Start With Your Biology: Your Body Isn’t Broken – Your Lifestyle Is Disconnected
A manifesto for people who’ve done what they were told and yet, still feel worse than they should.
When the Mirror Told the Truth
There’s a kind of silence that hits when your body surprises you - not with sudden illness, but with slow decay. It was a Thursday morning in March 2018. I was at my local gym, midway through my week, fresh off a solid weight session. I’d done everything I usually did - warmed up, trained hard, watched the heart rate monitor tick into the right zone - I should have walked out feeling accomplished.
Instead, I caught my reflection in the mirror, and I froze…
It wasn’t one of those “I need to drop a few kilos” moments - this was something heavier hitting! The man in the mirror looked foreign to me – a far cry from the mental image I had of myself and a far cry from healthy & thriving...
I stood at 5’7”, weighing in at 96 kilograms.
The size wasn’t muscle - It was muscle AND FAT…
Soft, stubborn, and unmistakably excessive.
Despite years of training, despite my discipline, despite my belief that I was “doing the work,” the reflection staring back didn’t match the story I was telling myself.
That day, I stepped on the InBody machine at my gym and what I saw confirmed what the mirror had already made clear - I was obese. My muscle mass was decent, yes but my fat mass was worse. For every gram of strength I’d built, I’d quietly layered on even more fat. I wasn’t just a bit out of shape either - I was metabolically unwell. I didn’t need a new routine - I needed a reckoning and it had finally arrived…
I remember standing there with the printout in my hand, barely reading it. My mind was racing through excuses.
Surely this was a blip.
Surely this was just stress, or a bad month, or some freak metabolic slowdown.
But I knew better. The truth was, I had felt it coming for years - the low energy, the erratic moods, the dips in focus. But I had dismissed it all because I thought I was too active, too educated, too “on top of it” to let this happen.
Now, there was nowhere to hide…
It wasn’t just about aesthetics either - the hardest part wasn’t the physical reflection - it was the emotional one. I felt betrayed by my own body, but even more so by the beliefs I had followed for so long. I had done what I was told:
train consistently…
eat in moderation…
Burned more than you consume...
And yet, there I was - standing in the harsh, unflattering light of truth. My body had moved on from that story - it had been trying to tell me for a while.
That morning, I finally listened.
The Words That Hit Hard
When I got home that later that day, I tried to keep things light - I played with my daughter, half-engaged. I pretended I wasn’t bothered, but I was unravelling. Something in me had cracked that morning, and all I could think about was how long I’d been ignoring it.
Later, in the kitchen, my wife looked at me and asked if something was wrong. I hesitated - then, not even fully meaning to, I told her what happened at the gym…
The mirror.
The measurement.
The realization.
I expected comfort - what I got instead was a sentence that landed with far more force than she probably intended:
“You can’t out-exercise your bad diet anymore.”
That line stayed in the air between us like smoke.
It wasn’t the first time she’d said something like that, but it was the first time I heard it - and I don’t mean physically, I mean in the way that a truth suddenly pierces your defences and rearranges the room….
I wanted to protest, to tell her about my workouts, my effort, my data… But what came out instead was silence - because I knew she was right!
That sentence hit me harder than the scale did. Harder than the mirror even - because it wasn’t just about my food, it was about my identity. I had always been the guy who could eat what he wanted, train hard, and stay in shape. That had been true through my teens, my early twenties and it was the mental image I carried of myself into my early thirties. It was how I saw myself, but now, that identity was exposed to be a lie.
It was like all of a sudden I wasn’t the fit one, I wasn’t the healthy one. I was the guy who was training his ass off and still getting fatter and sicker. I was the guy watching his belly swell, his energy crash, and his resilience evaporate - all while doing what conventional wisdom said to do... That night, I sat on the couch, wide awake long after everyone had gone to bed, and started to truly reflect on everything I was doing - my training split, my eating patterns, my sleep (or lack thereof). I was trying to find the glitch, but I didn’t have the understanding required to identify and articulate the problem back them – I do now though, and I can tell you that it wasn’t a glitch – it was a system failure.
The Slow Death of Old Beliefs
I didn’t pivot overnight. There was no “aha” moment that turned me from confused gym-goer to metabolic truth-seeker. What came first was disorientation - the disorienting realization that everything I had built my approach to health on wasn’t just ineffective anymore but possibly flawed at the core.
I had always believed in the math - calories in versus calories out (CICO). Train hard, eat clean & earn your food. If you gain weight, it means you’re eating too much or moving too little - simple. That model had worked for me in the past. It felt rational, fair & scientific, but now for the first time, I was seeing that the map I had followed didn’t match the terrain I was standing on.
