Tim Ferris Rewriting the Rules for the Optimal Body.

Timothy Ferriss, is an angel investor, author of the #1 New York Times The 4-Hour Workweek and now the Four Hour Body. Tim received his BA from Princeton University in 2000, where he studied in the Neuroscience and East Asian Studies departments.

The Following is a transcript of an interview conducted with Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4Hour Body and the 4-Hour Workweek as part of the Future of Health Now online event. To see Tims full interview, as well as interviews with many of todays leading health experts, register today for this free event.

Taking Place July 10th, 2012 - July 19th, 2012 Click Here to Register for the Free Event
Ann Wixon: Hello, and thank you for joining us. Im Ann Wixon, your host for The Future of Health Now. The purpose of our series is to give you privileged access to useful and helpful conversations with many of the worlds most respected doctors and scientists, helping you to achieve the best health possible. We are speaking with Mr. Ferriss today to learn the ridiculously simply fat-loss tricks he has spent the past 15 years testing and perfecting, plus how to triple your testosterone without a single drug, using diet alone. Welcome Mr. Ferriss! Tim Ferriss: Thank you for having me. Ann Wixon: Oh, were very excited. So what is a four-hour body? Tim Ferriss: So, a four-hour body, or the four-hour body, in general, is simply a minimalist guide to rapid body change, and that xes primarily, and

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focuses primarily, on something called the minimum eective dose. So, looking at any one of these 50 topics that I explore, whether thats fat loss, muscular gain, sleep, or otherwise, and looking at the minimum dose, minimum volume of a change, the smallest changes possible for the largest outputs. >> Click Here to Listen to Dr. Kareem Samhouris Lose Weight Quickly with Neuro Fitness Ann Wixon: Well, weve all been told is that you have to really work hard, you have to exercise a lot, you have to be so careful with everything you eat. Its kind of surprising that youre saying four hours a week is really all you need. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, the four hours, if we look at it across a time scale, if were looking at exercise, is on a monthly basis, so, it would be four hours for an entire month. It is surprising, its very counter intuitive, but if you look at the data, if you look at the case studies, youll see that the volume you need is very little. My dad is one example. He started at age 55 on a number of these protocols. He was 250 pounds, and 56, very overweight, and he ended up losing more than 90 pounds of fat and gaining 20 or 30 pounds of muscle, and he spent no more than an hour a week in the gym - probably less than that. Ann Wixon: Thats incredible. So, is it really possible to really lose 20 pounds of fat in 30 days, and increase fat burning by up to 300 percent? Almost everything ever written says safe weight loss is like 2 pounds per a week. Tim Ferriss: The two pounds is a bit like an urban myth, and then you nd that two pounds is repeated so often that people believe its true. And MDs fall prey to this as well. There are some amazing MDs. >>Click Here to Listen to Dr. John Berardis Fat Loss Secrets For Successful Body Transformation.

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There are also some who just repeat what theyve heard. It is entirely possible, if you look most recently at Twitter, is one example. If you go to Twitter and search @Tferriss, which is my handle, you will see dozens of status updates every day from people who have already lost 20 or 30 pounds since the book came out about a month ago. So, its absolutely possible. Ann Wixon: In your book, you mention fat-burning tips. So, lets start with the rst. What is Ice Therapy, and how does it work? Tim Ferriss: So, Ice Therapy, or cold exposure - you can work with cold showers, or even ice packs. It involves exposing your body to very short periods of cold in order to trigger accelerated fat loss. Thats due to a few things, activating brown adipose tissue is one. >>Click Here to Listen to Dr. Mark Hyman on Overcoming Diabesity to Acheive UltraWellness The second is, I believe, a hormone called adiponectin. There were a lot of skeptics when this rst came out in my book a month ago. There was just an article that came out in The New York Times about this - this week, in fact - and conrming much about what I put in the book. Ann Wixon: Congratulations, thats fantastic! Tim Ferriss: Yeah, thank you very much. And this research was done (that ended up in the book) with a gentleman named Ray Cronise, who is a former NASA scientist, and he works with thermodynamics; thats what he does. He was able to triple his own rate of fat loss. He went from 5 pounds of fat loss per week to 4.5 by simply adding what he called shiver walks. He would spend a short period of time outside with minimal clothing, meaning minimal jacket, etc. In my particular case, I prefer to take ice packs and put them on the upper back and upper chest area while youre watching TV or reading, lets say, for 30 minutes at night.

