A nice little reminder from the Whole9 archives. Also, we’ve not read the 4 Hour Body, so can’t speak to its contents – we just thought this title played nicely.
We get a lot of questions about products, services and protocols that promise miraculous results – improved body composition, fitness, energy or health – with minimal effort. This slant is not new – the lure of a shortcut (or “free lunch”, as Gym Jones calls it) has been the carrot dangling from our health-and-fitness stick since we first started paying attention to what we ate and how we moved. And wouldn’t it be great if it were true? If you could achieve all of your health and fitness goals in half the time, with half the effort? Heck, if that were possible, we would have signed on a long time ago.
There Is No Free Lunch
Trouble is, things don’t work like that. If there were a valid shortcut to optimal, well-rounded, big-picture health and fitness – don’t you think we would have heard about it by now? We sure haven’t stumbled across it. (And we live this diet and fitness stuff.) The truth is, there is no such thing as a free lunch. There is efficiency. There is intelligence in programming. There is concentration of focus, absolute dedication, fierce determination… but everything that’s worth doing requires – demands – that you work your tail off to get there.
The Secret
You want to maximize health and achieve optimal fitness? We’ll tell you exactly how to do it.
Eat foods that makes you healthier, every meal, every day. Eat foods that makes you less healthy infrequently, if at all. Eat just enough to support activity levels and goals.
Exercise. Work hard, but more importantly, work smart. Too much volume, intensity and frequency is just as bad as too little.
Recover. Devote as much effort to recovery practices as you do to exercise. This is not optional. Most fall miserably short in this category.
Sleep 8-9 hours a night, in a cool, dark room. Make time for this. You can get away with less, but only if it’s summer.
Manage your stress. Deal with it in a healthy fashion. Stress will undermine all of the above, and is perhaps the most important factor (after nutrition).
Do this, day in and day out, for years and years and years, as consistently as you can.
We Don’t Do Shortcuts
If you do these things, as often as you can, as consistently as you can, for as long as you can, you will be healthy. You will be fit. And your body composition will reflect that. Trouble is, that’s not anywhere near as much fun as the promise of a shortcut. And it’s nowhere near instant gratification.
But anything worth doing is worth doing right. And when it comes to your health, “right” is the only way you should consider. So we don’t offer you fads, false promises, or miracles. We’ll just tell you what you need to do to earn your 400,000 hour body – not just today, not temporarily, but forever.
We are Whole9. Let us change your life.
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You know what’s funny? I don’t know if anyone else has posted this, but I read “The 4 Hour Body”, and I tried it…. It’s basically Paleo 6 days a week, plus minimal weight-bearing exercise (think Tabatas), but he institutes a “cheat day” where, supposedly by eating whatever you want (he claims to eat doughnuts and whatnot at breakfast) it disrupts your metabolism and causes you to lose weight.
I lost a few pounds, but I think it had more to do with strict Paleo than the Day Of Junk every week. Yeah, it was kind of fun eating a whole bag of chips and candy and all that crap, but in the end I pretty much ended up right back where I started. :)
I read bits and pieces of it and although I can see how it would help you lose weight, the point is to lose weight, not necessarily to become healthier (at least that’s what I took away from it). Plus, what he recommended eating sounded really boring and I would fall of that wagon so fast! I love variety!
I read it. Started a blog about it but learned about real nutrition and switch pretty quickly. The “slow carb diet” is pretty much a more main stream version of paleo. Tim even got interviewed on Robb’s podcast when the book came out in 2010.
The rest of the book has a lot of paleoish, cross fit, and some bodybuilding stuff in there too. It’s not a bad read and I am glad I read it otherwise I probably would not have found sites like this and people like you guys.
I have said this many times. If I read “it starts with food” first it would have saved me a lot of time.
It’s a good read and the title is just his brand. The main idea of the book is self-experimentation, listening to your body, and measuring your results. Overall good advice. As far as dietary recommendations, it’s oversimplified, but comes to the same conclusion listed above: experiment, listen to your body, adjust.