The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [13]
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.
THE DUCT TAPE TEST: WILL IT STICK?
Eating at least one head of lettuce per day works well for losing fat and controlling insulin levels.
That is, if you’re a critical intervention patient, such as a morbidly obese type 1 diabetic. The options for such people, as explained by their doctors, are (1) change your diet with this prescription, or (2) die. Not surprisingly, adherence is often incredible. For someone who would like to lose 20 pounds but is more interested in how their ass looks in a pair of jeans, the adherence will be abysmal. Chopping vegetables and cleaning the Cuisinart three times per day will lead to one place: abandonment of the method. Does that mean it won’t work for some people? No. It just means that it will fail for most people. We want to avoid all methods with a high failure rate, even if you believe you are in the diligent minority. In the beginning, everyone who starts a program believes they’re in this minority.
Take adherence seriously: will you actually stick with this change until you hit your goal?
If not, find another method, even if it’s less effective and less efficient. The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
DON’T CONFUSE PHYSICAL RECREATION WITH EXERCISE
Physical recreation can be many things: baseball, swimming, yoga, rock- climbing, tipping cows … the list is endless. Exercise, on the other hand, means performing an MED of precise movements that will produce a target change. That’s it. It’s next to impossible to draw cause-and-effect relationships with recreation. There are too many variables. Effective exercise is simple and trackable.
Physical recreation is great. I love chasing dogs at the dog park as much as the next person. Exercise in our context, however, is the application of measurable stimuli to decrease fat, increase muscle, or increase performance.
Recreation is for fun. Exercise is for producing changes. Don’t confuse the two.
DON’T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSE AND EFFECT
Want to look like a marathon runner, thin and sleek? Train like a marathoner.
Want to look like a sprinter, ripped and muscular? Train like a sprinter.
Want to look like a basketball player, 68? Train like a basketball player.
Hold on now. That last one doesn’t work. Nor does it work for the first two examples. It’s flawed logic, once again appealing and tempting in its simplicity. Here are three simple questions we can ask to avoid similar mistakes:
1. Is it possible that the arrow of causality is reversed? Example: do people who are naturally ripped and muscular often choose to be sprinters? Yep.
2. Are we mixing up absence and presence? Example: if