I will from now on only post my weight weekly. Here are the before/after pics for week one:

All in all it was a tough, yet very successful week!

 

500 days without poison

 Once I hit the age of 50, I realized the actual speed at which time flies. It is absolutely ridiculous! In the blink of an eye, another year had flashed past and here I am on my way hurling down on 52. What I miss most is being active, I page through the pictures of events and people and such challenges sadly just evaporated from my life. I am a challenge type of guy. No absurd task and I lose interest. 

Welcome to my fresh undertaking: 500 days without poison. 

Mission summary:

500 days, one meal a day, train 500 days, no chemically fragranced products, no alcohol, no processed foods, no starch, no sugars, only carbs from mostly green vegetables.

Why:

Most challenges I have found on social media, for example, were done over short periods of time and were mostly created to prove a point or to test a method briefly. I want to commit 100% for 500 days to fully experience the long-term effects and true changes taking place. If it isn't beneficial to my health, then I will scrap it. The word ‘poison’ refers to any aspect of life or substance which can cause illness, possible bodily harm, or hinder our performance physically, psychologically, and emotionally. That which isn't a necessity for healthy living. 

Myself:

As I've said above, I am a 51-year-old male living in SA, I was very active until around 2009 when my circumstances changed and my life went from healthy to unhealthy. I went from playing under 21 provincial rugby for then Transvaal, playing golf off a 4 handicap, doing provincial cross country, being Northern Gauteng provincial duathlon champion, doing a 10:17 Ironman, doing a 2:47 Cape Argus and always weighing between 72 and 78kg, to being an unhealthy, chronically sick 106kg slob. My business' tanked and I was living in extreme depression, masking it up by drinking a lot and consuming a load of weed. 

This changed on the 1st of January 2023. I have watched a truckload of videos on health, read numerous books, and tried a few diets here and there over the last decade, yet I never took a decisive decision to permanently give up the things in life which held me back. Through all this, I've had one issue: who and what do you believe? I just cannot relate to a social media influencer with 20 million followers as we don't live in the same world. They promote millions of supplements and products, and every day there is a new weight loss secret revealed, which makes it seem like a fancy marketing advertisement, rather than being about genuine PERMANENT health solutions. In today's world, it is difficult enough just to buy fuel and pay for electricity, not to mention being able to afford a gym membership, expensive food, supplements, etc.

I am therefore submitting myself to this experiment, this journey in such a way as to keep it easy, simple and affordable. I, a normal overweight dude from South Africa on the wrong side of the aging timeline, will be my own lab rat. You can follow my journey here and decide for yourself. If you feel you don't have the energy to try again, if you are at that stage where you know you've had all these dreams and you have messed up, I was there for the last 3 years straight, then I am doing this for you. I will keep record of how I feel every day, how I change physically, my health, all the food I consume, and also my training journey. If you want to join in at any time during this journey, please contact me and we walk the walk together at trijackal@gmail.com. We can be better. What exactly am I going to do?

The mission:

I am going on a 500-day straight plan. Zero cheat days. Not even a bite of pizza or a sip of soda. On the 1st I started with a 5-day water only fast to reset my immune system and got myself down to a good default level. During this fast, I did light walking, no high-intensity stuff. After the fast, I will keep training easily for a month and then pick up the intensity very gradually. After fasting for 5 days (strictly only water), I have moved on to intermittent fasting, a one meal-a-day eating plan. Of all the diets I've tried over the last decade, intermittent fasting and keto/banting have treated my body very well and made me feel super and strong. I will try to eat roughly at the same time every day around 6 pm, but if I should have a day where I have to eat in the morning because of a function or such, I will do so, but then not again for the rest of the day. Strictly one meal per day not spread out over more than an hour.

I will only consume the following: whole meats (venison, beef, pork, lamb, fish, chicken) with lots of fat. Free-range and substance-free are ideal, but it is also then extremely expensive, therefore if I'm not able to afford free-range, I will buy what meat I can from reputable farmers/shops. NO processed products, no msg, no fake meat. 

I will eat the following vegetables (many of which we grow our selves), all as per the banting green list: green leafy vegetables, green beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, garlic, gem squash, kale, leeks, lemons, lettuce, mushrooms, olives, onions, all peppers, radishes, rocket, spinach, spring onions, tomatoes, aubergine, baby marrows, blueberries, strawberries, almonds. Together with this, I will also consume black pepper, ginger, turmeric, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, olive oil, coconut oil, and naturally caffeine-free tea like rooibos and apple cider vinegar. There will be some I have not to mentioned here, but I will name them as we go on. We grow our own spinach, green beans, baby marrows, tomatoes, chilies, cucumbers, and strawberries, all pesticide free. 

I will NOT consume any of the following: no carbohydrates outside of the above mentioned list, no fast food, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar, no pasta, no alcohol, no processed foods, no fruit, no juices, no seed oils, no stimulants like caffeine, etc. 

In my general day-to-day living, I will make the following changes:

No smoking (I was never a smoker), no meds and over-the-counter pills, only those subscribed to me during an unfortunate emergency in an ER or hospital. I will not use any products containing carcinogens like chemically scented soap, shampoo, washing detergent, deodorant, toothpaste, etc. I will swap the products out with safe, homemade products which I will make available as I test and develop them throughout this journey. No tap water, no fluoride, no vitamins or supplements. I will eliminate anger and stress as much as possible.

Fitness and general health:

I will train 500 days out of 500, unless sickness, an emergency, or tragedy prohibits me. 

My training will include weights, HIIT, endurance, and yoga, of at least 30+ minutes every day. More about this as the journey goes on. 

Of all I have said, sun exposure is very important to me. Every day during which we have sunlight, I will lie in the sun wearing just shorts, 10 minutes front and 10 min back, reloading my vit  D stores. 

During all this I will monitor and give feedback on the following: my hair, I will measure and compare the color to the current color. My skin, I have a lot of spots on my skin through years of toxic sunblock and hours of overexposure to the sun due to my sporting background. I will see how it improves if any. Nails and teeth. I have high blood pressure, which I will monitor as well. My lung health isn't the best because of previous bad working environments, I will let you know how it goes. Then obviously my weight and daily energy levels, sleep patterns, etc.

At the posting of this I am currently on day 13. I have not cheated in any aspect and I feel like a new person already! I will post my first weeks experience shortly!

I am looking forward to sharing my journey with you all, lets do this. 

Be strong. Live hard. 

TriJackal