Scan barcode
A review by libellum_aphrodite
The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss
3.0
When I put a hold on this book at the library, I had no clue I was going to be sent home with the gigantic volume that is The 4-Hour Body. Ferriss does a good job with such bulk though - I actually sat and read more sections than I thought I would (at the beginning, the reader is urged to only read the sections that they find relevant) just because I was carried along with the narrative.
Factoring in a grain of salt for Ferriss's showmanship and tendency toward the extreme, overall I found this a good source of diet/exercise ideas that can be easily tried out by those of us already on the regular exercise and diet conscious bandwagon, particularly given Ferriss's focus on minimum effective dosages. For example, a 30 minute/week ab routine is easy to give a shot and is a small gamble of time.
Ferriss's low carb variation, the Slow Carb Diet, seems a radical version of the Time Limited Carb Diet described by Dr. Terry Grossman. Both advocate staying away from carbs most of the time to keep insulin levels (and thus fat storage) at a minimum. The differentiation is when carbs are allowed - Ferriss gives you a carb binge once a week and Grossman allows carbs (not in binge form) at one meal a day. I imagine that Grossman's approach is more sustainable long term. As a distance runner, avoiding all bread, potatoes, rice, cereal, and fruit for 6 days of the week sounds like a terrible idea if I hope to get more than 6 miles in during the week. I also am suspect of Ferriss's cyclic binges - my instinct says these would slow rather than facilitate fat loss, but I have neither data nor anecdotes to directly refute him. I think his "cheat day" idea can be a fine way not to grind your metabolism to a halt and is a good mental health check when employed infrequently, but I doubt the weekly feeding frenzy he advocates is a wise idea and is more likely to derail rather than encourage most dieters.
A large gamut of material is covered in the book, so the solidarity and completeness of evidence fluctuates by topic, but as a whole, I would criticize it as overly male centric. I realize Ferriss is a man, and experiments a man has done on himself are automatically more relevant to men. I understand why the discrepancy exists and appreciate his attempts to mitigate it by including female case studies and addressing male and female anatomies separately, but I often found myself wishing for an equally detailed female data set as the one he has for himself.
Factoring in a grain of salt for Ferriss's showmanship and tendency toward the extreme, overall I found this a good source of diet/exercise ideas that can be easily tried out by those of us already on the regular exercise and diet conscious bandwagon, particularly given Ferriss's focus on minimum effective dosages. For example, a 30 minute/week ab routine is easy to give a shot and is a small gamble of time.
Ferriss's low carb variation, the Slow Carb Diet, seems a radical version of the Time Limited Carb Diet described by Dr. Terry Grossman. Both advocate staying away from carbs most of the time to keep insulin levels (and thus fat storage) at a minimum. The differentiation is when carbs are allowed - Ferriss gives you a carb binge once a week and Grossman allows carbs (not in binge form) at one meal a day. I imagine that Grossman's approach is more sustainable long term. As a distance runner, avoiding all bread, potatoes, rice, cereal, and fruit for 6 days of the week sounds like a terrible idea if I hope to get more than 6 miles in during the week. I also am suspect of Ferriss's cyclic binges - my instinct says these would slow rather than facilitate fat loss, but I have neither data nor anecdotes to directly refute him. I think his "cheat day" idea can be a fine way not to grind your metabolism to a halt and is a good mental health check when employed infrequently, but I doubt the weekly feeding frenzy he advocates is a wise idea and is more likely to derail rather than encourage most dieters.
A large gamut of material is covered in the book, so the solidarity and completeness of evidence fluctuates by topic, but as a whole, I would criticize it as overly male centric. I realize Ferriss is a man, and experiments a man has done on himself are automatically more relevant to men. I understand why the discrepancy exists and appreciate his attempts to mitigate it by including female case studies and addressing male and female anatomies separately, but I often found myself wishing for an equally detailed female data set as the one he has for himself.