Tony Packenas is a certified Dr Berg keto consultant with a strong background in natural therapies: he is a Bowen Therapy practitioner, a certified remedial therapist and has studied nutrition and dietetics alongside Emmett Technique and Finch Therapy for chronic pain relief.

But most importantly, he’s a husband and father – and his own health transformation using the ketogenic diet was a personal mission before it evolved into a professional one.

“As a typical young male, health and diet wasn’t a priority for me,”

he admits. “In fact, it was probably the last thing on my mind.” It was a long weekend away with the family that became the wake-up call he needed. 

“When I went back to work, I felt rubbish all day and I remember thinking - I shouldn’t be feeling like this at 34 years of age,” he shares. “I’d slowly been putting on weight, but didn’t have any health problems. I knew it was because I was eating terrible food and drinking too much alcohol all weekend. I knew if I wanted to improve how I was feeling, I had to make changes to my diet.”

Tony had been researching how to do intermittent fasting and made a snap decision to start that day – and found it surprisingly easy. “Before I knew it, I had fasted for 48 hours, only drinking water,” he says.

 
“Over those two days, I was researching what to eat after fasting and discovered the work of ketogenic diet expert Dr Eric Berg, who totally changed the way I thought about food. He was promoting a high-fat, low-carb diet, which totally blew my mind, but made perfect sense.”

“That sent me down a rabbit hole of research, self learning and formal learning. I uncovered science and research that supports eating a ketogenic diet, and why traditional diets, full of carbohydrates, are so bad for us.”

Tony lost 16kg in six weeks by combining the keto diet and intermittent fasting, and now has lost more than 20kg in total. More importantly, he has kept it off because keto has become a way of life.

“The most frequent question I get from people who haven't seen me in a while is ‘You look different – did you get a haircut?’. But the real difference to me is the change in my energy levels and what it means for my family. It’s so important to me that I can teach my children about eating in a healthy way, and that I’m providing a good example by looking after my own health.”

“I’m passionate about keto because I can see the real difference it has made in my life, in the lives of my family and loved ones,”

he says. “And the positive impact I’ve seen in the lives of my clients is always amazing.”