The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [29]
5. What is the smallest meaningful change I can make? Make it small. Small is achievable. For now, this means getting started on at least two of the above four steps before moving on. The rest and best is yet to come.
TOOLS AND TRICKS
Grossly Dramatic and Realistic Fat Replicas (www.fourhourbody.com/fatreplica) These are disgusting but effective motivators. I keep a one-pound fat replica in the drawer of my refrigerator. The five-pound replica is the most effective visual aid I’ve ever seen for getting otherwise resistant people to lose fat. One biotech CEO I know goes so far as to carry one in his briefcase to show people who might benefit. If you want to thank yourself, be thanked, or perhaps be punched in the face, order one of these.
Services for Posting “Before” (and “After”) Pictures
Posterous (www.posterous.com)
Evernote (www.evernote.com)12
Flickr (www.flickr.com)
PBworks Personal Wiki Pages (www.fourhourbody.com/pbworks) Ramit Sethi (in the next sidebar) set up a free PBworks page (a simple wiki page like those found on Wikipedia) and invited all his bettors to be notified when he updated his weight. He also used his PBworks page to talk a ridiculous amount of trash.
Eat.ly (http://eat.ly) Eat.ly is one of the easiest ways to start a photo-food journal. This site lets you track and keep a visual record of meals you’ve eaten.
Habit Forge (www.habitforge.com) Habit Forge is an e-mail check-in tool for instilling new habits into your daily routine. Decide on the habit you want to form, and Habit Forge will e-mail you for 21 days straight. If you don’t follow through, the e-mail cycle will start all over again.
stickK (www.stickk.com) stickK was founded on the principle that creating incentives and assigning accountability are the two most important keys to achieving a goal. Cofounder Dean Karlan, an economics professor at Yale, came up with the idea of opening an online “Commitment Store,” which eventually became stickK. If you don’t fulfill your commitment with stickK, it automatically tells your friends and opens you up to endless mockery and derision.
BodySpace (www.bodybuilding.com/superhuman) or DailyBurn (www.dailyburn.com/superhuman) Need to find someone to keep you accountable? To encourage or harass you when needed? Join more than 600,000 members on BodySpace, or 500,000 on DailyBurn who are tracking the results of their diet and exercise regimens. The URLs above will link you to 4HB communities on these sites.
Ramit Sethi has always joked about his “Indian frailty.”
He had wanted to add muscle to his 127-pound frame for years, but it didn’t happen until he made one simple addition to his life: another bet. Ramit has an entire folder in his Gmail dedicated to bets against friends, all adding up to about $8,000 in prize money.
This time, he bet them all that he could gain 15 pounds of muscle in three months.
In the first seven days alone, he gained five pounds and was the heaviest he’d ever been. In the end, he added 20% to his bodyweight—surpassing 15 pounds—while keeping his bodyfat low. Now, three years later, he’s maintained his new muscular weight almost to the exact pound.
There were three reasons it worked after years of failing to gain weight.
1. He used a bet and tracked results publicly
Ramit set up a free PBworks wiki page (like the pages found on Wikipedia) and invited all the bettors to receive notifications when he updated his weight. He then proceeded to talk an ungodly amount of trash.
Needless to say, smack-talking would make him look doubly stupid if he didn’t win the bet. Ramit elaborates on the accountability:
“Use psychology to help; don’t just ‘try harder.’ If you’ve repeatedly tried (or committed to do) something and it hasn’t worked, consider public compliance or a bet.”
2. He ignored almost everyone
From Ramit:
“Everyone has a damn opinion. Some people told me I would get fat, as if I would let that happen for a few hundred bucks. And of course, everyone