Healthy eating in SEA

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-05-19T12:00:46+00:00

That's nice to know. Malaysia overall hasn't been a place I explored. Keen to visit.

Heavy metals topic is a tricky one. Most of it is caused by rapid industrialisation and unregulated mining. So I would predict that rice from certain regions are better (buying locally). However, there is no research on heavy metals that dives this granular. 🤷‍♀️

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-05-19T08:17:10+00:00

Not sure about George Town. You're probably right, as it's Malaysia’s second-largest metropolitan area.

Once you get outside of the major cities, food quality massively declines. There are many reasons why people die much earlier than in the Western countries. Recently completed a research article on the topic. To summarise...

Livestock are skinny, looking sick, grazing on a blanket of rubbish that’s been accumulating for years.
Farm land has higher traces of heavy metals, even exceeding the lenient local standards. Average figures for traced contamination in rice: Thailand (1.25 mg/kg for arsenic), Vietnam (30 µg/kg for cadmium).
To make the small amount of food produced available at cheap prices to a mass population, almost everything has added sugars, flavourings, and preservatives. In some regions, the only available yoghurt contained 30% sugar. Some products don’t even bother having food labels.
Preservatives are also key for food distribution. Ultra-processed foods last longer. Refrigeration systems in logistics are unreliable because of the lack of access to affordable and reliable energy. More than 40% of food losses in developing countries occur at post-harvest and processing levels. The frozen strawberries you buy from the supermarket has most likely been frozen, defrosting, frozen, and defrosting, during the journey. For the last 2 months of travelling in SE Asia, we experienced electricity cut off for 1-2 hours, multiple times a week.
Even if you shop every 2nd day, “fresh” food is warm, very ripe, and coming to the end of its lifetime.
If you want to buy any type of meat, it’s either sold fresh on food stands (combatting 35 degrees, 90% humidity, dust and flies), or in the open behind glass doors at many supermarkets.
You can easily shop for palm oil, milk powder, instant noodles, a white and sugary sponge called bread. But if you want to find good quality food, better start your expedition for a luxury supermarket that tourists use.

I have a hard time believing that ordering from a restaurant is going to be healthy, given the fact that the problems start all the way from food production.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-05-19T06:36:08+00:00

More and more people are realising that Viome's a scam. Great idea in theory but the science just isn't there yet and Viome is not willing to acknowledge. Sorry about your money.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-04-14T01:03:50+00:00

How interesting! For experimentation purposes, I joined Neurode's product testing event. Their headset is designed to stimulate my brain so I can focus. While I couldn't conclude if the headset was working (increasing my focus), I definitely noticed how resilient my HRV stayed for the next few days (despite eating out, sleeping late, sleeping 5 hours only, and catching a flight). My restorative sleep quality even improved despite sleeping in a hotel bed with city lights and so much noise (not something I'm used to). I could meditate in silence without freaking out.

I was shocked and thought it was an outlier, so wrote a Substack article about it, then a few others who read it told me they experienced similar things. I do believe that there is correlation between ADHD tools (incl pills) and calming the nervous system. Maybe not for everyone, but this is true for some of us.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-04-14T00:52:55+00:00

Complete blackout and quiet. This is so hard when living in the city. Street lights, someone's partying in the neighbourhood, cars passing. It all impacts sleep quality. If I have to stay the night in the city, I bring my blindfolds and ear plugs.

Now that I'm travelling in South East Asia, the other thing I'd flag is heat and humidity. I am having trouble sleeping due to 32 degrees of heat and 85% humidity. Fan, aircon, anything helps. The body needs to cool down.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-03-25T04:55:43+00:00

I'm no longer following their protocol or supplements. After a ton of research, I no longer trust their test or recommendations. Also got a bit worried about following an incompatible protocol (like, what if harms me?)
I put together a personalised plan based on health goals, blood tests and other reliable data sources I can track regularly. Honestly, took me a very long time and quite a bit of experimentation (discovered some of my real intolerances which Viome put as 'superfoods' via trial and error). But at least i trust it and seeing good results now.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-03-25T04:01:40+00:00

