 This is the first thing I've eaten in three days. I'll just go. Hello, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. So why wasn't I eating for three days? Sounds like pretty crazy, especially for somebody that's so crazy about food and wine. Well, I'm going to tell you why. I just finished up a three day fast, only drinking water to help detoxify my body. You know, the first, the first night was easy. The second night was a little bit more difficult. And on the third day, I was feeling a little bit weak, but there were moments where I was feeling really clear and really awesome. So why the heck would I do a three day fast? I'm going to tell you why. It's something in the wine industry and the wine business that I think people are aware of, but they don't want to talk about is its weight and health. My whole life, I've struggled with my weight. I've fluctuated up and down. I've kind of had some body issues in the past. And the reason is I was always a basketball player and me myself being relatively tall for the average population, but being really short in the basketball world. I always wanted to be taller, longer, lengthier. That's the stereotypical basketball build and something I wasn't in. Compared to other basketball players, I'm rather short and squat. So in the past, I really struggled with that. And like I said, my weights went up and down all over the place. I come from a farming family where everything was put on the table and you ate as much as you could. Otherwise it would be all gone. Then you go out and work again. Whereas Shireen comes from a different type of background. She's helped me a lot where she comes from a family, a philosophy where you don't need to eat everything. You can leave things on your plate because there's, you know, there's always going to be more coming. There are a lot of good things about being in the wine industry and also a lot of not so good things, just like anything. For one, we travel full time. That means we're on a lot of press trips. We're on a lot of wine dinners. A lot of tasting where you're just eating unbelievable food, especially when you're eating local food sourced from around the area. Always tastes great with the local wine. And it just can be exhilarating, especially when you're opening up and trying different types of wines. Some of these wines are just great and outstanding. In addition to that, we get sent tons of samples and we cook at home, we taste the wines. If the wines are good, we have a couple of glasses. You know, although we don't drink as much as it appears, a lot of those tastings and those wines start to add up. The first year that we were in the wine industry, things were kind of going okay. But after a couple of years, I started to put on weight really rapidly and I was ignoring it. We were always out late at night, drinking with winemakers, producers, distributors, tasting wine, eating gigantic meals, drinking merrily at one point. Last year, at the end of 2018, I was the heaviest that I ever was. I ballooned up to about 106 kilograms. I think in pounds it equates to 233 pounds. And although Sharina's taught me a lot about discipline, one thing I'm not disciplined about is when there's excellent fine wine on the table, I can sip on that all night long. If it's kind of average wine or bad wine, I can stop myself pretty quickly. So last year, I actually read an article by Miquel Huden, another guy that writes about wine. He wrote about weight and health in the wine industry. And it got me thinking, and by the time I was pretty big at the end of the year, I knew that I had to do something about it. So this is what I did. Starting in December, 2018, January, 2019, I started doing hardcore intermittent fasting. And before I get into this, I have to give you a disclaimer. While I was a practitioner in the past, I am not your doctor, so you should seek medical advice before you take, before you try any of this. I'm just sharing with you what I did. So what I was doing was basically fasting for 16 hours a day and only eating within an eight hour window. The philosophy behind that is once your body starts to go into a fasting state, which they call ketosis, your body starts to use, it's your own stored fat as fuel. So within two and a half months, I dropped about 13 kilograms. So if you calculate, it's almost close to 30 pounds. If you're going in the pound system, I was back to almost the same weight as when we started traveling around the world back in 2015. In addition to that, I also took a whole month off just tasting wine, being around wine in general. It kind of helped to refocus my mind and control some of the late night eating and drinking. The third thing is when we started, we started to get back on the road and doing press trips, I started skipping a few meals here and there, probably usually breakfast because we have late dinner, skip breakfast and then not eat until a late lunchtime. That kind of gets me in the 16 hour fasting period, although it's not always 100% accurate. And the last thing is changing your mindset. Just knowing that when there's all these great wines in front of you, all this great food, you tend to think, oh my gosh, I'm never gonna eat or drink this again. But it really getting in the mindset, you know what, there's great wine here today, there's gonna be great wine here, great wine tomorrow. You're gonna have great food now, you're gonna have great food in the future. So really changing that mindset, not feeling like I have to eat and drink everything in front of me. So after we started traveling again in 2019, couldn't be in my hardcore intermittent fast schedule, how's it going? Well, I put on a little bit of the weight that I lost initially, but I've maintained a kind of control and manage myself. That's why I do things like these three-day fasts, trying to take breaks from tasting. And it's something that I'm always, it's always gonna be a battle. It's not something that's gonna be easy, it's something that I always get to work for. Of course, some people may say, well, why don't you just change industries? Well, this is the choice I made, so I have to work within these parameters. So I'd like to know actually how you detoxify, how you manage your weight, your health, everything while being around wine or alcohol or drinks and food all the time. Let me know in the comments below. Guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Mind Travel. I will see you in the next episode.