The plant based fitness & health roadmap

What if high-performance health wasn’t a fantasy?

What if you could make it your reality?

High-performance health over 40 isn’t common in modern society.

Most people are leaving 2 of the biggest health tools off the table by ignoring plant based fitness and nutrition skills. You’ll also need to master other health domains to achieve a high level of health, especially after 40.

The problem isn’t aging, as most people believe. Our bodies and health were meant to last in great shape for our entire lives.

If you take care of your vehicle (body), it will take care of you.

Unfortunately, the world that we live in isn’t conducive to health or well-being.

If you try to build fitness on sand (poor health), you won’t achieve high-level fitness.

That’s why the right habits, standards, and systems will always beat the best goal-setting techniques.

So, yes, goals are important.

But it’s just as important to have your skills, practices, and daily actions in place.

I’ve used this system for years with our clients to help them break down goals like dropping 30 pounds or building 10 pounds of muscle.

If you’re not clear on where you want to go, it’s hard to get somewhere you’re not clear on.

Let’s talk about what a plant based fitness and health roadmap looks like.

The plant based fitness roadmap

One of the things you’ll realize fast when you start a health or fitness journey is that everything is fragmented.

What I mean by this is that everything is scattered in 10,000 directions in the health and fitness world.

You’ll have one camp in the health world yelling one thing while another camp in the fitness world says another. Sometimes one camp is right. Often, partial truths are shared.

I spent most of a decade feeling confused and misled about health and fitness. I didn't understand the right principles for lasting change.

It was frustrating.

In fact, the more I’ve learned, the more I’ve realized that nearly everything in health and fitness is backward.

If you follow what the mainstream teaches to eat for health, you’ll probably be unhealthy.

If you follow the fitness herd, you’ll probably be doing something incorrect.

Awareness is the first step to change. It means learning about the timeless principles that have helped many people.

Good examples include studies like the China Study, the Nurses’ Health Study, the Adventist Study, and plant-based fitness. These have decades of research supporting them.

But at the same time, I wouldn’t discount internal cultivation practices like Qi Gong or Nei Gong, which have thousands of years of practice behind them, too.

You have to become your own health scientist.

Like any good scientist, you'll want to research and use proven principles and standards that have worked for large groups of humans.

But don’t take everything at face value. Test things for yourself. Try it out not just once, but for an extended period.

Working out and lifting weights won’t change your body overnight. But if you stick with it for 4-6 months, or longer, you’ll notice amazing changes in your body. This is especially true when you focus on energy balance.

So less is more when you’re doing the right things.

But you still have to do the right things long enough; otherwise, you won’t be able to make a scientific decision or analysis.

Jumping from one fitness trend to another doesn’t work. Unlike what you see on Facebook and Instagram, you won’t build abs in just 4 weeks. You can’t sustainably lose 20 pounds in 6 weeks or gain 10 pounds of muscle in a month.

You can, however, achieve the results you want over a longer period with the right approach.

Enter the ZH6 Stack™

The approach has worked well for our clients, and myself is the ZH6 Stack™.

As you can see, there’s 6 core domains in this methodology.

Each domain feeds into the other. None of them works in isolation. They all work synergistically to create a cohesive health bubble. This bubble expands and grows stronger the deeper you explore each respective domain.

For example, the exercise domain is broad. Once you start to go deeper, you can start to master different skills and practices like:

• Resistance training

• Cardiovascular training

• Mobility training

• Flexibility training

• Balance training

• Sports performance training

So there’s multiple paths you can take within each domain. A good way to think of each domain or category is like a house.

Each house exists next to another ‘house’ (another domain), and inside the houses are the subdomains (see example above for exercise domain).

Here’s how you master each domain:

Goals ← Skills ← Practices ← Actions

When you know your goals and the skills needed to achieve them, you can make faster and lasting progress.

This framework, popularized by Precision Nutrition, is known as the GSPA framework.

It builds directly on James Clear’s concept of systems over goals.

The better your health and fitness systems, the more likely you’ll consistently reach your goals.

The order in which you do things matters just as much as what you're doing.

How the Stack works

So what are the 6 key domains inside the Zhanay Health 6 Stack?

(The sequence matters as much as what you're doing)

Here’s a few caveats to keep in mind with the ZH6 Stack:

• Your floor = is your bare minimum, not a ceiling. Your effort should drop as habits take over, but your time commitment doesn't need to.

