Now with indoor gig and concert progress halted, the fate of live music in the near future is in disarray again. And it’s losing Record Weekly its gig reviewing niche, but stay with me. While I vowed I didn’t want this to turn into a personal blog, a few anecdotal features can’t hurt…

Around six years ago, I first dabbled in doing the 5:2 diet and it worked pretty well, despite posing its struggles. I’ve more recently dipped a toe in the same fasting pool and it’s ace. 

Generally speaking, I hate the word ‘diet’, because it evokes images of eating one lettuce leaf a day. Despite intermittent fasting being the crux of the 5:2, whereby you do feel as though you’re literally starving yourself at points, it actually has so many health benefits. The obvious one is weight loss, which, as a massive gym-goer, I have to regulate so that muscle isn’t stripped off. Better gum and metabolic health are two other major perks. To restrict yourself to no more than 500/600 calories a day, two days a week, is a lifestyle choice, not a ‘diet’, per se.

Cut to the chase? Okay, I shall. I had my earphones in a few evenings ago (which, I should add, are noise cancelling and really do the job!) while fasting, and I felt as though every chord, synth and lyric were infinitely clearer. It’s left me speculating about whether, by not feeding one of your senses (in this case, taste), you can sharpen another sense and strengthen it in that moment. They say that’s why a cinematic experience is best in total darkness, because your senses are stimulated and acutely refined. 

There’s talk of alleged correlations between healthier diets preserving hearing for longer, but I think the jury’s out about whether my fasting improved my hearing that night. I hadn’t increased the earphone volume, so perhaps we just chalk this up to food (or lack of) thought…