The 4-Hour Body
An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and becoming Superhuman
By Timothy Ferriss
Crown Archetype
$27.00, hard cover, 571 pages, 978-0-307-46363-0 (2010)
Remember that old saying that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is? The 4-Hour body promises to show you:
· How to lose 20 pounds in 30 days without exercising;
· How to increase fat-loss 300% with a few bags of ice;
· How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested;
· How the author gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in 4 hours of total gym time;
· How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks
· How to reverse “permanent” injuries;
· How to add 150+ pound to your lifts in 6 months;
· How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit;
· How to hold your breath longer than Houdini; and much more.
I’d like to tell you that all the promises are true and that the author discovered some new information in each of these areas that reveals all these secrets. But I’d be lying. The truth is that most of the above examples are wildly overstated, greatly exaggerated, impractical, ill-advised or simply physically dangerous.
Let’s go over just a few examples.
In the chapter on how to lose 20 pounds in 30 days without exercising, Ferriss says that it’s possible to do so by “optimizing any of three factors: exercise, diet, or a drug/supplement regime.” He then goes on to note that in 2007 he went from 180 pounds to 165 pounds in six weeks.
But how is losing 15 pounds in six weeks the same thing as losing 20 pounds in 30 days, you might ask? Ferriss explains that he added about 10 pounds of muscle during this time so that he really lost about 25 pounds. Two questions immediately come to mind. One, how do you know you gained 10 pounds of muscle during this six weeks? Two, you promised to show folks how to lose 20 pounds in six weeks without exercising – so how did you gain 10 pounds of muscle if you weren’t exercising?
Ferriss claims he lost the weight by doing what he calls the Slow-Carb Diet:
1. Avoid “white” carbohydrates. He writes that you should avoid any carbohydrate that is or can be white “except for within 30 minutes of finishing a resistance training workout” as described in other chapters. (Workout sure sounds like exercise to me – don’t you think?) So no bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, tortillas, and fried food with breading.
2. Eat the same few meals over and over again. Basically, eggs, chicken, beef, fish and pork for proteins. Legumes include lentils, black beans, pinto beans, red beans and soybeans. For vegetables, choose spinach, asparagus, peas, broccoli, green beans, cauliflower, and sauerkraut.
3. Don’t drink calories. No milk, soft drinks, white wine, beer, or fruit juice.
4. Don’t eat fruit. Except for tomatoes and avocadoes (in moderation), don’t eat any fruit.
5. Take one day off each week. Eat whatever you want one day a week. Ferris has specific instructions on how to minimize weight gain and insulin release on your binge day.
He also recommends supplements to increase insulin sensitivity: PAGG, which is 4 different supplements (Policosanol, Alpha-Lipoic Acid, Green Tea Extract and Garlic), taken in a combination at particular doses. These supplements are taken six days a week, with one day off each week and one week off each two months. Ferriss also recommends that you do air squats, wall presses, and chest pulls with an elastic band a few minutes before you eat and 90 minutes afterwards on your binge day (again, what ever happened to that “without exercising” claim?). He says that the diet causes you to lose excess water and recommends that you take additional supplements: potassium, magnesium, and calcium.
If this seems all a little daunting that’s because, well, it is. The hype is: lose 20 pounds in 30 days without exercising. The advice: give up all bread, pasta, rice, cereal, potatoes and fried foods with breading. Don’t eat fruit, drink beer, or have fruit juice. Eat the same few meals over and over and over and over.
Let’s turn to something else Ferriss promises: how to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit. In reading this chapter, Ferriss explains how he went to Nicaragua for two and a half weeks and spent about $2400 on travel expenses, housing, auto rental and food. So how does a hospital visit pay for his vacation?
Ferriss explained that he went to a hospital and had seven MRIs taken at a negotiated price of $400 each. He estimates that if he had to pay for those in the U.S. that they would have cost approximately $750 each so he “saved” $2450. He also estimates that he saved $640 on comprehensive blood and urine testing. This resulted, according to Ferriss, is a total cost savings of over $3000 which more than paid for his trip.
Does this make any sense? Ferriss claims it does because he uses the seven MRI for testing and prevention. But I question that assumption. First, who in their right mind needs seven MRIs? I’m over 50 and I haven’t had seven MRIs in my lifetime. Second, I have health insurance and the few MRI’s I’ve had didn’t cost me $750 – something substantially less. Third, MRI’s taken while you’re healthy might not be beneficial to your doctor if you’re injured. If I injure my knee running and my doctor wants an MRI, one taken three months ago in Nicaragua isn’t going to be any good. Fourth, how do you judge the quality of the medical care you’ll get in another country?
Again, the hype is much better than the advice.
What about the claim to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested? It called polyphasic sleep and sounds great until you realize that it requires that you get your 2 hours sleep by taking 20-minute naps every 4 hours. Ferriss cautions that you can’t oversleep and can’t skip naps or you’ll be a zombie.
Come on. Really? Who can handle this sleep schedule? And even if you can adjust to it after a few weeks, how practical is it and how long can your body endure it? And how healthy is it? The idea is that most folks only get a couple of hours each night of deep REM sleep, but isn’t there also some benefit to the other phases of sleep?
I could go on and on in analyzing each of the claims in this book but I don’t want to leave the impression that the advice was completely worthless.
It wasn’t.
The Slow Carb Diet is similar to the paleo diet, or the Atkins diet. As such, it has some health benefits – with some tweaking. Taking a day off each week in your diet has been proposed by others (can you say Body for Life?). Many of the exercises proposed by Ferriss are valuable. He had some common sense rules about getting a good night’s sleep that were good. His ideas on running with proper form (Pose method) are a Reader’s Digest version of the training advice in Born to Run.
This is a good book in many sections for those new to fitness if you take all the claims with a grain of salt and proceed slowly. I wouldn’t, for example, expect to go from running 5K to 50K in 12 weeks without injury. Ferriss has a couple of chapters where he consults with Brian MacKenzie (a former tri-athlete) to come up with a training plan.
Ferriss indicates in the book that he followed the plan. Did it work for him? He ends the chapter by saying that there wasn’t enough time to update the chapter before going to press but that the outcome is on his blog: www.fourhourbody.com/ultra. My book is a 4th printing and Amazon says the book was first published on December 14, 2020. But this link is suspiciously missing with a note that it’s “coming soon.”
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Buy it on Amazon here.
