Felocity

Revisiting the 4 Hour Body

When I last wrote about my experience with the 4 hour body, I was focused primarily on breakfast and had shed 40 pounds. When eggs weren’t viable or I was simply pressed for time, I found myself falling back on two standby bar based options. By keeping my sugar low the rest of the day, I was able to make do. By request, one year after I started this journey, I’m sharing the rest of my dieting experience, and how I turned it into a lifestyle. I’m still at 200 even (plus or minus 2 pounds). The strength training in a circuit-style continues; I can certainly do more pushups than I ever did before. There’s more muscle around, but the weight has been constant, resulting in me trimming down even further. Looking back over the last year, the three biggest challenges after conquering breakfast were water, eating out, and the free meal I faced every lunch as an employee in Silicon Valley.

Starting With Water

The biggest consistent factor that impacted my weight was water. When I drank enough water, I’d see steady progress no matter what I was doing. When I cut the water back, forgot to drink enough for the day, etc I’d see the weight loss stall out really quickly! 8 glasses a day is a good starting point, but for me I just drank until I found myself using the restroom constantly. I then simply keep up that rate of fluid consumption. Usually that results in about 8-12 glasses of water a day.

It seems pretty counter intuitive that the more water you drink the better your results, but your body is incredibly good at disposing of the liquid. Your body is also amazingly good about getting rid of extra waste items as long as you give it a venue to do so. Without water, great results would ultimately be mediocre at best. As an added bonus, you’ll find yourself much better regulated temperature wise and much less whipped when working out.

Eating Out

The Four Hour Body is comfortable with eating out, although pulling a menu apart can be a headache. Having done my share of eating out, here’s some things I’ve found that are pretty safe to make a meal out of while sticking to the plan (no white carbs, no fruit, lots of the same stuff, don’t drink calories, 1 day off a week).

• Indian Food: This is probably the easiest in my experience. Avoid the rice, ditch the Naan, and avoid the light colored things since they tend towards butter and cream. Vindaloo without potatoes, Dal, and Gobi dishes again without the potatoes make excellent choices. Tandoori chicken is a safe fallback. Avoid the deserts something fierce because of their sugar content, and look to the lentils as a guiding light if you find yourself caught short.
• Thai Food: Tim talks about Thai food a lot in his book. Like Indian food, you’re going to be skipping the rice except on your cheat days. Basil and Lemongrass chickens are pretty safe bets. You can also get curry sans rice, though there’s a good chance they’ll look at you strangely. As a failsafe, often the Thai places offer salads with chicken or seafood with a fish sauce dressing of some kind. You should go easy on the fresh rolls, though they do satisfy a desire for large amounts of vegetable matter in your belly.
• Mexican-ish Food: All Mexican and Mexican-like cuisines are easy to navigate. Plates with lean proteins are easy to come by, rice is easily skipped, and depending on the dish you can usually get a bunch of veggies too. Everything from taquerias to Chipotle is fair game here, and they are all about equal in difficulty- which is to say none. Don’t pound a 12 inch tortilla and you’ll do fine.

Having standbys for eating out makes it easy if you’re crunched for time or you simply don’t know what you want to get. When friends suggest going out, you can also hold onto these types of places in your head and offer them up. It’s hard to find people that hate all of these foods, even in a group.

The “Free Lunch” in Silicon Valley

LinkedIn provides a catered lunch to its employees- having done the startup thing, it’s a common occurrence to find lunches taken care of. There’s always delicious things, but like a bad buffet line there are also tons of things that would be a bad idea to eat. It would also be terrible to eat them in large plate-full quantities. To regulate my food consumption, I use the following technique:

If there’s enough lettuce and vegetables, there’s no room to put the crap after I add a small bit of lean protein. For anyone who needs to brave a buffet line or other provided lunch, this may be a good technique to hold on to. Allowing yourself a single forkful of something won’t be the end of the world, but the secret is just that. Use a regular fork to take that portion. You can’t possibly take a lot then. Chances are you won’t miss it. When you add a glass of water (one more tick towards those 8-12 you want a day), “free lunch” isn’t a scary time for the diet anymore.

Simple Advice

Michael Pollan has a much simpler statement when it comes to making yourself a diet. It’s something I fall back to again and again when I get tired of keeping all the food choices straight in my head.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Everything else is just details.