And so, I found myself faced with two choices:
Double down on CICO, walk away from meals still hungry and force myself into a bigger deficit…
Admit to myself that CICO isn’t sustainable and find a better alternative…
You see, the biggest issue for me – and you – is I love my food and I don’t love the idea of walking away from meals unsatiated and still hungry for the sake of getting back into good shape – worse still, the foods I loved the most seemed to make the idea of restriction even less appealing because once you had started they seemed impossible to put down until you had had your fill…
And so, I turned to Google and started searching…
There must be an alternative to CICO…
There must be an approach that let’s you eat until satisfied while still getting the results you desire…
There must be a better way…
I wasn’t looking for motivation - I wasn’t unmotivated, I was desperate and confused. I was doing the work and getting worse, so I didn’t want pep talks - I wanted answers.
The Self-Experiment That Changed Everything
To cut a long story short, I stumbled across some write ups about the “ketogenic diet” not from fitness gurus or celebrities in glossy magazines, but rather from doctors - Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt and Dr. Bret Scher from www.dietdoctor.com to be exact and what they were talking about intrigued me enough that I decided to give a ketogenic diet a 3-month (90-day) trial / self-experiment to see what it does…
Fast forward to the end of that little experiment and my eyes were opened wide by the results:
Body fat percentage dropped by 5.1% from 29.5% to 24.4%.
Body fat mass dropped by 8kg (18lb) from 30kg (66lb) to 22kg (49lb).
Skeletal muscle mass remained unchanged at 38kg (84lb).
The results of my self-experiment fascinated me because the impact were far reaching – improving so much more than just my body composition…
My sleep quality improved significantly!
My energy levels improved and remained constant through the day, even after exercise (I no longer felt chronically fatigued)!
I started to enjoy tremendous mental clarity/focus and no longer struggled to concentrate!
I ate highly satiating food leaving me with zero desire to snack between meals and no longer felt compelled to eat garbage all the time like I used to!
I felt great, I felt healthy again and was generally very happy, meaning no longer irrationally irritable or grumpy because of not feeling right!
Without even meaning to, I defaulted to eating on average once a day without feeling like I was starving or depriving myself (yes – I started eating a whole day’s nutrition in a single sitting) because what I was now eating was species appropriate and nutrient dense – less volume but far more ‘bang for my buck…’
This change was so profound that it stirred tremendous curiosity in me – why had I never heard about this before and why was it not being yelled from the very rooftops…?
I started reading outside the mainstream health & fitness sphere:
At first, just podcasts.
Then blogs and articles.
Then academic articles because I was aware of the need to double check that the claims being made were supported by good science (of all the things I learned in undertaking my MSc. – critical thinking is undoubtedly the single best skill I acquired).
Before I knew it, I was spending several hours daily engrossed in the relevant literature and completely reshaping my entire understanding of human health and well-being… The idea that my weight gain could be a symptom of metabolic dysfunction, not just a math error, was new to me. The notion that food could act as a signal, not just a fuel source, made something in me sit up.
Slowly, I began to see the connections: my worsening sleep, my crashing energy levels, my rising irritability, my brain fog - none of it was random - it was all downstream of something bigger…
That something was my metabolism, not in the pop-culture sense of “how fast you burn calories,” but in the truer, deeper sense: how my body was processing inputs, managing energy, recovering, adapting, and regulating itself. The more I read, the more I saw it. My problem wasn’t that I lacked discipline - it was that I was running a biological system on a completely mismatched operating model – my lifestyle was mismatched with my physiology and the declining metabolic health was the inevitable consequence…
However, the beliefs I had grown up with and held for years didn’t go quietly. They clung on - whispering that I just needed to double down, train harder & restrict more. But I’d already tried that, and it had led me into decline… What began to replace this old belief system wasn’t flashy - it wasn’t even fully formed yet - it was a quiet suspicion that maybe health isn’t earned through force.
Maybe it’s restored through alignment.
Reclaiming My Biology
Of everything I have learned, the most profound lesson – by far – is discovering how central metabolic health is to our overall physical AND mental health! It quite literally underpins it all, but to understand this you need to first understand what metabolic health actually is and in my first book (Conquering King Stomach) I defined it as follows:
“Our body’s ability to generate and process the energy and basic organic materials, needed to facilitate the proper functioning of our bodily systems, as required for critical life processes which are essential to not only sustaining life, but also enabling our continued physical, emotional, mental and social ability to cope within our environment.”
