Tim Ferris wrote an unconventional guide to lifestyle design with the Four Hour Workweek. In this book, he'll show us the shortcuts to a fit and healthy life. The notes here cover rapid fat loss, rapid strength gain, perfecting sleep, and life extension.
The minimum effective dose (MED) is the smallest dose that will produced a desired outcome. Anything beyond the MED is wasteful.
To reach your desired outcome, you'll work in three areas: diet, drugs, and exercise. An equal split would be ~33% in each. It's possible to use more of one area. 100% drugs means there will be side effects. 100% exercise is too easy to derail. Ferris suggests 60% diet, 10% drugs, 30% exercise.
Recreation is for fun. Exercise is for producing changes. Ferris warns us not to confuse the two.
Embrace the yo-yo diet. As long as your timing is right, it's okay to sneak in cheats. As long as it means you'll adhere to the stricter portion of your diet.
Have a measurable goal. "I want to be healthy" is not actionable. Think "I want to lose 5% of my body fat".
In body redesign, our destination should be a better ratio of body composition instead of just weight. Make sure you keep track of your body fat percentage.
People suck at following advice to become fit:
- The pain isn't enough to facilitate a change in lifestyle
- No consistent tracking == no awareness
Chad Fowler had his "Harajuku moment" in Harajuku while shopping for clothes. That's when he realized he wanted a more fit lifestyle. He had a successful career by being aggressive and not going with the flow, why not do the same with health?
Ferris highlights the importance of tracking. Fowler didn't follow the advice from this book, but he did keep track of calories and exercising.
The Slow Carb Diet is better fat loss through simplicity. There are 5 rules:
- Avoid carbs that are or can be white. This includes: all bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, tortilla, and fried food with breading.
- Eat the same meals over and over again. Successful dieters do this. Mix and match from each group: protein, legumes, and vegetables.
- Don't drink calories. Just water, unsweetened tea, coffee, or red wine.
- Don't eat fruit. Only exceptions are tomatoes and avocadoes.
- Take one day off per week.
My favorite parts about this diet is that it's simple to cook and cheap.
Ferris recommends potassium, magnesium, and calcium. You might lose excess water along with electrolytes. Potassium can be obtained through potassium enriched salts or avocadoes. Calcium via tofu or tempeh. Magnesium via almonds, spinach, or soybeans.
No. Expect massive fluctuations after cheat day and relax. It'll disappear within the next 48 hours.
Spices and herbs are your friends, but no cream based sauces. Butter is fine as long as the only ingredient is butter and salt.
You shouldn't. If you're hungry, eat more protein and legumes during your meals. If you're eating enough - it's a psychological addiction you should get over.
It's important to spike caloric intake once a week. Everyone binges eventually, it's better to do it at an interval than randomly.
No.
Yes, it's encouraged. Just avoid deep fried foods.
Grab a bag of almonds or raw nuts. It's better to choose mild hunger than to deviate from your diet.
- Skipping breakfast. It's closely associated with over eating in the evening. Eat a protein rich breakfast within one hour of waking up, or you will fail.
- Not eating enough protein or legumes. You don't want your metabolism to drop.
- Not drinking enough water, especially on cheat days.
- Believing that you'll cook.
- Over-eating "domino" foods like nuts, chickpeas, or peanuts.
- Overconsuming artificial sweeteners.
- Hitting the gym too often and rewarding yourself.
The three principles are:
- Minimize the release of insulin
- Increase the speed of gastric emptying
- Engage in brief muscular contraction throughout the binge
Insulin release is minimized by blunting sharp jumps in blood sugar. This can be done by:
- Ensure the first meal is not a binge meal, but a smallish one that's high in fiber and protein.
- Consume a small quantity of fructose fruit sugar (grapefruit juice) before the first binge meal. You can do this during breakfast also.
- Use supplements that increase insulin sensitivity (AGG or PAGG).
- Consume citric juices like lime juice in water or lemon juice on food.
Increasing the speed of gastric emptying can be done with caffeine or tea. Green tea works well. So does dark chocolate.
Ferris recommends air squats, wall presses, and chest pulls with an elastic band. Do these about 60-90 minutes before and after you eat. Do these exercises for 60-120 seconds. It brings GLUT-4 to the surface of muscle cells instead of fat cells for calories to flow into.
The posterior chain includes all muscles from the base of your skull down to your Achilles tendons. The secret is Russian kettlebell swinging twice a week for an average of 15-20 minutes each.
Here are the guidelines:
- Stand with your feet 6 to 12 inches outside of shoulder width on either side, each foot pointed outward about 30 degrees. If toes pointed straight ahead were 12:00 on a clock face, your left foot would point at 10:00 or 11:00, and your right would point at 1:00 or 2:00.
- Keep your shoulders pulled back and down to avoid rounding your back.
- The lowering backswing movement is sitting-back-on-a-chair movement not a squatting-down movement.
- Do not let your shoulders go in front of your knees at any point.
- Imagine pinching a penny between your butt cheeks when you pop your hips forward. This should be a forceful pop and it should be impossible to contract your butt further.
