TLDR: I'm 37. After following the diet, total cholesterol 165, triglycerides 386. Not on diet: Cholesterol 286, Triglycerides 1800. The diet works and it's super simple.
A friend of mine recommended this book after being on the diet. I was really skeptical about the claims in the book. I've got metabolic syndrome and I've been on statins for a long time. I'm by no means generally super fat or unhealthy in terms of diet or weight: 5'11 200 lbs and I don't eat a lot of junk. A large part of this is genetics.
I read the chapters of the book focused on the diet and honestly I rolled my eyes and said things like "no way" but I decided to give it a shot. I followed an even more simplified form of the book because I have 2 kids, my wife and I work fulltime and I'm always tired and have no time. I went to costco and bought 2 types of canned beans, stew meat, and frozen costco vegetables. I slow cooked the stew meat by literraly unloading the package into the slow cooker and salting it and letting it cook for 5 hours once a week. I put it in tupperware to keep for the week. For a meal I'd open a can of beans (used about half a can per-meal), pour out some frozen vegetables and microwave them for 3 minutes, then combine it all and heat for another minute. I'd have a meal ready in about 5 minutes. For breakfast I'd eat the same thing except I'd eat about half as much meat and add about 4 eggs. I used salt or sriracha chili paste for flavor.
I ate that 6 days a week, 3 times a day, and on Saturday I'd eat like an absolute pig. After 6 weeks I had my blood tested again and the results are better than when I was on statins. I also just generally felt better. I also lost like 15 pounds or so but that wasn't really my focus.
So the claims in the book about the effects on cholesterol are completely true as crazy as it sounds. Highly recommend this.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Mr. Ferriss makes difficult things seem very easy." NY Times
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Tim Ferriss has been called “a cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk” by The New York Times. He is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and more than fifty other companies. He is also the author of four #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, and Tools of Titans. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 200 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THE MINIMUM EFFECTIVE DOSE
From Microwaves to Fat-Loss
Arthur Jones was a precocious young child and particularly fond of crocodiles.
He read his father's entire medical library before he was 12. The home environment might have had something to do with it, seeing as his parents, grandfather, great-grandfather, half-brother, and half-sister were all doctors.
From humble beginnings in Oklahoma, he would mature into one of the most influential figures in the exercise science world. He would also become, in the words of more than a few, a particularly "angry genius."
One of Jones's protégés, Ellington Darden PhD, shares a prototypical Jones anecdote:
In 1970, Arthur invited Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and Franco Colombu to visit him in Lake Helen, Florida, right after the 1970 Mr. Olympia. Arthur picked them up at the airport in his Cadillac, with Arnold in the passenger seat and Franco in the back. There are probably 12 stoplights in between the airport and the Interstate, so it was a lot of stop-and-go driving.
Now, you have to know that Arthur was a man who talked loud and dominated every conversation. But he couldn't get Arnold to shut up. He was just blabbing in his German or whatever and Arthur was having a hard time understanding what he was saying. So Arthur was getting annoyed and told him to quiet down, but Arnold just kept talking and talking.
By the time they got onto the Interstate, Arthur had had enough. So he pulled over to the side of the road, got out, walked around, opened Arnold's door, grabbed him by the shirt collar, yanked him out, and said something to the effect of, "Listen here, you son of a bitch. If you don't shut the hell up, a man twice your age is going to whip your ass right out here in front of I-4 traffic. Just dare me."
Within five seconds Arnold had apologized, got back in the car, and was a perfect gentlemen for the next three or four days.
Jones was more frequently pissed off than anything else.
He was infuriated by what he considered stupidity in every corner of the exercise science world, and he channeled this anger into defying the odds. This included putting 63.21 pounds on champion bodybuilder Casey Viator in 28 days and putting himself on the Forbes 400 list by founding and selling exercise equipment manufacturer Nautilus, which was estimated to have grossed $300 million per year at its zenith.
He had no patience for fuzzy thinking in fields that depended on scientific clarity. In response to researchers who drew conclusions about muscular function using electromyography (EMG), Arthur attached their machines to a cadaver and moved its limbs to record similar "activity." Internal friction, that is.
Jones lamented his fleeting time: "My age being what it is, universal acceptance of what we are now doing may not come within my lifetime; but it will come, because what we are doing is clearly established by simple laws of basic physics that cannot be denied forever." He passed away on August 28, 2007, of natural causes, 80 years old and as ornery as ever.
