When we peel back the layers of our lives, we often find shared battles and common ground in the quest for mental wellness. Today, we sit down with the remarkably open Andy Kerr, who walks us through his journey of loss, depression, and the eventual solace he finds in helping others and in the written word. His story is a poignant reminder that while suffering may be deeply personal, the struggle with mental health is a universal challenge that unites us all.
Writing proved to be Andy's lifeline, a therapeutic outlet that eventually took the shape of his book "We All Change." He recounts the rollercoaster of emotions that led to its creation and discusses the surprising realizations about life's purpose that emerged from his introspective chapters. This conversation is an honest exploration of the struggles with mental health, the continuous management of well-being, and the importance of supportive dialogues that shatter the stigma surrounding mental health issues.
Andy's resilience also shines through in his passion for running, which goes much beyond a mere physical pursuit. Each stride for Andy represents a step in his ongoing recovery, echoing the determination and community found in the running scene. The discussion doesn't shy away from the physical challenges and injuries that come with age, yet it's imbued with optimism about setting and achieving new goals. Andy's narrative is a testament to the strength found in vulnerability and a beacon of hope for those navigating the murky waters of mental health.
You can read Andy's writings via his Substack page.
His charity website can be found here or email defirippleeffects@gmail.com.
If you'd like to purchase a copy of his book (remember a donation is made to the I AM HOPE charity whenever a copy of a book is purchased) then you can contact Andy at DifferentPeopleBooks@gmail.com.
When we peel back the layers of our lives, we often find shared battles and common ground in the quest for mental wellness. Today, we sit down with the remarkably open Andy Kerr, who walks us through his journey of loss, depression, and the eventual solace he finds in helping others and in the written word. His story is a poignant reminder that while suffering may be deeply personal, the struggle with mental health is a universal challenge that unites us all.
Writing proved to be Andy's lifeline, a therapeutic outlet that eventually took the shape of his book "We All Change." He recounts the rollercoaster of emotions that led to its creation and discusses the surprising realizations about life's purpose that emerged from his introspective chapters. This conversation is an honest exploration of the struggles with mental health, the continuous management of well-being, and the importance of supportive dialogues that shatter the stigma surrounding mental health issues.
Andy's resilience also shines through in his passion for running, which goes much beyond a mere physical pursuit. Each stride for Andy represents a step in his ongoing recovery, echoing the determination and community found in the running scene. The discussion doesn't shy away from the physical challenges and injuries that come with age, yet it's imbued with optimism about setting and achieving new goals. Andy's narrative is a testament to the strength found in vulnerability and a beacon of hope for those navigating the murky waters of mental health.
You can read Andy's writings via his Substack page.
His charity website can be found here or email defirippleeffects@gmail.com.
If you'd like to purchase a copy of his book (remember a donation is made to the I AM HOPE charity whenever a copy of a book is purchased) then you can contact Andy at DifferentPeopleBooks@gmail.com.
I definitely believe that the best way to help yourself be better is to find ways of helping other people. Those things around and in the first list there's those things around, you know, being a better husband, being a better father, being a better son. You know there's being present, being at work. There's some personal things on that list around looking after my health in various different ways.
Speaker 2:I've known Andy for a few years now and have always been impressed with the work that he is doing to make a real difference in and around mental health.
Speaker 1:If you write a book about mental health and then people start to use it, you become sort of responsible for their response to it. It's different to writing a novel. People can like a novel or not like a novel and everything else. This is about me. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not, it is what it is. And if you pull things out that might be useful to you then which was then Marie Claire's point well, what if it helps somebody else?
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan. Welcome to my podcast, where you will hear from a range of guests, including those from the startup world and those that have had incredibly interesting lives and some stories to tell. I would really appreciate it if you could hit the follow button and share this amongst your friends, but, as you know, time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. Time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. I want to tell you a little bit about desk work. Desk work is your offshoring option. If you want to save around 50% of your total headcount cost for equivalent talent across accounting, marketing, sales, your operations or your admin, then check out desk work. Honestly, if I was looking to start an accounting firm again, it would be a no-brainer for me to use Deskwork. I've used offshoring teams before in the past. I got past my skepticism on being able to do it and it was so phenomenally successful. Go have a look at desk-workco backslash, greg, and book yourself a free discovery call to learn more about it. Better still, mention my name and get yourself some discounts. Check it out.
Speaker 2:Now back to the show. My guest today is Andy Kerr. I've known Andy for a few years now and have always been impressed with who he is but, most importantly, with how open he is around the journey that he's been on and continues to be on, and the work that he is doing to make a real difference in and around mental health, and a variety of other things which we will get onto. I want to start this conversation, I guess, andy, just by firstly just welcoming you, andy. It is absolutely superb to have you on the show here today.