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Or, if you want to get a bit more aggressive with it, which is what I do, you could take 10-minute ice baths 3 times a week, and thats only up to the waist; youre doing it with 2 bags of ice, 10-pound bags of ice. But you start gradually, you start with the ice packs, then you move to cold showers, then you move to the ice baths. It does have a very measurable impact on fat loss. Ann Wixon: Wow! I love the idea of sitting in front of the television with an icepack, knowing Im burning fat. I think thats fantastic. And this fat-burning tip about Ice Therapy, this is something youve tested and documented, right? Tim Ferriss: Yes, absolutely. Ray has tested this and documented it, at this point, with several dozen subjects. So, its denitely replicable. Its not just a random outcome for one person. Were talking about something thats been studied, not only by Ray, but also extensively by the military. Ann Wixon: Oh, interesting. So why do ice baths make you lose weight? Tim Ferriss: It comes back primarily to the eect on hormones, and that would include norepinephrine, adrenaline, etc. But, adiponectin, I think, is the most interesting. Adiponectin is a hormone most people have not heard much about that impacts, not only fat loss, but muscular gain. So, Ray also increased his rate of muscular gain, oddly enough, when he added in his cold exposures. >> Click Here to Learn from Dr. Shira Miller on Hormone Balance for Men and Women Then, you have, last but not least, the brown adipose tissue. The brown adipose tissue is what some scientists refer to as fat-burning fat. It is actually a good type of fat that you want to have, which infants use to increase their body temperature when they are too cold because they cant go out for a jog, and they cant cover themselves. So, they have brown adipose tissue. Adults also have this fat-burning fat, but its only located in a few areas, like the upper back and upper chest, at least

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as far as we know. For that reason, thats why its where you put the cold compresses and the ice packs. Ann Wixon: Your second tip recommends that you eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. Thats a lot of protein. What does that do? Tim Ferriss: Its a decent chunk of protein. Its actually very easy to do if you just eat a protein shake of some kind. You can also just do - it doesnt all have to come from a pure protein source - so you could do 2 or 3 hardboiled eggs or scrambled eggs with some type of lentils and spinach; you could approach it that way. My father used a protein shake. Very simply, he used Myoplex, which wouldnt be my rst choice. Unavored whey protein of some type would be my rst choice. But he used Myoplex, and he made this one change, and he went from an average of 5 pounds of fat loss per a month to 18.75 pounds of fat loss per a month. So, he went from roughly 5 to roughly 20 pounds of fat loss per month just by making this one change. Ann Wixon: Thats incredible. Your third tip is like a dieters-gone-wild dream. Pig out, once a week. How will this benet us, and how is it even possible? Tim Ferriss: There are a few ways, or a few scientic reasons behind it. First is biochemical and hormonal. So, I keep coming back to these hormones. And for people who are wondering - hormones are basically chemical messengers. They go from one place in the body to another, and then produce a particular type of change. In this case, we are talking about improving thyroid performance. So many women, in particular, after they have their rst, or particularly second, child have trouble with weight gain. And its partially due to problems with the thyroid, or decreased thyroid output. By increasing your calories once a week, dramatically, you actually improve conversion of whats called T4 thyroid hormone to T3, which is more active

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for fat burning. Secondly, from a psychological standpoint, it makes the diet much more sustainable, and people are able to sustain this low-carb diet, with this one cheat day, indenitely, in many cases. For me, Ive been doing this for 7 years, 7 or 8 years, and many people have been doing this for the last few years since I introduced it on the blog. So, there are both biochemical and behavioral reasons that the cheat day works. Ann Wixon: Okay, I can pig out. Youre not talking, like I can pig out on tofu, right? I could pig out on donuts one day a week, and thatd be okay? Tim Ferriss: Thats totally ne. I like chocolate croissants and bear claws. I also like Wild Nettle Pizza. Theres a fantastic place in San Francisco called Gialina. So, Im not saying eat as much as you want of celery and broccoli. Im saying eat as much as you want of anything, but you have to keep it to one day. Ann Wixon: Okay. So lets say I mess up, and eat something really bad on a non-pig-out day, is there anything I can do to stop the bad results? Tim Ferriss: Yup, theres a few things you can do. So, theres an entire chapter in The Four- Hour Body called Damage Control. It talks about this. So, you have an unplanned splurge, whether thats you can only - you want to minimize this, of course, but there are ways that you can reduce the damage. One is, assuming youve already eaten the food, you can actually have two tablespoons of vinegar after your meal. That will lower the glycemic index of that meal. What that means is it will decrease the blood sugar spikes that come after the meal, which is very, very helpful, and that will minimize fat gain. Secondly, when you eat that food, most of the time that food will hit your bloodstream 45 minutes to 90 minutes after your meal. So, what you can do - and youre not going to get fat until it hits your bloodstream - so what you would then do is, lets say you went home, you