Jones left a number of important legacies, one of which will be the cornerstone of everything we'll discuss: the minimum effective dose.
The Minimum Effective Dose
The minimum effective dose (MED) is defined simply: the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome.
Jones referred to this critical point as the "minimum effective load," as he was concerned exclusively with weight-bearing exercise, but we will look at precise "dosing" of both exercise and anything you ingest.1
Anything beyond the MED is wasteful.
To boil water, the MED is 212°F (100°C) at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it "more boiled." Higher temperatures just consume more resources that could be used for something else more productive.
If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, let's assume one week, someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self. Sad little manatee. In biological systems, exceeding your MED can freeze progress for weeks, even months.
In the context of body redesign, there are two fundamental MEDs to keep in mind:
To remove stored fat -- do the least necessary to trigger a fat-loss cascade of specific hormones.
To add muscle in small or large quantities -- do the least necessary to trigger local (specific muscles) and systemic (hormonal 2) growth mechanisms.
Knocking over the dominos that trigger both of these events takes surprisingly little. Don't complicate them.
For a given muscle group like the shoulders, activating the local growth mechanism might require just 80 seconds of tension using 50 pounds once every seven days, for example. That stimulus, just like the 212°F for boiling water, is enough to trigger certain prostaglandins, transcription factors, and all manner of complicated biological reactions. What are "transcription factors"? You don't need to know. In fact, you don't need to understand any of the biology, just as you don't need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven. Press a few buttons in the right order and you're done.
In our context: 80 seconds as a target is all you need to understand. That is the button.
If, instead of 80 seconds, you mimic a glossy magazine routine--say, an arbitrary 5 sets of 10 repetitions--it is the muscular equivalent of sitting in the sun for an hour with a 15-minute MED. Not only is this wasteful, it is a predictable path for preventing and even reversing gains. The organs and glands that help repair damaged tissue have more limitations than your enthusiasm. The kidneys, as one example, can clear the blood of a finite maximum waste concentration each day (approximately 450 mmol, or millimoles per liter). If you do a marathon three-hour workout and make your bloodstream look like an LA traffic jam, you stand the real chance of hitting a biochemical bottleneck.
Again: the good news is that you don't need to know anything about your kidneys to use this information. All you need to know is:
80 seconds is the dose prescription.
More is not better. Indeed, your greatest challenge will be resisting the temptation to do more.
The MED not only delivers the most dramatic results, but it does so in the least time possible. Jones's words should echo in your head: "REMEMBER: it is impossible to evaluate, or even understand, anything that you cannot measure."
80 secs. of 20 lbs. 10:00 mins. of 54°F water 200 mg of allicin extract before bed
These are the types of prescriptions you should seek, and these are the types of prescriptions I will offer.
RULES THAT CHANGE THE RULES
Everything Popular Is Wrong
This is clearly a lie. Gaining 34 lb in 28 days requires a caloric surplus of 4300 calories per day, so for a guy his size, he must have eaten 7000 calories a day. He expects me to believe that he dropped 4% in bodyfat as a result of eating 7000 calories? . . ."
I took a big swig of Malbec and read the blog comment again. Ah, the Internet. How far we haven't come.
It was amusing, and one of hundreds of similar comments on this particular blog post, but the fact remained: I had gained 34 pounds of muscle, lost 4 pounds of fat, and decreased my total cholesterol from 222 to 147, all in 28 days, without anabolics or statins like Lipitor.
The entire experiment had been recorded by Dr. Peggy Plato, director of the Sport and Fitness Evaluation Program at San Jose State University, who used hydrostatic weighing tanks, medical scales, and a tape measure to track everything from waist circumference to bodyfat percentage. My total time in the gym over four weeks?
Four hours.3 Eight 30-minute workouts.
The data didn't lie.
But isn't weight loss or gain as simple as calories in and calories out?
It's attractive in its simplicity, yes, but so is cold fusion. It doesn't work quite as advertised.
German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe had the right perspective: "Mysteries are not necessarily miracles." To do the impossible (sail around the world, break the four-minute mile, reach the moon), you need to ignore the popular.