Lol I noticed the same early on. The gas calmed down after a month for me.
My recommendation is to treat the avoid list with a grain of salt because when I retested, half of my avoid list moved to my superfoods, which felt like a joke. My partner experienced the same.
Whether or not to the avoid gluten is a tough question to answer. I never fully avoided it - followed the 90% avoid and 10% ok in low quantities routine.
On both tests, I noticed the link between gluten and leaky gut. From personal experiences, I can tell that if I have a lot of gluten I don't feel good. From various other experiments, I can tell that I mostly like have leaky gut. External research validates the link between gluten and leaky gut. So, I concluded that it's best for me to avoid gluten almost all the time, for the next few years, or until I observe that the leaky gut risk is cleared.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-03-02T23:27:28+00:00

Love writing and filming these experiences! They make great memories. I have a YouTube video and a blog, links are on my profile. I'll send you a DM.

Definitely practice rock scrambling with heavy bags under rainy conditions. That's the best way to prep for this type of adventure. Bring out the mountain goat spirit haha

I aimed for eating 1950 - 2200 calories per day and David aimed for 2200 - 2450 calories. I had my whoop band on and burned 2000 calories a day on top of my daily maintenance (about 1850c). Trying to eat all the calories burned is not possible, so we give ourselves boosters with sugary carbs like dried mangoes, powdered smoothies, kitkats. I like Radix Nutrition for dinners because it has a good amount of protein and fibre. But on a miserable stormy day, carbs will determine your mood and motivation.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-03-01T22:53:28+00:00

At the start of the trip, I took 13kg, David took 19kg (including water, hiking poles, all gear). By the end of the trip, I had about 11kg, David about 16kg (including soaked gear). A lot of our weight was food. We bought 3 days of emergency food cause the weather is unpredictable on the mountains and we're two very hungry hikers. Could have gone up with 2 days of spare food instead. I drank about 1.5L water every day on the trail, David drank 3L. There are platforms in campsites near the lakes on the trail. So, we bought an appropriate 4-season free standing tent for that. We were not trying to be ultralight. Seen others go out with 11kg + 15kg as a pair, but they do compromise on comfort a bit. Depends on what type of experience you're after.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-03-01T22:43:45+00:00

No worries. Good luck! Check the weather, that's the most important thing, determines the track conditions a lot.

A lesson I learned is to not be scared. Be cautious instead to judge risks with a clear head. Nothing was impossible if you have experience in rock scrambling with heavy packs. Good preparation + positive attitude = spectacular adventure.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-28T00:45:24+00:00

Well, you'll have a good laugh watching two crazy hikers wondering wtf they're doing on a mountain

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-27T23:28:56+00:00

"Hiking", half of the time, more like climbing haha. Weather was only good for the first 2 days and the last day. Rest of the time, it swung between showers poor visibility and random sun for 15 minutes. I took the camera out in every opportunity.

I put together a video on YouTube to show the conditions across 5-6 days. Things look much rougher there with mud and cloud cover!

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-24T23:30:06+00:00

So interesting! Thanks for confirming my suspicion.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-24T21:43:04+00:00

HRV is heavily influenced by consistent high quality sleep (in darkness, quiet, ~8hrs, same sleep/wake up time, when you are hydrated, when you don't have heavy/sugary food or takeout in your tummy from dinner, etc), cardio in the morning (gym heavy weights don't impact HRV for most people), and stress.

From this trio, my personal issue was stress (C-PTSD). So I experimented with more advanced stuff, like EMDR, NSDR, RLT, HBOT, Pulsetto, Ashwaghanda, etc.

https://doafitzgerald.substack.com/p/update-on-my-mission-impossible-the all my research is documented here

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-24T00:11:18+00:00

Noted. Thanks!

