Tim Ferriss has tried a lot of diet . Here ’s one that he reckon is the good . And it is pretty easy to follow .
How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise
Out of clutter , find simplicity.-Albert Einstein
11:34 A.M. SATURDAY, 2025-04-04, SAN FRANCISCO
schoolbook content from London , eight hours before , meant to strike : This is my dinner . Happy times!The attach to pic : a pepperoni and sausage balloon pizza pie so great it does n’t fit on the filmdom . Chris A. , a fellow experimenter , and I were having our hebdomadal practical escort .
Text response from me : This is my breakfast . BREAKFAST . Can you get a line the insulin pouring out of my oculus ? Woohoo ! Ante up , fat boy . My accompanying exposure : two bear claws , two chocolate croissants , Citrus paradisi juice , and a largecoffee .
answer from Chris : LOL . . . please do n’t make me do this . . .
And so it carry on , a textual matter - message eating competition . The verity is , I do some interpretation of this every Saturday , and K of people over the last four years have join me in doing the same . In between pizzas and deliver claws , the last result is that the average follower has lose 19 pounds of fat , and a surprising number have lose more than 100 pounds total . This left feeler has produced something of a belittled revolution . Let me explain exactly how Chris and I accomplish and maintain sub-12 % body fat , often sub-10 % , by strategically eating like pigs .
The Slow-Carb Diet-Better Fat-Loss Through Simplicity
It is possible to recede 20 pound of body fat in 30 days by optimizing any of three factors : exercise , diet , or a drug / supplement regimen . Twenty pound for most people means moving down at least two clothing size , whether that ’s going from a size 14 dress to a sizing 10 or from an XXL shirt to a big . The waist and hip show an even more striking reduction in circuit . By April 6 , 2007 , as an example , I had slew from near 180 pounds to 165 hammer in six weeks , while adding about 10 pounds of muscle , which means I lose close to 25 pounds of fat . The changes are n’t subtle . The diet that I ’ll bring in in this chapter - the Slow - Carb Diet - is the only dieting besides the rather uttermost Cyclical Ketogenic Diet ( CKD ) that has produced veins across my abdomen , which is the last place I misplace fat . There are just five dim-witted rules to follow :
RULE 1: AVOID “WHITE” CARBOHYDRATES.
head off any sugar that is , or can be , white . The follow food are prohibited , except for within 30 minutes of finishing a resistance - training workout like those described in the “ From Geek to Freak ” or “ Occam ’s Protocol ” chapters : all moolah , rice ( include brown ) , cereal grass , tater , pasta , tortilla , and fry food with breading . If you deflect eating the said foods and anything else white , you ’ll be safe . Just for playfulness , another reason to stave off the whities : Cl dioxide , one of the chemicals used to bleach flour ( even if later made brown again , a common magic trick ) , combines with residual protein in most of these foods to work alloxan . Researchers use alloxan in lab rats to stimulate diabetes . That ’s right - it ’s used to acquire diabetes . This is defective newsworthiness if you wipe out anything lily-white or “ enriched . ”Don’t eat white-hot stuff unless you want to get fatter .