Speaker 1:This is a great opportunity. I've done a couple of these before, but they've really been sort of bit parts, but this is the first time I've done a full-on interview, so I'm really looking forward to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, I was super impressed when I took a look at your book. You've got a book out called we All Change and there was a line in that book that kind of really caught me off guard and when I read it I thought I almost sort of choked up a little bit. So there was something in there about, early on in the book, that your first wife, yvonne, passed away and she was in hospice for a while and then on the day she passed away you weren't with her when she died because you'd been drinking and you couldn't drive. It wasn't safe to drive. I don't even know where to start on something like this. Maybe a good place to start is just for you to give us maybe a bit of a story. Let's start with why did you write the book? What was?
Speaker 1:behind that. So I'd had I guess I'd had issues with mental health and mental health problems for a number of years. My mum talks about me behaving strangely for a while, but you know, some of it was just put down to being a teenager, I guess. But I would go into some odd phases. It's not in the book, but we used to have funky washing up time and for funky washing up time I had to play certain music, there had to be certain tracks on, and I can remember having what would be described now as a teenage hissy fit, I guess, if I couldn't get the music on at the same time as we were doing the washing up. But it's part of this obsessive nature of mine and it tends to drive me into places that I shouldn't go. So I had it for a long time back in 2018. Did a trip to Jakarta for work, came back and for the first time I just really struggled with jet lag and like two weeks later I was still really struggling. After four weeks I still wasn't sleeping and went into the GP and she made the mistake of asking me how I was and I just sort of fell apart there and you know, there in sort of the on the way to her office, got signed off and then it sort of gradually got better and I thought things were going okay. And then I had an accident. Um, at CrossFit tore my pectoral muscles off my left shoulder and put on a load of weight. Because you sit around, you don't do very much for a while, whereas you're trying to get better with any sort of major sort of muscle and shoulder injury. And it came back and it wasn't really, really wasn't well. This was now 2020. And I had.
Speaker 1:I went back to see my counsellor and on December the 14th the date sticks in my head. I don't think this date will ever, will ever, go away. My counsellor said to me at the end of our session. She said thank you for being so open and honest with me. And I started laughing and I thought well, I've been to like multiple sessions with you. What have I done that made you say that and because? And she said well, that's the first time you've ever described what happens to you. I'd always talked about, we'd always got into conversation in our sessions around where I'd been, the things I'd done and all that sort of stuff, but this was the first time I actually described what physically happens to me, because there was, maybe there is still a sort of a physical manifestation.
Speaker 1:So that then drove me to look up what was wrong with me. I couldn't find it. I went to various mental health self-help type websites, including Mind in the UK and mental health websites here in New Zealand and other places around the world, and I found some categories which went from not that I'm putting anybody on a scale here, I'm that. You know there might have been schizophrenia at the top and and mild anxiety at the bottom, that sort of thing and then. But what I could find was bits of me in bits of the descriptions. So I thought, well, I better write it down. So I rather manically I know that's a probably a bad word to use, but it was a bit sort of head down focused whilst I was typing it more felt like I was scribbling, and scribbling really hard. If you've, you can sort of get that picture.
Speaker 1:And I was so anyway so I wrote this, this piece, and I thought, right, okay, good job, that's done, try to get it finished before Christmas, because we were running up to Christmas then and I wanted it to be out of my head so that we could enjoy Christmas. We got got people coming around and that sort of stuff, so I got it written and I showed it to people, and I showed it to Tracy, my wife, and a couple of other people who knew that I wasn't well, and I gave it to Lorraine, my counsellor, and a few others, and the feedback was interesting. Lorraine immediately rang me and said are you okay Thinking that? Because there's a quote I use at the end of the first chapter, which is she thought maybe I wasn't that well and maybe I had some form of plan, and I assured her I didn't. It was more a case of the fact that these things have been running around in my head for a long time. So the quote that I'm referring to is from Doctor who, and when I was not well, from sort of 2018 through until 2020 and a little bit beyond, I watched Doctor who back to back obsessively and watched from when it got rejuvenated in 2005 all the way through to I'm going to get my timing wrong, but probably the Peter Capolzi series. I watched it four times all the way through. I don't know how many episodes there is, but it's quite a few, and a lot of it just sort of stuck with me. So what happened was I thought right, okay, well, I need to get better.
Speaker 1:If I can describe what's going wrong with me, I've always been a person that tried to just get stuff done, and not being able to solve this was distressing. I guess it sort of becomes self-compounding, if you like. You think about it too much, which then makes it worse. So then you think about it some more, which then makes it worse. So then you think about it some more and you can't. It's very difficult necessarily to break that cycle.
