The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [62]
3:50 pm: Kombucha
Lunch: 4:06 pm: hot & sour beef with eggplant
4:46 pm: yerba mate (20g sugar)
7:09 pm: unsweetened yerba mate
7:25 pm: 15 almonds + 2g vit. C
9:00 pm: workout start
9:30 pm: workout end
9:35 pm: super monster protein (Odwalla)
10:00 pm: seaweed salad (huge)
10:15 pm:
12–15 pieces sashimi
1.75 bowl rice
3 cups green tea
11:05 pm: 300 ALA
11:33 pm: 50 air squat
Compare the jagged graph for September 23 on this page with the following graph for September 25, which is a near flatline. On the 25th, I deliberately consumed high-fat meals and snacks for pre-sex testosterone (see “Sex Machine” for how to do this).
It’s important to note that, at 10:15 P.M. the evening before (September 24), I also consumed two rib-eye steaks (200 grams each) with sides of broccoli and spinach, which explains the flatline even before breakfast.
Friday 9/25
11:50 am: 1 Lipo-6
12:10 pm: 91,86,95,108 glucose
12:30 pm: grass-fed Prather beef meatballs with walnut pesto + olive oil25
12:42 pm: cobb salad (huge)
5:20 pm: 25 almonds + 300mg ALA
6:39 pm:
4 brazil nuts26
Fish/cod oil
2 scoops athletic greens
8:26 pm: CRAZY LIBIDO
Americano restaurant
Hierloom tomato
Antipasto mixed (olives, pork, meatballs)
9:29 pm: Pancetta wrapped chicken
11 pm–12 am: sex [You can see a small bump in blood glucose, which is partially due to glycogen being released. I also observed this during anaerobic exercise like weight training.]
September 26, a Saturday, and my weekly binge day, produced a unusually flat graph considering the jamming of chocolate croissants and other goodies down the gullet:
Saturday 9/26
10:40–11:40 am: sex
12:40 pm:
4 brazil nuts
2 cod caps
1 adrenal recovery pills, 3 desiccated liver [“liver”]
12:50 pm: 1 cup orange juice
1:03 pm:
2 chocolate croissants (3)
Bearclaw (1)
Coffee with cinnamon (3)
1:13 pm: done [I sometimes noted when I finished meals for duration]
1:44 pm:
Carrot juice
Almond croissant
3:45 pm: Kombucha
4:08–4:35 pm:
Hot & sour beef + eggplant
3/4 cup brown rice
5:45 pm:
20 almonds
4 oz liver
6:45 pm: Odwalla protein monster vanilla
7:30 pm:
2 brazil nuts
.5 lb chicken curry salad
.4 lb quinoa
AGG
+ 40 mini-band chest pulls
10:04 pm: 1 glass red wine [started drinking here and sipped]
10:45 pm:
spinach salad + oyster appetizer
11pm: Hanger steak
How is such a flat graph on September 26 possible when I was consuming such obvious garbage? Several of the tricks were covered in “Damage Control,” but there were other patterns that emerged over the weeks of testing with my implant. Patterns that you can use to your advantage.
The Results
The data set, small as it was, allowed me to form some preliminary personal conclusions that others were able to replicate. Here are a few worth considering:
IT’S NOT WHEN YOU PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH THAT COUNTS. IT’S WHEN IT GETS TO THE CELLS.
Food doesn’t move to the bloodstream nearly as quickly as I thought.
When I first implanted the SEVEN sensor, I was as giddy as a 10-year-old birthday girl and compulsively checked the values every five minutes during meals. I ended up misattributing all over the place. My blood glucose hit 200 during sex, and I thought it was the horizontal gymnastics that caused it, not taking into account the enormous sushi plate I ate two and a half hours earlier. It was probably 80%+ due to the latter.
It turned out that food and liquids took much, much longer to get to my bloodstream than one would expect. In most cases, I peaked one and a half to two and a half hours after food consumption, even with yogurt. Orange juice peaked 40 minutes after drinking.
This has profound implications and made the entire experiment worth the hassle.
Think you’ll have a quick bite for energy 20 minutes before going to the gym? It might not be available to your muscles until an hour after the gym. The solution: eat it an hour earlier.
Think that protein shake is getting to your muscles in the valuable 30-minute post-workout window? In my case, if I drank