First of all it is my first attempt to review any book, I admit it requires some practice so if there will be some mistakes or misunderstanding don’t be too critical. Basically I will post the most relevant issues and facts considered by me and that hopefully will give some good reasons to buy, to download or to read book.
The first book that I decided to review is created by Tim Ferriss and it is called “4 Hour Body Workout”. This book covers a lot of issues and facts in nutrition, training and even sexual fields. It has more than 500 pages so I will divide book review in 4 parts, each part will cover aproximatelly 100 book pages. From time to time I will post my opinion in brackets. So let’s begin with the first part…
THINNER, BIGGER, FASTER STRONGER?
It all begins with a concert…. The first pages are quite captivating and provided some interesting facts that I actually underlined for myself. Facts such as to drink little amount of grapefruit juice which contains Narigenin in order to extent the fat-burning effect of caffeine from cup of coffee or if you will exaggerate with some taste foods add some cinnamon to the pastries in order to increase insulin sensitivity.
“50% of what we know is wrong. The problem is do not know which 50% it is”
Tim Ferris tracked all his workout since the age of 18 and did all possible body/hormone analysis spending on them more than 250 000 dollars.
Tim gives us some rule to be followed in order to attain more benefit from his book. The author suggests to think of this book as a buffet of knowledge, you do not need to read this book from the beginning to the end. Skip science if it is too complicated, be skeptical, don’t assume everything in this book is true because he says so and read the issues that are only relevant to you at that moment.
FUNDAMENTALS – FIRST AND FORMOST
This part covers the minimum effective dose (MED) and which is by definition is the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome. The book suggests that anything beyond the MED is wasteful. In the body redesign methodology in order to remove fat we must do the least necessary to trigger fat-los cascade and initiate muscle growth mechanisms with least amount of effort.
(I must agree with this statement, there are a lot of people that tend to train every day for a few hours. As a result it is ease to overeat and overtrain. I was one of those individuals and trained every day however I understood that more doesn’t mean better. This is great temptation that is hard to resist).
Interesting Fact: you just need 15 minutes of sun exposure to trigger the melatonin response. More than that will result in burning and a forced break from beach.
Interesting Fact: The MED for Shoulders equals 80 seconds of tension using 50 pounds once every seven weeks.
RULES THAT CHANGE THE RULES
Tim is telling that he gained 34 pounds of muscle, lost 4 pounds of fat when he trained for about a month. His total time expenditure in the gym was about 4 hours a week in other words eight 30 - minute workouts.
(Not bad at all. Perhaps his muscle memory also contributed to this gains).
He claims that it is possible to redirect your natural-born genetic profile and that from now on “bad genetics can´t be your go-to excuse”
Muscle fiber composition can be changed and you should eat and train for your desired outcome. So basically the way you train and how you eat will influence your genetically predisposed fiber.
As far as nutrition there is a lot to discuss, there is a suggestion to treat anything that you put in your mouth or your bloodstream as a drug besides the “whole food”. Even the conception of “ food” is treated differently from “the whole food”.
Learning diet and exercise principles is priority number 1. There is a state not to confuse physical recreation with exercises. Recreation is for fun while exercises is for producing changes.
Tracking calories is not imperative however it is better than nothing.
Interesting Fact: 4000 calories equals about a pound of fat in simple way.
Different sources of calories = different results
Protein provokes a greater thermal effect than carbs or fat, so in digestion a higher percentage of protein calories are lost as heat. This led some scientist to believe that every gram of protein should be counted as 3.2 calories.
Women do not need specific workout programs and diets, statistics shows that most of men and women want less fat and more muscle in 99% cases so they should do the exactly same workout.
Interesting Fact: On average women have less than one-tenth the testosterone of men.
THE HARAJUKU MOMENT – DECISION TO BECOME A COMPLETE HUMAN
People suck at following advices, even the most effective
The main reasons are:
Second is, there are no reminders, no consistent tracking. However the most important is the turning point when something that you pretend happens either it muscle gain or a fat loss. It simply stimulates people to continue and make them psychologically happier.
ELUSIVE BODYFAT
The scale is a tool that we should use to track our progress. It is not only about weight, the body measurements are very important and perhaps even more important than our weight. It is like planning a trip without a start address. Take your circumference measurements such as: upper arms, waist, hips and both legs. You can also total this number.Body fat most constant and convenient tracking methods are DEXA, BodPod and Ultrasound
Never compare results from different tools, stay always with the same device/method in order to get more accurate results.
BF>30 avoid calipers and use DEXA, BodPod or ultrasound
BF<25 aim for DEXA, BodPo or Ultrasound or opt by calipers
FROM PHOTOS TO FEAR
There are 4 Rules that give us more motivation and they are:
Make it conscious: before pictures are very important – scientist found that photographers were more effective in their goals comparing with written food diaries. Take pictures of your front, back and side.
Make it a game and Make it competitive – suggests to use DailyBurns (www.dailyburns.com) which I personally use to track my calorie intake. Site has also different types of challenges which will help you to achieve your goals by competing with other people. On my personal experience, I tried and loved. It has been proven that on average the group of people lose more 5.8 pounds of fat compared to who doesn’t do any challenges. Try to persuade a friend or a relative to participate in this kind of a challenge.