Charles Munger, right-hand adviser to Warren Buffett, the richest man on the planet, is known for his unparalleled clear thinking and near-failure-proof track record. How did he refine his thinking to help build a $3 trillion business in Berkshire Hathaway?
The answer is "mental models," or analytical rules-of-thumb4 pulled from disciplines outside of investing, ranging from physics to evolutionary biology.
Eighty to 90 models have helped Charles Munger develop, in Warren Buffett's words, "the best 30-second mind in the world. He goes from A to Z in one move. He sees the essence of everything before you even finish the sentence."
Charles Munger likes to quote Charles Darwin:
Even people who aren't geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.
In the 4HB, the following mental models, pulled from a variety of disciplines, are what will separate your results from the rest of mankind.
New Rules for Rapid Redesign
NO EXERCISE BURNS MANY CALORIES.
Did you eat half an Oreo cookie? No problem. If you're a 220-pound male, you just need to climb 27 flights of stairs to burn it off.
F*cking hell, right? It's enough to make a lumberjack cry. Confused and angry? You should be.
As usual, the focus is on the least important piece of the puzzle.
But why do scientists harp on the calorie? Simple. It's cheap to estimate, and it is a popular variable for publication in journals. This, dear friends, is referred to as "parking lot" science, so-called after a joke about a poor drunk man who loses his keys during a night on the town.
His friends find him on his hands and knees looking for his keys under a streetlight, even though he knows he lost them somewhere else. "Why are you looking for your keys under the streetlight?" they ask. He responds confidently, "Because there's more light over here. I can see better."
For the researcher seeking tenure, grant money, or lucrative corporate consulting contracts, the maxim "publish or perish" applies. If you need to include 100 or 1,000 test subjects and can only afford to measure a few simple things, you need to paint those measurements as tremendously important.
Alas, mentally on your hands and knees is no way to spend life, nor is chafing your ass on a stationary bike.
Instead of focusing on calories-out as exercise-dependent, we will look at two underexploited paths: heat and hormones.
So relax. You'll be able to eat as much as you want, and then some. New exhaust pipes will solve the problem.
A DRUG IS A DRUG IS A DRUG
Calling something a "drug," a "dietary supplement," "over-the-counter," or a "nutriceutical" is a legal distinction, not a biochemical one.
None of these labels mean that something is safe or effective. Legal herbs can kill you just as dead as illegal narcotics. Supplements, often unpatentable molecules and therefore unappealing for drug development, can decrease cholesterol from 222 to 147 in four weeks, as I have done, or they can be inert and do absolutely nothing.
Think "all-natural" is safer than synthetic? Split peas are all-natural, but so is arsenic. Human growth hormone (HGH) can be extracted from the brains of all-natural cadavers, but unfortunately it often brings Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease with it, which is why HGH is now manufactured using recombinant DNA.
Besides whole foods (which we'll treat separately as "food"), anything you put in your mouth or your bloodstream that has an effect--whether it's a cream, injection, pill, or powder--is a drug. Treat them all as such. Don't distract yourself with labels that are meaningless to us.
THE 20-POUND RECOMP GOAL
For the vast majority of you reading this book who weigh more than 120 pounds, 20 pounds of recomposition (which I'll define below) will make you look and feel like a new person, so I suggest this as a goal. If you weigh less than 120 pounds, aim for 10 pounds; otherwise, 20 pounds is your new, specific goal.
Even if you have 100+ pounds to lose, start with 20.
On a 1-10 attractiveness scale, 20 pounds appears to be the critical threshold for going from a 6 to a 9 or 10, at least as tested with male perception of females.
The term "recomposition" is important. It does not mean a 20-pound reduction in weight. It's a 20-pound change in appearance. A 20-pound "recomp" could entail losing 20 pounds of fat or gaining 20 pounds of muscle, but it most often involves losing 15 pounds of fat and gaining 5 pounds of muscle, or some blend in between.
Designing the best physique includes both subtraction and addition.
THE 100-UNIT SLIDER: DIET, EXERCISE, AND DRUGS
How, then, do we get to 20 pounds?
Imagine a ruler with 100 lines on it, representing 100 total units, and two sliders. This allows us to split the 100 units into three areas that total 100. These three areas represent diet, exercise, and drugs.
