The Executive Health Speed-Run: Get Healthier Without Adding Hours to Your Week
You’ve built a career on good decisions. For most people in your seat, health is the one area that slips. Everything else had a deadline and your health didn’t, so it kept getting pushed down the list.
Most health advice makes this worse. It asks busy people to add more: more meal prep, more tracking, more 5 a.m. routines. The executives who actually get lean and feel better usually do the opposite. They hand off the things that eat their time, then put a few of those hours back into their body.
Here’s how that works in four steps.
The math: handing off meals and chores frees up 9–14 hours a week. Training and body care use 3–4 of them. You eat better, train, recover, and still come out ahead.
1. Hand off your meals (saves 6–8 hours a week)
Cooking healthy yourself means planning, shopping, unpacking, cooking, cleaning, portioning and tracking, several times a week. It’s the first thing to go when work gets busy, which is why so many diets fall apart in the first busy month.
A meal delivery service cuts all that to five minutes on your phone.
Pick meals with 30–50 g of protein. Protein keeps you full and protects your muscle while you lose fat.
Keep meals at home and at the office, so a late meeting doesn’t turn into takeout.
Expect around $1,000–$2,000 a month in Calgary. Compare that to what 25–30 hours of your time is worth.
2. Hand off the chores (saves 3–6 hours a week)
A cleaner saves most households 2–4 hours a week. A laundry service saves another 1–2. Add the meals and that’s 40+ hours a month you’re no longer spending on tasks someone else can do.
3. Train with a coach, close to home (2–3 hours a week)
This is the first place to put some of those hours back. Training is the one part you can’t hand off, so make it count. A good coach writes the program, adjusts it as you progress, works around old injuries, and notices when you’re slipping before you do.
Two things decide whether you actually go:
Train within 10 minutes of home or work. Every extra minute of driving is an easy excuse to skip.
Put sessions in your calendar like client meetings, and don’t move them for anything less important.
4. Book body care every week (about 1 hour a week)
This is the step busy people skip most, and the one they usually notice first. Massage, physio, chiropractic and acupuncture help your body recover from training, deal with the aches and old injuries that come with a desk job and a few decades of sport, and give you one hour a week where nobody needs anything from you. Most clients find it’s the hour that helps them actually wind down.
A simple way to set it up:
Rotate treatments weekly. For example: physio one week, chiropractic the next, then massage, then acupuncture. Hands-on treatment works on the things that hurt. The more relaxing treatments help you recover.
Book relaxing treatments after training, not before. Physio and chiro can go either side of a workout.
Have your assistant book it. Give them the list, ask them to book one treatment a week for the rest of the year, and to flag weeks you’re travelling. Then it happens without you thinking about it.
Check your benefits. Many company plans cover a good chunk of physio, massage and chiro, and most people never use it.
Once meals are handled, chores are handled, and training and treatment are on the calendar, there’s very little left to decide each day. That’s what makes this stick. Most people don’t quit because they stop caring. They quit because staying on track takes 30 small decisions a day and they run out of energy for them.
What this looks like in real life
Peter runs a company with more than 50 employees. He came to us with simple goals: lose the gut, feel better, get his energy back. Twelve months later he’d lost 60 pounds and 15 inches off his waist, and ran a 10K with his son. He didn’t find extra hours in his day. He stopped spending the ones he had on the wrong things.
Want this set up for you?
At Ludus, we build the whole plan around your schedule: training, nutrition, what to hand off, and a care team for your body. We’ll even coordinate the bookings with your assistant. All you have to do is show up.
Not ready yet? Start with one of our free guides.
