The other day my copy of The 4 Hour Body arrived. I read the author’s other book – The 4 Hour Work Week – a while ago so I thought this would be fun to read, especially as I recently joined a gym after about a 1.5 years of doing little in terms of exercise. Years ago I used to do a lot of weight lifting so I have always been interested in the science of exercise despite my recent hiatus. As I now have the time I thought I would try out some of the experiments in the book for myself.
First experiment: The Slow-Carb Diet or, as the book claims, “How to Lose 1.4 stone (9kg) in 30 Days Without Exercise!” I am going to start this tomorrow (Tuesday). Basically, none of the following are allowed: pasta, potatoes, bread, rice, cereal, milk, fruit etc, except for one day a week when you can eat whatever you like and have as much of it as you want. Sounds good to me!
Here’s an example of some of the meals I will be having:
- Breakfast: Eggs, lentils, spinach
- Lunch: Chicken, black beans, mixed veg, guacamole
- Dinner: Fish, borlotti beans, more spinach, mixed veg
The only other thing I will be taking is a calcium and magnesium supplement (1 capsule a day); I intend on getting all the potassium I need from the copious amount of spinach I will be eating. I drink about 1.5 litres of water a day anyway so won’t need to change anything there. I intend to continue with my 3 gym sessions a week but I’ll probably keep it fairly light while I’m on this diet.
Judging by some of the body fat example pictures from the book (here and here) I reckon I am probably somewhere between 12-15% body fat. I still need to find a tape measure as I haven’t done any of the measurements, e.g. waist, bicep, thigh etc, as the book instructs you to do (twice!) before starting.
I am going to give it a go for at least two weeks but probably not much more than that. I don’t really need to lose weight but as I intend on going away somewhere warm for a few days soon it won’t hurt to try and get a bit more some definition for the beach 🙂
Update: I’ve added a food diary page to record everything I eat