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King Charles has maintained a strict diet and rigid daily exercise routine for years.
The monarch was diagnosed with a form of cancer on Monday, Buckingham Palace revealed, after a check up last month found an unrelated, enlarged prostate that proved to be benign.
While the King will now step away temporarily from public-facing duties, he has lived an impressively healthy life up to now – barring several injuries from a lengthy polo career and two coronavirus infections during the pandemic.
In a list of 70 facts released by Clarence House in 2018 to mark the then-Prince Charles’ 70th birthday, it was revealed that Charles restricts himself to only two meals a day.
“The Prince does not eat lunch,” according to fact number 20.
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Gordon Rayner, former royal correspondent at The Telegraph, once said that the King believes lunch is a “luxury” that interferes with his busy schedule.
Charles also abstains from meat and fish on two days of the week, while he avoids dairy products additionally on one of those days, according to an interview with the BBC in 2021.
File photo dated 09/12/98 of the then Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) speaking to boxer Chris Eubank at a Breakthrough for Breast Cancer reception in London
(PA)
The month that Charles was crowned, Buckingham Palace posted a listing for a live-in vegan chef to prepare meals for the monarch.
While he has stated the main purpose of his intermittent veganism is for its benefit to the environment.
The king is also passionate about organic produce, as former royal chefs Darren McGrady and Carolyn Robb told Delish in May 2023.
Mr McGrady said Charles focused on organic produce “before it was even invented”, with Ms Robb echoing that the monarch’s farm was one of the first to be organically certified in all of the UK.
Alongside his strict diet, the monarch is also believed to stick to a rigid exercise routine.
The Telegraph reported in 2020 that Charles completes the Royal Canadian Air Force’s five basic exercises, referred to as the 5XB plan, twice a day.
The regimen was designed for pilots who need to be able to exercise without a gym.
The 11-minute workout involves two minutes of stretches, one minute of sit-ups, one minute of back and leg raises, one minute of push-ups and six minutes of running on the spot, while doing 10 eagle jumps every 75 steps.
Charles’ wife Queen Camilla also revealed that the King is an avid walker. She described her husband in 2020, when he was in his early 70s, as “probably the fittest man of his age I know”.
“He’ll walk and walk and walk,” she said. “He’s like a mountain goat. He leaves everybody miles behind.”
She went on to say that King Charles often goes on miles-long walks.
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