
Tim Ferriss Wants to Hack Your Body - Mithrandir
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/mf_qa_ferriss
======
codexon
Isn't anyone else here skeptical of Tim Ferriss?

Sure he's rich now, but he graduated from Princeton and self-admittedly worked
7 days a week in order to get his dietary supplement company BrainQuicken up
and running. All this flies in the face of his 4-hour workweek book.

~~~
joshklein
He addresses this in his book - creating the original "muse" is something that
requires huge amounts of work and time. But the objective is to only develop
the kind of business you can later automate, thereby reducing yourself to only
4-hours of busywork eventually - not total "work", mind you - so you can focus
on the things you care about. In Tim's case, that "stuff you care about"
appears to be creating a personal brand as a sort of life coach / marketing
guru.

Like all business and self-helpy books, you have to take the 4HWW's subject
matter as a skeptic, but there are some great nuggets in the book.

~~~
adriand
> there are some great nuggets in the book.

I typically detest self-help books but a small number of ideas from the book
were enough to change my life: not checking email first thing in the morning;
checking email at scheduled, limited times during the day; setting critical
goals for each day and prioritizing them; and setting short limits on the
amount of time I set aside for particular tasks.

I don't really care what criticism anyone might want to level at 4HWW (and I'm
sure there's plenty), but for me, these simple ideas increased my work
enjoyment and productivity tenfold.

------
nostromo
_In perhaps the most extreme undertaking, he packed on 34 pounds of muscle
while dropping 3 pounds of fat in 28 days._

I could probably gain 31 pounds in 28 days if I wanted to too... In all
seriousness, I'd like to see how he measured fat vs. muscle here. These self-
aggrandizing lifestyle / diet gurus tend to make a lot of claims that fall
flat when subjected to any sort of peer review.

 _... to compete in the kickboxing nationals... I weighed in at 165, and the
next day I stepped onto the platform at 193._

So in this instance, he gained over a pound an hour... Is that really
possible, even if it's all water?

~~~
joshklein
Not to defend his actual results, as I am unaware of them, but this can be
tracked by measuring your mass and volume (through water displacement), since
fat and muscle have different and known densities.

You can also use a body fat caliper for more of an eyeballing of body fat
percentage.

~~~
hugh3
Sounds rather error-prone. If I wanted to fool myself into thinking that I'd
swapped a lot of fat for a lot of muscle, what could I do? I'd try to increase
density from one volume measurement to the other -- I could breathe in a lot
of air during one measurement, and eat a lot of.. I dunno, fruit cake before
the other.

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chrisduesing
I am deeply skeptical that anything in this book will be even remotely
healthy, but it should at least be good for entertainment value.

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thisisnotmyname
It isn't an experiment without a control. There aren't any mentioned in the
article - are they in the book?

~~~
notahacker
The hair trim, lighting changes and Photoshop on the pictures in this related
blog entry will give you an idea of how scientific the content is likely to
be:

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-
to...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how-
i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/)

~~~
ojbyrne
Not to mention the weird scaling.

------
WillyF
I tried the diet that he outlines here:
[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/06/how-to-
lose-...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/06/how-to-lose-20-lbs-
of-fat-in-30-days-without-doing-any-exercise/)

I only did it for a few weeks before I went on vacation, but it worked really
well. Not sure that I lost 20 lbs of fat, but I definitely lost some weight.

Now, his ideas weren't all that earth shattering, but I wonder how the
intricacies of his diet generate different results from straight up Atkins.
I'll never know for sure, but it worked for me.

~~~
jessriedel
> How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise

A pound of fat has 3500 calories. A 170 lbs. man needs something like 2500
calories per day if he doesn't exercise. (I think roughly 2000 for truly
sedentary, 3000 for moderate activity.) That means that if you go _without any
food whatsoever_ for a month, you just barely lose 20 lbs. (And if you do
this, you'll probably become so weak and lethargic that you'll start burning
less than 2000/day.)

There's just no reasonable way to lose 20 lbs. in 30 days without drugs,
starving yourself, and/or a _very_ strenuous exercise regime. If you ran 10
miles per day (at 125 calories/mile) you'd still only be able to eat a very
meager 1200 calories per day. You'd have to run almost a marathon every day in
order to afford a normal calorie intake.

~~~
xiaoma
I've personally lost that much twice. The second time was due to illness while
traveling, but the first time was when returning to serious distance running
training after a multi-year layoff. Not only did I lost 20lbs in a month, it
was a total of 55 lbs over three months. I went from struggling to do an easy
one hour run to running over 150km/week.

I'm almost positive your math is off on the calorie burning. As an overweight
guy, you should be burning over a 100 calories per _km_ , not mile. Also,
there's more to it than just what you burn while running. After a certain
tipping point (about an hour a day for me), it seems my body just doesn't
_want_ to store fat. I'm not sure if it was a factor, but like most successful
distance runners, I stuck to a low-protein mostly plant-based diet while
training.

The other factor to consider is that someone approaching running from being a
sedentary programmer (as opposed to a bodybuilder), you'll be building up
muscle and even some bone mass as well as losing the fat. This is the case for
pretty much any weight-bearing activity (eg, skiing, snowshoeing, etc)

~~~
jessriedel
> I went from struggling to do an easy one hour run to running over
> 150km/week.

I think 150km/week qualifies as pretty strenuous! I'm not saying one _can't_
lose 20 lbs. / month, I'm saying it doesn't happen by just eating healthier,
smaller meals.

> you should be burning over a 100 calories per km, not mile.

Well, 125 cal / mile = 78 cal / km, so we're not off by much. Certainly, there
will be that much variance depending on whether you're (a) healthy but not
lean or (b) fairly overweight

------
desigooner
I'm really skeptical of what this book talks about (adding muscle mass in x
days, weight loss by this, extend orgasms by that and what not) and sounds
like a whole bunch of miracle cure type bullshit.

His diet outlines etc. are nothing but mashups of good nutrition advice out
there and cherry picking some points about certain diets .. it almost seems
like he spent a whole lot of time on messageboards and compiled what he read
into a book ..

Blindly following the advice in the book could well be a recipe for disaster
.. there's nothing like one-size-fits-all for the stuff he talks about in the
book ...

btw .. have you ever seen those fat loss pill ads (hydroxycut and what not)
where they show a reasonably inshape guy/gal in the before picture and an
extremely ripped version of that person in the post picture? it's someone
who's already well chiseled from the get go (fitness models basically) who
don't workout for a few days and put on some fat by eating certain types of
food .. then they go back to their nutrition and workout regimen to get back
in the shape they were already in ..

e.g. the VPX Meltdown model had some sort of a genetic makeup that made him
put on muscles very easily while losing fat (or appearing to do so) .. read
that on a fitness board.

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petercooper
_In any sport where power, speed, or endurance is a determining factor,
everyone is using drugs._

I suspect he'll get a lot of "feedback" on that point. I'm no pro-sportsman,
but that seems like quite the hot potato to throw out there.

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rysmit
I am really surprised the by the reception here on HackerNews. Tim has a few
hacks for the human body and knows how to market it well. That is all.

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jonhendry
When will we start seeing links to Kevin Trudeau on HN?

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bobbin_cygna
> he packed on 34 pounds of muscle while dropping 3 pounds of fat in 28 days

sure.

