About

As long as I can remember I always enjoyed being in nature. From early childhood my parents took my younger brother and I on weekend walks in Grunewald, while we were living in West Berlin, to the longer day hikes we did when getting older and visiting Harz, Lüneburger Heide and even Schwarzwald (Black Forrest) in the former BRD.

Though no one else in my family was much into camping outside, I went out with friends in my teens and fell in love with the experience for the very first time. The air, the silence (apart from natural sounds), cooking on a camp fire or camping stove and falling asleep under the stars with (and that only if forced by the weather or insects) just a thin layer of fabric between them and me. Yep, calling me a nature romantic would probably hit home!

 In 1986 I got my first ”real” back pack, a 60 liter internal frame Kober (that still does it’s job on shorter tours and is stored in the attic). At that time it was state of the art and so much more comfortable than the borrowed ones I had tried before. I suddenly got attracted into doing some ”serious” camping and to be out for a few nights. Not that this was an easy thing to do in a city surrounded by a wall and it took until the fall of 1987, I was 17 at time and my parents would never have approved, when a friend and I used visiting his father in Harz as an excuse to get out on a two night hike through the woods in the neighborhood. Needless to say, I got totally hooked!

Since my first real mountain hike during my military service in northern Sweden 1990 I have hiked the Swedish and Norwegian mountain range again and again. I´ve completed over 5000 miles and this years hike is number 28, so I start to consider myself rather experienced.

For the last ten years I´ve kept my nutrition gluten free paleoisch (full fat dairy works great for me) and rather on the lower carb side (100-150g/ or less) and tweaked it back and forth quite a bit, always feeling better and having better body composition going rather low.
As I got my training in nutrition and physiology in the mid 90´s it took some time and experimenting before I trusted my body to perform in a fat fueled state and it´s only been the last maybe 4 years or so that I really started upping the fat and limiting carbs during hiking.

And, suddenly, I was in heaven – my endurance improved dramatically, my energy stayed consistently high during the day and adding in a few extra km/miles when needed became easy.
Actually I went from snacking all the time (in addition to 3 meals/d) to having 2-3 meals per day (sometimes even just one) and felt so much better at the same time!

I got more and more curious about eating ketogenic and after reading up on the science, following a couple of blogs and listening to a few different podcasts (see links in the side panel) and devouring Christofer Kelly´s “Keto Summit” a second time I was ready to give it a shot.
Spending 6 weeks in ZA earlier this year, eating out a lot and enjoying the good wines of the area, pushed me to take control and go for the promised health benefits.
So, I spent about three months eating a maximum of 25g of carbohydrates daily most days (kicking my heels with some awesome ice cream on Kauai), never checking blood ketones yet being pretty sure I was in nutritional ketosis most of that time.
And, I felt amazing!!!
During this time I approached a good friend who is an MD and specialized in Diabetes/Obesity medicin as well as endocrinology and suggested we do an expanded blood panel before and after my 29 day hike this summer and her enthusiastic positive answer marked the starting point for this project!
This is the idea:
Take a rather over averagely healthy 46 year old male (that´s me) and put him in a more or less hunter/gatherer situation (except I carry my food instead of killing it along the way) for just over four weeks.
No planned social interactions, no connectivity (that´s no FB, email, cell phone connection… not even snail mail) – just moving through beautiful nature and following the natural rhythm of the body.
Eat when hungry, sleep when tired, move daily, rest as much as needed. Detached from civilization and connecting back with our origin, in a safe and relaxed way using a familiar environment to really remove any stressors as much as humanly possible.
Thanks to Michel Lundell from Ketonix and Christoffer Kelly from Nourish Balance Thrive who are both sponsoring the project I will be able to optimize the production of keton bodies using Phat Fibre and measure  the aceton in my breath with the Ketonix breath meter. Thereby recording my state of ketosis during every day of the hike.