The Weekday Veg

In November 2009 my SO heard about the idea of being a "Weekday Veg" I'm not really sure where, but he decided that we should try it out for health, for money savings, for the environment, and for animals. We're actually weekday pescatarians-- we can eat seafood, eggs, dairy on the weekdays and on the weekends we eat whatever we want.

At first I thought it would be difficult, but it's not really that bad. The main thing was that there aren't very many lunch options besides salad and vegetarian burritos around here, so we actually ended up saving even more money by bringing leftovers for lunch almost every day.

Here's a TED video with Graham Hill discussing the idea.

A year passed and aside from a couple of occasions in which work lunches were at steakhouses that make it impossible to resist, it hasn't been too bad. Of course then in December 2010 my SO read about the Four Hour Body and now our diet's getting complicated.

The Fine Print

Tim Ferriss is obviously a marketing genius, have you seen the trailer for the Four Hour Body?

A diet with only five easy rules is also good marketing, but in truth there are a few more that he lists as common mistakes.

Slow Carb Diet Rules, The Fine Print

6. Eat Breakfast within 1 Hour of Waking (Extra Points for 30 min. or less)

Breaking the fast is important in starting your metabolism. It's obviously a lot better to eat more calories before you are active all day than to eat them right before you sleep and not eating breakfast has also been shown to lead to over eating in the evening.

7. Eat 20 Grams of Protein at Each Meal

I really don't know why this didn't make it into the five rules of the diet. It's the basis of the whole idea!

8. Drink a lot of Water

This is pretty self explanatory.

9. Follow Rule 2

If you never cook don't expect to start cooking all of the time, you're setting yourself up for failure. Rule 2 should help to make it easier, but if that's still too hard figure out what restaurants you can go to -- Mexican works well sans tortillas.

10. Don't Mistime Weigh Ins with Your Menstrual Cycle

Another obvious one. If you are retaining water your measurements will go up. Any woman should expect this. Don't confuse this data with your actual progress.

11. Don't Overeat "Domino" Foods

Nuts, Chickpeas, Hummus, and Peanuts

When I read the first chapters of this book I made a list of snacks that I thought would be acceptable and they were pretty much all in the Domino category.

12. Don't Overconsume Sweeteners, Artificial or All Natural

Sweeteners tend to spike insulin levels and I happen to think that consuming them alters your perception of what's sweet. If I drink artificially sweetened Coke then fruit just doesn't seem that sweet anymore.

13. Don't Hit the Gym Too Often

Hitting the gym with cause increased muscle mass, which is good, but will increase your weight, but it may also lead to overeating if you workout too often.

The Four Hour Body

The Four Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman is the result of self-experimenter Tim Ferriss's (author of The Four Hour Work Week) decade long quest to find the minimum effective dose for rapid fat loss, rapid muscle gain, strength, endurance, fantastic sex, and effective sleep.

My interest? the book's claims that you could lose 20 pounds in 30 days without any exercise. Having compulsively recorded his personal data including workouts, food intake, supplement intake, etc. Ferriss has concluded that a low Glycemic Index (G.I.) diet is the key to fat loss and the visible veins in his abdomen (!) are the proof.

The Rules of the 4 Hour Slow Carb Diet:

1. Avoid White Carbs

Bread, rice, cereal, pasta, potatoes, tortillas, and fried foods with breading

2. Eat the Same Few Meals Over and Over

This should make it easier on you so that you don't have to wonder what to eat. It also frankly makes me uninterested in food

3. Don't Drink Calories

Only drink water, unsweetened teas, and coffee. No milk. Dry wine is okay.

4. Don't Eat Fruit

Fruit is full of fructose.

5. Take One Day Off Per Week

Binge Day helps you stick with the diet longer than without it. Ferriss also writes, that a caloric spike helps with the fat loss due to hormonal changes.

Personally Rules 1-4 make a lot of sense to me, Rule 5, however I am skeptical of. On the one hand, this is a restrictive diet and you might completely lose it and eat a baker's dozen of bagels if you don't allow yourself a "cheat" occasionally, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if you don't cheat you'd get there faster.

Tim Ferriss

Four Hour Work Week

Four Hour Body