Tim Ferriss, author of the bestselling The 4-Hour Workweek, is back with the sequel. The new book, The 4-Hour Body, promises the results
of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body … fixated on one life-changing question:
For all things physical, what are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results?
The book is a smorgasbord of topics ranging from losing fat, adding muscle, improving sex, perfecting sleep, reversing injuries and more. Besides the meat of the book, Ferriss provides links to lots of additional bonus material.
For a general (and expert) review of 4HB, check out this from Chris Masterjohn.
For the rest of this post, I’m going to look specifically at 4HB’s Slow-Carb Diet chapter (which curiously is online at Gizmodo).
4HB’s Slow-Carb Diet
The 4HB’s slow-carb diet involves following four rules for six “slow-carb” days per week and one rule for one “cheat” day per week (bullets are my primal/paleo editorial comments):
Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates. Don’t eat bread, pasta, rice (brown or white), grains, potatoes, breaded fried food or dairy on your slow-carb days.
No big surprise here; white foods have been targeted before in various diets. In general, white foods are energy-dense and nutrient-poor, so avoiding them is an all-around good diet strategy.
Ferriss mentions grains only very briefly re the slow-carb diet (answers “no” to the question “Can I eat whole grains or steel-cut oats?”).
Dairy may be a bit of a surprise, but Ferriss advises against it because of a high insulin response to dairy despite its low GI ranking. [Ed note: this may or may not be a problem at an individual level. You may want to avoid dairy if including it stalls weight loss.]
- Grains aren’t part of a paleo/primal diet because of their anti-nutrients; dairy is included by some.
Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again. Meals should include protein, legumes, and non-starchy vegetables; eat as much as you like, 3-4x/day.
Yes, it’s boring, but according to Ferriss, the diet is “intended to be effective, not fun.” Unless you really have the time and skills to cook every day, he advises to go with frozen and canned foods — at least initially — that make meal prep easier.
- Meats and veggies are definitely part of the paleo/primal diet. Because of their anti-nutrient content, legumes aren’t. Eating to satiety is paleo/primal, but given the ancestral link, there isn’t a focus on eating every so many hours (in fact, many paleo/primal folks practice intermittent fasting).
Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Avoid milk (including soy), sweetened soda (no more than 16oz of diet), and fruit juice. One or two glasses of red wine are permitted.
- Red wine is enjoyed by some on a paleo/primal diet.
Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. Tomatoes and avocados are okay (the latter in moderation).
Ferriss suggests avoiding fruit (especially fruit juice) on slow-carb days because of the way fructose is metabolized.
- Fruit is part of a paleo/primal diet, though limiting high-sugar fruit may be useful (Cordain, PāNu) for some.
Rule #5: Take one day off per week. Go nuts and eat lots of calories to keep your metabolic rate (thyroid function, conversion of T4 to T3, leptin) up. Do at least five days of rules 1-4 before following rule 5.
- Eating lots of non-paleo/primal foods one day a week is definitely not paleo/primal!
Other tips
The five rules above make up the bulk of the diet. However, Ferriss provides a list of mistakes people often make with the diet. They are re-written here as tips:
- eat within 30-60 minutes of waking
- get at least 20g of protein per meal, especially at breakfast
- drink sufficient water, especially on your “cheat” day
- avoid artificial sweeteners
- don’t overdo with exercise
Re supplements, Ferriss suggests potassium, magnesium, and calcium.
Re fats, Ferriss suggests eating “decent quantities of fat at each larger meal” (typically lunch and dinner). Saturated fat is fine if the meat is free of hormones and antibiotics. Otherwise, go for olive oil, butter, ghee, or macadamia oil (which has more monounsaturates and less omega 6 than olive oil).
My take
Overall, this seems like it would be a successful diet for some (many?). In general, it emphasizes nutrient-dense, lower-energy foods and avoids the foods that are likely the biggest culprits in obesity and lifestyle-related disease: refined grains, added sugars, and vegetable oils. And, aside from the semi-boredom, the ability to essentially binge one day a week and still lose weight seems to be too good to be true.
