4-Hour Body – The Slow-Carb Diet
Tim Ferriss has tried a lot of diets. Here's one that he thinks is the best. And it is pretty easy to follow. How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without ExerciseOut of clutter, find simplicity.-Albert Einstein 11:34 A.M. SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 2009, SAN FRANCISCOText message from London, eight hours ahead, meant to impress: Text response from me: Response from Chris: And so it continued, a text-message eating contest. The truth is, I do some version of this every Saturday, and thousands of people over the last four years have joined me in doing the same. In between pizzas and bear claws, the net result is that the average follower has lost 19 pounds of fat, and a surprising number have lost more than 100 pounds total. This odd approach has produced something of a small revolution. Let me explain exactly how Chris and I reach and maintain sub-12% body fat, often sub-10%, by strategically eating like pigs. The Slow-Carb Diet-Better Fat-Loss Through SimplicityIt is possible to
lose 20 pounds of body fat in 30 days by optimizing any of three factors:
exercise, diet, or a drug/supplement regimen. Twenty pounds for most people
means moving down at least two clothing sizes, whether that's going from a size
14 dress to a size 10 or from an XXL shirt to a large. The waist and hips show
an even more dramatic reduction in circumference. RULE 1: AVOID "WHITE" CARBOHYDRATES.Avoid any
carbohydrate that is, or can be, white. The following foods are prohibited,
except for within 30 minutes of finishing a resistance-training workout like
those described in the "From Geek to Freak" or "Occam's
Protocol" chapters: all bread, rice (including brown), cereal, potatoes,
pasta, tortillas, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating the
aforementioned foods and anything else white, you'll be safe. RULE 2: EAT THE SAME FEW MEALS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.The most successful
dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat-loss, eat the
same few meals over and over again. There are 47,000 products in the average
U.S. grocery store, but only a handful of them won't make you fat. Proteins Legumes Vegetables Eat as much as you
like of the above food items, but keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and
repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place
of french fries, potatoes, or rice. 10:00 am - Breakfast Here are some of my meals that recur again and again: Breakfast (home):
Scrambled Eggology® pourable egg whites with one whole egg, black beans, and
mixed vegetables warmed up or cooked in a microwave using Pyrex® containers. Just remember: this diet is, first and foremost, intended to be effective, not fun. It can be fun with a few tweaks (the next chapter covers this), but that's not the goal. RULE 3: DON'T DRINK CALORIES.Drink massive
quantities of water and as much unsweetened tea, coffee (with no more than two
tablespoons of cream; I suggest using cinnamon instead), or other
no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk (including soy
milk), normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. Limit diet soft drinks to no more
than 16 ounces per day if you can, as the aspartame can stimulate weight gain. RULE 4: DON'T EAT FRUIT.Humans don't need
fruit six days a week, and they certainly don't need it year-round. If your
ancestors were from Europe, for example, how much fruit did they eat in the
winter 500 years ago? Think they had Florida oranges in December? Not a chance.
But you're still here, so the lineage somehow survived. RULE 5: TAKE ONE DAY OFF PER WEEK.I recommend
Saturdays as your Dieters Gone Wild (DGW) day. I am allowed to eat whatever I
want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5,
and all of my other vices in excess. If I drank beer, I'd have a few pints of
Paulaner Hefe-Weizen. That's All, Folks! If the founding
fathers could sum up our government in a six-page constitution, the above is
all we need to summarize rapid fat-loss for 99.99% of the population. Followed
to the letter, I've never seen it fail. Never. When you feel mired in details
or confused by the latest-and-greatest Rule 1: Avoid "white"
carbohydrates (or anything that can be white). $1.34 PER MEAL?Andrew Hyde is
community director at TechStars, a well-known start-up incubator in Boulder, Total per-week food
cost: $37.70 And this was including organic grass-fed beef! If he'd eaten a big salad three times a week instead of a few proteins, his weekly cost would have been $31.70. He repeated four meals: BREAKFAST: Egg
whites, one whole egg, mixed vegetables, chicken breast Mixed vegetables, peas,
spinach (salad) His exact shopping list was simplicity itself. The prices are the per line totals: 1x Eggs (12 pack)
$1.20 Getting these prices
didn't require a degree in negotiation or dozens of hours of searching. Andrew
looked for discounted items near expiration date and shopped at smaller stores,
including a Mexican grocery store, where he bought all of his dried beans. THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: FRUCTOSECan fruit juice
really screw up fat-loss? Before (10/16, no fructose)
and after (10/23, orange juice): There were two other values that shot up unexpectedly: Albumin: 4.3 -> 4.9
(out of range) Albumin binds to
testosterone and renders it inert, much like SHBG (discussed in "Sex
Machine") but weaker. I don't want either to be out-of-range high. Bad for
the manly arts. If you said "Holy sh*t!" when you saw the iron jump,
we're in the same boat. This result was completely out of the blue and is not
good, especially in men. It might come as a surprise, but men don't menstruate.
This means that men lack a good method for clearing out excessive iron, which
can be toxic. The increase in iron was far more alarming to me than the changes
in cholesterol. In addition to contributing to metabolic abnormalities, the consumption of fructose has been reported to affect homeostasis of numerous trace elements. Fructose has been shown to increase iron absorption in humans and experimental animals. Fructose intake [also] decreases the activity of the copper enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) and reduces the concentration of serum and hepatic copper. The moral of the story? Don't drink fruit juice, and absolutely avoid a high-fructose diet. It doesn't do the body good. TOOLS AND TRICKSThe Three-Minute Slow-Carb Breakfast (www.fourhourbody.com/breakfast) Breakfast is a hassle. In this video, I'll show you how to make a high-protein slow-carb breakfast in three minutes that is perfect for fat-loss and starting the day at a sprint. Still Tasty (www.stilltasty.com) Not sure if it's safe to eat those eggs or those Thai leftovers? Tired of calling your mom to ask? This site allows you to search the shelf life of thousands of cooked and uncooked foods. Food Porn Daily (http://www.foodporndaily.com) Need some
inspiration for your cheat day? Food Gout: The Missing Chapter (http://www.fourhourbody.com/gout)
Concerned about protein intake We believe the body is a gadget. Here's how to hack it. Timothy Ferriss, nominated as one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Business People of 2007," is an angel investor (StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, etc.) and author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been sold into 35 languages. Tim has been featured by more than 100 media outlets–including The New York Times, The Economist, TIME, Forbes, Fortune, CNN, and CBS–and has been a popular guest lecturer at Princeton University since 2003, where he presents entrepreneurship as a tool for ideal lifestyle design and world change. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman is available fro
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