My journey of discovery was revolutionary for me because it finally felt like I had stopped fighting biology and started working with it. I wasn’t relying on discipline to survive my days anymore and I wasn’t dragging myself through routines - I was finally aligned and starting to thrive!
That feeling - that deep, stable, biological clarity - was better than any physique I had ever chased and far deeper reaching because I was still busy, still working a full-time job, still up at night with a toddler sometimes, but I was no longer operating from depletion - I had margin, I had capacity - for the first time in years, I had health!
However, dietary lifestyle change was just the tip of the iceberg – it was the gateway to the world beyond, and over time I began to unravel and better understand the lifestyle factors our physiology not only needs, but actually expects in order for optimal metabolic health to be possible…
Formulating The Five Pillars of Metabolic Health Concept
Now days, when people ask me what “turned it around,” they usually expect a particular diet name, a magic protocol, some new app or tracking device – some sort of ‘short cut’ or ‘secret recipe’ to fast results…
I don’t blame them to be honest, I used to think that way too. However, the truth is both simpler and more uncomfortable than that:
Nothing worked until I stopped outsourcing my health and started aligning with my biology.
I realized the body doesn’t care what trend is popular, it doesn’t respond to discipline the way productivity culture wants us to believe – your body responds to inputs, to signals and it does so consistently, predictably - biologically…
So ultimately, there is no ‘secret recipe’ or ‘short cut’ – there’s only the signals that matter most and they are not hacks, they are not expensive, and they are not even new.. They are foundational and your body is hardwired to expect them – they are necessary and non-negotiable…
What I have come to identify - and test, and live - are what I now call “The Five Pillars of Metabolic Health” and these are the foundational lifestyle and environmental factors necessary for biological alignment and true metabolic thriving!
Pillar-1 is Nutrition. Not in the way we’ve been taught to think of it - calories, macros, restrictions - but in terms of biological appropriateness. What you eat is a signal to your body about the world it thinks you live in. Processed seed oils, synthetic carbs, and nutrient-void calories tell your system it’s under siege. Real food - the food our species evolved eating - tells your body that it’s safe, nourished, and stable. When I switched to what I now call “species-appropriate nutrition,” everything began to shift. Nutrition is the cornerstone of the foundation of true metabolic health because it enables and impacts everything else profoundly and it is also the most logical starting point – the gate to entry so to speak – so much so, that it was the focus of my first book within which I lay out my case for species appropriate nutrition and if interested, you can find it using the links below:
Kindle (Global) / Standard Paperback (UK & USA): https://amzn.to/4hRImti
Premium paperback (International): https://amzn.to/4l5F2h3
Pillar-2 is Movement. Not punishing workouts or relentless cardio, but functional intensity and consistent activity instead of being sedentary. When I trained, I stopped training to burn calories and started training to send the right signals to my body – signals telling it to strengthen & adapt, to build power & explosiveness and most importantly – to build and maintain full mobility! But that’s not the main thing either because training is such a small part of our lives – we are talking about an hour a day (if that), a few days a week... It is in fact, the rest of the time where people need the most intervention because it is being sedentary which destroys our bodies and we need to buck the trend of modern sedentary lifestyles by building non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) also known as non-exercise physical activity (things like walking, standing, climbing stairs, doing chores, etc.) into our daily routines. We need both training and NEAT to signal true physical vitality. This kind of movement isn’t about maximum effort 24/7 – it’s about communication and telling your body, “You are strong, you are capable, and you need to stay ready.” Do this and your body will respond! Here’s an article of mine to help you see movement for what it is: https://rickyduplessis.substack.com/p/mechanotransduction-the-forgotten
Pillar-3 is Sleep. For a while, this was the hardest one because sleep, when it goes bad, affects everything - but when it’s good, it becomes the engine that makes all the other pillars more effective. I stopped wearing my chronic exhaustion like a badge of honour – I stopped taking pride in the stupidity of the mindset which says, “I will get plenty sleep when I am dead” and I began building an appreciation for how important sleep actually is… It’s not the “shut down” we imagine it to be – sleep is actually an incredibly metabolically active state and it is completely and utterly NON-NEGOTIABLE for metabolic health… I have written a bit about this and you can find the article here: https://rickyduplessis.substack.com/p/the-role-of-sleep-as-a-trigger-and
Pillar-4 is Light Exposure. If you’ve never thought of light as a nutrient, you’re not alone - I hadn’t either… And when I first came across the concept, I thought it was weirdo hippie shit… But it turns out that your body’s master clock - your suprachiasmatic nucleus - runs the show. That’s right, your circadian rhythm controls your hormones, digestion, metabolism, blood sugar regulation, mood, etc. All of it responds to light – getting the appropriate type of light at the right time of day... But it goes so far beyond just circadian biology, full spectrum sunlight plays a crucial role in your metabolic health for loads of reasons – you can find one of my articles scratching at the surface of this here: https://rickyduplessis.substack.com/p/suns-out-guns-out
Pillar-5 is Grounding. Now admittedly, I used to laugh at the idea that walking barefoot could improve health – I was dead certain this was hippie nonsense... Now I do it daily, not because I’m chasing a vibe, but because I now understand the nervous system and the impact being electrically earthed has on our metabolic health... We are electrochemical beings - our cells carry charge - our environment carries current, and direct skin-to-earth contact literally discharges stress! It lowers cortisol, regulates inflammation, and restores balance. It doesn’t replace the other pillars - it supports them, and it calms the system. It brings you home to your body and until very recently in human history, it was a consistent part of our day to day activities – learn more from my article here: https://rickyduplessis.substack.com/p/the-role-of-grounding-in-human-metabolic-05b
Together, these five pillars form the foundation of what our physiology needs to thrive. They don’t just heal the body - they rewire our mindsets and give us a new compass. One that isn’t built on discipline or denial or thrashing ourselves in misalignment but one built on physiology, respect, and understanding.
