Fast And Low: An Engineer's Approach to Health and Wellness

Achieve your health goals painlessly

​Fast and Low introduces an experimentation- and metric-based scientific approach to finding and adhering to the lifestyle changes that forge the best path toward your goals.

I am an engineer and all my life have been driven by scientific approaches to everything, be it in work or life in general. In this book you will find a set of scientific principles that will help you make meaningful and permanent lifestyle changes.

Whenever you embark on a journey to achieve something new or make any change in your life, you start with a goal, a purpose. As an engineer, I like to define my goals in numbers. A numerical goal gives you the ability to measure and know exactly how far away you are from your end objective at any time. It enables you to know whether you’re making any progress toward your goal and whether the healthy actions you’re taking are working for you. 

For example, if your goal is to lose weight, saying “I want to lose weight” and saying “I want to lose 30 pounds in three months” are two very different goal definitions toward a similar objective. The former is certainly a goal, but the latter, while keeping the same objective, makes it measurable. 

While this is an extreme example, in the book I will explain how you can draft almost all your goals in numeric terms. Then I’ll give you tools to measure and monitor them with minimal effort. Goal definition is just the first step. You must take concrete actions to achieve your goals. Again, I would like all my actions to be measurable. In the book I will also provide a simple way to define and measure your actions toward your goals. 

“Is that it?” you may ask. “Define measurable goals and measurable actions and you’re done?” 

Not quite. 

Another big theme of this book is that every human being is unique and different from every other. 

In nature, almost no two things are exactly alike. No two trees in a large forest are identical in all their branches and leaves. Even a simple snowflake, one among the countless snowflakes in nature, is unique in its form. Just reflect for a second that with the unimaginable complexity of human life forms, how uniquely different you may be from any other person who ever existed (or ever will exist). 

It’s not just your fingerprints, your retinal structure, or your dental imprint. Every single cell in your body is distinct and different from those of any other person in all of human history! This difference, encoded in your DNA, makes you a unique individual in the known universe. 

This realization is important, because when it comes to health decisions and choices, it is vital to understand that what works for one person may or may not work for others. 

More specifically, what works for some people may or may not work for you. 

After you’ve set your measurable goals and measurable actions, I’ll describe a process of self- experimentation by which you can measure the effects of your chosen actions in a scientific manner. This will enable you to focus on the actions that advance you toward your goals and not pursue the ones that do not have any major impact. 

The guidance and techniques in this book work especially well if you are willing to experiment and, in the process, learn what health improvement strategies are the most suitable for you.

"""Goal-driven and action-oriented folks who are serious about improving their well-being will appreciate Nasir Khan’s scientific approach to adopting healthy habits. From his perspective as an engineer, Khan dispenses evidence-based insights on diet, fasting, and exercise. No two bodies are alike, and Khan’s metrics-focused approach emphasizes measurable goals and self-experimentation techniques to effectively achieve individualized results."" ---Maileen Hamto, San Francisco Book  Review"