• The sequence moves from low-willpower cost to harder psychological work. This follows the "body before mind" principle.

• This is different from all-at-once programs like 75 Hard. The gated layering is why it avoids their dropout problem.

• The minimum standards above are exactly that - minimum standards. You should raise the bar when you have the time and energy to invest, to see faster, better results. But you never drop the bar on the minimum standards. This lets you keep a pulse on all 6 domains without falling into an all-or-nothing mental trap.

I'm calling this a stack, modeled on the well-known ‘habit stack’ method. This method links a new habit to an existing one, creating a ‘stickiness’ effect. This makes it easier to maintain the new habit over time.

The same goes for the ZH6 Stack.

Each habit should build on the prior habit, but the sequence is crucial.

Inner work, like Qi Gong and shadow work, helps you understand yourself. But it’s hard to integrate if your health is suffering. If your environment is chaotic, you’re eating poorly, or not sleeping well, focus on those issues first.

Your health foundation needs to be strong first to support deeper, harder work later on.

You have to build your health ‘home’ on a concrete base - not sand.

Let’s cover each part of the ZH6 Stack more in depth below:

1. Ecosystem design:

   1. Your environment and relationships are two major health factors you can influence easily. You don’t need constant willpower or effort for this. This domain comes first. When you set up your health relationships and environment, everything else gets 10x easier. Anti-health habits are real and can sabotage even the best intentions.

   2. A simple example is having a partner who doesn’t support your health goals or a kitchen full of junk food. Both can undermine your long-term health goals. So, setting this up for success first creates a big win for your long-term health success.

2. Regenerative health:

   1. Now we move into deeper health. This covers topics like sleep, recovery, hormones, and stress. Sleep is a big one, especially after 40. Hormone management is crucial for sleep and recovery. Sunlight and blue light play big roles, yet many health programs overlook them.

   2. An example of forming good habits is going to bed at the right time. This reduces stress and allows proper recovery between work and exercise.

3. Plant-rich nutrition:

   1. How you fuel yourself comes closely behind in the ZH sequencing. Many people struggle with their health, partly due to poor nutrition habits. This issue often follows their ecosystem design. Choosing the right foods, in the right amounts, at the right times is part of this domain. Nutrition is a vast topic, but most of it can be simplified and made easier to understand.

   2. A good example is eating a whole-food, plant-based diet. This helps improve your health and fitness. Also, eat the right amount of food, including calories and macros, for better body composition results.

4. Leveraged exercise:

   1. You might be surprised to see exercise later down the sequence. For most overachievers, this is because their ecosystem, nutrition, and health are all in shambles. Adding exercise stress won’t fix those other health domains. Once you’ve gotten a handle on those areas, you can start layering in leveraged exercise.

   2. Leveraged exercise uses evidence-based methods to deliver the best results in the least time.

   3. Choose effective resistance training exercises. Arrange them in the right order with proper volume and intensity. Then, complete these workouts every week.

5. Integrative psychology:

   1. The next domain of the ZH6 Stack is integrative psychology. Integrative psychology draws from thinkers like Carl Jung, Robert Johnson, and Maslow, along with other psychologists. This domain includes practices like shadow work, dream analysis, and resolving psychic tensions.

   2. Here are 2 reasons why IP matters:

      1. Integrating your shadow is easier when you have a stable internal base. This base starts with a healthy body.

      2. You can explore your archetypes to understand what drives your motivations, habits, and patterns. This insight helps you take deeper control of your health. This category also includes learning about your shadow and suppressed parts.

6. Internal cultivation:

   1. The last domain of the ZH6 Stack is where things start to get even more interesting. Most people never fully graduate to integrative psychology or internal cultivation because they lack the prerequisite health levels in the prior 4 domains.

   2. Internal cultivation is where you develop your internal faculties. It lets you dive deep into what your body and mind can truly do. Damo Mitchell, one of the world’s leading Qi Gong teachers, calls this ‘creating a highly efficient body and mind’. This includes practices like Qi Gong, breath work, yoga, and meditation.

   3. For example, spend some time each day on an internal practice. For instance, focus on Qi Gong. This helps you develop your internal energy and life force through various exercises.

At the center of these 6 health domains is your Center.

