Around the new year one of my best buddies from law school, Pat Walsh, sent me an email asking if I was interested in making dramatic changes in my health and appearance. Pat and his wife are both very health conscious and I trust any tips and techniques that they recommend, so I said yes. A few days later I receive a book in the mail entitled "The 4-Hour Body: An uncommon guide to rapid fat-loss, incredible sex, and becoming superhuman."

The book makes many major claims that I was eager to both learn how to accomplish and also ready to disprove them as a bunch of hype. I started reading the book that morning and did not stop for 6 hours! The book is an amazing read and the author, Tim Ferriss (NYTimes Bestselling author of "The 4-Hour Workweek"), backs up all his claims with logical reasoning. How does Michael Phelps eat 12,000 calories in a day? Subtract 3,000 calories for resting metabolic burn off, so we are to believe that he burns 9,000 calories everyday swimming? If that were true he would need to swim the breast stroke at olympic level speeds for 10 hours, non-stop, everyday. Obviously not happening ... I won't ruin it here but he goes on for a chapter about thermol load and how water is 4 times more conductive than air. This is just a tiny glimpse at some well researched and logical approaches to eating better and working out smarter (which actually means working out less than you would think, maybe twice a week).

So, here I am. Starting to incorporate the tips and techniques in the book. One of the first thing the book states is to make sure you graph changes by measurements beyond a weight scale. Obviously if you are gaining muscle some weeks while losing fat, the scale can be misleading and frustrating. The book also recommends posting pics and measurements online and open for others to see, this is to ensure that I stay with things. This is why I created this blog, so that I can keep myself honest and maybe ... just MAYBE ... inspire someone else to take on some of these ideas!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Marcus and Olin

I am so happy that my buddies Marcus and Olin have been reading the 4-Hour Body and have been loving it. They are both taking tips and techniques from the book, I will keep the blog updated with some of their progress too!

Marcus loves the cinnamon and lemon juice before a meal tips. He is also doing a section in the book that is more about rehabilitating your body and prepping it for workout. A lot of good stretches and strength building exercises. He is also, not fully, but partially doing the slow-carb diet. Cutting bread, pasta, rice, etc out ... tons more veggies and beans. He was never a big veggie fan, so it was cool to see him downing spinach while we were hanging out!

Olin got his copy in the mail last week and is doing the diet and the muscle building exercises. The diet isn't a huge change for Olin, he has always been real good about eating veggies and beans, etc. He is having the same issue as I am about trying to get 40 grams of protein in every meal! It is a lot of protein!!

Olin and I are going to make out Kettle Bells this week and add that to our process. Marcus did some Kettle Bell swings last week and almost fell down the stairs afterward because his legs were so sore they almost gave out. ha
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