4 Time efficient tools to your best physique and health

Running a business takes a lot of time and dedication. It's often difficult to maintain your physique and overall health because of that.

You likely have low energy throughout the day and don't have time to go to the gym in the first place. Preparing, eating and cleaning up after 3 meals a day is a significant time commitment in itself.

How could you possibly make time for the gym on top of that? I'll get to that soon.

First I'll start with when I was 19 I got into fitness training. I typically ate 3 meals a day with snacking between meals.

At that time I felt lethargic most of the time but I pushed myself to stick to physical training. I did feel more capable as my muscle mass started to change.

But it always felt like I was carrying around extra weight or that it was plain cumbersome to move around in my body. In that time I was interested in bulking for size so I was eating a significant amount of food.

I read in a book on physical training that in order to gain mass I had to eat big. So I ate big. Whenever I ate and felt full I would eat even more for the sake of appearing stronger.

I did end up putting on a decent amount of weight but my energy levels did not improve. If anything they declined.

I came to a place of acceptance that this is just the way life is and that it's uncomfortable being in a human body. Fast forward 17 years and I discovered Dr. Amen Ra's longevity protocol.

I jumped into the protocol right away and began the journey into cyclic fasting. I began to realise that lethargy and low energy is not the normal human condition.

After 7 years of practice with the longevity protocol I made my own tweaks to optimise the system even more. During the first 6 years I experienced digestive issues since the regimen. I believe it's because the regime is vegan based.

I'd have non-stop bloating and belching steady throughout the day. I tried eliminating some of the constituents of the daily elixir that are part of the regimen with no luck.

The bloating continued. I began research and read a few books about stomach bloat to finally find some relief. I began by eliminating gluten from my diet which helped reduce the symptoms.

I then came across Dr. Shawn Baker's Carnivore Diet book which explains that gas is minimal to nil on a carnivore diet. Needless to say it sparked my interest and so I began to implement a close to all meat diet.

My experience revealed that the gas effect dissipated. I'm happy to be eating a mostly carnivorous diet to date. With the Amen Ra protocol there's a lot of supplementation involved using isolated amino acids.

It felt unnatural to be consuming protein powders. So I made the choice to consume protein from whole food sources instead. Meat is the most bio-available protein source for humans.

Considering metabolic typing, Dr. Amen Ra is of african decent which means vegan dieting is more suitable. Those who come from tropical places are more designed for vegan and light food diets.

Tropical places offer abundance of vegetation whereas northern regions have minimal vegetation. The diets in the north consisted of more animal protein as they still do in northern regions today.

Studies show that illness in those areas are low compared to other countries that consume less meat per year. This tells me that I'm on the right track by consuming a more meat based diet living in a northern country.

Over the past 7 years I've been a sponge for information on longevity to maximise health. I've taken all the knowledge from various sources and made it my own through experimentation.

I've risen above challenges and embrace all the benefits the longevity protocol offers. Of the practices my favourite part is the fasting.

I wake up and have black coffee. Afterwards I drink water all day until dinner time. This reduces prepping, eating and cleaning 3x's daily down to once daily.

Time and energy are both saved. This gives me daily hours back and simultaneous lifespan extension. Win win!

Not only is my effort saved but my digestive system is not labouring all day long. Digestion is taxing on your system and requires a lot of energy.

When your system is not being taxed by digestion you have that energy to use on other pursuits. I currently fast for 23 hours per day.

My energy levels are quite good. I used to do yard work for a guy and the first time I met him his mind was blown.

I worked steady for 5 hours moving all the wood from his original wood shed down to another wood shed on his property. He asked how I had so much energy so I filled him in on fasting knowledge.

What I didn't tell him was that after the 5 hours working I went home and completed my full body work out session as usual. The bottom line is fasting conserves energy that would otherwise be expended on digestion.

Food is a sedative. If you ever notice after you eat a large meal you just feel like laying down or taking a nap. This is the effect of digestion.

So fasting, being directly linked to longevity tells us that it's a healthy practice. Anything that extends lifespan optimises overall well being over the long haul.

In terms of food, studies show that people in countries that eat more beef have longer lifespans. This is outlined in the Carnivore Diet book.

Animal proteins just make sense because if you eat vegan or vegetarian you have to eat so much food volume to obtain adequate protein. You have to eat a ridiculous amount of broccoli to equate to a small fraction of protein from animal sources.

It's just not feasible. Upon switching to a mainly carnivorous diet I realise I no longer need all the supplementation from the Amen Ra protocol.

Meat has substantial amounts of protein in whole food form. It just makes sense over lab foods (isolated amino acid supplements).

If there's a valid elimination diet it's the all meat diet. It removes the most damaging foods, with sugar being at the top of that list.

Another advantage to an all meat diet is the superior aborption of magnesium. Magnesium is one of the most important daily minerals for humans.

Glucose has been shown to compete with magnesium because they share a pathway. This makes meat superior in that regard because it fuels the body with fat instead of glucose.

In terms of amounts of food to consume, the lesser the better. Calorie restricting is linked to longevity. It's because eating food produces free radicals in the system with causes cell damage. So the more food consumed the more damage incurred.

Restricting calories is not necessary but you can rest at ease knowing it's healthy for you if you do it. Missing a meal or eating less in a given day has positive effects.

If you're aiming for that summer beach bod it's the only way to burn fat. There's still lots of claims of exercises that burn fat but it's total BS.

There's absolutely no exercise that targets fat burning. Exercise is designed to strengthen and maintain muscle mass only.

To burn fat it is a process over time that's successful through a calorie deficit. Strength training pairs well with a calorie deficit to bring definition to your muscles while the fat trims off.

