Early Morning Fasted Cardio: The ULTIMATE Time Management Hack

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Jay Campbell

5x international best selling author | men’s physique champion | founder of the Jay Campbell Brand and Podcast.

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Jay Campbell

Jay is a 5x international best selling author, men’s physique champion, and founder of the Jay Campbell Brand and Podcast.

Recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on hormonal optimization and therapeutic peptides, Jay has dedicated his life to teaching Men and Women how to #FullyOptimize their health while also instilling the importance of Raising their Consciousness.

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Table of Contents

There’s nothing people love yet hate more than doing cardiovascular exercise.

Especially when you have to do it on an empty stomach (i.e. 10-12 hours without eating) and in the very early hours of the morning.

Fasted cardio has been a staple of the bodybuilding world for torching stubborn body fat over the past few decades.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a bodybuilding contest preparation program that doesn’t involve 20-30 minutes of fasted cardio on days when one isn’t engaged in intense resistance training.

But for the average person who just wants to fulfill their recommended 150 minutes a week of aerobic activity, cardio can feel like sheer torture.

If that’s you… I’m afraid to say you do not understand the 3rd Density construct of TIME (it does not EXIST outside of here) and how to use it maximally to your advantage.

And as long as we are in the Matrix and remain confined to the limits of the physical world, we may as well thrive instead of merely “survive”.

So what I want to do today is briefly talk about why fasted cardio remains one of my favorite tools for losing more unwanted visceral fat at an accelerated rate.

But more importantly… how fasted cardio is the ULTIMATE time management hack for adding multiple hours of free time to your already-busy week.

 

What Makes Early Morning Fasted Cardio So Damn Special?

Nobody disputes the overwhelming health benefits of low-intensity steady-state (LISS) cardio, where your heart is beating at ~125-140 beats per minute.

Most people who specialize in endurance training will often refer to this as “Zone 2 Heart Training”, of which there are two primary health outcomes achieved: Improved metabolic flexibility and mitochondrial health.

Dr. Howard Luks expands on this in his must-read blog post about Zone 2 cardiovascular exercise:

“During Zone 2 training, you will increase your number of mitochondria, mitochondrial efficiency,  and increase your metabolic flexibility.

Metabolic flexibility refers to the ability of your mitochondria to utilize fat (faat oxidation) and glucose (glycolysis) as an energy source (substrate). At low heart rates, your main source of fuel should be fat… not glucose. 

Poorly functioning mitochondria, which are likely to be found in ~ 75% of people, will result in metabolic inflexibility.. or the inability to utilize fat versus glucose.   

People who are poorly trained, sedentary, or those with insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, and Metabolic Syndrome (hypertension, abdominal fat, insulin resistance [high A1c]) are very poor at using fat and often go straight to glucose as a fuel source very quickly with walking. 

This is the picture of metabolic inflexibility. This produces excess lactate, and due to poor mitochondrial function, their clearance of the lactate is poor, and the lactate builds rapidly.”

This still leaves two important questions unanswered…

Why is it mission-critical to do your cardio in the morning?

And why is it most optimal to do cardio in a fasted state versus in a fed state?

Cardio In the Early Morning 

We all know the popular saying “The early bird gets the worm”.

In the context of Zone 2 cardio, getting your fasted cardio done before the day starts will lead to:

  • Increased energy levels and overall alertness
  • Better control over your appetite and food choices throughout the day (i.e. lower caloric intake)
  • Improved mood via lower stress levels
  • Easier blood glucose/pressure management

This is highly debated due to the limitations of studies attempting to draw a definitive conclusion about the effectiveness of morning workouts vs. evening workouts.

Lack of sufficient sample size to detect a meaningful difference, suboptimal exercise regimens, failure to measure energy balance, insufficient study duration, adherence to exercise interventions, using metabolically dysregulated test subjects instead of lean resistance-trained athletes, not measuring key variables at consistent timepoints including the beginning and end of the study, and on the list goes.

Therefore, you are going to see different medical papers reach very different conclusions.

Putting aside the debate, I would argue that early morning cardio (especially fasted) is a symbolic start to any productive day.