An equal split would look like this:
________/________/________ (33% diet, 33% drugs, 33% exercise)
It is possible to reach your 20-pound recomp goal with any combination of the three, but some combinations are better than others. One hundred percent drugs can get you there, for example, but it will produce the most long term side effects. One hundred percent exercise can get you there, but if injuries or circumstances interfere, the return to baseline is fast.
/__________/ (100% drugs) = side effects
//__________ (100% exercise) = easy to derail
Here is the ratio of most of the fat-loss case studies in this book:
______/_/___ (60% diet, 10% drugs, 30% exercise)
If you're unable to follow a prescribed diet, as is sometimes the case with travel or vegetarianism, you'll need to move the sliders to increase the % attention paid to exercise and drugs. For example:
_/____/_____ (10% diet, 45% drugs, 45% exercise)
The numbers need not be measured, but this concept is critical to keep in mind as the world interferes with plans. Learning diet and exercise principles is priority #1, as these are the bedrock elements. Relying too much on drugs makes your liver and kidneys unhappy.
The percentages will also depend on your personal preferences and "adherence," which we cover next.
1. Credit is due to Dr. Doug McGuff, who's written extensively on this and who will reappear later.
2. In fancier and more accurate terms, neuroendocrine.
3. In this case, the "4-Hour Body" is quite literal.
4. These "mental models" are often referred to as heuristics or analytical frameworks. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
From Microwaves to Fat-Loss
Arthur Jones was a precocious young child and particularly fond of crocodiles.
He read his father's entire medical library before he was 12. The home environment might have had something to do with it, seeing as his parents, grandfather, great-grandfather, half-brother, and half-sister were all doctors.
From humble beginnings in Oklahoma, he would mature into one of the most influential figures in the exercise science world. He would also become, in the words of more than a few, a particularly "angry genius."
One of Jones's protégés, Ellington Darden PhD, shares a prototypical Jones anecdote:
In 1970, Arthur invited Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and Franco Colombu to visit him in Lake Helen, Florida, right after the 1970 Mr. Olympia. Arthur picked them up at the airport in his Cadillac, with Arnold in the passenger seat and Franco in the back. There are probably 12 stoplights in between the airport and the Interstate, so it was a lot of stop-and-go driving.
Now, you have to know that Arthur was a man who talked loud and dominated every conversation. But he couldn't get Arnold to shut up. He was just blabbing in his German or whatever and Arthur was having a hard time understanding what he was saying. So Arthur was getting annoyed and told him to quiet down, but Arnold just kept talking and talking.
By the time they got onto the Interstate, Arthur had had enough. So he pulled over to the side of the road, got out, walked around, opened Arnold's door, grabbed him by the shirt collar, yanked him out, and said something to the effect of, "Listen here, you son of a bitch. If you don't shut the hell up, a man twice your age is going to whip your ass right out here in front of I-4 traffic. Just dare me."
Within five seconds Arnold had apologized, got back in the car, and was a perfect gentlemen for the next three or four days.
Jones was more frequently pissed off than anything else.
He was infuriated by what he considered stupidity in every corner of the exercise science world, and he channeled this anger into defying the odds. This included putting 63.21 pounds on champion bodybuilder Casey Viator in 28 days and putting himself on the Forbes 400 list by founding and selling exercise equipment manufacturer Nautilus, which was estimated to have grossed $300 million per year at its zenith.
He had no patience for fuzzy thinking in fields that depended on scientific clarity. In response to researchers who drew conclusions about muscular function using electromyography (EMG), Arthur attached their machines to a cadaver and moved its limbs to record similar "activity." Internal friction, that is.
Jones lamented his fleeting time: "My age being what it is, universal acceptance of what we are now doing may not come within my lifetime; but it will come, because what we are doing is clearly established by simple laws of basic physics that cannot be denied forever." He passed away on August 28, 2007, of natural causes, 80 years old and as ornery as ever.
Jones left a number of important legacies, one of which will be the cornerstone of everything we'll discuss: the minimum effective dose.
The Minimum Effective Dose
The minimum effective dose (MED) is defined simply: the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome.
Jones referred to this critical point as the "minimum effective load," as he was concerned exclusively with weight-bearing exercise, but we will look at precise "dosing" of both exercise and anything you ingest.1
Anything beyond the MED is wasteful.
To boil water, the MED is 212°F (100°C) at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it "more boiled." Higher temperatures just consume more resources that could be used for something else more productive.
