Book Review: The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss (Pt 2)

The author of this book is a marketing aficionado and he has accrued himself a very sizable following - one of his blog posts has over 4,600 comments!  The book has been in the best-seller lists since publication December last year, particularly in the US, it has been right at the top of "diet" bestseller booklists and it has over 1,500 reviews on amazon.com already. By comparison, The China Study - published 2006 and possibly the most remarkable book I have ever read - has 'only' ~ 1,000 reviews. The 4-Hour Body is a fairly lengthy book, coming in at 592 pages; I think large parts of it are based on Tim Ferriss' blog posts. In fact, you can read much of the content of parts of this book for free by reading old posts on Tim Ferriss' blog.

Basically, the author says he has spent a lot of time "self-experimenting" and the book details what he has found. I'm going to try to summarize each chapter in a single sentence each, followed by some analysis.

Section 1: Fundamentals – First and Foremost
Chapter 1 – The Minimum effective dose
Summary – Aim to do the smallest amount that will produce a desired outcome (minimum effective dose - MED) - this will give not only the most dramatic results, but requires the least time possible.

Good advice - the two keys are to find out what that MED is and then to have the willpower to stick to that as the game-plan. There can be a huge temptation to stray if you think you're not doing enough.


Chapter 2 – Rules that change the rules: Everything popular is wrong
Summary – Ignore dogma, marketing and general knowledge about diet and exercise.

This chapter also has an inset "Why a calorie isn't a calorie" which makes a case for why calories from different sources or different contexts are not equal. This inset also has two "rules" – #1: It's not what you put in your mouth that matters, it's what makes it to your bloodstream; and #2: The hormonal responses to carbohydrates, protein, and fat are different. All of this so far makes sense, although even within the latter three categories, he is ignoring the complexities, ie. simple vs complex carbs, animal vs plant protein, what type of fat?


Section 2: Ground Zero – Getting Started and Swaraj
Chapter 3 – The Harajuku moment: The decision to become a complete human
Summary – Don't settle for being an incomplete person, allowing some part of your life to be completely neglected – choose to become a complete person

Anecdote from a high-achieving IT-whiz who spent more than a decade being obese, only to one day have something click in him that made him want to change. He talks about how despite kicking ass in many areas of his life, he left his health wane, feeling powerless and just kind of putting up with being an 'incomplete' person. The turning point was when he heard himself saying "For me, it doesn't even matter what I wear; I'm not going to look good anyway." This chapter is interesting, and although I can't relate directly to being obese, I can relate to being so busy trying to achieve in some areas of your life that you just kind of give up on other areas.

Chapter 4 – Elusive bodyfat – where are you really?
Summary – Body weight and scales can be misleading; a better way of tracking body composition changes is via circumference measurements (tape measure) and bodyfat measurements (variety of methods).

I found this chapter very interesting. I've never paid much attention to scales and body weight, but at the start of this year, when I decided to become healthier, it was obvious that part of this would involve losing bodyfat and perhaps replacing it with a some muscle. This idea of measuring and tracking results is a strong point of the book, and certainly appeals to my love of data. To measure %bodyfat, several methods are suggested, such as calipers, ultrasound, BodPod, etc. However, one of the most accurate – Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) – stood out as a convenient and not prohibitively expensive option. Moreover, there is a DEXA facility only a few suburbs away. I rationalised the cost by thinking of it as an investment in my future health, but truth be told, I was no doubt also motivated by my interest in all things technical. I have had three DEXA scans now over the last 9 months, but that's a topic for a future blog post. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in taking on any health, fitness or lifestyle changes. The book recommended taking a number of circumference and a %bodyfat measurement before making any lifestyle changes, and I am glad I did, because it gives a great reference point.

Chapter 5 – From photos to fear – making failure impossible
Summary – Use psychological tricks to ensure success with efforts to change body composition – 1) make it conscious; 2) make it a game; 3) make it competitive; and 4) make it small and temporary.

I must admit that although I read this chapter, I didn't put any of it into practice. My motivation was more about feeling healthy than how I looked. It wasn't like I was obese and looking to become non-obese. Things like photographing meals, "before" photos in underwear (puhlease?!!), making bets with other people, etc are all things that I have no interest in.

Well that's it for this installment, till next time...