You transcend the barriers and limits imposed on you by your mind while it tells you a story rationalizing why you should just hit the snooze button and put it off for a later time.

Of course… we all know how such a story ends.

Which is why one key point nearly every single productivity expert agrees on is the concept of “eat that frog” popularized by Mark Twain:

“Scientists have found that some people’s speed and accuracy at completing tasks are better in the morning. Your brain is at peak performance in the morning, so why not work on the most challenging task of the day?

Use this energy to tackle the most difficult thing on your to-do list so it can get the attention it deserves. That way, you don’t have to worry about doing difficult tasks when you’re tired and inattentive at the end of the day.”

Nothing feels more exhilarating than knowing you got in your 30-60 minutes of Zone 2 cardio before the sun is up and everybody else is just barely struggling to wake up for the rat race.

Cardio While Fasted

To this day, fasted cardio vs. fed cardio remains a controversial topic of discussion in the bodybuilding community.

Some people swear by doing cardio in a fasted state while others will argue it makes zero difference whatsoever in your body composition results.

The large reason why this uncertainty still exists is that we don’t have enough hard data in the current year to make a definitive conclusion either way.

Prolific fitness writer Lyle McDonald talked about this back in the early 1990s and 2000s (back when I was still a guinea pig for his 1998 book on ketogenic dieting), even writing about it in his flagship book The Stubborn Fat Solution.

And while we don’t know the exact origin point of fasted cardio, many people will point toward Body Of Life founder Bill Phillips as the person who popularized it in the 1990s.

Without getting into the intimate biochemistry of fat loss, there are three primary steps involved in the process:

Mobilization refers to actually getting stored fat (specifically fatty acids) out of the fat cell; this process is under the primary control of insulin and the catecholamines although hormones such as growth hormone, cortisol and others play secondary or tertiary roles.

Transport refers to the actual transport of fatty acids (bound to albumin) within the bloodstream; this step can be an issue when folks are dealing with stubborn body fat (such as lower ab/low back fat in men and hip/thigh fat in women); blood flow is impaired in those areas.

Finally is oxidation which is the actual burning of fatty acids within tissues such as skeletal muscle, liver and heart.”

And if you want to truly dig into the weeds of this topic like Lyle, myself, and many more of the world’s smartest fitness experts, I highly recommend reading his two-part series (Part 1, Part 2) about how useful fasted cardio can be for faster fat loss.

Seriously, read it… it also doubles as a masterpiece in health misinformation and how 1-2 studies from the right person can easily be turned into industry-wide myths that spend years never getting the debunking they deserve.

But to return to the conversation at hand, it appears as if the utility of fasted cardio becomes greater as you reach a lower body fat percentage:

“… for lean individuals (where lean is around 12-15% body fat for men and about 19-22% for women), fat mobilization becomes a problem; blood flow is often an issue as well.  As folks get leaner, the body undergoes a series of adaptations that occur to make getting fat out of the fat cells more difficult.

At the other extreme, that is in the very obese (here I’m talking about perhaps 35%+ body fat for men and 40%+ for women), the reverse problem is present.  There are tons of fatty acids floating around in the bloodstream, but for a variety of reasons, oxidation has become impaired.  

And between those two extremes (so from about 15-35% body fat in men and ~20-40% body fat in women)… mobilization is usually not a problem since the body hasn’t started to fight back, transport isn’t an issue since stubborn fat isn’t being targeted, and oxidation is rarely a problem since the defects which show up at the extremes of obesity generally aren’t present.

For the lean trying to get very lean (15% body fat or less for men, 22% or less for women), various strategies, including fasted cardio are probably going to be required to offset the mobilization and blood flow defects.

That’s why that specific group found decades ago that fasted morning cardio worked best.”

Put another way, he argues what is most important for anybody NOT extremely lean is they just get their cardio in consistently, morning or evening, fasted or fed.

To REALLY dig deeper into this, there is some science behind this that while is largely theoretical has ended up becoming one of those phenomenons where the bodybuilding bros and the physical culture of 100 years ago was right all along.