If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, let's assume one week, someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self. Sad little manatee. In biological systems, exceeding your MED can freeze progress for weeks, even months.
In the context of body redesign, there are two fundamental MEDs to keep in mind:
To remove stored fat -- do the least necessary to trigger a fat-loss cascade of specific hormones.
To add muscle in small or large quantities -- do the least necessary to trigger local (specific muscles) and systemic (hormonal 2) growth mechanisms.
Knocking over the dominos that trigger both of these events takes surprisingly little. Don't complicate them.
For a given muscle group like the shoulders, activating the local growth mechanism might require just 80 seconds of tension using 50 pounds once every seven days, for example. That stimulus, just like the 212°F for boiling water, is enough to trigger certain prostaglandins, transcription factors, and all manner of complicated biological reactions. What are "transcription factors"? You don't need to know. In fact, you don't need to understand any of the biology, just as you don't need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven. Press a few buttons in the right order and you're done.
In our context: 80 seconds as a target is all you need to understand. That is the button.
If, instead of 80 seconds, you mimic a glossy magazine routine--say, an arbitrary 5 sets of 10 repetitions--it is the muscular equivalent of sitting in the sun for an hour with a 15-minute MED. Not only is this wasteful, it is a predictable path for preventing and even reversing gains. The organs and glands that help repair damaged tissue have more limitations than your enthusiasm. The kidneys, as one example, can clear the blood of a finite maximum waste concentration each day (approximately 450 mmol, or millimoles per liter). If you do a marathon three-hour workout and make your bloodstream look like an LA traffic jam, you stand the real chance of hitting a biochemical bottleneck.
Again: the good news is that you don't need to know anything about your kidneys to use this information. All you need to know is:
80 seconds is the dose prescription.
More is not better. Indeed, your greatest challenge will be resisting the temptation to do more.
The MED not only delivers the most dramatic results, but it does so in the least time possible. Jones's words should echo in your head: "REMEMBER: it is impossible to evaluate, or even understand, anything that you cannot measure."
80 secs. of 20 lbs. 10:00 mins. of 54°F water 200 mg of allicin extract before bed
These are the types of prescriptions you should seek, and these are the types of prescriptions I will offer.
RULES THAT CHANGE THE RULES
Everything Popular Is Wrong
This is clearly a lie. Gaining 34 lb in 28 days requires a caloric surplus of 4300 calories per day, so for a guy his size, he must have eaten 7000 calories a day. He expects me to believe that he dropped 4% in bodyfat as a result of eating 7000 calories? . . ."
I took a big swig of Malbec and read the blog comment again. Ah, the Internet. How far we haven't come.
It was amusing, and one of hundreds of similar comments on this particular blog post, but the fact remained: I had gained 34 pounds of muscle, lost 4 pounds of fat, and decreased my total cholesterol from 222 to 147, all in 28 days, without anabolics or statins like Lipitor.
The entire experiment had been recorded by Dr. Peggy Plato, director of the Sport and Fitness Evaluation Program at San Jose State University, who used hydrostatic weighing tanks, medical scales, and a tape measure to track everything from waist circumference to bodyfat percentage. My total time in the gym over four weeks?
Four hours.3 Eight 30-minute workouts.
The data didn't lie.
But isn't weight loss or gain as simple as calories in and calories out?
It's attractive in its simplicity, yes, but so is cold fusion. It doesn't work quite as advertised.
German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe had the right perspective: "Mysteries are not necessarily miracles." To do the impossible (sail around the world, break the four-minute mile, reach the moon), you need to ignore the popular.
Charles Munger, right-hand adviser to Warren Buffett, the richest man on the planet, is known for his unparalleled clear thinking and near-failure-proof track record. How did he refine his thinking to help build a $3 trillion business in Berkshire Hathaway?
The answer is "mental models," or analytical rules-of-thumb4 pulled from disciplines outside of investing, ranging from physics to evolutionary biology.
Eighty to 90 models have helped Charles Munger develop, in Warren Buffett's words, "the best 30-second mind in the world. He goes from A to Z in one move. He sees the essence of everything before you even finish the sentence."
Charles Munger likes to quote Charles Darwin:
Even people who aren't geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.
In the 4HB, the following mental models, pulled from a variety of disciplines, are what will separate your results from the rest of mankind.
