The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [4]
The process wasn’t punishing. It wasn’t hard. Tiny changes were all it took. Tiny changes that, while small in isolation, produced enormous changes when used in combination.
Want to extend the fat-burning half-life of caffeine? Naringenin, a useful little molecule in grapefruit juice, does just the trick.
Need to increase insulin sensitivity before bingeing once per week? Just add some cinnamon to your pastries on Saturday morning, and you can get the job done.
Want to blunt your blood glucose for 60 minutes while you eat a high-carb meal guilt-free? There are a half-dozen options.
But 2% bodyfat in two weeks? How can that be possible if many general practitioners claim that it’s impossible to lose more than two pounds of fat per week? Here’s the sad truth: most of the one-size-fits-all rules, this being one example, haven’t been field-tested for exceptions.
You can’t change your muscle fiber type? Sure you can. Genetics be damned.
Calories in and calories out? It’s incomplete at best. I’ve lost fat while grossly overfeeding. Cheesecake be praised.
The list goes on and on.
It’s obvious that the rules require some rewriting.
That’s what this book is for.
Diary of a Madman
The spring of 2007 was an exciting time for me.
My first book, after being turned down by 26 out of 27 publishers, had just hit the New York Times bestseller list and seemed headed for #1 on the business list, where it landed several months later. No one was more dumbfounded than me.
One particularly beautiful morning in San Jose, I had my first major media phone interview with Clive Thompson of Wired magazine. During our pre-interview small chat, I apologized if I sounded buzzed. I was. I had just finished a 10-minute workout following a double espresso on an empty stomach. It was a new experiment that would take me to single-digit bodyfat with two such sessions per week.
Clive wanted to talk to me about e-mail and websites like Twitter. Before we got started, and as a segue from the workout comment, I joked that the major fears of modern man could be boiled down to two things: too much e-mail and getting fat. Clive laughed and agreed. Then we moved on.
The interview went well, but it was this offhand joke that stuck with me. I retold it to dozens of people over the subsequent month, and the response was always the same: agreement and nodding.
This book, it seemed, had to be written.
The wider world thinks I’m obsessed with time management, but they haven’t seen the other—much more legitimate, much more ridiculous—obsession.
I’ve recorded almost every workout I’ve done since age 18. I’ve had more than 1,000 blood tests1 performed since 2004, sometimes as often as every two weeks, tracking everything from complete lipid panels, insulin, and hemoglobin A1c, to IGF-1 and free testosterone. I’ve had stem cell growth factors imported from Israel to reverse “permanent” injuries, and I’ve flown to rural tea farmers in China to discuss Pu-Erh tea’s effects on fat-loss. All said and done, I’ve spent more than $250,000 on testing and tweaking over the last decade.
Just as some people have avant-garde furniture or artwork to decorate their homes, I have pulse oximeters, ultrasound machines, and medical devices for measuring everything from galvanic skin response to REM sleep. The kitchen and bathroom look like an ER.
If you think that’s craziness, you’re right. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a guinea pig to benefit from one.
Hundreds of men and women have tested the techniques in The 4-Hour Body (4HB) over the last two years, and I’ve tracked and graphed hundreds of their results (194 people in this book). Many have lost more than 20 pounds of fat in the first month of experimentation, and for the vast majority, it’s the first time they’ve ever been able to do so.
Why do 4HB approaches work where others fail?
Because the changes are either small or simple, and often both. There is zero room for misunderstanding, and visible results compel you to continue. If results are fast and measurable,2 self-discipline