The ABCD Method For A Fit Life

By Manish Kumar

Do you want a fit body? Do you want to lose fat and build muscle? Are you sick and tired of jumping from one fad diet to another? Are you confused of all the information out there telling you something is good for you today only to flip tomorrow? 

Join the ABCD method revolution that aims to demystify the science behind building a fit body to show how anyone can build a healthy body inside and out. Its made as simple as the alphabets so that Any Body Can Do it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manish Kumar
• Release date: Aug 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393130284

Book preview

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Life is tough, complicated, and relentless in its motion. As adults, we are required to deal with a myriad of issues, events, and situations; from our career to our finances, our relationships, retirement planning; it just seems to go on and on. Between taking care of all that, our own health and wellbeing often falls by the wayside. Most of the time we are simply running our bodies on autopilot doing what we always do and hoping it all works out.

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Even when we decide to start taking better care of ourselves, what stops us in our tracks is that there are just too many things to think about: are we getting the right nutrition, are we getting the right amount of exercise, are our hormones balanced, do we need any supplements, which diet should we follow, and so much more. Needless to say, it can be really daunting for someone who is not a health professional and one who doesn’t want to devote their life researching this topic.

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When I was in my 20s and pursuing my Ph.D., I learnt the value of scientific methods and understood the realities and limitations of the field of research. I realized there are tons of helpful information available, including the ones gathered anecdotally, which can be helpful, even though they remain unverified and unresearched.

I also learnt that big pharmaceutical companies and food industry publish and market information through their sister organizations, hiding their true allegiance, to spread misinformation that serves their needs and drives people to purchase their food, their medicine, and into a life of dependency on their products and becoming their customers for life.

Thanks to my training I was always good at collecting data and looking for patterns. I started investing significant free time reading, experimenting, and jotting down my observations and then trying all the supplements and fitness related devices under the sun, sometimes with the help of coaches, trainers, and fitness enthusiast friends. I carefully recorded how my body reacted to various trials. Some of these notes I would share with friends, who were eager to know what I was up to, and had their own struggles with weight, or their own fitness goals, and looking for solutions.

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I learned my lessons and adjusted. I learned that it’s the small changes made over time that consistently led to big results overtime. It’s like compound interest that helps grow your retirement funds. The small amounts added overtime accrue and keep growing. Same principle applies to your health. One small tweak to your diet here, one extra rep in your workout there, one extra push needed to resist quitting another day, and this all keeps getting added to your health balance and keeps building and growing just like compound interest.

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I also learned that consistency is the most important thing. If we are persistent with our selected diet plan or exercise routine, we will see results. The issue is more that we don’t know how to stay consistent and yet still have a life, have fun with friends, have occasional slip-ups, and yet recover and get back on track. And that is what causes the biggest setbacks and failures for most people.

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In this book my goal is to provide you with easy to follow advice that has worked for me and countless other people. It is an actionable guide, that is easy to understand (like the alphabets), and that Any Body Can Do (ABCD Method). The book is divided into four major chapters: Biochemistry, Diet, Exercise, and Hacks. These four areas form the pillars that sits on top of the foundation of your age, gender, genetics, and lifestyle to mold your body to withstand the rigors of life. Let’s get started!

CHAPTER 2: BIOCHEMISTRY

Biochemistry, as the name indicates, combines two science disciplines: biology and chemistry. It tries to explain the effects of genetics, metabolism, and biomolecules through their impact on the cellular processes that occur within our body.

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Genetics refers to how the information encoded in our DNA results in the cellular processes within our body. This encompasses heredity, any genetic variations within our body, and any mutations. This is something we are born with so we can’t do too much, besides gene therapy, to change it.

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Metabolism is the mechanism by which the cells in our body harness energy from food for essential and non-essential functions. Our metabolic rate changes depending on our activity level, while the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which is the energy needed by the body to perform the body’s essential functions like breathing, digestion, blood circulation etc., stays steady. The only way to affect the overall metabolism is through our activity levels and the foods we eat.

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Biomolecules refer to the four main types of molecules within our bodies, carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. Carbohydrates are the most prevalent biomolecule and they help to provide the cellular structure and also act as energy storage. Lipids comprise of a range of fats or fatty acid related molecules, and they also act as energy storage while providing rigid or flexible structure of various cells. Proteins are large molecules made of amino-acids and they carry structural and functional roles within the body, like the contraction of skeletal muscle. Nucleic acids are primarily found in the cell nuclei and convey genetic information as well as form the base for adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the primary energy-carrier molecule found in all living organisms.

Getting into genetics is not fruitful for the purposes of this book as it’s not possible to change it. Metabolism is a topic that we need to be aware of and that should drive us towards making healthy choices for our body in terms of food we ingest and the activities we do. We will cover these areas in detail in the chapters on Diet and Exercise.

Biomolecules which basically form the structure of our body tells us about the importance of consuming carbohydrates, fats, and proteins and how these molecules are used for sustenance and growth. These are important macronutrients which we will cover in more detail in the chapter on Diet.

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Before we get into Diet and Exercise though, we need to learn about our bodies hidden messengers called hormones. Hormones can be categorized structurally or functionally but for the purposes of this book it’s best to think of three major types that are most directly relevant to health & fitness.

We will look at steroidal hormones that impact muscle growth, nitric oxide that plays a huge role in blood circulation and nutrient transport, and insulin plus leptin and ghrelin hormones that signal hunger, uptake of nutrients by our cells and lead to energy or fat storage in various cells.

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Our goal is not to get into a detailed dissertation of all the hormones and the interplay between them in the body but give you an introduction to these important messengers that drive our results from whatever changes we make to our diet and exercise.

2.1: Repair and Growth

When we think of hormones required for muscle building and fitness, the first one that jumps out to us is testosterone. Testosterone is primarily thought of as a male hormone even though it is present in both men and women and plays a vital role in muscle development and growth for both.

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It’s a steroid hormone that