Speaker 1:What I found was that maybe writing things and things down. So over Christmas you know, christmas day was sort of pretty busy, boxing Day was busy I then got my notebook out and I started to write down what was important to me, and it was a little bit prompted by the again mentioned in the book. I talk about Alistair Campbell, who used to be Tony Blair's head of sort of head of comms I forget what his official title was, and I'd heard some interviews and read some articles about him. And then my wife bought me Tracy. She bought me his book, which I read as well, covered all that in the book too. But there's some things that he did to be able to help him get better and where I thought, right, okay, well, the first thing to do is to write down what's important to me, and it sounds really simple, but I'd actually never done it before. I'd never written down what really is important. And you know that thing about where people in business say to you you know, if you have an idea, it's an idea, but if you write it down and then put some structure around it, it can become a plan. Well, that's effectively what that became.
Speaker 1:Then that list of stuff where I thought these are the things that I need to focus on too. I don't I try and avoid the phrase get better, because I don't think you ever do. I think it was, and it goes away and then it comes back. So the idea is to try and be better. I'll be honest, I'm not particularly good at that either. Recent experiences and then the list became effectively a guide for the next 18 months.
Speaker 1:Wrote the list, started talking about the list, wrote the third piece. So then the list became a reason for writing another piece. So I also wrote about coincidence or the mysterious forces at work. I mentioned Christmas Day and getting ready for the fact that and I've been in chapter one I've talked about, talked about Alistair Campbell, talked about his book, talked about the articles and everything else, and it refers back to an interview that he did with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand in October 2020. And I'd gone into the kitchen We'd done sort of outdoor breakfast, barbecue and whatnot and gone into the kitchen, started to prepare stuff, flipped the radio on and it was just before midday and just as I was starting to prepare stuff for the barbecue for the evening on came that interview again and I wrote then that I don't understand how the world works. Sometimes things just sort of surprise you. You know for for what. Weeks and weeks before I'd had um Alistair's interview and his articles and that sort of stuff running through my head and then I go in in a quiet moment and start to do some stuff and I didn't know the interview was going to be on. I had no way I mean I could have if I was that avid a Radio New Zealand listener. Maybe I'd have been aware of it, but no, so it was sort of I don't know a serendipitous moment, but it then prompted me to write the second chapter. And then I wrote a third chapter about reading his book. And then I wrote a fourth chapter.
Speaker 1:A mutual friend of ours, mary Claire. We were sitting at 10cc in Masterton having coffee and we were talking about can't remember what it was now and she I gave her the fourth chapter, I printed it out and gave it to her and she said to me you should turn this into a book. And I said to her at that time I said Tracy said to me when I wrote chapter one, maybe I should publish it. And I'd said then that I didn't want the responsibility. And what I meant by that was that if you write a book about, I feel my thoughts were. My thoughts were if you write a book about mental health and then people start to use it, you become sort of responsible for their response to it.
Speaker 1:It's different to writing a novel. People can like a novel or not like a novel and everything else is about me. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not. That's, it is what it is, and if you pull things out a bit, that might be useful to you then, which was then maricla's point? Well, what if it helps somebody else? So I said, all right, I'll have a think about it. And she said and this is me, by the way, as well, be really cool to know someone who's published a book. So I don't know, I don't know. So, just so, I went back home and then a few days later I wrote the intro to the book, even though I'd only got like four chapters. Decided then I'd write 13 chapters, 13 things on a list of things to help me be better. I mean 13 chapters. And I just kept writing. And what was the reason for it? I wrote recently I've started a sub stack as well. That's not an advert. I'm just sort of continuing to keep my hand in, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Where do we find your sub stack For those people who are listening? Where do they go and find?
Speaker 1:it. Oh yeah, no, I am Andy Kerr on sub stack. I am Andy Kerr, so I was writing on that and thinking that when I was writing the book, sometimes I'd get so frustrated about the fact that the words wouldn't come and I was trying to allocate time to sit down and write. What I've learned now and what I find when I'm trying to write pieces for the Substack is yes, I still need to allocate time and it needs to be the right moment for flowing, but generally speaking, when it starts it just comes, and I find now that it helps me with my thinking. So the book took longer than I thought it would and that's because of that frustration of trying to force it out of me. So there's no point in me trying to do that. But I didn't realize it at the time and in the end I finished writing. I'd written the 13th chapter, thought, yep, this is all good, this is brilliant, and I thought, oh, bugger, I've missed some stuff out.