You don’t have to control or punish your body anymore – you simply have to listen to it and give it the signals it needs to thrive....
Once I started doing that, I knew I couldn’t keep this to myself – I had to share this with you!
This Platform Is for People Like Us
By the time my health started to rebuild - and not just superficially, but at the root - I knew that I was onto something big and that I had to document what was happening. At first, I was just blogging via my social media – now I advocate and educate to help others discover and experience the same improvements.
Why do I do this…? Simply because while I was changing, I was also observing. In my work, in the gym, at school drop-offs and across my social circles - I see people who reminded me of the version of me I have left behind. People who are busy, committed, well-intentioned, but exhausted, bloated, foggy, anxious and struggling because they are metabolically compromised and they don’t even realize it... Trapped in bodies that don’t seem to respond to effort anymore, living in survival mode – just like I had been.
That’s why I started shaping the idea that now defines everything I advocate & teach:
Biology first!
Not willpower first.
Not productivity first.
Not even mindset first.
Biology. First!!!
Because if your biology is out of alignment, no amount of motivation will stick. You’ll white-knuckle your way through 30 days and fall apart on day 31. You’ll blame yourself, but it was never about discipline - it was about inputs and the fact of the matter is that your body doesn’t care how badly you want to be healthy - it only responds to what you actually do, and whether what you do matches the signals it was designed to expect.
That’s the idea that shifted everything for me, and the one that now sits at the heart of my platform.
If we want lasting health, we need to restore the biological signals that support it.
That means building a lifestyle which is centrally focused on The 5-pillars: nutrition, movement, sleep, light and grounding.
Lifestyle – not fad – LIFESTYLE…
That’s what led me to develop the “Metabolic Health Hierarchy” - a framework I created not to simplify the complexity of human health, but to organize it. To give people a compass, not a checklist and to serve as a guide for implementing physiologically appropriate lifestyle change in pursuit of optimal metabolic health outcomes.
Because we’re all at different starting points.
Some of us are battling full-blown burnout.
Some are sleep-deprived parents with 30 minutes of free time a day.
Some are healthy-ish but stuck — unable to get to the next level, despite doing “all the right things.”
The hierarchy is my answer to that and you can find out more about it here: https://rickyduplessis.substack.com/p/the-metabolic-health-hierarchy-by
It’s a guide for where to focus, and when. A tool to help you triage your own health decisions, based on what’s most biologically foundational. Because people tend to get distracted and caught up in fads or gimmicks, but the 5-pillars are foundational and interconnected, and they MUST be the primary focus of your lifestyle change.
This isn’t a rigid formula - it’s a flexible framework and it meets you where you are. It helps you stop wasting energy on things that don’t matter yet and start focusing on what moves the needle and gets you aligned with your physiology where it counts most.
It’s the proverbial hill upon which I have planted my flag - one of the most important parts of what I now share, week after week, with people who are ready to take their health seriously.
This framework exists because I needed it – I had to fugure out my way through it all and now, it’s here to help others - people like you - who’ve tried, and failed, and tried again, and are ready to stop guessing.
What You Can Expect From Me (And What You Shouldn’t)
Let me be clear about something: I’m not a coach. I don’t offer programs or 1-on-1 consultations. I’m not going to DM you personalized macros or walk you through a morning routine. That’s not what I do and it’s not what my platform is for.