Cheat day, really? The “cheat” day concept is the biggest concern I have with the 4HB. The idea of carb/calorie cycling isn’t new and in fact is somewhat intriguing (the Cheat to Lose diet operates under a similar framework and the idea has been discussed in paleo/primal circles).
However, I think there’s a difference between trying to regulate hormones by overfeeding periodically and eating crap just because you can (Ferriss says his breakfast on his “cheat” days often includes multiple chocolate croissants and bear claws). I recall Art DeVany doing a post last year around the holidays that talked about what a bad strategy it was to binge periodically (I believe it related to nutrigenomics), but alas, can’t find the link.
Seems to me if you were going to overfeed as a regular strategy, doing so with higher quality food might work better. Or doing it only if you’re generally in good health. Binge-eating on industrial crap when you’ve got one or more of the metabolic syndrome risk factors wouldn’t be something I’d recommend strongly. But then again, perhaps it’s a relative question. Maybe eating industrial crap one day a week is better than eating it every day of the week!
All of this said, I think that if you are going to follow Ferriss’ lead re “cheat” days, then you should also follow his lead on minimizing the damage from them (see “Damage Control” and “The Glucose Switch” chapters). Exercising before breakfast may be helpful too.
Other than that? I find myself already doing rules 1-4 these days. I do like the idea of macadamia nut oil (I use olive oil for salad dressing pretty liberally) and am planning to give that a try soon.
I don’t eat legumes (though I’m thinking of adding peas back per Paul Jaminet and Melissa McEwan). Nor do I generally eat within an hour of waking up, mostly because I get up early to get to work early, so if I’m not skipping breakfast for fasting reasons, I usually eat around 2 hours after waking. I don’t see the need for changing this for now.
What I do need to change is the diet sodas. Ferriss calls himself a “total Diet Coke whore” and I can relate! Unlike him (he allows himself 16 oz/day), it’s my remaining vice and I have let myself get a bit nuts. Hello, New Year’s resolution!
Where to order. Visit Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Body website for more info and purchase links. At $14 and change for the book and $10 for the e-book, it’s well worth adding to your library.
Update, 12/14: In her sardonic review of the 4HB, Melissa makes a paleo/primal point I should have explicitly made:
“Vegetables are not calorically dense”
Um, no shit?
“so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.”
No, it’s critical that you add fat for caloric load. It’s clear people still get good results on his diet, but I think they would have better digestion and potentially eliminate autoimmune issues if they didn’t bother with legumes.
I give Ferriss props for recommending good fats, but it’s too bad he does so only in an off-hand way (rather than as an essential part of his diet).
I agree with Melissa. You don’t need legumes to make up for missing grains/starch calories. Paul Jaminet (whose Perfect Health Diet includes non-paleo starches like white rice) is also on the anti-legumes bandwagon, including the lentils Ferriss eats religiously.
I’m about 1/2 way through the book, and my take on the diet was that it absolutely requires legumes. Without those as a third of the meal, it’s really just a much less satisfying version of Atkins induction.
Probably, something could be substituted for them based on glycemic index, since I gather that’s the point of the diet, but more meat would be required since legumes do have some protein.
You’re right; since the 4HB diet excludes grains and potatoes, Ferriss notes that “it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.”
As I mentioned, the paleo/primal take on legumes is that they be avoided because of their anti-nutrient content. To make up the calories, a paleo/primal diet would either include sufficient meat, tubers or fruit, or fat.
The Weston Price folks deal with the anti-nutrient problem by using traditional preparation methods including soaking, sprouting and fermenting: http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/492-putting-the-polish-on-those-humble-beans.html
I’ve been on the “Slow Carb” diet for a little over a year and have lost about 90 lbs or so. I will admit that it’s an ongoing experiment, and I have found that a “cheat meal” can work just as much as an entire day can. However, I work out 4-6 days/week depending on my schedule, so a whole day doesn’t really hurt. However, my largest weight loss results were when I went all out.