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could do a series of exercises, not that strenuous. The goal is to provide tension on the muscles. You can do things like wall presses, air squats - not hard to do at all. Youre not going to make yourself sick. That will actually increase the recruitment of what are called GLUT4 transporters, and those will actually put them up in the muscle cells, so you can put more of those calories in your muscle, as opposed to on your hips or waistline. Ann Wixon: Um, theres a lot of confusion about diets, mainly because each new diet contradicts the other about what youre supposed to eat, whats good for you, whats bad for you. You recommend the slowcarb diet. What is that and how does it work? Tim Ferriss: So, the slow carb diet is, in eect, a diet that you follow 6 days a week, because we have our binge day, we have our cheat day. It entails a few very simple rules: The rst is for those 6 days a week, you will not eat anything white. Thats a very simple rule, makes it easy to remember, nothing can be white. So, that means no bread, that means no pasta, that means no cereal, no milk. Thats the general rule, rst and foremost. Secondly, you will be getting your protein in the morning, youll be getting 30 grams within 30 minutes of waking up. And third, youre going to - much like people do already, I should emphasize - youre going to have the same few meals that you eat for breakfast and lunch, which people do already. If you look at what you ate for the last week, and what you had for breakfast, you probably had one of three meals, or slight variations, so youre just going to nd better default meals. You will minimize fruit - this is probably the most controversial. Ann Wixon: I was going to say, Im surprised to hear that. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, thats the most controversial recommendation. And Im okay with controversy, as long as I have data to support it, because particular fruit juice and fruit still, by itself, in the industrial food culture, which we have

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- we have large production, large-scale production of these foods - they are designed to have the highest level of sugar; in this case, fructose, possibly because it make it tastier. And fructose is very unique. Its not the same as table sugar. Its very unique in the sense that it helps you put down body fat. It is treated very uniquely by the liver, and its converted to something called glycerol phosphate, and then, through a few steps, to body fat. So, you want to minimize fruit if your goal is fat loss. One might ask, isnt that unhealthy, isnt that unsustainable? My answer to that would be, if you look back evolutionarily, youre not going to see anyone in the winter of the 1500s eating much fruit, at least in cold climates. So, I would say that that is yet another reason why fruit is not necessary seven days a week. Ann Wixon: So, other than white foods and fruit, are those the only foods we need to avoid? Tim Ferriss: Thats basically it. If I say avoid white foods, then youre going to be avoiding milk and dairy. You can very much enjoy most of the foods you enjoy already. For most people, that will mean youll be eating lean protein, some type of green vegetable, and then some type of a legume or bean at every meal. Thats the general rule of thirds that I recommend. But you can certainly go out to a Thai restaurant. I eat out two meals a day lunch and dinner - so eating out is not an excuse, is not an excuse to not follow the diet. It works. Ive been to 30+ plus countries, and Ive still been able to follow it. Ann Wixon: Because I would say - most people would say - Oh my gosh, if I eat out eating out is what makes me gain weight. So, thats fantastic to hear that we can eat out and not worry about it. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, people use eating out as an excuse to gain weight. But, it doesnt have to be a reason that you gain weight. So, Ill go to a French restaurant. I can have oysters, dierent soups, as long as theres no potato in it. I can have lamb shank with Swiss chard, and all that other stu. If there s a little bit of cream, it doesnt matter for the most part because - getting a little technical - its an exception of sorts; but if its pure fat, surprisingly enough,
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its not going to do the type of damage that youd expect. Youre trying to avoid, in the case of dairy products, the lactose for the most part, the milk sugar thats in those products. But, you really dont, you dont have to feel like youre suering, and even if you do feel like youre suering, which you shouldnt, you know youll only have to feel that way for 6 days, and you can eat whatever you want. Ann Wixon: Then you get to pig out. Tim Ferriss: Then you get to pig out. Ann Wixon: So, are there any big surprises other than the fruit in the slow carb diet? Fruit is actually a big surprise because if you look at the food pyramid, youre supposed to eat a lot of fruit. Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I would say one other surprises is and this is important for people to realize - you cant do this diet halfway. What I mean by that is small things; there are certain foods that, even if you have a tiny amount of them, that can completely sabotage your fat loss. Ill give you an example. What we noticed Ive tracked hundreds of people following this diet so I have very good data and a lot of data what weve noticed is that, in many cases, they will lose an additional 2 to 4 pounds per week, assuming they have at least 30 more pounds to lose; at least 2 to 4 pounds additional pounds per a week, if they just replace the milk in their coee with cinnamon - just the milk in the coee. So, if youre having 2 cups of coee a day, and maybe a 1/4 cup of milk in each of those coees, thats enough to keep 2 to 4 pounds of fat on your body per week. Its these details that are important for people to understand. You cant, you dont, want to do it halfway, its a waste of time. Whereas, you realize that it only takes small changes to produce fat loss. That can be very encouraging for people. In fact, if you wanted to just test this out, without making any big changes, just get the 30 grams of proteins within 30 minutes of waking up, and get rid of the milk - and see what happens. Youll be amazed. There was one gentleman recently - he put this on Twitter - he was doing everything else right, but he had his dairy still in his diet, but he removed the dairy and he lost 16 pounds in 15 days. Not to say that thats typical, but its certainly possible.

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This has been an excerpt. To listen to the rest of Tim Ferriss full interview on Rewriting the Rules of the Optimal Body, please join us at the Future of Health Now.

>>Register Now for this Exclusive Free Event<< July 10th, 2012 - July 19th, 2012

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