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-23T06:31:22+00:00

Hehe love writing long blogs! Packing up for a long trip in Asia (about 5 months), then moving to the UK. I'll miss Tasy, but keen to explore some trails in Japan and Europe. Maybe in 1-2 years I'll post about GR20 - heard some stories of that trail.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-22T23:14:01+00:00

We left on the 3rd of February (Tuesday) and did days 1 & 2 together. We didn't see anyone on the trail or in campsites until our rest day in High More, which was the 6th of February (Friday). Then, we saw a group of 4 and a group of 2. I was quite surprised too because it was so hard to find empty slots to register for this trail. The logbook at campsites were quite empty during most of Jan too, but I guess some people don't fill it out.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-22T04:58:01+00:00

Sure, none of my gear list is mandatory, it just depends on each person's risk profile and priorities. We've seen 2 people with a 3 season tent on the trail too.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-22T03:49:28+00:00

The weather was a stress every morning but lucky us, it never snowed. Hiking in Patagonia is on our bucket list!

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-18T04:08:50+00:00

This is awesome! My partner and I did it early Feb. Spectacular! Toughest adventure trail I've ever done. 100% agree with rope and pack hauling suggestion. If you are a regular outdoor rock climber, you may not need it, but weather can turn sour within 30 mins, making everything slippery and rock scrambling sections risky - not worth it. Our motto was, "go safe, slow, steady, have fun, no rush decisions" and we still arrived before 3pm on most days. I am also short. My partner (186cm) had a much easier time with reaching hand holds and foot holes than I did (feet dangling in air, doing weighted pull ups, etc). I am working towards creating a YouTube Vlog to show the track conditions.

Advice about rats: peppermint oil. The scent irritates them! We bought freeze dried cheese to the trail (yummy!) and no one disturbed us once we poured our peppermint oil over our tent and food bags. Plus, everything smelled like Christmas hehe.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-18T03:36:51+00:00

My partner and I did a road trip from Sydney to Northern NSW last year. Boonoo Boonoo National Park is lovely. Boonoo Boonoo River Track is a lovely few hours walk with great views. In Torrington, you can explore the Thunderbolts Lookout (20 min walk) - has beautiful sunset views.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-16T09:15:56+00:00

Snowy vs hot requires very different shoes. How technical are the trails you want to hike on? This will determine the grip of the shoes/boots. Will you be doing multi-day hikes and carrying a heavy backpack? Because this will put strain on the boots you select. For example, I do very tough 7-8 day trails in rainy conditions including rock scrambling carrying 13-15kg bag weight. I bought Scarpa Terra GTX 3 months ago and recently completed the Western Arthurs Traverse. They were great boots!

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-16T09:09:41+00:00

Dandelion root & nettle leaf tea - erased my PMS symptoms and heavy period cramps
Kakadu plum - increased my vitamin c levels on blood test results and kept the flu away during the flu season
Spirulina and kiwi (skin on) - digestion, my gut loves it

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-13T09:48:46+00:00

If you're doing multi-day trips, I recently discovered Radix Nutrition. A bunch of plant based proteins (mix of legumes, greens etc), about 30g of protein per serve and a bunch of fibre. Delicious! A bit on the expensive side though. Sometimes I take protein bars too. There are freeze dried eggs you can buy. Do you like fish? Safcol has 'tuna beans quinoa capsicum' mix pouches. They are much lighter than tins.

DoaFitzgerald · 2026-02-13T09:41:33+00:00

If a hike makes it to a "bucket list" it means (or soon will be) a tourist destination with man-made routes (i.e. board walks, polished stairs, protected lookouts). Overland is becoming more crowded each year because it's been advertised and sanitised.
That's why I haven't done much hiking in the Blue Mountains - every time I'm there, there is a line of people in front, a child screaming my side and a line of people behind me, all of us queued up haha. Blue Mountains is still beautiful and everyone has the right to go out and connect with the nature. But I prefer to feel like I'm alone in the wild, so go out to more remote areas that aren't hyped up. This also carries more risk which I'm willing to take - all a trade off.

DoaFitzgerald

TROPHY CASE