It’s where you’ve learned to master your body and mind and move closer to what Maslow called self-actualization.

The Taoists would call this moving back to Spirit or returning to ‘shen’.

Jung would call this reconnecting with your higher Self.

Do you need to master all 6 of these domains to reconnect with your understanding of spirit?

Not necessarily.

It’s much harder to reconnect with your spiritual side—whether that’s God, nature, the universe, or your true self—when you’re unhealthy or out of shape. Without energy, it’s hard to practice things like silent meditation (zazen), Qi Gong, or yoga.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which moves from basic needs to higher levels of health and awareness, is helpful to keep in mind here.

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So self-mastery might be your ultimate goal—or maybe it’s not.

When I started lifting weights 15 years ago, my main goal was to gain weight. I wanted to add muscle to my skinny frame and rebuild my confidence.

I worked hard, challenged myself with weights, learned how to build muscle, and got stronger over time.

Eventually, after quitting college over 7 times and having nothing to show for it, I realized my true passion was health & fitness.

After working with hundreds of busy professionals over 40, I found that macros and workouts alone don’t create lasting change.

If you don't view human health and performance through a ‘deep health’ lens, as Precision Nutrition suggests, long-term failure is likely.

Dropping 20 pounds in itself is pretty straightforward.

What isn’t as clear-cut is a human life with complexity, intricacies, and motivations that change over time.

Which is why I’m a big fan of standards and systems. Both are important health tools to keep front and center, especially in our modern world.

As you’ve probably noticed, our world isn’t predicated on health. Neither are most modern workplaces. If you follow the mainstream, you’ll often find yourself lacking in health, strength, and energy.

It’s the unfortunate reality that we all live in.

But there is a better way - going deeper, not wider.

Depth is the key

Depth is the key to health, not width.

Go deeper with each skill and practice, rather than go wider and dilute your efforts.

Here’s what I mean:

• Instead of tackling 5 new exercise skills, focus on 1-2 at a time. Learn the ins and outs of each skill and become proficient at executing each daily.

• It might not seem exciting. Our Trickster archetype loves shiny things, but this approach is effective. It helps you focus on skill development and practice instead of switching your focus every week.

A good example of 1-2 fitness skills to master could be:

• The skill of resistance training and lifting correctly

• The skill of cardiovascular training

That’s it. No Pilates. No HIIT. No mobility. No flexibility. No other skills to work on.

Does that mean you can’t work on other skills? Absolutely not. You can tackle them later. It also doesn’t mean you can’t do mobility drills or stretches during your weekly lifting and cardio.

It just means it won’t be your main focus.

You want to keep the main thing, the main thing.

Focus is a superpower in health & fitness.

In a world that zigs at every health opportunity, you’ll zag. You’ll build your own fitness roadmap. This will lead you to health freedom, fitness mastery, and simple nutrition.

It's like the yellow brick road to Oz. But instead of a magician behind the curtain, you'll find that mastering your health in these 6 domains gives you unmatched freedom.

A life free from chronic symptoms, limiting beliefs, and low energy. A life where you feel confident, strong, and energized to live on your terms vs. society’s.

I’ve learned that when it comes to acquiring new skills, tackling more than 1-3 new habits every 2 weeks doesn’t make sense. I’ve found that 1-2 habits every few weeks works best, especially for busy professionals and high performers.

And yes, if you’re an overachiever, more isn't better.

It’s counterintuitive, but going slower, especially when you're first building a new habit, is the best thing you can do for its longevity.

So 1-2 skills per domain. Go deeper, not wider. Once you’ve mastered those skills well enough, you can layer on the next 1-2 skills.

A good way to think about this is to use the 4 stages of learning model.

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Going from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence takes time, energy, and focus.

But it’s the way you create automatic ‘mastery’ without having to exert as much energy later on.

That is why systems built correctly over time will deliver on goals every time.

Every skill you develop eventually becomes a new health system.

Since the ZH6 health domains are all interconnected, what you do in one domain directly affects the other 5.

And it all moves you closer towards self-mastery.

Why less is more

To create high-level fitness or health results, you don’t have to become a full-time athlete or chef.

The concept of MED, or minimum effective dosage, is key in strength training. It focuses on achieving the best results with the least exercise.

It’s especially helpful for high-performance athletes. They need to balance resistance, cardio, sport-specific skills, and other stressors smoothly.