And it has to do with hormones called “catecholamines” that attach to fat cell receptors and stimulate the release of the contents within said fat cells:

“Fat cells have two types of receptors for catecholamines: alpha- and beta-receptors. To keep this simple, beta-receptors speed up fat mobilization, whereas alpha-receptors hinder it.

The more alpha-receptors a fat cell has, the more resistant it is to being mobilized by catecholamines. On the other hand, the more beta-receptors a fat cell has, the more receptive it is to these fat-mobilizing molecules.

…Another problem with these stubborn fat deposits relates to blood flow.

…fat in areas like the lower back and thighs are slightly colder to the touch than fat in other areas of your body like the arms or chest [due to lack of blood flow]. Less blood flow = fewer catecholamines reach the stubborn fat cells = even slower fat loss.

…Fasted cardio helps in this regard because blood flow in the abdominal region is increased when you’re in a fasted state, which means the catecholamines can reach this stubborn fat easier, hypothetically resulting in greater stubborn fat mobilization.

…while fasted cardio won’t help you lose more total fat every day, it probably will help you lose more of the fat you want to lose most.

However, I would argue we’ve come a VERY long way since that time and my 30 Days 2 Shredz protocol highly advocates fasted cardio regardless of your starting body fat percentage.

(Which, by the way, fully taps into the “catecholamine” cascade using a combination of alternate-day fasting, specific cardio protocols, well-timed macronutrient manipulation, and many more tricks of the fat loss trade I’ve picked up over the last 30 years and adapted from people like Lyle)

Not only does it enhance insulin sensitivity, a much-desired outcome in people with or close to being diabetic, but it also helps any metabolically dysregulated person improve fat oxidation.

The main takeaway from this discussion is the following:

Early morning fasted cardio is always healthspan-promoting and longevity-promoting, yet becomes an increasingly useful tool for resistant fat elimination as you get progressively leaner over time

Why Fasted Cardio Gives You HOURS Of Productive Time

Although an extended discussion about the merits of fasted cardio isn’t why I penned this article, I had to get the main points out of the way before I get to the core reason I AM a big proponent of this timeless practice.

(Again, 30 Days 2 Shredz – and the upcoming video masterclass – is where you want to go for the extended discussion with sCiEnCe and how to properly do cardio without ‘losing muscle’ or feeling drained all day long)

When you regularly do fasted cardio, you end up freeing numerous hours of the week that otherwise would not be available to you.

This shift in thinking first came to me when I read legendary marketer Dan Kennedy’s “No B.S. Time Management Guide for Entrepreneurs” some many years back.

One of his signature practices what what he called ‘profiting from odd-lot time’:

“Everything is now portable. A seminar by a great speaker, just about any and every book ever published, how-to information of every variety, on audio CDs and DVDs, accessible through online media, on YouTube, inside your Kindle or iPad… There is no excuse to simply waste time while waiting in an airport, stuck in traffic, or parked in a reception room.

In Washington, DC, they say a billion here, ten billion there, and before you know it, you’ve spent real money. Well, five minutes here, 15 minutes there, pretty soon, you’re spending months and real money.

…You can turn your car into a classroom. You can listen, think, and absorb while doing mundane, relatively mindless tasks you either can’t escape or don’t want to (some people like mowing their lawns).

You can condition your subconscious with spaced repetition learning most easily with audio; 7 to 21 repetitions of the same messages automatically embeds. Few will read the same book seven times.

Disciplined use of the time everybody else wastes can give you an edge.

… For most people, these minutes don’t matter. But they can. In a sense, thisis the penny argument. It’s only a penny. A lot of people won’t even pick one up if they drop it.

But if you ask Warren Buffett if he pays attention to pennies, you’ll get a different answer. When you say to yourself, “It’s only ten minutes,” you miss the entire point of time. You either take it seriously or you don’t.

Granted, this was from a time when the majority of the “wasted” time in your day was found in commuting to and from work.

But the point still holds that every single human being on Planet Earth has 168 hours in the week to use at their disposal.

