0:00Do you think the basic principles in the four hour body still apply to those over 40, over 50, etc? Specifically, I'm thinking about slow carb diet, but feel free to answer in relation to other parts of the book. Thanks for everything. Yes, 100%. There is very little in that book that I would rescind or revise.
0:17It has been shockingly stable and highly predictive. If you go back to when I wrote it, 2008, 2009, it was published in 2010. I was using a first generation Dexcom or maybe second generation Dexcom continuous glucose monitor. I think I was one of the first non-type 1 diabetics to use that device and a lot of what's in that book has now become mainstream. The Egoscue method, still stand by it.
0:47The slow carb diet, 100% stand by it. And I still use the slow carb diet myself if I need a reboot. That is certainly one of my top picks.
0:57I will alternate sometimes with the ketogenic diet for coming back to state storage strategy, look up metabolic psychiatry or listen to my interview with Chris Palmer of Harvard for more on that. But for optimizing state, for stabilizing and maximizing energy production, in my particular case, I find the ketogenic intermittently to be very helpful. So, my default, however, is
1:25actually a hybrid of those two, which is slow carb diet with intermittent fasting, where I am fasting for at least 16 hours and then I have an 8-hour window of eating, sometimes less. So, what that looks like on most days is I will fast up until 2:00, 3:00 p.m. 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 p.m. and then start eating and that will go for another 8 hours until I finish dinner.
1:51And by the way, you should make sure that you stop your clock when you finish eating, not when you start eating dinner.
2:01And what that does over time is it in my case dramatically changes your say oral glucose tolerance test and insulin sensitivity. It is remarkable how little it takes. 4 to 6 weeks and my tests were completely a world apart. So I'm getting I'm becoming fat and keto adapted through the intermittent fasting and then I'm using slow carb diet for the rest of the time.
2:26And people can look up how to lose 100 lb on the slow carb diet and that'll bring up a blog post. Read it for free. It's got all you need with photos, before and after photos. It is still for my money the simplest, most reliable diet for recomposition and performance change with the highest likelihood of success because the the best diet that you follow is a lot better than the perfect diet that you quit.
2:57And I do stand by that. I'm in prep for surgery. I'm using Occam's protocol from that book to increase muscle mass with the expectation that I will have quite a bit atrophy in the 4 to 6 weeks post surgery. So I'm still using almost everything in that book. The one caveat is the PEG stack. This is a supplement combination. I have no stake in any of it. Could have made a lot of money if I
3:26had done it, but I didn't want people to question my motives, so I did not launch a sports nutrition company along with the book. The PEG protocol, which is policosanol alpha lipoic acid, green tea, decaffeinated green tea extract, and then garlic. The only question mark really that I have in that stack is policosanol. I was on the fence, but slightly over the fence at the time of publication.
3:51I'd have to go back and really look at the research that is not funded by some form of industry to fully assess that. But that that's really the only asterisk that I would add to that book. Everything else, in my opinion, still applies. Could be missing something, but that's where I land at the moment. This one's from Alice. Hey Tim, I had my first baby a year ago and motherhood has kicked my ass. Pause.
4:15Congratulations, Alice.
4:17Continuing now with the question. If you were a new parent, which of your protocols would you prioritize and which would you scrap in the interest of familial, personal, and marital well-being?
4:25Assuming you have limited financial resources and minimal family help.
4:31There are two things that came to mind for me and this should sound somewhat familiar because it echoes my answers to the Ramit Sethi question of what would it look like to invest 10 times more in the one or two levers that matter most. And if you might recall, my answers were health/fitness and relationships. So, here are a few that come to mind.
4:59There's an audiobook called Fierce Intimacy by Terry Real. I find Terry to be a beacon of clarity in a world of hand-wavy relationship advice. He's very opinionated and has a lot of experience. He's one of the highest-paid couples therapists on the planet and you can get a lot of his greatest hits through Fierce Intimacy. There's no print version, there's no Kindle version.
5:27It was something that he recorded based on the core principles and tenants and strategies that he uses with his clients. And [clears throat] I have found that incredibly useful.
5:40His other books are also very, very good. So, that is one that comes to mind. You could also look at Crucial Conversations, which I mentioned earlier, but if you had to pick one, I'd say listen to Fierce Intimacy. I'm guessing your time to listen is greater than your time to read text. So, Fierce Intimacy would be one. And then from a physical fitness perspective, that's the next one. It is the great force multiplier, not to overuse that, but I recall and I wrote about this in the introduction to the 4-Hour Body, the first time I spent any time with Richard
6:09Branson, well before I interviewed him for the podcast, was with a small group and somebody asked him, "If you could give one tip for productivity, what would it be?" And his answer was exercise. And he said, "By exercising every day, I give myself something like 3 to 4 more hours of focused productivity." Now, in your case, it's not necessarily focused productivity, but it is energy.
6:30So, I would say from physical fitness perspective, there are two things you can do that require very little money, no gym membership. The first I'll mention that you can check out is from Jerzy and Aniela Gregorek. I've had Jerzy, J E R Z Y, both from Poland, who now live in California, on the podcast.
6:50I was introduced to them by Naval Ravikant. They have a book and a program called The Happy Body. And they're in their 60s, they can run up trees and grab kites, they can do things that most 30-year-olds cannot do. Jerzy, I want to say he's now, he's got to be 70, 71. He can load a barbell, get on an Indo Board, one of those balance boards, and do a full snatch landing ass to heels and stand up and repeat while maintaining his balance. I mean, it's incredible.
7:17And they do a lot of things, but they credit most of it to this daily practice of doing a sequence of exercises called The Happy Body. And you really basically need next to nothing.
7:30Maybe a yoga mat, couple of dumbbells, you're good. Shouldn't cost you more than $50 to get what you need. And if you can't afford dumbbells, you can find a way to hold weight, right? You can fill up some jugs full of water or something like that. So, The Happy Body.
7:45And then the second one is Gymnastic Strength Training, GST, and you can look up Coach Chris Summer, S O M M E R, he's in Tools of Titans. He has also been interviewed on the podcast. Hilarious, salty old dog, just like Jerzy. Kind of specialize in interviewing these salty old dogs. They're such a pain in my ass, but they're so good. Love both of those guys and both of them would laugh hearing me say that.
8:14And GST's phenomenal. It is bodyweight exercises in the modern sort of cool kid YouTube parlance, some of it would be called calisthenics, but it requires very very little. You just need a floor.
8:28You can do a lot. You don't need a ton of equipment and I have been in the best shape of my life in the last few decades when I was combining GST plus the happy body plus acro yoga of all things. L basing, if you want to look up that, you can certainly, but that is a little more involved than the other two. So, that's what I would say. That's what comes to mind.