Hong Kong cancer survivor’s tips for a happier, healthier life, why balance is key and five questions to answer before you can attain it
Feisal Alibhai didn’t smoke, touch alcohol, tea or coffee, rarely ate out and worked out every day. When, aged 35, he got 10 cancer tumours, the businessman sought to understand why. These are the lessons he learned
On Sundays, Feisal Alibhai and his two boys have an after-dinner meeting of a kind not seen in many other Hong Kong households.
“We sit down and decide the meals for every day, from Monday to Sunday, breakfast, lunch, dinner. On a full stomach. That makes them learn to be proactive and not reactive, and they get to see a full balance, the full view of what they’re eating,” Alibhai says. “At the age of seven and nine, they were already learning to control what goes in their mouths, and to balance.”
It is never too early to take charge of your health and all the elements that may impact it, including how and what we eat, he says – and he speaks from experience.
In September 2004, the then-35-year-old high-flying family business titan got a harsh reality check: a stage-three lung cancer diagnosis. Eleven months on, and after 20 rounds of gruelling chemotherapy and three operations to remove 10 tumours, he began his recovery and personal transformation. Now it is his mission to help others take charge of their health, too.
“I want you to learn from idiots like me,” he told attendees of the Khoja Business Leaders’ Summit, in Davos, Switzerland, in September 2017. “I want you to make better choices based on my life’s lesson and not have to pay the school fees.”