Speaker 1:There were some things, because what I did was originally I was just writing these pieces for people around me to read and see that, because lots of people knew I was in wealth and this was my way of being able to communicate with everybody. Well, look, these are the things that I'm doing, this is where I'm heading and this is what's happening and it's sort of. You can see through the writing and I've commented on this to a couple of people that I didn't know I was doing it at the time that chapter one is very. There's no pictures, it's just words. And you're in that sort of state where you're very, very focused and you've got to do something, whereas through the rest of it you start to see that I become better because the writing gets better and less sort of must get this done and then it sort of keeps moving, moving through. And the other thing is sort of because and like I said, I didn't realize it at the time, but I do now that the writing was helping me think, which made the writing better, and it became less about, I guess, less about mental health more than about.
Speaker 1:I've posited this question to myself very recently and I'm going to write a piece about it but what am I for? And it's it's sort of the. There's a double play to that, which is well, if I'm just here to consume and do nothing else, well, what's the point in that? That's one side to it. So I figured I definitely believe that if you and it would be very personal to each to anybody else I definitely believe that the best way to help yourself be better is to find ways of helping other people.
Speaker 1:Those things around, and in the first list there's those things around, you know, being a better husband, being a better father, being a better son. You know there's being present, being at work. There's some personal things on that list around, looking after my health in various different ways. So there's all that sort of stuff. But then there was the giving back, which is around trying to find ways to help other people. It's all evolved. It's just sort of I didn't, so why write a book? I didn't have a plan to write a book, I just wrote some stuff down and then it sort of morphed into it.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting because it strikes me that it's something that initially started as something that maybe was cathartic for you and it was an exercise in just starting to construct your thoughts and then from there, ultimately it became a book and then from there it has impact on others. Did you ever then feel the pressure, once it was published, to sort of have to, as you say, you know you've written these things down and then others use them? Do you now have to somehow be responsible for that? What did you think after it was published in terms of, you know, reflections from others?
Speaker 1:oh, now, this is an interesting. So it got published as in from the point of view of the fact that I had boxes of books on the first of apr. April 2023. It went into editing in August 2022, and it took that long to get it.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what the scariest moment that you'll ever have in your life if you've written a book is the first time the editor hands it back to you and there's just a sea of red all the way through it and I was thinking, oh, what have I let myself in for? And I'm paying for this privilege as well. So when I got, I haven't been particularly good at managing myself. So in the book I talk about being on medication and I'm still on medication. My expectation is that I'll be on medication for a long time, and the reason why is because, for whatever reason and I know there's been lots of discussion in the media recently last year or so about SSRIs SSRIs are not good for me whatsoever. That's the reason why I've been shaking my right hand and ended up in an ambulance in june last year because of trying to change drugs, and we tried to try this as all right. Again I'm on something else. And what the other. What this one does is it tops up the amount of serotonin in me.
Speaker 1:But because I'm I've always been this, generally speaking, sort of full-on, live life to the full, work hard, blah, blah, blah. And when I started running, I just ran hard. And what I've learned from doing half marathon training and that sort of stuff is that I don't have that all that capacity to be able to do everything that I want to do at the same time. Running training takes a lot out of you, burns through a lot of resources and when, what I found, what I find is that sometimes the medication doesn't support me.
Speaker 1:So, having printed the book on the 1st of April, I didn't try and sell any until about the 10th of December. So it was, it just came around. To well, I need to allocate some time to actually doing it. Well, and not, what if somebody asks me a question about the book? In the past, I've not been particularly good about talking about it, and that's partly because of the past. I've not been particularly good about talking about it, and that's partly because of the fact that I've normally been doing a lot of other things at the same time, which means that I get caught out.
Speaker 2:Sorry to interrupt you. Take us back to when you first became aware that your mental health wasn't great. Was it prior to losing your first wife? Was it you wife? Were you a much younger man at the time when you became aware that actually I'm struggling here and you talk in the book a lot about dealing and battling with alcohol and drugs? When did you realize, andy, you're not well, you need some help.
Speaker 1:Again. It's funny, I catch myself saying you know, oh yes, it's in the book. My problem was and I'm I think this happens to other people in similar situations. It's an actual fact, you don't know. So I was so back when Yvonne died I'd been working so hard. We had Edward. Edward was two and a half, no, two years old, just over two years old. Two years old, just over two years old. He was just over four years old when she died and she first got ill. So Yvonne died when I was 30, and she first got ill when I was 23. We were going to go on holiday and she found a lump or a dent, really went into the hospital, went to the GP. Gp referred her straight away to the hospital and she ended the operation two days later it was. They'd done biopsies and bits and pieces and found that it was so aggressive that if they didn't, they didn't think that. She said, oh, we're going on holiday in two weeks. I said, no, you're not. And then it was the radio and chemo.
