The Four Hour Body?

As a result of injuries preventing training, laziness and a love of beer, wine and ‘good’ food, and after a 2 week holiday in the USA, I suddenly find myself weighing in at just under 16 st (224 lbs).  Not the heaviest I have ever been but probably a couple of stone over the weight I’d like to be and should be.

Having read the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss earlier this year, and starting to put some of  the theories in to practice, The 4 Hour Body was a natural choice of holiday reading for me. This is not a slim book at over 500 pages and initially seemed somewhat daunting but Ferriss’ easy writing style and his own admonishment to  “Just don’t read it all at once…” makes it a breeze.

Some of the claims made on the back cover include, “lose 2% of body fat in 2 weeks…”, “gain 34 lbs of lean muscle  in 28 days…”, “sleep 2 hours a day and feel fully rested…” and “add 150+ lbs to your lift in 6 months…”.  Easy to be sceptical but to be fair to Ferriss a lot of the theory is backed up by scientific research and a lot of crazy self experimentation. I particularly enjoyed Tim’s description of his 6,214 calorie marathon binge in 12 hours, and the fact that 48 hours later he had reduced his body fat by 0.3%. The book covers many and varied topics including improving sex (the 15 minute female orgasm) , Reversing permanent injuries and running faster and further but for now I am primarily concerned with rapid fat loss so will be focusing on The Slow Carb Diet and PAGG.

The Slow Carb Diet – How to lose 1st 4Lb in 30 days (with no exercise)

As the title suggests the aim is to lose 1st 4Lb (9 Kg/20 Lbs) in 30 days, although I will be attending my regular Wing Chun  class and running a bit.

There are 5 rules:

• Avoid white carbs – no bread, potatoes, rice, cereals, pasta etc (Except within 30 mins of a resistance training workout)
• Eat the same few meals over and over again – recommended foods include eggs, chicken, beef, fish all beans and legumes and mixed vegetables
• Don’t drink calories – no booze, except up to 2 glasses of red wine per night (Result)
• Don’t eat fruit – fructose sugars make you fat
• I love this one – take one day off a week!! And on that day go wild and eat whatever you want.

That is it in its simplest form, I will go into more detail about specific elements in later posts. The only other key element is weighing, measuring and recording weight, body fat etc. on a weekly basis and taking before and after photos.

So my measurements on Sunday 6 November 2011 were:

Weight: 15st 13lb (223 lb / 101 Kg)

Body fat: 25.7%

Total Lean Mass: 165.69 lb

Total Inches: 158 inches (This is the sum of the following measurements: both arms at bicep, both legs at mid-thigh, hips at widest point and waist at navel – note your waist measurement is not your trouser size!

I will write an update with progress and measurements each Saturday and will post final 30 day results and before and after photos on Tuesday 6 December.

Look out for my next post, which will cover the second part of my experiment with the ‘Four horsemen of Fat Loss’ the PAGG stack.

Related articles

• New Health Solutions pAGGSupplement.com Featured in Womens World Magazine (prweb.com)
• Expert Reviews: Timothy Ferriss’ 4-Hour Body (webmd.com)