Neil Gyte
My health journey began with a profound realisation during my daughter's christening. At 118 kg (260 pounds), I was far from the active and fun father I wanted to be and was on a fast track to an early grave. This moment of clarity ignited my determination to change and set me on a journey towards better physical and mental health (largely through ultra-endurance training/endeavours). Over the last few years, I've witnessed the devastating impact of chronic diseases on family and loved ones. This led me to dive deep into research, searching for the root causes and exploring ways to manage and reverse these conditions. I discovered the startling yet relatively unknown truth: our mitochondrial health is the root cause of chronic diseases. Remarkably, much of this is within our control and often can be reversible and preventable. Inspired by this revelation, I embarked on a new life mission: Help 1 Billion+ People Become Metabolically Healthy.
Neil's Story
Stage 1: My Health Journey
I remember the moment that changed the trajectory of my life as if it were yesterday. It was our daughter's christening, a beautiful summer's day in Belgium. As we celebrated with the family, I had to sit and rest after just 30 seconds trying to play football with the kids (I was 260lb/118kg at the time). Years of poor nutrition, lack of exercise, weekly business-travel (always lugging my gym kit with me for it to never leave my suitcase!) had left me on a fast track to an early grave.
This was the seminal moment of deep pain, where I realised that I could not be the father I aspired to be unless I made some drastic changes (both for my daughter but more importantly for myself). I wanted to be a loving and inspiring father who could match whatever my daughter wanted to do as she grew up. Sport was a huge part of my childhood and I wanted to make sure I could support anything my daughter wanted to do. In that moment, I made a promise to my daughter: I would change and become the healthy, active father that I aspired to be.
This was the start of my health journey, which has continued and evolved over the last ten years and led to a huge amount of learning, development, and growth (mostly about myself) but also as I chased longer distance endurance events (like Ironmans), I became increasingly interested in how our bodies use energy and ultimately fat as a fuel source.
Stage 2: Family, Friends: Chronic Diseases
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Seeing the impact of chronic diseases on loved ones continued to deepen my interested in Metabolic Health. I embarked on trying every single ‘diet’ myself to try and find the most anti-inflammatory nutritional approach that I hoped could help loved ones manage these diseases more naturally. After trying many approaches I personally find that a low carb/ketogenic Mediterranean style works the best for me. This, together with natural herbs from a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) specialist, has been a great combination to naturally manage some chronic conditions.
Most recently, it was one close family member’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis that really had me digging deep into podcasts, books, YouTube videos searching for: how do you stop cancer, how do you reverse cancer, what causes cancer? This journey led me to the amazing work of Thomas Seyfried and his Metabolic theory of Cancer. As I read and read, I realised there was a common thread across all my research and these chronic diseases. They all shared the same root cause: Mitochondrial Dysfunction, and I realised that Mitochondria and Metabolic Health (how our bodies convert energy from food) is the root cause of chronic diseases.
Stage 3: New Mission to help 1Billion+ people become Metabolically Healthy
With the realisation and mix of excitement and dread (I knew what the upstream root cause of chronic diseases was, but also the realisation that 90%+ of the world are metabolically unhealthy), I decided to leave my 20 years in tech/mapping to embark on a new mission: Help 1Billion+ people become Metabolically Healthy.
This led to the founding of 1BMH.org – providing simple education and links to tools in order to help people start or continue their Metabolic Health journey.
Looking at the global problem, impacting billions – I decided to focus on the most impactful part of this problem with the least number of effective/practical tools: ultra-processed foods and sugar/fructose specifically. A serendipitous meeting with RxSugar at the Metabolic Health Summit in January 2024 made me realise that allulose, a rare natural sugar, can provide people with the 'sweet' taste we all enjoy, without the devastating metabolic impact of traditional sugar/sweeteners. In fact much of the science and research shows allulose has positive Metabolic Health effects. It was an easy decision to join the RxSugar team and 'Solve for Sugar'!
This challenge was born from Dave’s journey and use of outdoor swimming/endurance events as part of his coping strategy for his mental health struggles. Knowing my love of endurance challenges, he asked me if I wanted to join (easy decision to say yes!). Given where I was at with my knowledge and Metabolic journey – I asked Dave if he would be up for doing it with the twist of zero calories – hence Zero-Two-Lomond was born!