Many people believe you have to exercise several times a week to be fit. That's plain false.

I used to work out 6 times per week 1.5 hours per session. Until I discovered the holy grail of training. Now I train 45 minutes twice weekly with better results than before.

You can strength train for as little as twice for 30 minutes per week and achieve the most optimal physique your genetics will allow. Yes, you can achieve the physique you desire by working out 5 times at 1.5 hours per week but you don't have to waste your time.

What I do now is called High Intensity Training (HIT). It's the safest, most time efficient strength training protocol. Bar none.

It involves slow repetitions to muscle failure which is the only time your muscles receive the signal to strengthen.

Many people still do 3 sets of 10 but the first 2 sets are too weak to stimulate the response for the muscle to adapt (strengthen). It's not until the very last rep of the 3rd set that this response is invoked if at all.

Instead high intensity training gets right to the point. 1 single set to muscle failure. No warm up or stretching required because the movements are so slow and controlled.

HIT is even safe for the elderly, the injured and children. It's the swinging of weights done with conventional strength training that is dangerous.

The danger is the high peak force used to move the weights which most often produces injuries. It's rare to be injured from HIT training.

Time Efficient Fitness and Health

To implement and reap the benefits of the Time Efficient Fitness and Health lifestyle there's 4 simple components. You can choose to do all 4 but I recommend to start with 1 at a time.

Fasting:

For the fasting it's best to transition gently into it by starting with a 16 hour fast. So you choose an 8 hour window to eat in per day.

It's optional to stay within the 8 hour window; however, if you shorten it even more you enhance the fasting gene expression (FGF-21) which promotes longevity. That said, you could opt to reduce your eating time window by an hour each week or every other week (whichever is manageable for you).

The window can be shortened to a single hour of eating per day (OMAD). I hear good things about fasting for multiple days but only have extensive experience with 23 hour fasts and can speak that they've served well for the better part of 7 years.

Calorie Restricting:

Essentially if you adopt a smaller eating window you'll naturally be cutting calories alongside it. This means you don't have to be super meticulous about calorie counting.

You could instead use the fasting protocol as a means of restricting calories. If you prefer to be more detailed you could start tracking calories using Chronometer (free phone app or website) to track your calories.

If decide to track you could first do a week of tracking your normal eating habits. The following week you could diminish your intake by 5%.

You can diminish caloric intake up to 50% depending on your health goals. This is an effective way to lose weight without changing what you eat.

It's best to eat high quality whole foods and organics if available. If eating meat then grass fed is highest quality however meat holds highly bio-available nutrients regardless of the feed type.

If organics are unavailable then it's best to eat local foods. Eating local attunes you more to the environment you live in.

Eat crops and animals that come from your local region to foster an intimate relationship with the land. The result is heightened intuition.

Carbon 60:

Antioxidants are the pinnacle of consumable anti-aging agents. Carbon 60 is a super antioxidant that is 172x's stronger than Vitamin C.

After 7 years of supplementation I have found this one supplement to cover all the bases. I used to take 15 different supplements and now happy to say I narrowed it to a single one.

It's a premium product and you only need a teaspoon a day to reduce stress, increase energy, mental clarity, immunity and overall well being. It comes in olive oil which is also linked to longevity based on studies.

It's the one supplement I don't go without. If interested you can order it cheapest at this link when you use my discount code KUSHWOOD.

Exercise:

2 exercise session per week is all that's needed to attain your most optimal physique. You could even do it in 1 session weekly depending on your body's response and your physical goals.

At 30-45 minutes per session HIT offers the most effective strength training for time spent. It has produced the same results or better than conventional training for me. I only spend 90 minutes per week training instead of 10 hours with conventional methods.

My results are better. I actually feel that my muscles are being adequately trained. In the past there was no feeling of soreness the next day.

Now with this HIT training my body knows that it was properly trained the previous day. I feel mild soreness and the sensations of recovery.

When starting out with HIT a full body workout is ideal because muscle strengthening is systemic. There's no benefit to training upper body one day and lower another day.

I now do whole body sessions by performing 1 or 2 exercises per muscle group. Remember, the most crucial part of muscle strengthening is the amount of intensity you put forth.

Ideally you want to reach momentary muscle failure with each set you perform. In the beginning muscle failure will be unfamiliar and as a result difficult to pin point.

in a nutshell failure is the point with which if you were held at gun point to do another rep you couldn't do it. But that may take practise in the beginning to reach that place.

During that time it's a good idea to do a drop set immediately after your main set for each body part. This means you lower the weight after the first set and immediately continue the exercise until you can't.

With HIT there's no rep counting needed but the sweet spot for finding the best weight to use is to find the one that you can lift for 8-12 reps. Your strength will increase over time. When you conquer that initial rep range it's time to slightly increase the weights.

An even better way to confirm that you're in the right rep range is to verify the time under tension. When you begin a set, set a timer and the set should be within 1.5 - 2 mins. If it's outside that range, increase or decrease the weights accordingly.

Closing Thoughts

With these tools you have the power to manifest your greatest levels of health. You could adopt all 4 or choose one of your favourites and stick with that as a lifestyle.

Discipline delivers results. I personally don't miss a single training session (even though it's allowable). I sometimes fall off track with the fasting protocol and it doesn't make much difference in the long haul.

You don't have to be extremely rigid. You can allow yourself to adapt to these health practices at your own pace.

Once you do there are tremendous benefits. May you thrive beyond your years with this knowledge.

-Kush Wood

If you want more details on achieving your best physical health I'm happy to assist further. DM me on any social media link below:

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