New Rules for Rapid Redesign
NO EXERCISE BURNS MANY CALORIES.
Did you eat half an Oreo cookie? No problem. If you're a 220-pound male, you just need to climb 27 flights of stairs to burn it off.
F*cking hell, right? It's enough to make a lumberjack cry. Confused and angry? You should be.
As usual, the focus is on the least important piece of the puzzle.
But why do scientists harp on the calorie? Simple. It's cheap to estimate, and it is a popular variable for publication in journals. This, dear friends, is referred to as "parking lot" science, so-called after a joke about a poor drunk man who loses his keys during a night on the town.
His friends find him on his hands and knees looking for his keys under a streetlight, even though he knows he lost them somewhere else. "Why are you looking for your keys under the streetlight?" they ask. He responds confidently, "Because there's more light over here. I can see better."
For the researcher seeking tenure, grant money, or lucrative corporate consulting contracts, the maxim "publish or perish" applies. If you need to include 100 or 1,000 test subjects and can only afford to measure a few simple things, you need to paint those measurements as tremendously important.
Alas, mentally on your hands and knees is no way to spend life, nor is chafing your ass on a stationary bike.
Instead of focusing on calories-out as exercise-dependent, we will look at two underexploited paths: heat and hormones.
So relax. You'll be able to eat as much as you want, and then some. New exhaust pipes will solve the problem.
A DRUG IS A DRUG IS A DRUG
Calling something a "drug," a "dietary supplement," "over-the-counter," or a "nutriceutical" is a legal distinction, not a biochemical one.
None of these labels mean that something is safe or effective. Legal herbs can kill you just as dead as illegal narcotics. Supplements, often unpatentable molecules and therefore unappealing for drug development, can decrease cholesterol from 222 to 147 in four weeks, as I have done, or they can be inert and do absolutely nothing.
Think "all-natural" is safer than synthetic? Split peas are all-natural, but so is arsenic. Human growth hormone (HGH) can be extracted from the brains of all-natural cadavers, but unfortunately it often brings Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease with it, which is why HGH is now manufactured using recombinant DNA.
Besides whole foods (which we'll treat separately as "food"), anything you put in your mouth or your bloodstream that has an effect--whether it's a cream, injection, pill, or powder--is a drug. Treat them all as such. Don't distract yourself with labels that are meaningless to us.
THE 20-POUND RECOMP GOAL
For the vast majority of you reading this book who weigh more than 120 pounds, 20 pounds of recomposition (which I'll define below) will make you look and feel like a new person, so I suggest this as a goal. If you weigh less than 120 pounds, aim for 10 pounds; otherwise, 20 pounds is your new, specific goal.
Even if you have 100+ pounds to lose, start with 20.
On a 1-10 attractiveness scale, 20 pounds appears to be the critical threshold for going from a 6 to a 9 or 10, at least as tested with male perception of females.
The term "recomposition" is important. It does not mean a 20-pound reduction in weight. It's a 20-pound change in appearance. A 20-pound "recomp" could entail losing 20 pounds of fat or gaining 20 pounds of muscle, but it most often involves losing 15 pounds of fat and gaining 5 pounds of muscle, or some blend in between.
Designing the best physique includes both subtraction and addition.
THE 100-UNIT SLIDER: DIET, EXERCISE, AND DRUGS
How, then, do we get to 20 pounds?
Imagine a ruler with 100 lines on it, representing 100 total units, and two sliders. This allows us to split the 100 units into three areas that total 100. These three areas represent diet, exercise, and drugs.
An equal split would look like this:
________/________/________ (33% diet, 33% drugs, 33% exercise)
It is possible to reach your 20-pound recomp goal with any combination of the three, but some combinations are better than others. One hundred percent drugs can get you there, for example, but it will produce the most long term side effects. One hundred percent exercise can get you there, but if injuries or circumstances interfere, the return to baseline is fast.
/__________/ (100% drugs) = side effects
//__________ (100% exercise) = easy to derail
Here is the ratio of most of the fat-loss case studies in this book:
______/_/___ (60% diet, 10% drugs, 30% exercise)
If you're unable to follow a prescribed diet, as is sometimes the case with travel or vegetarianism, you'll need to move the sliders to increase the % attention paid to exercise and drugs. For example:
_/____/_____ (10% diet, 45% drugs, 45% exercise)
The numbers need not be measured, but this concept is critical to keep in mind as the world interferes with plans. Learning diet and exercise principles is priority #1, as these are the bedrock elements. Relying too much on drugs makes your liver and kidneys unhappy.
