The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

by Timothy Ferriss

First things first: why the hell would I do this to myself? It’s quite simple. There is a price to be paid for all of the envelope- pushing I’ve done over 15+ years. Namely, more than 20 fractures and 20 dislocations, two joint surgeries (shoulder and, now, elbow), and enough tears and sprains to last a lifetime. Decades of full-contact abuse and overconfidence in all sports ending in “-boarding” has made me, as one orthopedic surgeon put it, “a 30-year-old in a 60-year-old body.”

Bruce Lee emphasized, to “absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own.”

“The Turkish get-up and swing just aren’t sexy enough for the glossy magazines. Am I actually saying that you can be a world-class athlete and only do TGU and swings for injury prevention? Yes, pretty much.”5

The paradigm is shifting and the writing is on the wall: working smarter beats working longer, whether in the weight room or on the track.

Athletes often miss the point of strength training. Some confuse it with conditioning. Others confuse themselves with powerlifters. The barbell is not there to make you a better man (or woman) by testing your mettle. That is what the court, the field, or the mat is for. The barbell is there to give you a strength advantage over an opponent of equal skill.

“In my opinion, ‘easy’ strength training is the only productive way a competitive fighter can strength train.… But most people think if you don’t break a sweat, it must not work. This used to bother me a lot, but not anymore, because I think it is one reason why my fighters win so much.”

“Strength training is like putting the money in the bank to take it out on the fight day.” Save the fatigue for your sport.

Muscle strength and short-term power output peak in the early evening (4:00–6:00 P.M.), which coincides with daily maximum body temperature.15 Pain tolerance, at least for arthritis and fibromyalgia, is also highest between 4:00 and 5:00 P.M.

8:00 A.M. for most subjects who have work or classes beginning at 9:00 A.M., and if peak power output and pain tolerance is between 4:00 and 6:00 P.M. in their studies, this corresponds to 8–10 hours after waking. I am a night owl, and my average wake time is 11:00 A.M. Using this average,16 8–10 hours after waking would put my ideal window between 7:00 and 9:00 P.M.

Note that the opposite is not true. Lifting before running is fine, but running before lifting is asking for injuries.

This is one place where I diverged from instructions and performed warm-up sets of 1–2 reps leading up to my heaviest work weight. If I have an unidentified injury, I’d prefer it to blow out with 100 pounds instead of 400. This is a topic that Barry and I agree to disagree on.

Stunning was Scot Mendelson, who has bench-pressed 1,031 pounds in competition at 275 pounds bodyweight. To put 1,031 in perspective, imagine loading a standard gym barbell with 45-pound plates until no more can fit. That is a measly 885 pounds. Scot has to use 100-pound plates, and the tempered-steel bar literally bends around his hands. He wears a mouth guard so he doesn’t shatter his teeth with jaw tension, and his vision gets pulled out horizontally when the bar pauses at his chest. These are unusual people. But that’s a compliment. You can learn a lot from the extremes.

Well-fed Owen, by contrast, is a happy camper with a wry smile, every inch the laid-back simian, plump, eyes twinkling, full mouth relaxed, skin glowing, exuding wisdom as if he’s just read Kierkegaard and concluded that “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.”

Karma is what karma does.

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. —Carlos Castaneda

This book is a Trojan horse full of unexpected transfers. It’s intended to make you a better all-around human. It’s also intended to make you a role model for those around you.

This is rare in life, perhaps unique. Simply focusing on some measurable element of your physical nature can prevent you from becoming a “Dow Joneser,” someone whose self-worth is dependent on things largely outside of their control. Job not going well? Company having issues? Some idiot making life difficult? If you add ten laps to your swimming, or if you cut five seconds off your best mile time, it can still be a great week. Controlling your body puts you in life’s driver’s seat.

Take the next step: uncap a pen and take an inventory of all the things in the physical realm that you’ve resigned yourself to being poor at. Now ask: if I couldn’t fail, what would I want to be exceptional at? Circle these alternate realities. This list, circles staring back at you, gives you a blueprint for not just a new body, but an entirely new life. It’s never too late to reinvent yourself. Computer scientist Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Where will you start?

If you can’t act on it or enjoy it, don’t bother testing it. No one needs to learn they’re predisposed to a disease they can do nothing to fix. Focus on actionable items and ignore the rest.

Should you start avoiding saturated fat? First, find out exactly what “longer” means. Based on available data, it turns out that reducing your saturated fat intake to 10% of daily calories for your entire adult life would add only 3–30 days to your lifespan. Considering this, is the trouble worth it if a rib-eye is one of your pleasures in life? Probably not.

The satirical religion Pastafarianism purposely confuses correlation and causation: With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence? Drawing unwarranted cause-and-effect conclusions from observational studies is the bread-and-butter of media and cause- or financially-driven scientists blind to their own lack of ethics. Don’t fall for Pastafarianism in science.

British MD and quack buster Ben Goldacre, contributor of the next chapter, is well known for illustrating how people can be fooled by randomness. He uses the following example: If you go to a cocktail party, what’s the likelihood that two people in a group of 23 will share the same birthday? One in 100? One in 50? In fact, it’s one in two. Fifty percent.

Taurine is a component of bile acid that cats can’t synthesize on their own, but humans can. It helps with digestion and is a supplement in commercial cat food. If cats are taurine-deficient, they show vision problems, heart problems, and developmental problems.

Taurine is deactivated by heat.

Don’t confuse ideology with good science. Take an honest look at the available research (applicable to humans) so that you can make a well-informed decision. It’s your body, after all.

I have been unable to find a single indigenous population that has thrived on a 100% PPBD, even after asking my 100,000+ Twitter followers to help me find one. Low animal product consumption is simple to find, but even the famous Jains of India are, with rare exception, lacto-ovo vegetarians.

Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, are occasional meat-eaters, and humans produce the enzyme elastase, which serves to break down connective tissue for digestion.

Dr. Richard Sharpe, director of the Medical Research Centre for Reproductive Biology in Edinburgh, Scotland, echoes my conclusion about soy: “I’ve seen numerous studies showing what soy does to female animals. Until I have reassurance that it doesn’t have this effect on humans, I will not give soy to my children.”

My general guideline, what I refer to as “Darwin’s Rule,” is simple: eat for optimal fertility and everything else falls into place.

“When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.”

“Good cooking is no mystery. You don’t need years of culinary training, or rare and costly foodstuffs, or an encyclopedic knowledge of world cuisines. You need only your own five senses.”

I don’t care why people pick up cookbooks. I’m much more interested in why they put them down.

In the U.S., the last generation of career farmers is retiring. Specifically, more than 50% are set to retire in the next 10 years. Their farmland will be up for grabs. Will it go to an industrial agro-corp like Monsanto, and therefore most likely lead to monocrops (wheat, corn, soy, etc.) that decimate ecosystems? Will it be strip malls? Or might it become a collection of smaller food producers? The last option is the only one that’s environmentally sustainable. It’s also the tastiest. As Michael Pollan would say: how you vote three times a day (with the meals you eat) will determine the outcome.

Going small can amount to big economic stimulus. Let’s look at the economic argument for shifting from a few huge producers to many smaller producers: by diversifying crops beyond corn and soybeans in just six agricultural states, the net economic gain would be $882 million in sales and 9,300 jobs, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University.

Mise en place, called meez in kitchen slang, means everything in its place.

Age doesn’t matter; an open mind does.