Everything in their exercise programming has a purpose.

You can use the same approach in your fitness.

Instead of trying to do everything all at once, focus on your MED.

‘What’s the bare minimum or minimum effective dosage I need to apply to see the best results? ’

Research backs this up. According to this study:

“Just 90–120 minutes of strength training a week may deliver some of the biggest long-term health rewards, according to a study tracking more than 147,000 people for 30 years.”

Above 120 minutes, disease risk didn't decrease further.

In other words, the MED was already hit by 90 minutes per week.

The results improved even more with cardiovascular training. This helped reduce disease risk further.

Cardio exercise over 7.5 MET hours lowers the risk of death by 26-43%. MET shows how many calories you burn during activity compared to rest.

Clarifying your minimum standards in each part of the ZH6 ecosystem can greatly impact your health and lifespan.

Less is more when you’re doing the right things.

One thing I’ll add to this is that context is always important.

In some cases, you may want to do more.

As a counterargument, exceeding the minimum effective dosage can yield even better results. This is particularly relevant for internal cultivation practices like Qi Gong or meditation.

But balance is still key.

That’s why the popular belief that cramming all your studies the night before an exam works doesn’t hold up.

You might pass the exam, but the memory retention after the test won’t be high.

Exercise, nutrition, health, and internal skills take time to develop.

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There’s a difference between practicing something just to do it… vs. practicing something to master it.

Deliberate practice is more effective than just ‘doing the reps’.

The 10,000-hour rule shows that you need to invest time and effort. However, true mastery comes from effective, deliberate practice in the skills you're working on.

Practice doesn't make perfect.

Deliberate practice over long enough time makes perfect.

The long path truly is the fast path.

Success leaves clues

If you want to build high-level fitness, it makes sense to model successful examples.

I’ll use 2 examples to support my point.

The first is the former best tennis player in the world.

The second is the former best soccer player in the world.

Let’s start with Novak Djokovic.

Holding the world’s longest-ever No. 1 ranking for years, Novak has won it all in tennis.

His nutrition, exercise, and health habits match his discipline.

Not surprisingly, he focuses on the same pillars that make up the ZH6 Stack.

Here’s his health protocols:

• Eats fully plant-based

• Focuses on whole foods from soil

• Balances resistance, cardio, and athletic training

• Prioritizes sleep, rest, and recovery (especially as an older athlete)

Before he became the world’s best tennis player, Novak struggled. His performance and health were slowly falling apart.

Chronic inflammation plagued his body, and being #1 was a faraway dream.

But then, he changed his diet. He removed gluten, dairy, and meat.

He began adding fruits, vegetables, and whole foods.

The results speak for themself.

He used plant based fitness and nutrition and made them his tennis weapons.

You can see a similar story play out with Messi.

For years, he relied on his skill and work ethic to reach a high level.

But in 2014, he worked with an Italian sports nutritionist, Giuliano Poser, who helped him overhaul his health and nutrition.

Here’s Messi’s health protocols:

• Focus on whole foods (specifically: water, olive oil, whole grains, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables)

• Balance his sport-specific training with resistance and cardio training

• Rest, recover, and prioritize sleep and rejuvenation

• Stretching, flexibility, and targeted plyometric routines

• Strategic post-match fueling and core recovery protocols

You'll see a similar theme in Novak’s protocols here, too.

Success leaves clues.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to your own health and fitness.

The world's best athletes use similar principles across domains to achieve high-performance fitness and health results.

And the world’s smartest doctors, researchers, and thought leaders have written extensively about this, too.

When you follow these principles, you'll start to see the same results in your health.

Bringing it all together

So let’s quickly recap what the ZH6 Stack can do for you and how to create high-performance health results.

Novak, Messi, Venus Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Scott Jurek, Alex Morgan, and others have achieved peak fitness using the different parts of the ZH6 Stack.

They’ve hit the top ends of their sports using plant-based fitness, nutrition, and psychology.

It doesn’t need to be perfect.

It doesn’t need to be all-or-nothing.

But when you combine the right health domains, follow them in the right sequence, and stay focused long enough, good things will happen.

Consistency over time leads to the best health outcomes.

The best results come from focusing on your behaviors consistently over time.

Use the ZH6 Stack to your health advantage.

Less is more when you’re doing the right things.