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(Source)

This was the main thesis of the popular time management book “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think”, where author Laura Vanderkam has you literally take a blank worksheet dividing every hour you have available in the week and honestly write down what you do (or don’t do) in each hour:

“…we claim to work more hours than time diaries reveal we do.

Indeed, back in the 1990s, when the University of Maryland sociologist John Robinson and his colleagues analyzed people’s estimates of how much they worked, and compared those to the time diaries, they found that the more hours people claimed to work, the more inaccurate they were. You can guess in which direction.

Almost no one who claimed a 70-hour workweek was underestimating. Indeed, the average person who claimed to work more than 75 hours per week generally logged about 55.

…the average person who claimed to be working 60-69 hours per week was actually logging 52.6, and the average person claiming to work 70, 80, 90, or more hours was logging less than 60.

When you add up these overestimations of time engaged in work, housework, and other activities (like child care and exercise), you can see why some studies have found that people’s accounts of an average week add up to 180 or even more than 200 hours—even though the mightiest among us is, alas, granted no more than 168.

Time-diary studies are valuable in sociology because they force us to face the reality that a day has 24 hours and a week has 168, and all our activities must, in fact, fit within these limits.”

In other words, we vastly overestimate time spent on work and so we feel overworked, while paradoxically underestimating time spent on leisure and so we feel under-rested… and ascribe to stories that line up with this beLIEf.

Breaking Down The Math

Let’s take the fasted cardio you end up doing on my 30 Days 2 Shredz program and illustrate how much free time it gives you in just one week.

At bare minimum, you are doing cardiovascular activity in the morning for four days out of the week (i.e. on fasting days).

Here’s what that means…

  • One 30-minute session of cardio on fasting days gives you 2 hours’ worth of productive free time in the week
  • One 45-minute session of cardio on fasting days gives you 3 hours’ worth of productive free time in the week 
  • One 60-minute session of cardio on fasting days gives you 4 hours’ worth of productive free time in the week 

But let’s say you’re following the program on the more advanced levels and you add in a second evening session to the same days:

  • Two 30-minute sessions of cardio on fasting days give you 4 hours’ worth of free time
  • Two 45-minute sessions of cardio on fasting days give you 6 hours’ worth of free time
  • Two 60-minute sessions of cardio on fasting days give you 8 hours’ worth of free time

We can even kick this up a notch further… at the FULLY F*KKN OPTIMIZED (FFO) level, you are adding in an additional 30-minute LISS cardio session on the morning of your training days (3x/week) before you break a fast with your first meal of the day :

  • Two 30-minute sessions of cardio on fasting days + one 30-minute session on the morning of training days = 5.5 hours’ worth of free time
  • Two 45-minute sessions of cardio on fasting days + one 30-minute session on the morning of training days = 7 hours’ worth of free time
  • Two 60-minute sessions of cardio on fasting days + one 30-minute session on the morning of training days = 9.5 hours’ worth of free time

Are you paying attention yet?

Nearly 10 hours in the week you would have normally given up to Netflix, YouTube, procrastination, and distractions are now a sacred opportunity for you to manifest a Level 10 life of abundance. 

The only question remaining is what you will CHOOSE to do with the free time available to you.

EVERYTHING You Can Do During Fasted Cardio

What follows is as exhaustive of a list I could come up with of all the things you can do during fasted cardio to turn it from a torture session into one of productivity and fulfillment.

And yes… I came up with all of this in a single 45-minute fasted cardio session on the stationary bike I have installed in my office. 😉

You’ll soon start to see one of the reasons why it is effortless for me to be an exceptionally busy content creator and entrepreneur with multiple businesses… and all without internally imploding.

Playing “distraction games” to keep your mind occupied 

I wanted to get this one out of the way as newbies to fasted cardio, let alone any cardiovascular exercise, may not be mentally prepared to deal with the repetitive motion of cycling in the same spot, walking perfectly in sync with the treadmill, and so on.

One of the reasons why doing productive activities during fasted cardio is such a life-changing time management hack is because you’re combining instant gratification with delayed gratification in a very specific context.