RULE 2: EAT THE SAME FEW MEALS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
The most successful dieter , no matter of whether their destination is brawniness amplification or rich - loss , eat the same few meals over and over again . There are 47,000 product in the average U.S. grocery store store , but only a handful of them wo n’t make you fat . Mix and match from the following leaning , constructing each repast with one pick from each of the three groups . I ’ve starred the selection that farm the fastest fat - loss for me :
ProteinsEgg whites with 1–2 whole testicle for flavor ( or , if constitutional , 2–5 whole eggs , including yolks)Chicken chest or thighBlack beansBeef ( preferably grass - fed)Pork*Fish
Legumes*Lentils ( also squall “ dekalitre ” or “ daal”)Pinto beansRed beansSoybeans
VegetablesSpinachMixed vegetables ( include Brassica oleracea italica , cauliflower , or any other cruciferous vegetables)*Sauerkraut , kimchee ( full explanation of these later in “ Damage Control”)AsparagusPeasBroccoliGreen beans
Eat as much as you like of the above food item , but keep it simple . Pick three or four meal and repeat them . Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetable in billet of french fries , white potato vine , or rice . Surprisingly , I have found Mexican food ( after swapping out rice for vegetables ) to be one of the culinary art most conducive to the Slow - Carb Diet . If you have to bear an spare $ 1–3 to substitute at a restaurant , take it your six - battalion tax , the nominal fee you pay off to be lean . Most people who go on “ low”-carbohydrate diets complain of low-toned energy and give up because they consume insufficient kilogram calorie . A half - cup of rice is 300 gram calorie , whereas a half - cup of spinach is 15 calories ! Vegetables are not calorically dense , so it is critical that you summate legumes for caloric onus . exhaust more frequently than four times per day might be helpful on gamy - carb dieting to prevent gorging , but it ’s not necessary with the ingredient we ’re using . eat more frequent meals also appears to have no enhancing effect on resting metabolic rate , despite title to the contrary . Frequent meals can be used in some circumstances ( see “ The Last Mile ” ) , but not for this intellect . The follow meal docket is based on a late nap schedule , as I ’m a dark owl who open up the wraith at 2:00 a.m. at the early , usually with wineglass or book still in hand , à la heroin freak . set your meals to fit your agenda , but verify to have your first meal within an hour of waking . Meals are or so four hours aside .
10:00 am – Breakfast2:00 pm – Lunch6:30 pm – minor 2d lunch8:00–9:00 pm – Recreation or sport training , if scheduled.10:00 post-mortem examination – Dinner12:00 am – Glass of red wine and Discovery Channel before seam
Here are some of my meals that repeat again and again :
Breakfast ( home ): Scrambled Eggology ® pourable egg White person with one whole testicle , disgraceful beans , and mixed vegetables warmed up or cooked in a microwave using Pyrex ® container . Lunch ( Mexican eating house ): Grass - fed constituent beef , pinto bean , sundry veggie , and supererogatory guacamole . Dinner ( home ): Grass - fed organic beef ( from Trader Joe ’s ) , lentil plant , and mixed vegetables .
Just think back : this diet is , first and foremost , think to be effective , not fun . It can be fun with a few tweaks ( the next chapter treat this ) , but that ’s not the goal .
RULE 3: DON’T DRINK CALORIES.
tope massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened tea , chocolate ( with no more than two tablespoon of cream ; I propose using cinnamon instead ) , or other no - nutritionist’s calorie / low - kilogram calorie drink as you like . Do not salute milk ( including soybean milk ) , normal gentle drinks , or fruit juice . demarcation line diet gentle drinks to no more than 16 ounces per Clarence Day if you may , as the aspartame can stir weightiness gain . I’m a wine fanatical and have one to two glasses of red vino almost every evening . It does n’t appear to have any disconfirming encroachment on my pace of fat - loss . Red wine-coloured is by no way need for this diet to work , but it ’s 100 % allowed ( unlike blanched wines and beer , both of which should be avoid ) . Up to two glasses of bolshie per dark , no more .
RULE 4: DON’T EAT FRUIT.
Humans do n’t require fruit six day a week , and they certainly do n’t need it year - orotund . If your ancestors were from Europe , for example , how much fruit did they eat in the wintertime 500 old age ago ? Think they had Florida Orange River in December ? Not a chance . But you ’re still here , so the lineage somehow live . The only exceptions to the no - fruit rule are love apple and avocadoes , and the latter should be feed in moderation ( no more than one cup or one meal per day ) . Otherwise , just say no to fruit and its primary saccharide , fructose , which is converted to glycerol phosphate more efficiently than almost all other carbohydrate . glycerine phosphate atomic number 15 triglyceride ( via the liver ) p fat memory . There are a few biochemical exception to this , but avoiding fruit six mean solar day per week is the most authentic insurance . But what ’s this “ six day a week ” business ? It ’s the 7th day that allows you , if you so desire , to consume peach crepes and banana gelt until you go into a comatoseness .
