{"id":846,"date":"2012-01-20T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T15:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/?p=846"},"modified":"2012-01-24T13:12:34","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T18:12:34","slug":"book-review-4-hourbody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/book-review-4-hourbody\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The 4 Hour-Body (Plus a Free Giveaway!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_856\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-856\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/blogpost-weightlift-4hrbodyreview.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-856\" title=\"blogpost-weightlift-4hrbodyreview\" src=\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/blogpost-weightlift-4hrbodyreview-500x350.jpg\" alt=\"Getting prepared to deadlift 500 lbs! Image courtesy of Joint Base Lewis McChord on Twitter.\" width=\"500\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/blogpost-weightlift-4hrbodyreview-500x350.jpg 500w, https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/blogpost-weightlift-4hrbodyreview.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-856\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A weight lifter getting prepared to deadlift 500 lbs! Image courtesy of Joint Base Lewis McChord on Twitter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It&#8217;s been about a year since Tim Ferriss&#8217; latest book, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fourhourbody.com\/\">4-Hour Body<\/a><\/em>, came out. The book was released to a large amount of fanfare, and even today, hovers around the top <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.com\/030746363X\">200 books sold on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Although focusing on body\/nutrition\/fitness optimization, Tim&#8217;s book has important implications for learning <em>anything<\/em>. In essence, his message is: cut the fat and extra bull when trying to learn something new and you&#8217;ll be rewarded.<\/p>\n<p>So, with that message in mind, let&#8217;s dive into Tim&#8217;s book. This book review will be a little different than the other ones you may have read. Additionally, below you&#8217;ll find a nice surprise &#8212; a content\/giveaway I&#8217;m running.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Everyone talks about the sex chapter, so I&#8217;ll let you read one of the other 10,000 reviews for that. In the light of &#8220;big wins&#8221;, I&#8217;ve focused on only three aspects for this review &#8212; which are physical and mental improvements that resonate with me:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Weight\/muscle mass gain<\/li>\n<li>Sleep optimization<\/li>\n<li>Fat loss\/eating healthier<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h3>Video Review<\/h3>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/_MUwiyexTGA\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>Increasing Muscle Mass: Gaining That Muscle Weight<\/h3>\n<p>More (clean) food, more protein! That&#8217;s how Tim&#8217;s chapters on muscle gain can be summarized.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, Tim recommends training less often than conventional wisdom suggests, but doing extremely challenging exercises with one\u00a0repetition\u00a0per exercise. Some of you may be familiar with the weight lifting term &#8220;one set to failure,&#8221; which dictates that you should only do one &#8220;set&#8221; of an exercise, but the weights should be heavy enough that you can&#8217;t do anymore than 10 reps comfortably. It&#8217;s additionally critically important to go slow when doing\u00a0reps in a weight-resistance exercise. Too often, people flail three or four body parts around when trying to do dumbbell curls, for example. As a result, Tim prescribes lifting at a slower (5 second up\/5 second down) cadence; a cadence which allows you to properly control the motion of the weight and properly isolate the necessary muscles.<\/p>\n<p>As for monitoring food intake: I use DailyBurn.com to track my eating habits every once-in-a-while and make sure I&#8217;m on the correct path. I&#8217;ve always been skinny, and gaining clean weight is extremely challenging for me. However, the principles Tim outlines in the book (follow a Paleo type diet, follow a <a href=\"http:\/\/baye.com\/\">HIT exercise routine<\/a>) should help everyone else in a similar boat. I&#8217;m eating more clean protein and fat than I ever have in my life, and I feel great!<\/p>\n<h3>Improving Sleep: Waking Up Ready and Refreshed!<\/h3>\n<p>Sleep is one of the most overlooked aspects of a person&#8217;s health. In the age of electronics, constant activities, and artificial lights, it&#8217;s hard <em>not<\/em>\u00a0to stay awake. However, as anyone who has gone to work on a short night&#8217;s sleep can tell you, trying to do anything productive while exhausted is nearly impossible. Therefore, it&#8217;s important to pay attention to your sleep habits to improve your overall well-being.