I have aspirations to be a writer in my spare time. I’ve recently published a book on Russian Verbs (see Leanpub or Amazon), so I’m nearly there. My original idea for a book was a novel about someone who could not quite hit the mark. I abandoned it.

My next idea was a book about the Slow-Carb diet. I would have called it 100 Days on the Slow-Carb Diet. When I did 100 days on that diet, I blogged about it every day. I’ve got lots of notes and it was a success story. I ended up weighing 76kg. I continued and got my waist size down to 34”.

I even had a draft cover made.

And I’ve been kicking the idea around ever since. Later I decided that a book of essays would be more useful. I would base these on blog articles I’d already written. Today I’ve abandoned the idea and moved on. And I’ve republished some of the relevant blog articles on this site. What a relief!

Here they are:

1. How to Lose Weight

This would have been a chapter about my journey from 102kg to 86kg. I’m grateful to my trainer Andy Fowler for putting me on this journey.

2. 100 Days on the Slow-Carb Diet

This would have been a longer chapter on my experiences in 2012 when I went from 86kg to 76kg. For example, I went to New York with 36” jeans, woke up one day and they were too big. The fat dropped off. I’m afraid these days are distant memories. But I can summarise:

  • Reduction of stress
  • Removal of bad and toxic relationships
  • A good diet that I stuck too
  • Lots of walking and exercising

3. 540km later

I wanted to write a chapter about cycling. Between 2013 and 2015 I cycled a lot. Most Saturdays I would cycle up and down the Vtlava river in Prague with friends. We would often rack up 130km. But with that came a relaxed attitude to diet. And furthermore, a need for carbs.

4. Crash!

I fell off my bike badly. Really badly. Many NHS doctors and nurses rebuilt me. I have full movement back in the arm but that was not expected. The thing is I was dieting at the time. I was able to cycle 80km fasted. And I believe that one of the things that helped me heal was my diet.

This would have been a chapter about recovery.

5. Lent 2021

There are several articles here.

The articles are a final draft of the chapter on following Lent. I had one meal a day. I ate meat. The key was only one meal a day. Also, I didn’t drink. My friend Robert kindly read through this chapter.

Since then, I have written notes and kept results with the full intention of finishing the book. But I’ve decided today to just publish it here. I will republish the blog articles from the “100 Days” diet in due course. I need to reformat them.

During COVID we lost a friend in hospital. Our friend Neil went into hospital on Christmas Eve with terminal cancer. Because of the restrictions, he died in hospital alone without seeing his family. I would have dedicated this book to him, so the best I can do is dedicate this post to him. Rest in peace Neil.