Make it small and temporary
Once again do not forget about measurement. Weight yourself constantly at the same time and under same circumstances. As an example the you can choose Monday morning as your weight day, so begin weighting yourself on Saturday, Sunday and finally on Monday. Afterwards just make a media of you weight of the last three days, this will give you more accurate result. Make it small and for the most important make it achievable.
If you want to walk for an hour a day, don’t start with one hour. By choosing one hour you are automatically building an excuse of not having enough time and in the end you will give up. Try small periods of time, begin with 5-10 minutes a day and try to increase time.
BIG SUMMARY: TRACK OR YOU WILL FAIL.
SUBRACTING FAT – SLOW CARB DIET I
(I am a fan of Paleo Diet with some exceptions like oats – post workout and cottage cheese that I do love mixing with Whey Protein. I think that rules of the diet below indicated is not very optimal for gaining muscle however with the right directions it will be a great diet for a fat loss).
Rules:
1. Avoid white carbs such as bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pastas, tortillas
2.Eat the same few meals over and over again – eat a lot of protein from egg whites and yolks, fish, chicken(turkey) breast or thigh, pork. A lot of green vegetables and beans
3.Don’t drinks calories
4.Don’t eat fruit
5.Take one day off per week and go nuts
Debate on FRUITS AND FRUCTOSE
(Once again there is a big discussion in nowadays about the fruit consumption. Personally I am not a big fan of fruit, perhaps from time to time I allow myself to consume some fruit but nothing over exaggerated. Simply for the most of the time I rely more on vegetables.)So in this part Tim is saying that he tested to different types of diet. The first one consuming fructose and the second without fructose (each diet was one week trial). When he says the fructose diet it means that he consumed 14 onces of pulp-free orange juice upon waking and before bed. So the results were quite interesting. During the fructose diet the level of cholesterol went up from 203 to 243 and LDL increased from 127 to 165. Also albumin values went up from 4.3 to 4.9 and IRON from 71 to 191.
The moral of the story is that do not try to rely on high fructose diet. It will not help you to get rid of last pounds of fat.
SLOW CARB DIET II
Continuing with the diet…
First of all, start changing your breakfast and you will lose fat
In the book Tim suggests using potassium, magnesium and calcium supplements. Use potassium during meals. Avocado is a could choice which contains 60 % more than bananas. Also it is a good source of insoluble fiber 75%.
There is another option; you can simply use pill form of each micronutrient.
Potassium - 4700 mg (beans, spinach, lentils, sardines, mushrooms) per day recommended for an average healthy male person 25 years old
Calcium - 1000 mg (salmon, sardines, spinach)
Magnesium - 400 mg (pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, peanuts, cashews, almonds) per day.
What about Diary products?
Mostly of diary product despite low glycemic index and glycemic load paradoxically have a high insulinemic response that was proven by University of Lund. (Once again bad reputation of insulin). So removing diary can result in accelerated fat loss.
Beans are good source of macronutrients and great for cutting
Cheat Day
Expect to have great weigh fluctuations after your cheat day. Don’t worry about it you can easily gain around 10-20 pounds due to water weigh. So enjoy your cheat day and relax, the weight will disappear in the next 48 yours (Hopefully).
Don’t forget to take the respective measurements, pounds can lie.
What about alcohol?
Only on cheat day. However you can opt by drink dry wines which have less than 1.4 % of residual sugar.
Snacks? You don’t need them. Perhaps you are under eating, just try to eat more protein and vegetables. If you decided to snack try something small that have range of 200-300 calories.
Go crazy once a week? Really?!?! It is important to spike caloric intake once a week. This causes a host of hormonal changes that improve fat-loss, from increasing cAMP to GMP that to improve conversion of the T4 thyroid to the more active T3. Perhaps having only a cheat meal will not give you a sense of guilty and won’t create great weight fluctuations.
Egg yolks also very important they provide choline, which protect the liver and increases fat loss. Spinach and Popeye?! Spinach is incredible for body recomposition.
The phytoecodysteoirds (can’t spell it right) in spinach increase human muscle tissue growth rate by 20% and also glucose metabolism. By eating 2 cups or 162 grams per day you can increase muscle fiber synthesis by 3 %.(Now I am really considering buying spinach)
Avoid diary with the exception of cottage cheese. It even appears to facilitate the fat-loss.
EATING OUT AND THE CHIPOTLE METHOD
COMMON MISTAKES
Not eating within one hour of walking, preferably within 30 minutes. He considers that skipping breakfast will lead to overeating in the evening. I can’t agree completely with that as I am doing Intermittent Fasting.
Not eating enough protein. (I think that this is basic for everyone.)
Not drinking enough water to ensure optimal liver function for fat-loss. (Basic number 2.)
Overeating foods such as nuts, almonds, peanuts. Very caloric dense foods. (I completely agree with this statement, as an example of myself I can truly say that it is very simple to over consume such foods.)
Over consuming artificial sweeteners. Even with no calories, insulin can be released however aspartame shows little effect on insulin. (Once again completely agree.)
Hitting the gym too often. Doing too much will not help at all, it could even reverse your progress, as it also leads to overeating. Remember the MED. (Less is more. 100% agree.)
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