Good luck! It’s a great diet and easy-to-do (otherwise, I wouldn’t have stuck to it).
Hi Leon, I was wondering if you could clarify what you meant by “…my largest weight loss results were when I went all out.”
Did you mean when you when all out with a cheat day as opposed to a cheat meal, or did you mean go all out with exercise?
Thanks!
The Every Other Day Diet plan (EODD) is developed by Jon Benson who claims that he can lost over 70 pounds of stubborn fat, got rid of those ugly pockets of belly fat, arm fat by eating my favorite foods each and every week!
Interesting perspective re: the legumes. I read that somewhere else too while researching the diet. But I don’t really understand the science of it all.
I do know that this is the first time I’ve been on a “diet” and not been hungry!
I tried the paleo diet before but I didn’t like that a lot of the cookbooks just had ideas for making “bread” or other substitutues for things you couldn’t have while paleo. Substitutes suck, LOL, if I’m gonna bother I want the real thing.
For someone like me who’s never been able to really stil to a diet, the idea of a cheat day is nice too - I’m looking forward to mine!
I’m on the diet now, have lost 10 lbs in 3 weeks - also working out, but I can vouch for the quality of this diet. Long live Tim Ferriss!
Tim posted an excerpt from Robb Wolf’s book on the horrors of gluten: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/
He offers an explanation for eating legumes:
“[Note from Tim: Many of you know that I consume some legumes and beans. Normal cooking will reduce anti-nutrients in both, but, when possible, I also soak them overnight beforehand in water with a tablespoon of baking soda. Soaking for 24 hours at room temperature has been shown to remove 66% of the trypsin (protease) inhibitor activity in mung bean, 93% in lentil (this is what I eat most often), 59% in chickpea, and 100% in broad bean. Remember also to distinguish "in vitro" (e.g. red blood cells in a petri dish) vs. "in vivo" (e.g. after normal digestion) studies.]”
Of course, the cheat day destroys the benefits of avoiding grains that Rob is arguing for.
I am reading this book now and am very excited about incorporating these concepts and seeing the results. Most I’ve read before and most make perfect sense. I am wondering, though, how a human being is supposed to intake 4700 mg’s of potassium a day. I’ve been to 3 health food stores and the largest pill dose is 200mg. This is either a typo or I’m missing something. Even the potassium enriched foods you’d need to eat seems ridiculous .
Tom, it’s actually not a typo. You can get potassium pills at higher doses, but those require an MD’s prescription. That said, while I get why he suggests it, as you can tell from the list of potassium-rich foods in the book, lots of foods have lots of potassium … it’s not a scarce nutrient compared to some (e.g. choline or magnesium).
I hadn’t realized until you commented how he implied the opposite by pointing out you’d need to eat 5 cups of lima beans or 8 cups of mushrooms to get the RDA.
Well yeah, if that’s the way you had to get your potassium! But if you looked at it instead as needing to get ~1500 mg/meal, then building a meal that provides that amount is quite a bit easier: 1 cup lentils + 1 c cooked spinach + half a fillet of halibut = 2,486 mg … more than half the RDA!
Granted, every meal might not be as high, but you’re also not limited to just one starch, one veggie, and one protein at each meal. By incorporating extra veggies (or a nice-sized salad), you are likely doing a pretty good job at getting sufficient potassium.
If you’re concerned, you could certainly take the supplements or liberally use a potassium salt (these are available in the supermarket generally labeled as “lite salt” or some such). HOWEVER, one of the reasons that higher-dose potassium supplements aren’t available is that you really, really don’t want to get too much potassium either! Getting it via food greatly limits any potential for getting too much in your diet.
All this said, since the 4HB plan has you eating beans or lentils at each meal, I’d think you’d find that you could easily ensure getting the RDA via food.
What you may want to do is use a nutritional calculator (I like the “My Tracking” tool NutritionData has) and plan out a menu to see how you’d be doing with potassium. And just for fun, you may also want to see how much you’ve been getting on your pre-4HB diet.