Speaker 1:I think I wasn't well through that whole period, through the seven years, and I understand when people step away, people in that situation that I was in just go. Sorry, I can't deal with it. I get it, I stuck with it but then fell off a cliff when it all stopped, and even though there was Edward to look after and the problem was there was some fundamental things to do, like arrange funerals and so on. But when it all stops and you've got this massive gap, that's when it comes in and takes over, and that's what happens to me.
Speaker 1:So I went to the GP then and the GP put me on Prozac and I sort of weaned myself off it a few weeks later and when, and as I've written, I actually went looking to see if, if, the depression was still there. And it didn't seem to be, and then it didn't come back again for another 19 years the title of the first chapter. I think the problem is that most people don't realize it, which is why, if things aren't quite right, my view is you, you must seek help, you must talk to someone. I was lucky. I it's lucky. I went to see my GP and she referred me to Lorraine, my counsellor, and she has been excellent, one of the things that I'm sort of struck by is that this is a monster.
Speaker 2:You know depression. This is a monster that can strike anyone, and it doesn't matter your social status, your wealth, your gender, where you live, what you do for a living. It can strike anyone. And you cite Alistair Campbell, tony Blair's chief of staff or whatever he was. You cite him, but it can get to anyone, right? And I think one of the great things you've done in this book and when you talk to others is just to destigmatize it. I mean, this is something. It's the human body. Neurologically we are quite complex. We can get tired, we can fall on issues of addiction, we can get obsessed about things, we can have behavior that is not ideal, and all of these things can kind of lead to a decreasing circle of a lack of mental health. So I think that was one of the things that really struck me in your book is that this can happen to anyone, right? And you must see that all the time.
Speaker 1:It can. And I think there's a danger in over-diagnosis and over-sharing. And I think that people, like when I started to talk about the book, I thought, well, do I put it on LinkedIn, you know, do I? And I thought, well, if people you know I've got, I'm connected with over 500 people and what have you? Most of them, to be fair, you don't really know them that. Well, it's the way LinkedIn works. I just thought, well, what's the worst that could happen? Some people go. Well, not so sure about him any longer. I said, why, in the end, if we don't talk about it but talk about it constructively?
Speaker 1:I think the what I was saying there how do I know? How did I know to get help? I really didn't. I had a really good GP and a really good counsellor. The GP helped me onto medication and I think that getting good medical help is necessary.
Speaker 1:Being able to talk to somebody is necessary and for those that are the sounding board, like yourself, you're sitting here and you're you're listening, you're being a good listener and then you're picking up on the things that I say. You're not giving me necessarily your opinion on what's happened to me or anything else. It's more a case of well, these are the things, the things, and what I found was I was surrounded. I got very insular throughout the previous period before I sort of hit this wall again, 2018 and then 2020. Reaching out and reconnecting with people has been one thing that's really helped, which means, then, that those people will be supportive of you when you go and put something out there.
Speaker 1:So some friends of mine have been excellent about the book and they've posted online about it, and I think the key thing is, if you think something's not quite right, then go and talk to somebody about it, even if it's just walking around. We've got Henley Lake here. You know, marceline, we've got Henley Lake. Just go for a stroll around Hangley Lake and talk to someone. It doesn't have to be a professional, but just sort of get it out there, you get out into nature and related to that.
Speaker 2:I want to pick up on three different themes, and you talk about all three of these themes in the book and I've also heard you talk about these. So one is sleep, one is exercise and, for you, running and CrossFit, and then the third one being nutrition, and we'll finish around and talk about keto. If we look at sleep, you made a comment in the book where, I think it was, your counselor was saying to you look, andy, with all of these things that you're sort of processing in your head and issues and things that happen in your life, some of them quite traumatic, you put those things in a box and you just keep putting them in a box and that's kind of fine while they stay in the box, but when you don't sleep properly, the box opens up and these are my words but it's almost like the box drops on the floor and everything comes out of the box. Has that been your experience? A lack of sleep really has contributed a lot to finding this?
Speaker 1:It most definitely did. It was the lack of it was my habit of not dealing with things and just pushing them away, putting them in this sort of metaphorical box and locking them up and then go. Well, that's how I'm going to deal with stuff that I don't like or struggle to deal with. So the things that I did, you know, as Yvonne was getting close towards dying, those things I'd locked up. You know, I hadn't. I never told anybody what I'd done. So when stuff just sort of unraveled, and with Lorraine talking to me and teasing out all of the things that I'd done in the last sort of 19, 20 years which had gone into this box, and what I'd since then, and probably stuff before then as well, and I don't remember all that we talked about in all the sessions, but yeah, and then, basically, what she said, what she said, look, we all do it, we all sort of park stuff, stuff. That's difficult, but if we, if it becomes really acute, the problem is that if you have that tendency for stuff to eventually unravel, it's going to hit you really hard and that's what happened to me. So I'm fortunate.
