Turning My 61‑Year‑Old Body into a Guinea Pig: Keto, Fasting and Fixing in Bangkok

Filming in Bangkok: Testing Whether fasting, kept and data can keep me sharp through Long shoot days and fixer work.

I’m a 61‑year‑old Londoner living in Bangkok. I make films, teach business communication and AI, run a production agency, work as a fixer and creative consultant, and edit a digital wellness and lifestyle magazine called One Create. With what precious time is left, I’m trying to stop my body from staging a rebellion against the work I still want to do.

For the past few weeks, I’ve turned myself into a guinea pig in my own metabolic laboratory.

The experiment: keto, fasting and a CGM

The protocol is simple but not exactly gentle:
18:6 to 20:4 intermittent fasting. A ketogenic diet. A continuous glucose monitor strapped to my arm. Training logs, weight measurements, and careful notes about energy, clarity and moods. Plus the occasional gastrointestinal disaster caused by overly enthusiastic MCT oil in my coffee.

The early numbers: about 3 kg down, steady glucose, better energy, and a growing library of data points that are starting to tell a story.

Why turn myself into an experiment?

As editor‑in‑chief of a wellness and lifestyle magazine called One Create, I spend a lot of time hearing other people’s health stories. I also spend too much time watching nonsense on social media, which makes me, in polite British terms, positively mad.

Most people change their health by feel. Eat better, move more, hope for the best. The problem is that our bodies are noisy systems. Stress, sleep, travel, age, even Bangkok’s weather, all blur the picture. We draw the wrong conclusions from how we feel on any given Tuesday because we don’t map our own data well.

So I decided to run a proper n=1 experiment. Become both subject and observer. Design a protocol, run it for a fixed period, and collect enough data to answer a few real questions:

• What actually happens to my glucose when I fast, train, eat keto – and when I don’t?

• Can I still do demanding creative work and physical training in my 60s without crashing?

• How does this feel, not just for a day, but across weeks?

The first 2.5 weeks: what changed

I committed to 18:6 and 20:4 intermittent fasting, combined with a ketogenic diet, and added one 24‑hour fast in the middle just to see what happened.

The weight: around 3 kg down. Not crash‑diet territory, just steady loss that suggests my body is finally tapping stored fat without panicking. No hunger crashes. No sense of metabolic meltdown.

The glucose: surprisingly calm. Meals I’d always assumed were “fine” – a bit of rice here, a slice of bread there – showed up as small but obvious spikes on the CGM trace. Meanwhile, beef, pork, bacon, eggs, salmon, tinned mackerel, avocado, cheese and low‑starch vegetables produced beautifully flat lines. Even birthday and wedding meals barely moved the needle when they sat on top of a strong fasting and keto base.

The energy: better than expected. I was braced for keto flu, brain fog and fatigue. They never arrived. Instead, after the first few days, mornings felt clearer, energy stayed steadier through long shoots and editing sessions, and the mid‑afternoon crash quietly disappeared.

By week two I could row hard, fasted, at 7 a.m. without fear of slacking. I could direct, write and teach without needing to refuel every three hours. My body had remembered how to run on its own reserves.

The MCT oil incident

Not everything worked.

MCT oil in fasted coffee, which the internet promised would give me ketone superpowers, reliably wrecked my gut. I learned the lesson the hard way, twice, before accepting that some biohacks simply don’t suit everyone. The data was clear: this one belongs in the “dead weight” column.

What this experiment is really for

This isn’t just about losing weight or tidying up my glucose graph. It’s about designing a life where I can still shoot, direct, write, travel, teach and fix in my 60s and beyond, with a body that quietly supports the work instead of sabotaging it.

Clinical trials and guidelines tell us what helps an average group. They can’t tell a 61‑year‑old British filmmaker in Bangkok exactly what to eat, how long to fast or how hard to train. Structured self‑experiments fill that gap.

By running these trials on myself I’m answering questions like:

• How long can I comfortably fast and still work and train?

• Which meals give me rock‑steady ketogenic fuel and which quietly spike me?

• How much sleep, coffee and stress can I get away with before the curve starts to wobble?

Instead of generic advice, I’m building a personal ruleset. It’s how many clinicians now suggest people use CGMs and wearables: short, focused bursts of data to refine individual habits.

There’s also a psychological trick here. Framing this as an experiment, not a “new lifestyle forever”, invites curiosity instead of moral judgement. If it doesn’t work, I didn’t fail; the hypothesis did.

Turning numbers into a story

Wearables and apps generate oceans of personal data, but data without narrative is dead weight. People don’t change because of dashboards; they change because of stories they believe about themselves.

I sit at the intersection of media maker and lab rat. My job is to translate:

• A CGM trace that spends 100% of the time in range into what it felt like to row hard or get put through my paces in Pilates, fasted, without fear of crashing.

• A flat overnight glucose line into the experience of waking clear‑headed instead of foggy.

• A spike after wedding cake into an honest conversation about enjoying life without pretending it doesn’t show up on the graph.

There’s good evidence that narrative health stories – especially first‑person, culturally grounded ones – change behaviour more than dry education. My n=1 becomes a bridge for thousands of other n=1s.

What comes next

This first 2.5‑week block is just the opening chapter.

The endgame is a body of work: a series of self‑experiments shared through articles, films and conversations – from continuous glucose monitoring and sleep restructuring to strength blocks and archery prep. Each experiment will have:

• A contained protocol and clear questions.

• A story arc: setup, struggle, data, resolution.

• Practical takeaways for people who recognise themselves in my situation.

Plenty of biohackers collect data. Fewer can frame it in a way that’s honest, cinematic and useful. That’s the space I want to occupy with One Create and The Liminal Desk.

For now, I’m 5 kg lighter, my CGM trace looks more like a calm lake than a mountain range, and my 61‑year‑old body is proving more adaptable than I’d given it credit for. More importantly, the process works: turning guesswork into data, data into narrative, and narrative into a way of working that lets me keep doing the projects I care about in Bangkok and beyond.

The experiment continues.