Tag Archives: Workout

Tim Ferriss and the 4-Hour Body

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I first heard about Tim Ferriss‘s new book, The 4-Hour Body, through commentary on a podcast from the TWiT network. It was during the show that I checked out the Audible version of the book. Unfortunately the reviews were pretty horrible for the Audible version. Not for the lack of quality content but an actual lack of content. A six hundred paged book abridged to just a few hours of audio.

So it came to be that I completely forgot about the book, until I was listening to another podcast, Nerdist Podcast #73: Tim Ferriss. Nerdist is a weekly podcast about all things nerdy and standup comedy related hosted by Chris Hardwick, Jonah Ray and Matt Mira (wow, look at me name drop).

Ferriss was on to talk about his new book, which coincidentally two of the Nerdists hosts were already following. The idea of the book was intriguing enough the first time I heard about it, however, learning all the gritty details, experiments and science really got my interest going. Before the podcast was even over I purchased a copy from the iTunes iBook store.

The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation. From Olympic training centers to black-market laboratories, from Silicon Valley to South Africa, Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, fixated on one life-changing question:

For all things physical, what are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results?

I’m only a few chapters in but I can say it is interesting and I can’t wait to finish it and start putting the new knowledge to good use. The premise of the book is basically that most of what you know about working out, dieting and getting “healthy” is wrong. Not in that calories vs calories out is a lie but rather it is a misconception. And so seem to be a lot of the other things I thought I knew about nutrition.

I’d love one of my nutrition-fanatic friends and readers to give this book a read and tell me what they think. Things like how drinking grapefruit juice before consuming carbs helps burn the carbs instead of storing them. That cinnamon with sugary foods helps more efficiently process the sugar. That fructose is bad, when I had always been told that it was a better sugar compared to sucrose.

Back in February I started working out again, after nearly a one year hiatus. I was in pretty bad shape. The first week of training left me a miserable mess of pain and stiffness. By the second week, and with the help of USP Labs Jacked, I was pain free, running faster and lifting more.

In a month I went from running a 20 minute mile to a 10 minute mile, doubled my lifting abilities in nearly every category and increasing my overall energy and feeling of wellbeing. It was awesome. But then I went on a business trip for a month and broke down my workout a bit. Then there has been the mold infestation that kicked us out of our apartment and took almost all of our belongings, which has really slowed me down.

Tag on the fact that I wasn’t seeing any real results in weight loss, only in performance enhancement. It wasn’t long before I began to lose my motivation.

So in the spirit of Ferriss writing a book about his exercise experimentation, I am going to dedicate a series of posts to my own exercise experimentation using his book as my guide (as well as my personal trainer). So here goes. Let’s see a 20lb fat reduction with muscle gain and let’s make it happen soon! No one wants to spend summer inside right?

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The New Apartment

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I have figured out why I feel so lazy, slothy and such.  Typically I would wake up everyday between 6:30 and 8:00 in the morning and get ready for class which started at 8:00 or 9:30 in the morning.  Then I would drive to campus and park my car which was followed by a brisk walk to class.  Everyday.  And then walking from class to class and then back to the parking garage.  All that walking burned a lot of calories and kept me from feeling icky.

Since summer started I haven’t really been walking all that much.  I workout but not enough, especially considering my goals for the summer…  So I guess starting tomorrow I will take some long walks, actually ride my bike somewhere and have an adventure.  I work Friday through Sunday, so that will get me some real movement.  Maybe I will start swimming or something.

I feel really alone right now, and doing any of these things alone just isn’t much fun.

My new apartment will be ready in just a week and a day.  This is very exciting.  I won’t actually be able to move in for a few days or weeks after that.  I’m getting my floors refinished before I move in.  Right now they have the potential to be beautiful but thanks to years of wear and tear, the wood floors don’t look so hot.

When I get to Houston I’m going to make a trip to IKEA to figure out a way to make my kitchen work for me.  As it is right now there is zero counter top space, as in, there are zero counters.  Just a 5 foot wide sink “thing”.  It seems the sinks from the 20’s required drying racks on either side, what?  No dishwasher? haha  And the wall opposite the sink is totally bare, not a damned thing on it.  And really, there isn’t room for anything, I believe there is only a few feet between the wall and the sink.  Yikes.  Only one cook in there at a time.

I have already found some really cool kitchen systems at Lowes and Target that should help remedy this situation.  I plan to turn the breakfast nook into a kitchen prep nook instead… and turn the living room’s dinning area into the primary dinning room.  It’s placed in front of these beautiful windows, what better place to eat one of my delicious dinners? haha

Even though I won’t be able to actually move anything into the apartment, I am excited about spending time, cleaning it up.  Doing a deep clean of the kitchen and the bathroom… and just about every other part of the place.  The guy who has been living there is a really wonderful fella and did some great things to the walls of the apartment, love the colors, but as with most guys in college, not the cleanest guy around.  Super considerate though, I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked in there June 1 and found it shining from floor to ceiling.  (well maybe not floor…)