Unlocking Peak Performance: My Journey with Biometrical Data

Looking back at my life, numbers have always been my thing. I remember myself running to school in the morning when I was young, always trying to beat my own personal best. My Casio watch was my best friend and I cannot remember how often I have used the stopwatch functionality to track my time and the progress I made.

My old trustworthy friend

With a father and older brother both being engineers - and my curiosity for numbers and figures - it was back then an obvious choice to also complete my studies in the same field.

I've started working as a Research Engineer, worked myself up on the corporate ladder and started traveling a lot for professional reasons. Both in my jobs as a quality manager and procurement director I was able to find some analytical satisfaction.

At the same time, after quitting football, I started my journey of extreme explorations in the world of endurance sports. I ran multiple ultramarathons; from the desert of Morocco, into the jungle of Brazil and across the mountains of Switzerland.

Marathon des Sables (240 km self-sufficient footrace in Morocco)

I remember how during the race in the Sahara I was always checking my heart rate, as if it was a lifeline for me. It gave me immediate feedback on whether I was running to fast or whether I could pick up the pace.

It for sure helped me to cross the finish line as the first Belgian competitor that year.

A whole lot has changed since then, I've switched from Casio to Garmin as my trusted digital advisor and besides the stopwatch functionality I started tracking many more health metrics.

Also professionally I’ve made some changes. After leaving the corporate environment and working as a project management and LEAN consultant for many years, I decided to start my life as an entrepreneur.

My divorce accelerated my journey of personal development and made me re-orient myself into health and performance optimization disciplines. I became a Wim Hof method instructor, a methodology focusing on health optimization through breathwork, mindset exercises and cold exposure. It showed me that besides trusting numbers, I could start to trust my body and learn a lot more about how to change my state and become healthier by just using the power of nature.

During my Wim Hof instructor training in PolandIt opened my curiosity for embodied practices in which discomfort is often the accelerator for growth.I specialized myself into the concept of “Intermittent Living” where not only breathwork and cold exposure are used but also science based interventions using intermittent fasting, intermittent drinking, heat exposure, intense exercise and cognitive tests.

We notice that a lot of people and companies are still reluctant to use biometrical data as a structural component of their leader’s wellbeing or as part of their wellbeing strategy. Understandably, using data raises questions on privacy and the use of it should be well explained and contained.

To help people in their journey of using health metrics as a KPI within their organisation, I’m starting this bi-weekly newsletter called “Metric Monday”

Taking "Metric Monday" serious :)

The objective of this newsletter is to:

• Inform about which health metrics can be tracked and why more and more people are doing it
• What the most valuable metrics are to monitor and how they are linked to not only your health but also your performance and at a bigger scale the performance of organisations
• Elaborate on the vast amount of scientific research and literature which is already available on the power of using biometrical data
• Insights into my own health metrics which I’m tracking on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and which actions I take from them
• Insights into the impact of certain lifestyle habits on your key health metrics and how they can improve or decrease your performance

I will try to combine knowledge and content with bite-sized actionable insights which can also help you to become healthier and happier.

So subscribe to this newsletter and stay posted every two weeks about my own learnings and some really interesting insights into the world of biometrical data.

Be your best,

Lieven