Speaker 1:Now the drug I'm on the tazepine. When I take it, it frustrates. That frustrates tracy. I'll take my drug and then 20 minutes later I'll be out. That's me gone. And she said it's so frustrating I can just say, oh you know, and then bang, I'm out. So that helps me sleep. The problem is that I don't remember any of my dreams usually, so I don't know if I do dream. I'm guessing I do Every now and then there's sort of remnants of stuff, but I'm just gone, so I definitely get sleep now. Is it high quality? I don't know. But I think the other thing to add to the box situation is that I don't put anything in the box any longer now.
Speaker 2:Tell us about that. What do you do? Do you just do you? If there's something that's a bit painful that you would have avoided in the past, do you now just walk into it?
Speaker 1:Look at the world we live in now. Everything's difficult. The way I've decided to try and go about things now. I still write lots of lists. I've got got to do it. The danger in putting things off is then it becomes a mind thing of its own rather than it just being a task to do, and there's always going to be difficult stuff. But I figured that I've got the 55. Now, you know, got the more difficult stuff coming with. You know aging parents, aging in-laws, aging relatives, myself I'm aging, but not aged. I'm determined to make it to 95, if not beyond, which comes down to the health stuff and sort of looking after myself. Again, I'm not always very good at that, but that's the intention. So yeah, so I don't put stuff in the box.
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Speaker 2:Let's get back to the show Then, in terms of exercise. So you got into running. Tell us a bit about that and the role that exercise plays in, I guess, your recovery from depression or the fight against depression I don't know if there's ever a full recovery, right.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think there is. I think it's always hanging around. It's always something to manage, but getting into the running, it became an obsession. I ran lots and lots. I didn't really know what I was doing. I ran a park run with. You know, I met some great people at park run bead and martin, and and we used to. There was a sort of competition with different ages, but all over 50 and that sort of stuff, and it was quite. It was quite good. I then ran some 10ks and did quite.
Speaker 1:You know, for me I wasn't somebody could go out with a bit of a plan and try and come in at a time that I wanted and that sort of step, and that's sort of as far as I wanted to take it. I then tried to run a half marathon and it was the half marathon, my first one, and I made a big splash about it on LinkedIn and Facebook and that, and I'd set up the charity then. I'd set up the charity then, and it was the first time that I was running a half marathon, but also the first time I was saying, look, I'm out here raising funds and this is what I'm going to do with it. So it was a rubbish, rubbish half marathon. I got, well, I was 16, got in 16 Ks out of the 21 Ks and got crammed in both legs and walked in pain for the rest of it. And people said to me, oh you know, I'd have dropped out. I just said, well, I've made such a fuss about it on the internet that I better get to the finish line. And it's really funny. You get within sort of 300 meters of the line and there's people going, come on, come on. I said, oh, I've got nothing, I'm not running, I'm not running at all, otherwise you'd.
Speaker 1:So that then drove me to again obsessively think, well, this is no good, I can't, I've got to be able to do this. So I sought some help from a running coach and that then got me through the next two or three half marathons and bits and pieces and I'm going to run a marathon. It's now going to have to be next year, because I've been off sick from work recently because I tore my pectoral muscle off my right shoulder in January. Because I tore my pectoral muscle off my right shoulder in January, surgery in February, which has meant that I've had to do a lot more sitting around and not doing very much. But the good news is that somebody said to me well, how's it going this time? I said, well, that's okay.
Speaker 1:I wrote a manual about what not to do, so I've been able to. I haven't put on the 10 kilos that I put on the last time. I put on a little bit of weight in that, but running with both of these injuries. So now I never needed an operation. Before I came to New Zealand I've had two hernia operations, one left, one right, and now two pectoral muscle repairs, one left, one right. So I'm now fully balanced and it's only taken it's only taken like 18 years to become fully balanced in New Zealand and, by the way've got I've taken my fair share of Tafata Ora's budget into my shoulders.
Speaker 2:Your shoulder is now so you presumably can't bowl a good googly anymore. Like that's gone.
Speaker 1:No, I'm intending on going back and I'll play cricket again. I'll get the range of motion and everything back again. What I can't do is go and lift really heavy weights, so that so because I was obsessively, I was doing ego lifts, and at 50, you've got to be stupid to be doing ego lifts. Sorry to anybody who's doing ego lifts at the age of 50, but you've really got to.