The percentages will also depend on your personal preferences and "adherence," which we cover next.
1. Credit is due to Dr. Doug McGuff, who's written extensively on this and who will reappear later.
2. In fancier and more accurate terms, neuroendocrine.
3. In this case, the "4-Hour Body" is quite literal.
4. These "mental models" are often referred to as heuristics or analytical frameworks. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B003EI2EH2
- Publisher : Harmony; 1st edition (December 14, 2010)
- Publication date : December 14, 2010
- Language: : English
- File size : 40333 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 593 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#15,736 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #26 in Exercise & Fitness (Kindle Store)
- #26 in Healthy Living
- #28 in Weight Loss Diets (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
5,258 global ratings
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5.0 out of 5 stars
6 weeks into the diet: Total cholesterol 165, triglycerides 386. Before diet: Cholesterol 286, Triglycerides 1800. It works.
Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2017Verified Purchase
209 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2018
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As much as I like the "rogue science" approach of the book, being a health scientist myself, I'm currently on the diet that this book talks about, have been for almost 3 weeks, and haven't lost even 1% body fat... I was so excited to finally adhere to something to see results, but I'm only disappointed now... Wish I could have my money back. Mr. Ferriss, it didn't work...
72 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2018
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Didn't work for my wife or I - sorry T. Ferriss I guess I'm not one of those freebie grabbing people that got a free book and gave you 5 stars.
3 weeks, nada. 4th week? I think the saying goes "First week is the trial, second the proof and if the 3rd week don't work toss the book!"
3 weeks, nada. 4th week? I think the saying goes "First week is the trial, second the proof and if the 3rd week don't work toss the book!"
91 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2018
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boring, simple and not useful. Extremely dull to read.Just a guy giving tips with long personal stories. I do not recommend
61 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2017
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Love this book, gift it often.
I've lost significant weight on its protocol (went from 28%MBI to 16% in 10weeks)
It's improved my sex life - cannot speak more highly of kettlebell swings for this and below
Mass gains were meh but still good for the total gym time
sleep manipulation didn't work for me but know it has for others
helped a ton with injury recovery
I've lost significant weight on its protocol (went from 28%MBI to 16% in 10weeks)
It's improved my sex life - cannot speak more highly of kettlebell swings for this and below
Mass gains were meh but still good for the total gym time
sleep manipulation didn't work for me but know it has for others
helped a ton with injury recovery
69 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2017
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I absolutely love this book. It is broken down into easy to understand sections with straightforward information which is easy to understand. I have had good results after implementing some of the authors recommendations. The slow carb diet and cold showers are, in my experience, especially beneficial. The book is much larger than I anticipated, apparently, I ignored the page count when I placed my order. Don't think of this resource as a book that you read cover-to-cover. You can read it however you want but I have found it most useful as a reference book that I can consume topic-by-topic.
58 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2018
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This book has changed my life. After a decade of steady weight gain and many failed diets and fads, this book has succeeded. I have lost weight and inches without feeling like I am deprived. My well being has improved. My relationship with food and sugar has become much healthier.
36 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2018
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At first the information seemed a little unorganized to me, as I was expecting more of a step-by-step guide, but after extracting all pieces that were valuable to me, I was able to set a solid regiment for myself.
Important side note about the slow card diet - listen to your body. Eating the amount of protein at the four meal a day frequency he recommended was always way too much for me if I was also having a small serving of beans and spinach or other veggies too (I'm 5'3 and 138 lb), so I wasn't losing weight until I reduced my intake to three meals a day with the equivalent of one egg of protein per meal. I'm also doing the recommended minimum amount of exercise he discusses, eating my meals slowly, following cheat day to a T, doing the PAGG and CQ supplements as recommended, and drinking more than enough water, so it really was just eating too much. Having a decent amount of hunger before a meal helps a lot.
