What follows below is a “succinct” origin story that led me to where I am now, a point that can be – as has been – described as ‘sorcery by spreadsheet’. It may therefore help in furnishing this narrative by sharing that this was not ever part of some grand plan, but instead simply what comes from following my passion. Of course, in hindsight, this all has the fingerprints of inevitability of it all… by which, I mean that the part of me that was so easily discontented by the mundane was forever captivated by the excruciatingly complex-yet-elegant patterns found throughout nature. The code-breaker in me drawn to understanding these embedded rules. And my inner pragmatist was hyper aware that, if I was to spend years pursuing mastery in any area, then this was the the most useful arena to do so (recognizing that mastery of human physiology remains unparalleled in its capacity to improve the world, one person at a time, by changing the otherwise unchangeable). This is why I chose to take a deep dive into the study of nutritional therapy and related areas of human physiology when I did. However, while scientific exploration underpinned this entire journey and I naturally consider myself a scientist, I was never interested in knowledge for knowledge’s sake and, accordingly, I found school a highly uninspiring place and often felt hostility to system that purports to promote science while simultaneously discouraging questions. One such unanswered question is how our institutions manage to make such fascinating subject matter so dull. It may therefore come as no surprise that I chose to leave college early but this was not to pursue my passions. I had already become highly interested in the workings of the human body; specifically, how to modulate performance in the one I owned, having spent several years competing in both swimming and football (where I was good enough to win local championships and be part of the youth academies, respectively, but not good enough to have a realistic chance of making it to the Olympics or Premier League). But, at this point, I decided that it was best for all concerned for me to Get Rich. Several projects I started languished, but one took off; I observed that there was a gap in the car finance market to finance specialist/non-standard cars and contacted a host of lenders to get them to buy into the idea. Most said no. One said yes. These financial products are commonplace now but they weren’t in 2003. By 2004, I had managed to take enough market share from the big hitters to buy a house in my hometown of Basingstoke. Within the next few months, the cost of doing business rocketed due to changes in financial regulations, the very same big hitters added products to their line-up to take the market share back and my lenders pulled out. Aged 20, I now found myself with a mortgage I couldn’t pay. I worked in the ‘real world’ for five months and added part-time work at the weekends, but this was still not quite enough to cover my bills. All work and no play, yet no reward either. I was aware of the downsides but I concluded that, seeing as I was destined for poverty no matter what and I was clearly going to be spending more time working than on leisurely pursuits, I needed job satisfaction. So I qualified as a personal trainer and nutritionist and jumped in. Although I paid a big price for this decision, it is not one that I have ever regretted for a second. In the early years, I focused heavily on sports and performance. I enjoyed the ability to quantify the improvements we were seeing, be that in body composition or in sprint times or any other metrics (including some world titles). Nutrition became my focus and rapid fat loss soon became ‘my thing’ . Word-of-mouth referrals meant that the community I worked with, once concentrated on athletes, became more diverse. It was at this point that I began to habitually encounter a split in the outcomes I was seeing; many saw amazing results but just as many experienced frustration. And thus, I sat with the dual question that would underpin all my research until the present day: what is stopping certain individuals from responding the way the should to interventions? And what do I do about it? What followed was a quest to build a comprehensive model of the human metabolism and a system that identified the rate-limiting factors. I averaged several hours of research a day for over a decade, although the harshest (and most valuable) lessons were not those that I chose, and came through an enforced change of perspective. By this I refer two my own health challenges; in 2007, in the midst of late training sessions and early starts combined with ongoing financial stress, I experienced an injury to my ear and ‘crashed’. I floundered for several months with failed strategies and various dead-ends, until the right blend of adrenal support saw me turn a corner and I regained my bounce, together with an understanding of the adrenals that would prove valuable for others in the years that followed. However, in 2012, I was subject to two hits on my