The 4 Hour Body book by Tim Ferriss will rock your world whether you’re a person who’s trying to eat right, get in shape, professional athlete, personal trainer or all of the above
The book strives to teach readers that there are a lot of myths out there about eating right, losing weight and is backed by lots of testing, testing, testing.
Tim’s a self-proclaimed experimental nut who seems to be striving for truth and no BS info on how to get the mos tout of his body and his life, Tim is author of the 4 hour work week and when I told people that this book existed, they outright laughed in my face because they don’t really understand what having a business is really all about due to having the employee mindset, but that’s another story.
There’s good points and bad points to Tim’s book the 4 Hour Body.
The good points are that you can follow this book, it’s teachings and recommendations and probably experience the results that you want to achieve with your sex life and fitness levels and weight management,
Tim does give readers some simple, easy to follow diet/eating regimen recommendations and makes it seem almost too easy to follow.
One thing that you might like, love or run away from is the concept that Tim brings up called, Minimal Effective Dose, (MED) which means the minimal required amount of food, minerals, carbs, protein, sugar, glucose, fat, exercise, repetitions etc… needed to achieve the required results for that eating or exercise session. I’ve had personal trainers work with me on running and weight lifting and there’s one thing I know for sure: that someone like myself who truly enjoys pushing himself and working out has wasted a TON of time doing exercises improperly, and a ton more time doing workouts the wrong way.
They call boxing the sweet science, and the more you know about boxing the more you know this to be a good way to describe that sport, and the same applies to working out, eating right, and manipulating your body to achieve desired maximum effective results.
One time when I was really into weightlifting, I downloaded a workout regimen off the internet that was geared towards building up a broader back and more developed shoulders. the exercise routine was very explicit on what to do and when, and had a weird mix of repetitions to do, weights to use, and the sequence really didn’t make sense to me because I thought I knew how to lift weights properly. Well, I did this routine for 3 weeks and didn’t expect to see any results, but I was bored with my current routine and back and shoulders wasn’t a huge narcissistic priority of mine so I really didn’t care whether it worked or not.
One day I was over a girlfriend’s house and was in kitchen putting dinner plates away after a meal and she noticed the changes, and could tell that the back and shoulders were just all around bigger and bulkier! I was surprised to hear this and really didn’t believe it, but she hadn’t seen me for 2 weeks so I guess she noticed it better than I would, and this was with a shirt on, not off, which means it definitely worked.
The point this the aforementioned rambling is…. there’s a science to doing things effectively and really, it’s more like an art form because you have to do the exercises properly, in the right sequence, with prescribed periods of rest in between, and you have to put the effort in as well. therefore, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong, but if you hit everything just right, even a workout routine that doesn’t make sense….like much of what Tim prescribes doing in 4 hour Body won’t make sense to you,,, will work because we’re dealing with MEDS here, minimal effective doses.
The bad side to reading this, and it’s got nothing to do with the book itself is…. you will have to unlearn a lot of stuff that has been drilled into your head and a lot of what is taught in this book goes against natural conventional wisdom in the mainstream dietary recommendations and what-not.
For example, everyone says fruit is good for you right? It has fiber, and makes you poop more often thereby cleaning your system of waste more often so you don’t carry around inside your body pounds of waste, but Tim says fruits to be avoided and gives his reasons, you will have to read the book to find out why he advises against having fruit in your diet as this is not the place to debate such a thing.
The reason I say there’s a bad side to reading Tim’s book is that you have to be willing to follow everything he says to the letter, otherwise you’re going to be battling what you think you know to be true (eat fruits) and you’re going to end up cherry-picking what you feel like doing, and end up doing a mix-and-match with your current eating regimen and you’ll end up following two different ways of doing things and end up achieving less.
Some advice Tim gives for workouts that rings true, and IS true….
It’s better to have an eating an exercise regimen that’s easy to follow than it is to have one that’s hard, and tough, because it’s more EFFECTIVE in the long run to implement new habits that you will do consistently.
how many fad diets have you been on that really sucked because maybe your bad carbs addiction hasn’t quite left you yet. yes carbohydrates, and bad carbs are addictive and I know this to be true, but you can wean yourself off bad food quite easily if you follow an eating plan that keeps you full, is filled with preservatives-free “stuff” and it end sup changing your palate, your tastes.
There used to be a time when the smell of potato chips, Dorito’s or a Chinese food place would drive me towards and impulsive eating binge which I always enjoyed. Old habits die hard though, and when I ever so rarely indulge on those things on a cheat day for eating, I almost always regret it, but more for the fact that I just don’t feel good after eating it, not because I gained weight from doing those things. After you eat clean healthy, preservatives-free food for a while, you tend to spoil your taste buds and body into feeling good and not bogged down, so when you DO eat crap food, it won’t feel good, and as was mentioned earlier in this review, if something doesn’t feel good (like an exercise or eating habit) then you end up quitting that behavior because it’s human nature to be attracted to comfort, and to be repelled by discomfort.
…..So there’s some real down to earth common sense advice here in Tim’s 4 Hour Body book, and if I didn’t trust my personal trainer so much, I’d probably take this book as my new Fitness Bible because it really does cut to the core of what you can do. It is by design a book written to help you get the absolute most of our limited time on this earth, and the concepts are solid.
Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Body reviews, and points to ponder…
1- It’s a good book, it destroys some health myths
2- It’s geared towards people who want more for themselves in less time
3- It’s appeal is fad-like, kind of like 7-minute-abs (which you don’t get unless you eat properly by the way)
4- It has simple, easy to follow eating an exercise plans
5- There’s plenty of common sense concepts in here that can hopefully make you avoid fad diets and exercise routines and focus instead on consistent quality workouts and dietary practices.
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