Speaker 2:I do ego lifts at the age of 55. I just think it's a male thing.
Speaker 1:I think we're stupid sometimes, yeah, so I now can't do all those things. But thing, I think we're stupid sometimes, yeah, so I now can't do all those things. But you know, maybe I could. But there's no point in me testing where the new boundary is. There's just no point, because if I reach it and it goes wrong, I can't fix it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're screwed. Yeah, so with the running, is that something? Are you still doing the running? Are you still using that as a kind of an antidote to fighting?
Speaker 1:depression. I had just started training again and then had the accident playing cricket which caused this, so I then had to stop because, given mobilization for one. So I've literally just started over the past two weeks, started running again, just treadmill stuff at the moment I had a bit of a cold so it's not helping with the breathing and so on, but the intention is to run a 10K in November. I'll run a half early next year and then run a marathon next year.
Speaker 2:Well done. And with the running, what's the benefit for you? Is it the sort of endorphin hit and getting the blood circulating and feeling fitter and better and therefore you you're able to kind of push away and feel better about yourself, push away the depression? Or is it the goal setting and the personal bests and the times and those sorts of things, so you've got a goal and an objective? Why do you think you do?
Speaker 1:running it's interesting around queenstown for the second time in november and it was the best planning we'd ever done, that I'd ever done running coach, had got some help with nutrition, did all sorts of things, had it bang on right, but got halfway through and it just wasn't going to happen, me coming in five minutes under my PB, which had been the plan. Just wasn't going to happen. And it was strange because I knew I'd got another what 11 and a half Ks to go, or whatever. I just thought, well, what am I going to do? Because, for whatever reason, even though I was eating well on the run and everything else, it just wasn't going to happen. So I just thought, sod it, I'll just enjoy it. I'll wave at every camera that I see, I'll stop and acknowledge. I won't stop, but I'll wave Queenstown's. Really good, the Queenstown people are excellent. They come out and they line the route. Some of them are ringing cowbells and you know people yelling my name out. So it's cool, it's really cool.
Speaker 1:And that was my first half marathon where I didn't get cramp, not during the race, not after the race. So I just thought, well, this is a really good learning opportunity in that case, because I've got all the way through. I didn't get cramp at all. All right, didn't go how intended. But what I do know is that I can now get round the whole way without getting injured. I've learned a hell of a lot from it. Then the intention was that I would have been running. I was going to try and run the Taupo marathon in August this year but because I learned so much about myself, I know that doing that intensive training between now and August is likely to be detrimental to my mental health. So therefore, right, interesting further and ease things along right.
Speaker 2:And what about nutrition? We sort of close on the sort of sleep, exercise, nutrition piece we and we talk a little bit about keto. I know you're a real advocate for keto. Why is that?
Speaker 1:so originally I was an advocate for it because I got obsessed with losing weight which is again is a trait and I found it a really good way of of losing weight. Now I've learned more about keto and intermittent fasting and that sort of stuff and it probably was the reason why I lost a lot of weight was probably just to through calorie restriction and additional exercise, calories in, calories out and that sort of stuff and, very simply, that's probably what was what was going on. But during that period, what I learned, what I didn't? I did more things around learning around.
Speaker 1:I'm somebody who's been pre-diabetic for 16 years, so being on a low carbohydrate diet makes sense anyway, being I am male and therefore the medical profession just says to you well, you need to get your psA test done once a year at least, because you're going to get a large prostate and you're more than likely to get prostate cancer. So I was a bit angry with the medical profession about the fact that this is just. Well, it's written in stone. So I thought, well, I got that. No, it's not going to be written in stone for me.
Speaker 1:So I've looked at different ways. I've been able to not only support my body when I need to do running, not only thinking about aging and maintaining muscle mass and maintaining bone density. So it's moved on from keto although there's a reference back to it for the charity. But for me personally, I try to still now eat relatively low carb, I try to eat higher protein and what I'm doing is gearing what I eat. I'm not doing very much training at the moment but when I am training, gearing what I eat to support the effort that I need to put in to be able to get the most out of the training that I'm doing, and then also then respecting my body afterwards. You know it takes a good three to four weeks for somebody of my age who's not really a runner, to be able to get over what I've just put myself through.
Speaker 2:So and tell us about the charity. What is this all about? I know a few things, but obviously listeners don't. So to take us through that you know what have you created here and why again in the book.
