Tim Ferriss - The 4-Hour Body

I listened to The 4-Hour Work Week many times during 2009.  I never actually acted upon it, but I found the "hacker" methods fascinating.  I have no doubt that Tim Ferriss is a very smart person.  If you are a web aficionado you probably have heard of Tim.  The purpose of this post is about his latest book called The 4 Hour Body and what I want to get from it.  This will be my Christmas present!

There are two things that I noticed that attracted me immediately.  The first being fat-loss and the second one being the "How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested".  I want to know why during my excessive and consistent work out times I never got the fabulous abs that you see on magazines. I also want to know how can I sleep less and still be effective. I sleep between 7 to 9 hours a day and see this as a massive waste of time.

Besides wanting to know why my abs never showed and why I couldn't remove the layer of fat that hides I have lately added a few pounds.  Winter times + Holidays = weight gain.  I need to lose 10 pounds in about two weeks for some US Marines training.  More pounds = more pain.  My current methods that I employ are very physical and my knees are in constant pain these days.  I hope to find a few "hacks" to improve my methods.

The sleep time is a must for the type of lifestyle I desire.  Sleeping less is very attractive to me because I see sleep as a waste of time.  If you think about it 8 hours of sleep within 24 hours is a big chunk of time.  I don't want to waste 33% of my life sleeping.  I know that sleeping is essential, so I want to know how can I sleep less and don't feel like crap.

70 pages into the book and so far it's completely fascinating.  I'll do updates on this post about bits that I find interesting.

Few things that I have found interesting so far:

• Minimum Effective Dose (MED) - The smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome
• Marketing - how "everything popular is wrong"
• The Harajuku Moment - The decision to work on our shortcomings
• Calorie sources for weight loss - fats vs protein vs carbohydrates.  Fats aint't too bad! - ties into "Fat Head movie"
• Love the "Don't I need a balanced diet?  NO" quote.  Removing fruits from diet seems like everything I have believed in.  "An apple a day keeps the doctor away!"
• Using cold for fat loss - I used a similar method of drinking lot's of cold water before sleep.  Cold isn't pleasant though...  Cold being unpleasant is a reason why I have gained weight.  Working out in the cold is painful.  But if used correctly as demonstrated in the book, can deliver some very good fat loss results.
• Tim suggest removing a lot of things from diet... things like bread, just about anything sugar related, and even fruit. Tim encourages certain foods like beans, vegies, and protein.
• The sleep chapter is rather short, but gets the point across. It's about scheduling sleep pattern and following that schedule religiously.
• Cold Showers - Painful but extremely useful to help me sleep.

Links:
Google - Tim Ferriss
Amazon - The 4-Hour Body
Amazon - The 4-Hour Work Week