RULE 5: TAKE ONE DAY OFF PER WEEK.
I recommend Saturdays as your Dieters Gone Wild ( DGW ) solar day . I am allow to eat on whatever I desire on Saturdays , and I go out of my way to eat ice emollient , Snickers , Take 5 , and all of my other frailty in excess . If I drank beer , I ’d have a few pints of Paulaner Hefe - Weizen . I make myself a little sick each Saturday and do n’t want to calculate at any junk for the rest of the week . Paradoxically , dramatically spiking caloric aspiration in this way once per workweek increase fertile - loss by ensuring that your metabolic charge per unit ( thyroid gland function and transition of T4 to T3 , etc . ) does n’t downshift from extended caloric restriction . That ’s correct : eating pure shit can facilitate you fall back fat . Welcome to Utopia . There are no limits or boundaries during this day of gluttonous enjoyment . There is absolutely no calorie count on this dieting , on this day or any other . Start the dieting at least five days before your point swindle day . If you choose Saturday , for example , I would suggest starting your diet on a Monday .
That ’s All , Folks !
convention 1 : Avoid “ white ” carbohydrates ( or anything that can be white).Rule 2 : Eat the same few meals over and over again . Rule 3 : Do n’t drink calories . prescript 4 : Do n’t use up fruit . principle 5 : Take one sidereal day off per week and go nuts .
$1.34 PER MEAL?
Andrew Hyde is community director at TechStars , a well - known start - up brooder in Boulder , Colorado . He is also an Internet - notable vainglorious steal Orion . I apply “ big ” in both the figurative and literal senses : Andrew is 6’5″ and 245 pounds . I should say that he was 245 pounds . In his first two weeks on the Slow - Carb Diet , he mislay 10 pound and , perhaps more telling , racked up incredibly unimpressive toll :
Total per - week intellectual nourishment toll : $ 37.70Average per - repast toll : $ 1.34
And this was include organic grass - fed beef ! If he ’d run through a big salad three times a week instead of a few protein , his weekly cost would have been $ 31.70 . He reiterate four meals :
BREAKFAST : Egg Edward White , one whole egg , mixed vegetables , chicken breast motley vegetables , peas , spinach ( salad)LUNCH : Mixed vegetables , peas , spinach ( salad)SECOND LUNCH : Chicken second joint , black noggin , mixed vegtablesDINNER : Beef ( or pork ) , asparagus , pinto beans
His precise shopping list was simplicity itself . The prices are the per line total :
1x Eggs ( 12 pack ) $ 1.204x interracial vegetables ( 1 - lb bags ) $ 61x volaille bosom $ 21x constitutional peas ( 2 - lb udder ) $ 22x Spinach ( 3 - lb grip ) $ 63x Chicken thigh $ 92x Grass - fed constituent beef ( 0.5 - lb cuts ) $ 42x pork barrel ( 1 - lb cuts ) $ 32x Asparagus cluster $ 21x Pinto bonce ( 1 - lb cup of tea ) $ 1.501x Black beans ( 1 - lb udder ) $ 1
make these prices did n’t take a degree in negotiation or dozens of hours of searching . Andrew look for discounted items near expiry date and shopped at smaller memory , including a Mexican grocery store , where he buy all of his dried noggin . Just to restate an significant point : Andrew is an combat-ready 6’5″ , 245 - lb , 26 - twelvemonth - sometime male person , and he practice three time a workweek during his boring - Carb Diet experiment . He ’s not a small being to eat . He ’s also not unique in his experience . Though you might not get to $ 1.34 per repast , his two - week experiment shows what thousands of others have been surprised to learn about the Slow - Carb Diet : it ’s damn cheap . The myth that eating right wing is expensive is on the dot that : a myth .
THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: FRUCTOSE
Can fruit juice really have intercourse up fat - loss?Oh , yes . And it screws up much more . Not to speculate , I tested the impression of laevulose in two tests , the first during a no - fructose diet ( no succus , no yield ) and the second after one week of consuming 14 oz. - about 1.5 large glassful - of pulp - free orange succus upon fire up and before bed . The Orange River succus was the only affair distinguishing diets A and B. The changes were unbelievable .
Before ( 10/16 , no fructose ) and after ( 10/23 , orange juice):Cholesterol : 203 - > 243 ( out of “ healthy ” range)LDL : 127 - > 165 ( also out of compass )
There were two other value that shoot up unexpectedly :
Albumin : 4.3 - > 4.9 ( out of range)Iron : 71 - > 191 ( ! ) ( out of kitchen stove aka into the stratosphere )
Albumin binds to testosterone and renders it inert , much like SHBG ( discuss in “ Sex Machine ” ) but weak . I do n’t want either to be out - of - reach high . Bad for the manly arts . If you said “ Holy sh*t ! ” when you pick up the branding iron jump , we ’re in the same boat . This resolution was completely out of the gloomy and is not good , especially in men . It might come as a surprisal , but men do n’t flow . This means that men lack a undecomposed method for discharge out undue Fe , which can be toxic . The increase in iron was far more alarming to me than the modification in cholesterol . Here is just one of several explanation from the enquiry lit :
In increase to contributing to metabolic freakishness , the consumption of fructose has been reported to strike homeostasis of numerous ghost element . Fructose has been shown to increase Fe preoccupancy in humans and experimental brute . Fructose intake [ also ] decreases the activity of the copper enzyme superoxide dismutase ( SOD ) and thin the concentration of serum and hepatic copper .
The moral of the tarradiddle ? Do n’t fuddle fruit juice , and perfectly invalidate a in high spirits - fructose dieting . It does n’t do the body good .
TOOLS AND TRICKS
The Three - Minute Slow - Carb Breakfast ( www.fourhourbody.com/breakfast ) Breakfast is a hassle . In this video , I ’ll show you how to make a in high spirits - protein slowly - carb breakfast in three minutes that is thoroughgoing for fat - going and start the day at a sprint .
Still Tasty ( www.stilltasty.com ) Not sure if it ’s secure to use up those eggs or those Thai leftovers ? stock of calling your mommy to ask ? This site allows you to seek the shelf life of thousands of cooked and uncooked foods .
intellectual nourishment Porn Daily ( http://www.foodporndaily.com ) Need some stirring for your Lolium temulentum day ? FoodPorn Daily provides a delicious and artery - draw a blank cornucopia of bad ( but tasty ) eating . Save it for Saturday .
Gout : The Missing Chapter ( http://www.fourhourbody.com/gout ) Concerned about protein intakeand gout ? interpret this wanting chapter from Good Calories , Bad Calories , gracefully provide by stunning scientific discipline author Gary Taubes . It might exchange your creative thinker .
We believe the body is a gizmo . Here ’s how to chop it .
Timothy Ferriss , name as one of Fast Company ’s “ Most Innovative Business People of 2007 , ” is an angel investor ( StumbleUpon , Digg , Twitter , etc . ) and author of the # 1 New York Times , Wall Street Journal , and BusinessWeek bestseller , The 4 - hr Workweek , which has been betray into 35 language . Tim has been feature by more than 100 media outlets – including The New York Times , The Economist , TIME , Forbes , Fortune , CNN , and CBS – and has been a democratic guest lector at Princeton University since 2003 , where he presents entrepreneurship as a instrument for ideal modus vivendi design and reality change .
The 4 - Hour torso : An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat - Loss , Incredible Sex , and Becoming Superhuman is available fromAmazon.com .
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