What I do offer is something different and, I believe, more powerful for the right kind of person.
I offer perspective - the kind you can only get from someone who’s lived through the breakdown, put the pieces back together, and stayed curious the whole way through. I offer principles - not tactics that expire next quarter, but frameworks you can build your life around. I offer truth - not hype, not easy fixes, but honest, grounded content that respects your time and your intelligence.
I do this through five core channels, and I do it consistently:
My Podcast:
Every Monday, I publish a podcast interview with someone whose voice matters - people who are doing meaningful work in the fields of metabolic health, ancestral living, light biology, sleep science, functional fitness, and beyond. These conversations provide insights from subject matter experts you can trust and that you can take away and apply in your own lives.
Every Thursday, either solo or in collaboration with a trusted partner, I unpack a specific topic that’s central to your health journey. Sometimes it’s a deep dive into a scientific concept. Sometimes it’s a challenge to mainstream thinking. Sometimes it’s a practical breakdown of something I’ve tested myself. Always useful. Always real.
My Substack:
Every Friday, I publish an essay on my Substack - like this one. Longform, story-driven, grounded in lived experience, underpinned by the relevant science and shaped to help you make sense of your own health journey. This is where I connect dots, offer new insights, challenge assumptions, and create space for clarity.
Social Media:
Daily (or at least almost daily) via my social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Etc.) I post about metabolic health, about my journey and about the things I am learning. Thought provoking – aimed at getting you to question conventional wisdom and look deeper than the surface…
My Books:
I have one book out to date (Conquering King Stomach) and a second book currently being worked on – non-fiction writing is a medium I have come to love because it is brilliant for both building my own understanding through research and learning, and conveying this to others in a format which can meet them where they are and work with them at their own pace because life is not always kind enough to facilitate us signing up to that “12-week transformation plan” we like the look of, but a book and the implementation strategies laid out therein can be far more easily accessible.
Public speaking:
In partnership with Martin Gillespie (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillespiemartin/) and Neill Friedman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neillfriedman/) we are offering metabolic health focused corporate workshops / talks aimed at helping companies invest back into the wellbeing of their most valuable assets – the workforce!
These platforms are not about overwhelming – they’re about re-aligning!
I won’t give you a new fad or gimmick to try – I am here to help you understand what is physiologically and ancestrally appropriate and therefore biologically required for optimal metabolic health! I want to help you stop spinning your wheels and start moving in a direction that makes biological, emotional, and practical sense.
I’ll also never pretend to have it all figured out - I don’t - I’m in the trenches too, with kids, a full-time career, time constraints, and a marriage I care deeply about. I don’t preach from the side-lines - I share from the field...
So no, I won’t tell you what to eat for lunch next Tuesday… But I will help you understand why you’re hungry at the wrong times, why your body resists your effort, why your sleep feels broken and why motivation keeps burning out…
I’ll keep giving you tools, frameworks, and hard-won insight to help you take real ownership of your health - not for a week, but for the long run.
If You’ve Felt It Too, Subscribe
If you’ve read this far, something in you recognizes the story I’ve told, not because it’s identical to yours, but because it echoes something real.
Maybe it’s that moment in the mirror.
Maybe it’s the quiet fear you carry in your body — the fatigue that doesn't lift, the stubborn weight that won’t move, the creeping sense that something’s off and no one’s giving you a straight answer.
Maybe you’ve spent years trying.
Maybe you’ve done the diets, the 6-week plans, the tracking apps, the gym routines.
Maybe you’ve convinced yourself it’s just aging, or stress, or “life with kids.”
You’re not broken, you’re not weak, you’re not lazy - you’re living in a system that works against your biology, and it’s slowly grinding you down.
What I want to offer you isn’t a magic fix. I won’t promise you six-pack abs or boundless energy in 30 days. What I can promise is this:
You’re not alone.
You’re not imagining it.
But there is a way through.
If my story resonates - not because it’s ‘heroic’, but because it’s familiar - then this platform is for you. It’s a place to remember that health isn’t something you chase. It’s something you recover - by realigning with how your body is meant to function.
Every week, I’ll show up here with something that helps you do that.
Not because I’m perfect, goodness knows I am NOT perfect in any stretch of the imagination, but because I’m committed - to the truth, to the process, and to sharing what actually works in real life, for real people - people like you - people like me!
If you’re ready to stop guessing and start understanding...
If you want to take your health seriously without losing your mind...
If you want to stop chasing balance and start building resilience...
Then subscribe. Join me. Let’s rebuild from the ground up.
This isn’t just content. It’s a conversation.
And I’d be honoured to have you in it.