Which according to one behavioral study is a powerful way to build commitment and consistency.

temptation bundling—a method for simultaneously tackling two types of self-control problems by harnessing consumption complementarities. We describe a field experiment measuring the impact of bundling instantly gratifying but guilt-inducing “want” experiences (enjoying page-turner audiobooks) with valuable “should” behaviors providing delayed rewards (exercising).

…Participants were randomly assigned to a full treatment condition with gym-only access to tempting audio novels, an intermediate treatment involving encouragement to restrict audiobook enjoyment to the gym, or a control condition.

Initially, full and intermediate treatment participants visited the gym 51% and 29% more frequently, respectively, than control participants, but treatment effects declined over time (particularly following Thanksgiving).

After the study, 61% of participants opted to pay to have gym-only access to iPods containing tempting audiobooks, suggesting demand for this commitment device.”

I’ve seen some wacky strategies for distracting oneself away from boredom and it only goes to show how far our society has fallen when we refer to the treadmill as the “dreadmill”.

The most common one is to throw up a tape or some kind of apparatus to block the clock/timer on the cardio machine so you don’t have to watch the seconds pass by one at a time, and resist the temptation to “peek” (which apparently is very painful as it makes time feel slower)…

I’ve even seen some people do this with the displayed distance too, or any other number such as speed and RPM.

If not knowing the remaining time you have left helps you, have at it.

Other people get motivated by setting smaller goal increments for things like time, distance, RPM… or even telling themselves things like “just 5 more minutes” to push themselves through discomfort and eventually enjoy being in the present moment.

And using the numbers as motivation so they can achieve a new record.

Or even these hilarious tactics:

  • Reversing the timer so it acts as a countdown instead
  • Watching high-quality “virtual active videos” where the camera takes you through visually breathtaking scenery as if you are there yourself in real-time (there are even free “apps” like Zwift and Rouvy designed just for this… an app for freakin’ everything)
  • Watching highlights of races to get inspired by other people running/cycling/etc. 
As you’re going to see, when you choose the right productive activity and get fully immersed in it, “hacks” like the one you see above are nothing more than a reflection of the inability to pay attention to the present moment.

Improve your posture/gait

For those of you who prefer the treadmill to the bike, now is the perfect time to sharpen your biomechanical movements and your moving posture.

You likely have a few weak areas where you are ruining your musculoskeletal system by failing to follow basic postural cues.

Your arm movement, your neck/shoulder positioning, your cadence, your stride… lots of little things add up for perfect form.

Many people swear that even using something like a desk treadmill helps alleviate lower back pain and the all-too-common “tech neck” that comes from poor ergonomic habits while hunched over at a computer for 8 hours straight.

Similar to how you build the mind-muscle connection when you remove ego and momentum from lifting weights, do the same thing with your breathing and your movement.

Enjoy catching up on a movie or TV show you’ve been excited to see

Whether it’s through a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu, whatever you’ve downloaded to your phone/tablet/laptop for offline viewing, the TV installed in your treadmill or the one hooked up wirelessly to your treadmill’s audio input in your local gym, you can engage in some light entertainment for your brain.

Some people take this to the next level with a few of these tactics to avoid monotonously staring at the second’s hand of the clock:

  • Only watch specific shows when you are doing cardio for a boost in motivation, and never outside of your allotted time for cardio
  • Figure out how long your episode(s)/movie(s) takes and time them so it lasts exactly as long as your cardio session
  • Choose a genre of entertainment that keeps you fully engaged in the medium and in a flow state… some people like lighter humor, others like fast-paced action, pick what works best for you.

Enjoy the visual distraction in the form of modern entertainment,  make sure you’re paying attention to your surroundings so you don’t get into an accident!

Listen to an informative podcast

As Dan Kennedy said, there is an infinite reservoir of knowledge available in the world from subject matter experts who are willing to share the keys to the kingdom for free.

Why not occupy your mind with the subject you’re most interested in and get fully immersed in learning something new?

If you’re having a hard time choosing one to listen to, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest The Jay Campbell Podcast.

Or the weekly Health Optimization Doctor’s Roundtable if you want to hear the world’s best hormonal health physicians duke it out over today’s groundbreaking medical news and discoveries.