spine in the same week while living in a mouldy flat and spiralled into a cycle of fatigue and insomnia. Whereas the first slump had demonstrated what was missing in the mainstream model, the second highlighted what was missing in my own. Like many people, I fell victim to the intuitive thinking that, ‘if I can just get a good night’s sleep…’, ‘if I can just kill off the microbes causing the inflammation’ or ‘if I can just take care of my postural issues’, I would be right again. Many late nights of research would yield new leads and bolster my optimism that I was about to get the breakthrough I so craved. They all failed. I was forced to abandon my prior dogma and discard my hope that the ‘right’ combination of the ‘most effective’ interventions would be enough. What emerged was a methodical and objective process of map-building that I use to this day, one that mandated focus on a) identification of the ‘rate-limiting factor’, b) due consideration for the myriad of two-way relationships in the human metabolism, most notably the pivotal body-mind connection and c) sequencing staging of treatments, according to the resources that were available at the time. My experience of these challenges will not the be the same as yours and the steps needed to resolve them may wildly differ. But what I do know first-hand is that the experience of insomnia, fatigue and brain fog is different to mapping out the complex web of metabolic factors that cause them. I know what it’s like to rotate a heap of sleep aids in the ungainly attempt at beating tolerance and play draining mind games in an attempt to make it to the end of the day. I know what it’s like to stumble for words and repeatedly say things I didn’t mean. I’ve given up doing things I love in order to achieve the improvements I needed and faced the inner conflict that comes with these tough choices. I’ve spent money I didn’t have on tests that proved fruitless. I’m not under any illusions that this equips me with the power to know everything about the inner challenges faced by other individuals on their own journey, but I will always try to provide the type of support I needed (and lacked) back in the darker days. Of course, its one thing scoring a victory in one person and quite another to achieve it consistently in thousands of others. Doing so required several things: an efficient process to identify the rate-limiting factors in the case of each individual, which can vary greatly when symptoms appear identical; establishing a right spread of customized metrics to generate the context to properly determine what each response actually means (no, its not always ‘die-off’!); and establishing a model that could accurately determine when something was likely to work as it should and, most importantly of all, when it was not going to (and, in such cases, what alternative option was called for). Doing so meant marrying the mechanisms laid out in the scientific literature to the data I was yielding on the front line, and called for multiple deep dives on Pubmed as well as extensive audits of real-life results. It meant discarding the flawed paradigm of ‘evidence-based medicine’, which identifies the ‘best’ intervention through average results achieved in a group of individuals with similar symptoms, in favour of a personalised approach that leveraged both functional testing and the wisdom embedded in traditional healing systems. Doing so left me with the system that I employ today and, by 2015, saw me with a five-month waiting list. This only served to highlight the lack of access most individuals have to such an approach and, in response, I resolved to set up The Academy. This took two years to get over the line but, since 2017, I have held these events to train other practitioners in the both the broad concepts and the granular details that have made it possible to reliably achieve improvements in so-called ‘impossible’ cases. Since 2020, I have committed to regular podcast appearances to share my ideas with the wider public. In recent years, my time has been split between working with the complex/chronic cases and with athletes, alongside delivering these courses. My research continues and my auditing of results is unremitting, albeit at a less breathless pace, and I have placed more focus on means to better communicate my ideas to those who stand to benefit from them. Those who wish to know more about these ideas can do so through my articles and podcasts.
About Me
My name is Marek Doyle and I have spent the last 18 years building a comprehensive model of personalised nutrition.
Who Am I
A quick overview on me
17
Years Experience
3,000+
Individual Journeys Tracked
11,000+
Test Results Analyzed
MSc
in Personalized Nutrition
Me & My Journey
My journey
Early years
Me, nutrition and the human metabolism: beginning
Me, nutrition and the human metabolism: evolution
The present day
MY APPROACH
The science and art of personalised nutritional therapy
office@marekdoyle.com
Any questions? Drop me a line.
Contact us
This website uses cookies to improve your web experience.