You can take it further by adding two other routines. Every Mon, Wed, and Fri prior to breakfast you can:
- Do one set of 20 two-legged glute activation raises
- Do one set of 15 flying dogs on each side
- Do one set of 50 kettlebell swings
The prerequisite for visible abs is to follow a diet that allows a sustained 12% body fat or less.
There are two exercises which work well: the Myotatic Crunch and the Cat Vomit.
To do the Myotatic Crunch:
- Sit with your back on BOSU, Swiss ball, or pile of firm cushions. Ensure your butt is close to the floor.
- Stretch your arms overhead as high as possible, keep them behind or next to your ears for the entire exercise.
- Lower under control for 4 seconds until your fingers touch the floor, the entire time attempting to extend your hands further away from the ball.
- Pause at the bottom for 2 seconds, aiming for maximum elongation.
- Rise under control and pause in the upper, fully contracted position for 2 seconds. The arms should not pass perpendicular with the ground.
- Repeat for 10 reps. Once you can do so, add weights.
It turns out laughing works out your abs very well. To do the Cat Vomit:
- Get on all fours and keep your gaze focused either directly under your head or slightly in front of you. Don't arch your back or strain your neck.
- Forcefully exhale from your mouth until ALL air is fully expelled.
- Hold your breath and pull your belly button upward toward your spine as hard as you can for a target of 8 to 12 seconds.
- Inhale fully through the nose after the 8 to 12 seconds.
- Take one breath cycle of rest then repeat for 10 reps.
The most likely cause of injury isn't weakness or tightness, it's imbalance. The core works fine as long as the hips aren't moving. Once they're moving, the core starts trying to compensate and balance.
Gary Cook came up with a Functional Movement Screening to determine if you have an imbalance or not. He does this through a pass/fail evaluation of:
- Deep squat
- Hurdle step
- In-line lunge
- Active straight leg raise
- Seated rotation
If you do have the imbalance, the core four protective exercises to fix it are:
- Chop and lift
- Turkish get up
- Two-arm single-leg deadlift
- Cross-body one-arm single-leg deadlift
Use the videos found here to learn more:
- http://www.fourhourbody.com/fms-self
- http://www.fourhourbody.com/cl
- http://www.fourhourbody.com/tgu
- http://www.fourhourbody.com/1SDL
Strength is a skill - that can be learned quickly. The workouts are:
- Dynamic stretching before each session with "over-unders" see http://www.fourhourbody.com/over-under
- One of the following with 5 minutes rest between sets: a. Bench Press 2-3 sets of 2-3 reps or b. Push Ups 10-12 reps
- Conventional deadlift to knees, 2-3 sets of 2-3 reps and then dropped to the ground to avoid injury. Total lift time for each set should be 10 seconds. Perform Plyometrics after each set and then a 5 minute rest before next rep.
- Core exercise, 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps isometric holds or torture twist. Sit on a bench, lock your feet below a pole or another bench, then turn to each side and hold for 3 seconds on each.
- Static stretching
Ferris used multiple devices to keep track of his sleep like WakeMate, Zeo, and FitBit. Using these, he found that:
- Good sleep (8-10) was dependent on the ratio of REM to total sleep instead of total REM duration
- Increase REM percentage by extending total sleep time past nine hours or intentionally waking up approximately four and a half hours after sleep onset for 5-10 minutes before going back to sleep
- Taking 200 milligrams of huperizine-A 30 minutes before going to bed. As always, speak to your doctor before using. It's not a recommended long term solution
- The higher percentage of deep wave sleep, the better physical performance
- Too much wine within four hours of sleep will decrease deep wave sleep
- Eating two tablespoons of organic almond butter on celery sticks before bed eliminated "feel-like-shit" mornings. Two tablespoons of flaxseed oil will add to this effect
Some other sleeping tips:
- Experiment with different room temperatures to fall asleep faster. Most people prefer 67F to 70F degrees. Usually a colder temperature helps you fall asleep.
- Eating a large fat and protein dominated meal within hours of bedtime will also help you fall asleep faster.
- To most useful sleep tool is the goLITE which uses light cues to put you to sleep.
- Exercise
- Take a cold bath one hour prior to bed
- Use a humidifier
- Resort to the self-imposed half military crawl position which forces you to stay still and fall asleep
The hard part about extending your lifetime is how to do it without living a complete boring life.
Cycles of 5-10 grams of creatine monohydrate reduces risks of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases. It has side effects though. Consult a doctor before taking.
Scientists have discovered that a lower caloric intake is highly correlated with a longer lifetime. Do this with intermittent fasting or protein cycling. The Fast-5 diet is fasting for 19 hours starting at when you go to sleep. Then eat at anytime during 5 hours before going to sleep.
The Alternate Day Caloric Restriction diet requires that calories are cut 50 to 80% every other day. Protein cycling refers to having up/down cycles of normal protein intake and half the recommended.
Bloodletting reduces the risk of heart attacks and other diseases by letting out the extra iron in our system. Once every 8 weeks is recommended. For males only.