Watch an educational documentary

Same deal here — plenty to choose from out in the Wild Wild West of the Internet.

You can even click here because I already did the Google Search for you to find them at no cost!

Go through a video course for a new skill or area of expertise you’re developing

YouTube, Skillshare, Lynda, Udemy, or whatever free/paid educational platform you have in mind will be perfect.

For every 30-60 minutes you spend consuming educational content, you’ll just come out that much wiser.

Learn a new language with a smartphone/tablet app

Although there are heavy debates on whether apps like DuoLingo are really the best medium for becoming fluent in a new language, there’s no denying it’s a far better use of your time than watching sportsball.

Some of these apps only take 5-10 minutes to go through per day and you build up the habit of expanding your vocabulary.

Keep it up for a year and see if you can hold a basic conversation in the language of your choice.

Enjoy your favorite music, perhaps an album you’ve been meaning to give a spin

I’ve already written extensively about the best choice of music for enhanced workout performance.

It’s best to choose tracks and/or radio stations where (a) you actually enjoy them, and (b) the beat matches the pace/intensity of whatever cardiovascular exercise you’re doing to tap into the “runner’s high” flow state while keeping you inspired to walk/pedal.

Do both of these and I guarantee the hands on the clock will fly by in the blink of an eye.

This is pretty much the most popular activity of choice, and some people will even curate playlists so they start and end in sync with their fasted cardio session.

Challenge your brain with difficult puzzles (Sudoku, crosswords, etc.).

There are an abundance of cognition-stimulating games on the smartphone you can download for free that comes with hundreds of levels and puzzles.

Make sure they’re at the right difficulty, though.

Too easy and your mind will find itself wandering off somewhere else.

Too difficult and you’ll just end up throwing your phone across the room!

Listen to an audiobook if you prefer reading books that way

I’ll be saving my “book-reading hack” for closer to the end of the article, but there are some people who swear they learn best through audiobooks.

I AM of the opinion they are an inferior way to become engaged with the material being presented, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

Download the MP3s, get your Audible subscription loaded up… whatever works best for you.

By now I hope you’re starting to see the amazing power of using multimedia as your “cue” by only doing certain things when you are on the bike or treadmill.

I don’t know a single person who hasn’t eventually fallen in love with hour-long cardio sessions when they get into the groove and find the options that work best for them.

If you can, perform some productive work and/or study for an upcoming test

There has been an emerging rise in the use of treadmill desks to allow office workers to remain productive while in motion.

This is self-explanatory, but I will provide some tips for easily adjusting to true productivity without getting distracted or exhausted:

  • Allow yourself an adjustment period to practice and get used to your normal pace while doing your work tasks (moving a mouse, using a keyboard, paying attention to the present moment, writing things down on paper, etc.)
  • Start with less-demanding tasks and master those while moving before you take on the more challenging aspects of your work
  • Use shorter durations of working at first, and a slower pace, before you eventually transition towards working the entire time you are doing fasted cardio

Many people find themselves far more creative at problem-solving and eventually become more productive than they would if they were to perform the same tasks while sitting down.

The initial feelings of exhaustion and “sacrificing” brain power will quickly dissipate with practice

This will take longer if you are a metabolically deranged dumpster fire, so set reasonable expectations and don’t expect to be solving calculus during a brisk walk on day 1.

And don’t listen to the people who say walking while working is half-assing it… they don’t know what they’re missing out on.

Your concentration and alertness will take a temporary hit at worst but eventually, the net result is improved cognitive function and alertness.

Check your email inbox (read unread messages, respond to people, delete/archive old messages, etc.).

Now would be a good time to clear your ever-expanding inbox.

Read your unread messages, respond to important people, clean out the junk in your folders, and archive what can be put away for later… you know what to do here.

Have a phone conversation with a friend and catch up

You know there are those people in your life who are owed a call and you’ve been putting it off for God-knows-how-long.

Schedule the call during your cardio session if it’s a priority for you.

Just make sure you’re not talking about sensitive topics where it would be a net negative for other people can eavesdrop on your conversation

Be in a business meeting (if your heavy breathing doesn’t become a nuisance)

On the same note, if you’re doing your fasted cardio at Zone 2 pace, you shouldn’t have a problem attending a Zoom meeting.

