Tim Ferriss has turned the publishing world upside down with his book, The 4-Hour Body. It was released last December and is still #1 in its Amazon category.

I have been following the The 4-Hour Body plan to the letter since the third week of December. My bride Jayne wisely doesn’t like me speaking about things such as dieting. Generally she is correct as it can be… haughty I suppose… and then if I fail later, I look like a loser. But I’ve been working with some friends who finally started the The 4-Hour Body plan last Monday and the emails we’ve been trading are like gold for anyone considering this so I wanted to start discussing it some here.

Let me stress that the book is written from a secular standpoint.

A Little About It

The Four-Hour Body is an eating plan, not really a diet. It’s been blogged about to death already but here you’ll read and learn all sorts of unique aspects of it you never heard of before. And if you’re new to it all, I can tell you how it’s worked and how I’ve gone about addressing some of Tim’s more fragmented advice that didn’t always make sense in the book (few and far between but still present).

Tim wrote the book as a result of a 2-year study where he turned himself into a guinea pig for all of us. He had electrodes surgically implanted and wore them constantly to monitor his blood sugar. He would carry a bag with all his equipment to each and every meal. He talks about a date where he pulled out a pair of scales, looked at the girl whom he was having a first date with, and as he began taking his food off his plate and weighing it, he said, “I hope you don’t think I’m weird.” (He implied there was no second date…)

He offers tremendous advice, but does it work?

I have followed his eating plan now since late December. As of about the last week in December, I have cheated TWO TIMES, both times with extremely small cheats. So I can tell you the results from someone who has stuck with it. And I tell you the good, bad, and the ugly here in these posts which fall under the category Greg’s Gut (see the box at the right).

My Bottom Line (literally!)

I have not one week gained one ounce since I began this. I weigh weekly, every Saturday morning, and unlike ANY eating plan I’ve ever been on, this has NOT had the typical, routine ups and downs with more downs than up… rather, it has only been down with the exception of 3 (or possibly 4) weeks of staying exactly the same.

As of this morning, I am down 33 pounds. As of this morning, I feel f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c.

I was sure I had not lost this past week. I have felt bloated all week, probably still leftover from last Saturday where I overdid it. See, on Saturdays you can eat anything and as much as you want. And I do. Man, do I. The rest of the week, I stick EXACTLY to the 4-Hour Body eating plan by primarily eating eggs for breakfast and Mexican food most of the other times. (With a few Pei Wei meals thrown in here and there as we’re in town to enjoy them.) If you don’t like eggs, there are tons of other things, eggs are just what I choose. (Free-range, hormone-free, which we try to get the majority from our neighbors we trust and not from the store.)

So knowing this morning I was not going to like what I saw given how much I overdid last Saturday, once again The 4-Hour Body didn’t fail:

• I was not up for the first week since I began as I expected…
• I was not the same weight as last week…
• I had not lost my typical half-pound as I’ve been doing for several of the past weeks…
• Nope,  I was down 1.5 pounds! WHOA! I did not expect that this time even though I know The 4-Hour Body works and works well.

If you need to lose weight, if you need to gain weight, or if you want to eat better, would you stay with me for a few of these posts and hear about my experience? I think you will be shocked and then well-rewarded when you begin The 4-Hour Body… and you will, you will before I’m through with you, get and follow The 4-Hour Body.