<\/p>\n<p>Some of you may have seen my <a href=\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wakemate-review\/\">Wakemate review<\/a>, which Tim mentions in his book. As a very light sleeper who constantly wakes up during the night, I&#8217;m in the constant pursuit of things that will help me sleep better. Tim offers some great suggestions, although I have yet to try them all.<\/p>\n<p>So far, though, there hasn&#8217;t been <em>that<\/em>\u00a0noticeable a difference in my sleep patterns. Suggestions of Tim&#8217;s I follow:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I eat two scoops of almond butter about an hour before bed (I prefer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Onceagain-Butter-Raw-Crunchy-Organic-16-Ounce\/dp\/B0046GSTUM\">Once Again organic raw almond butter<\/a> &#8212; tastes delicious!)<\/li>\n<li>I stop using electronics one hour before bed<\/li>\n<li>I read anywhere from 10-30 pages of a fiction book with a dim night light<\/li>\n<li>My bedroom is dark and I utilize ear plugs<\/li>\n<li>I sleep for 8 to 8.5 hours per night on average<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>I&#8217;m curious to try a few more of Tim&#8217;s suggestions: using the Zeo sleep monitor and using a small humidifier are the next two on my &#8220;to-do&#8221; list.<\/div>\n<h3>Slow-Carb Diet: Losing That Extra Fat<\/h3>\n<p>Tim&#8217;s slow-carb diet is very, very similar to the Paleo Diet (which experts like <a href=\"http:\/\/thepaleodiet.com\/\">Loren Cordain<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/robbwolf.com\/\">Robb Wolf<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marksdailyapple.com\/\">Mark Sisson<\/a> have been writing about for years). There are a few important differences, though:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Tim recommends milk for those trying to gain mass. For most Paleo-practitioners, milk is a no-no. A large percentage of people have a tough time digesting dairy, and it can cause problems (one of the more annoying ones being skin breakouts).<\/li>\n<li>Tim recommends beans. Because of the\u00a0nutritional\u00a0makeup of beans, Robb, Loren, and Mark recommend to stay away from it. Tim&#8217;s rationale is that if you soak the beans in the water, the malicious effects are minimized.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>In general, Tim declares a war on all white carbs and processed food. Yes, that includes McDonald&#8217;s, all bread, rice, pizza, and breaded food (fried chicken wings, etc.). It might seem difficult to do, but the benefits of being anti-grain far outweigh the downsides. I rarely eat processed food and carbs (focusing instead on free range\/grass-fed meat and healthy fats, such as macadamia nuts).<\/p>\n<h3>Summary<\/h3>\n<p>While Tim&#8217;s book isn&#8217;t revolutionary (as mentioned above, for example, Loren, Robb, and Mark have been covering low-carb diets for years and their books have much more detailed information), the\u00a0<em>4-Hour Body\u00a0<\/em>offers a great first-step for users aiming to improve their physical makeup.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s enough information in the 600+ pages of the book that even if you&#8217;re familiar with the Paleo Diet and one set to failure\/HIT methods, you&#8217;ll still be interested in the other topics. In addition to chapters on the Slow-Carb Diet, improving sleep, and increasing muscle mass, you also have the infamous sex\/increasing testosterone chapters, chapters on reducing the impact of injuries, and strategies to improve running skill.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested, check out the website for the book <a href=\"http:\/\/fourhourbody.com\/\">here<\/a>. The website includes a free preview of the book, the book&#8217;s &#8220;trailer&#8221;, and some more details about what you can find inside.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\"><strong>Contest<\/strong><\/span>: I have an extra hardcover copy of <em>The 4-Hour Bod<\/em>y lying around (MSRP $27.00) and I&#8217;d love to give it away to one of my readers. All you need to do is click the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/subscribe\/\">Subscribe<\/a>&#8221; button above and subscribe to my newsletter (100% clean, spam-free emails; I&#8217;ll only email you when I write a new post or I have a big announcement). All my current subscribers, as well as everyone who subscribes up until February 20th at midnight ET, will be automatically entered in the raffle. I&#8217;ll ship out the book to the winner via USPS Priority Mail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although focusing on body\/nutrition\/fitness optimization, Tim&#8217;s book has important implications for learning anything. In essence, his message is: cut the fat and extra bull when trying to learn something new and you&#8217;ll be rewarded.<\/p>\n<p>So, with that message in mind, let&#8217;s dive into Tim&#8217;s book. This book review will be a little different than the other ones you may have read. Additionally, below you&#8217;ll find a nice surprise &#8212; a content\/giveaway I&#8217;m running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bodybuilding","category-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}