If you find yourself out-of-breath, you’re either doing cardio at too high of an intensity or your cardiovascular health needs some desperate fixing.

Either way… the mute button exists for a reason.

Catch up on the news and any must-read articles you’ve missed

As someone who is sent hundreds of articles and books to read on a daily basis, fasted cardio is the perfect time for me to get caught up to speed on what’s happening in the world.

People are often shocked at my immense ability to recall vast amounts of complex information instantly despite my incredibly busy schedule.

And that’s where the magic power of cardio several times a week starts to truly pay off.

Meditating or contemplating to 333 Hz angelic music

For some people, fasted cardio is a time to disconnect from the 3D realm and focus inward.

When they become adapted to the pace of Zone 2, they often find themselves more connected to the present moment.

They pay attention to their breathing and notice the intricacies of the inward breath and the outward breath – the sounds, the body parts that move, etc.

They become more conscious of every step they take and gain a deeper appreciation for the gift that is the ability to freely and easily move their bodies.

They are more observant of their thoughts, both the good ones and bad ones, coming and disappearing as if they never existed in the first place.

Myself personally, I like to tune into Angelic music and focus on what I want to manifest for the day.

Ironically, this actually calms me down and allows my body to pedal for longer periods of time without having to think about how many seconds are leftover before my fasted cardio session ends.

A win-win on all fronts!

Reading books

As promised, I have saved the very best for last.

One of the ways I AM prospering in my life is through my unwavering commitment to reading 4-12 books a month about the esoteric and raising my vibration as high as possible.

I have done this consistently without fail for the past 10 years and I don’t intend on breaking my streak anytime soon.

Keep in mind I AM NOT “speed reading” these books and pretending I read them.

And no, these are not fluffy pop-psychology books found in the New York Times best-seller list or the book store at any airport.

These are deep, dense books about the esoteric history of the world and raising my awareness (aka my vibration) to the highest levels possible.

Contrary to what you would think, my retention of these books actually goes up when I consume them during fasted cardio rather than sitting down to read them.

Why?

I talk about the science behind this extensively in 30 Days 2 Shredz, but here’s the long-and-short of what happens…

Your brain processes the information faster due to the increased arousal via catecholamine release.

Plus it RETAINS the information better because you’re reading and moving at the same time.

So not only do you learn more, you can actually recall the contents of what you read for when you most require it.

Additionally, reading helps the cardio session go by much faster and lets you learn about anything you want.

I love using the stationary bike for this hack because it allows me to read and pedal at the same time, at least compared to if I was to perform the same feat on a treadmill.

Shortly…

Fasted cardio is the easiest time management hack to let you read an extra 2-4 books per month (or more) you may not have read otherwise.

But as a final reminder:

This hack and every other one featured in this article will work best for people who are well-adapted to cardio and are used to exerting themselves at a low intensity for 30-40 minutes without being short of breath or losing focus.

You may require music or a podcast at first to push through the boredom and/or pump yourself up to get into the heart rate range of 125-140 BPM.

CONCLUSION: Fasted Cardio Leads To A Happier, More Successful Life

Above and beyond these activities for 10x-ing your time management skills, the most important thing you can do with fasted cardio is accelerate the path toward your dream physique.

Especially when you are using any of my favorite fat-loss peptides — specifically the GLP-1 agents like Tirzepatide —  to speed up lipolysis, suppress appetite, and increase your metabolic rate:

And when you combine fasted cardio with the surgical use of fat-loss peptides/agents, there’s no telling how far you can optimize your body and your brain.

Why not stock up on the 30D2S Fat Loss Bundle from Limitless Life Nootropics and have all these agents available to you right now?

30D2S Fat Loss Bundle | Limitless Life Nootropics

No need for any discount codes as the package is already heavily discounted!

As always…

Raise Your Vibration To Optimize Your Love Creation!

PS – If you want access to even more of these unconventional time management hacks for a truly Level 10 life, join The Fully Optimized Health Private Membership Group.

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