Speaker 1:I was driving back from Wellington one day this was sometime in 2021 March 20th, 21, I think and I heard an article on radio new zealand and it was about a lady called charlene tan smith who is the new zealand's top lead on medicalized ketogenic therapy and that is mainly used in new zealand and a lot of other countries to help people. But there's big focus from her on children or under 15s drug-resistant epilepsy and they go on a diet that's up to 90% fat and then the other 10% is protein and carbohydrate and what they've proven is the fact that they can reduce seizures in kids, wean them off medication eventually for some, wean them off the diet and it goes away and stays away, but it's not funded. The treatment isn't really well supported in New Zealand and it's not funded. And it's also, if you can imagine, if you're on a high fat diet and you're a child, you need to be able to grow as well. Your brain needs to grow, your body needs to grow, so therefore it needs to be nutritious as well as serving the purpose of reducing your seizures. So it's a diet that's managed daily, but the macros are tested daily and there's software out there that that can help you manage your recipes and make sure that the the kids getting the right food, and lots of testing, lots of blood tests and everything else.
Speaker 1:So I created the charity not to support Charlene and her husband, andrew. It was to try and support the families that go on to this, because you don't want to be eating lard, you need to be eating better quality fats, and in New Zealand that tends to be expensive. So I thought, well, maybe what I could do is help families that go on to the treatment. As it was, we ended up helping one family and then it sort of petered off, and that was because there's only one service, really strong service, in New Zealand and that's in the South Island. There's a little bit done out of Starship and a little bit done out of others, but it's not a focused service. The focused service in South Island serves 30 kids, plus some that Charlene does privately. So we structured the charity, rejuvenated something that I'd written back in 2017 around being able to help families in the Warapa with heating their homes with dry firewood. So this winter we've helped seven families. We'll look to do more next year and I'm in the process of literally there's a ton of gum over in a paddock and I'm getting that cut up and then we'll process that and put away for winter next year and we sell some of that to be able to raise funds and so on and so forth. So there's that part of it.
Speaker 1:And then right now just finalizing a proposal for creating a training program for keto dietitians in New Zealand training program for keto dietitians in New Zealand and what we're looking at doing is being able to take a model from the UK where this has sort of been done before, where they take a dietitian and train them to become a keto dietitian and train sort of three to five dietitians and then over a three-year period they'll be able to take on up to 30 patients each. The payback on it is amazing. It's about eight to 10 times on the payback because what you're doing is you're removing that child's time in ED and overnight stays and consultants and medication and blah, blah, blah. So for each per annum, for each kid that goes onto it, you save conservatively $21,500. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to.
Speaker 1:We will be sort of putting a paper out and talking to people about it, but we need to raise. So the charity is putting in 30,000 and we need to raise another 132 to 212. That'll get us the training and mentoring for that period that we need to be able to bring those dieticians up to speed and get them servicing those patients. And the payback is depending on whether it's three or five. It's two and a half million to 4.2 million over that training period. We're training a mentoring period and then so, assuming that runs for three years, in year four you save 3.2 million and then it's each year afterwards. So it's sort of, to me, coming at it from a business perspective, it sort of speaks for itself. I've just got to find the money.
Speaker 2:That is a great way to finish up and I will make sure, actually, that there are ways for people to be able to find you and connect with the charity and learn more about it and be able to support the charity. Andy, you're an impressive guy and I want to thank you for the way that you are open, so way that you know you've written a book which makes your story and some of the lessons that come out of that able to be consumed by others, and so for that I want to thank you. I also want to thank you just for being open and sharing.
Speaker 2:You're, let's call it, a middle-aged I hate using that phrase on myself, but I am a middle-aged guy and a lot of on myself, but I am a middle-aged guy and a lot of guys find it tough to share, and yet there will be a bunch of guys and girls you know this, this impacts everyone but a bunch of guys in particular who will hear your story and resonate with it and whatever their situation and whether they have got, you know, issues around addiction with alcohol or or other things or not, and they're just struggling, and you, in talking about it in the way that you do and some of the references you make to other people that are talking about this in your book.
Speaker 2:It's just super helpful for people. So thank you for that. As I say, I will make sure there are connections for people to connect in with you and your charity in the show notes to this episode. But I just want to say thank you, andy, because you're a top guy and I suspect the 95-year-old version of yourself, because you will make it will be able to sit back in that armchair and feel very satisfied with the impact that you've made on others. So so thank you, mate, well done.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Thank, greg. This has been a great chat. Always good to see you. One other quick thing, if I may so if people would like to buy the book, there's a $10 donation from what they from the cover price goes to, I Am Hope, to help support kids with counselling in New Zealand.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely superb and again, we'll include that in the show notes as well. So thank you, mate. It's really cool Top stuff. Thanks very much. Hey, don't forget to check out Deskwork, the team behind you being able to build high-performing offshore teams for your startups and SMEs. It's deskworkco. Backslash, greg, and go and save yourself some hard-earned money.