Maximum return, minimum inputs
The Minimalist Stack
If you do nothing else, do these. Six moves, most of them free.
For: Anyone overwhelmed by the whole guide who just wants the shortest high-yield list.
The opposite of a mega-stack. Strip everything down to the handful of inputs with the highest return per unit of effort, and ignore the rest until these are automatic. Five foundations and exactly one supplement. This alone outperforms almost any elaborate protocol built on a shaky base.
If the full guide feels like a lot, this is the antidote. It’s the shortest list that still captures the overwhelming majority of the available benefit: sleep, movement, strength, a decent diet, enough protein, and creatine. Five of the six are free, and the sixth costs pennies.
The discipline here is subtraction. Every elaborate protocol on the compound sites is trying to add its way to health on top of a base most people never built — and a mega-stack on a shaky foundation loses to these six moves, every time. So the instruction is almost aggressively simple: pick the one of these you’re worst at, fix it until it’s automatic, then move to the next. Ignore everything else in this guide until these are genuinely in place. When they are, you’ll have done more for your healthspan than any bottle in the tiers above — and you can decide, from a position of strength, whether you want anything more at all.
The protocol
The backbone
Does the work. Build these first.- Sleep Foundations A
7+ hours, consistent wake time. The single highest-yield habit here.
- Aerobic base Foundations A
Move most days; walking counts. The biggest changeable predictor of a long life.
- Strength Foundations A
Two short strength sessions a week. Guards muscle, bone, and metabolism.
- Nutrition Foundations B
Mostly whole food, enough protein and fiber, portions matched to your goal.
- Protein Foundations B
Roughly 1.6 g/kg/day — the one macronutrient worth counting.
Worth adding
A real, evidence-backed boost on top of the base.- Creatine Supplements A
3–5 g/day. The only supplement that makes this list.
Build it in this order
- 1 Pick the one you're worst at and fix it first.
- 2 Make each move automatic before adding the next.
- 3 Add creatine once the five foundations are genuinely in place.
What to skip
- Adding anything else until these are automatic.
- Believing a bigger stack would beat this one. It won't, if this one is skipped.