Important side note about the slow card diet - listen to your body. Eating the amount of protein at the four meal a day frequency he recommended was always way too much for me if I was also having a small serving of beans and spinach or other veggies too (I'm 5'3 and 138 lb), so I wasn't losing weight until I reduced my intake to three meals a day with the equivalent of one egg of protein per meal. I'm also doing the recommended minimum amount of exercise he discusses, eating my meals slowly, following cheat day to a T, doing the PAGG and CQ supplements as recommended, and drinking more than enough water, so it really was just eating too much. Having a decent amount of hunger before a meal helps a lot.
54 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

RoughNorth
2.0 out of 5 stars
A mixed bag
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2019Verified Purchase
I love a lot of Tim Ferriss' work, but I don't think this is a good book. In fact, I think it is his worst.
How can you trust what someone says when they claim to have gained 30lbs muscle in 30 days, or whatever it was.
Clearly nonsense.
Tim Ferriss is excellent when it comes to productivity, business, marketing and interviewing. Physical fitness - look elsewhere.
Not everything requires a 'hack'. Sometimes, the conventional methods + hard work will equal great results!
He claims that you should not look at experts for guidance as to training. According to Peak though, experts became so because of the huge amount of deliberate practice they put in, not just because they are 'gifted'. Tim creates a false separation here. You should look for the most efficient training methods, regardless of whether someone is 'gifted' or not. Often people will appear gifted because they have incredible training methods!
How can you trust what someone says when they claim to have gained 30lbs muscle in 30 days, or whatever it was.
Clearly nonsense.
Tim Ferriss is excellent when it comes to productivity, business, marketing and interviewing. Physical fitness - look elsewhere.
Not everything requires a 'hack'. Sometimes, the conventional methods + hard work will equal great results!
He claims that you should not look at experts for guidance as to training. According to Peak though, experts became so because of the huge amount of deliberate practice they put in, not just because they are 'gifted'. Tim creates a false separation here. You should look for the most efficient training methods, regardless of whether someone is 'gifted' or not. Often people will appear gifted because they have incredible training methods!
21 people found this helpful
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joe_the_drummer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Requires careful reading to get the best from it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2019Verified Purchase
I was motivated to write this after reading some of the 2/3 star reviews, many of which seem to have missed the point. Even if you don't actually apply any of the techniques, this book will likely make you think about your overall health in a different way. Whether or not you do anything with that is - of course - up to you.
There is a wealth of information in this book, and it has helped me lose weight, gain strength and run faster in the last 12 months. Like most of Ferriss' work, it could easily be misunderstood. Be clear that it isn't about shortcuts or 'hacks', it's about efficiently getting maximum benefit from the minimum input - but that 'minimum input' still requires effort and dedication. You'll get out what you're prepared to put in.
There is a wealth of information in this book, and it has helped me lose weight, gain strength and run faster in the last 12 months. Like most of Ferriss' work, it could easily be misunderstood. Be clear that it isn't about shortcuts or 'hacks', it's about efficiently getting maximum benefit from the minimum input - but that 'minimum input' still requires effort and dedication. You'll get out what you're prepared to put in.
16 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars
Two Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2018Verified Purchase
A true expert in the art of Bovine Scatology.
32 people found this helpful
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J. C.
4.0 out of 5 stars
If it works for you, then good :-)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2019Verified Purchase
This is an interesting book. Tm Ferriss is something of a character. IHe explores his own path to becoming 'superhuman'. He explodes many of the myths on the subjects he describes. It's well worth reading his blog where he tries his weight loss ideas on members of the general public with some success. This book was his first and I think his most interesting. Do not read if you are easily shocked. You have been warned :-) Some Kindle books don't contain illustrations. This does.

4.0 out of 5 stars
If it works for you, then good :-)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2019
This is an interesting book. Tm Ferriss is something of a character. IHe explores his own path to becoming 'superhuman'. He explodes many of the myths on the subjects he describes. It's well worth reading his blog where he tries his weight loss ideas on members of the general public with some success. This book was his first and I think his most interesting. Do not read if you are easily shocked. You have been warned :-) Some Kindle books don't contain illustrations. This does.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2019
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13 people found this helpful
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Chilli
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some good advice and reads well
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2018Verified Purchase
I'm just starting out so I can't comment on effectiveness but the book reads well and appears to be packed with useful info and workable solutions that you can stick to. I've swapped white carbs for lentils and it's sustainable for me. Not sure about no fruit, but I can see some fruits are packed with natural sugars. Cheat day 1x a week is good idea.
5 people found this helpful
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