The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [18]
It wasn’t the amount of weight that I found fascinating. It was the timing. He’d been obese for more than a decade, and the change seemed to come out of nowhere. Upon landing back in San Francisco, I sent him one question via e-mail:
What were the tipping points, the moments and insights that led you to lose the 70 lbs.?
I wanted to know what the defining moment was, the conversation or realization that made him pull the trigger after 10 years of business as usual.
His answer is contained in this chapter.
Even if you have no interest in fat-loss, the key insights (partial completeness, data, and oversimplification among them) will help you lift 500 pounds, run 50 kilometers, gain 50 pounds, or do anything else in this book.
But let’s talk about one oddity upfront: calorie counting. I just got done thrashing calorie counting, and I’m including Chad’s calorie-based approach to prove a point.
This book didn’t exist when Chad lost his weight, and there are far better things to track than calories. But … would I recommend tracking calories as an alternative to tracking nothing? You bet. Tracking anything is better than tracking nothing.
If you are very overweight, very weak, very inflexible, or very anything negative, tracking even a mediocre variable will help you develop awareness that leads to the right behavioral changes.
This underscores an encouraging lesson: you don’t have to get it all right. You just have to be crystal clear on a few concepts.
Results will follow.
Enter Chad Fowler.
The Harajuku Moment
“Why had I gone 10 years getting more and more out of shape (starting off pretty unhealthy in the first place) only to finally fix it now?
“I actually remember the exact moment I decided to do something.
“I was in Tokyo with a group of friends. We all went down to Harajuku to see if we could see some artistically dressed youngsters and also to shop for fabulous clothing, which the area is famous for. A couple of the people with us were pretty fashionable dressers and had some specific things in mind they wanted to buy. After walking into shops several times and leaving without seriously considering buying anything, one of my friends and I gave up and just waited outside while the others continued shopping.
“We both lamented how unfashionable we were.
“I then found myself saying the following to him: ‘For me, it doesn’t even matter what I wear; I’m not going to look good anyway.’
“I think he agreed with me. I can’t remember, but that’s not the point. The point was that, as I said those words, they hung in the air like when you say something super-embarrassing in a loud room but happen to catch the one randomly occurring slice of silence that happens all night long. Everyone looks at you like you’re an idiot. But this time, it was me looking at myself critically. I heard myself say those words and I recognized them not for their content, but for their tone of helplessness. I am, in most of my endeavors, a solidly successful person. I decide I want things to be a certain way, and I make it happen. I’ve done it with my career, my learning of music, understanding of foreign languages, and basically everything I’ve tried to do.
“For a long time, I’ve known that the key to getting started down the path of being remarkable in anything is to simply act with the intention of being remarkable.
“If I want a better-than-average career, I can’t simply ‘go with the flow’ and get it. Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome. If they would just do something most people would find that they get some version of the outcome they’re looking for. That’s been my secret. Stop wishing and start doing.
“Yet here I was, talking about arguably the most important part of my life—my health—as if it was something I had no control over. I had been going with the flow for years. Wishing for an outcome and waiting to see