The 4-Hour Body / Slow-Carb Diet

Thanks for the beans and Brussels recipe. I will DEFINITELY try that. Love them sprouts!

1st cheat day today. Some things were delicious. Others were "meh." I think the BEST thing I had was 1) an apple and 2) a plate of locally made pasta carbonara from our favorite restaurant. Next week, I'm going to hit the grocery on Friday night and pick up a few things for the next day. I'd have preferred to start the day with that apple, or some other fruit, than the doughnut my BF brought me.

I'll know tomorrow how much "damage" I did, ha ha. However, while I'm full and relatively happy, I am not feeling sick or overstuffed. I'm definitely ready to face another 6 days of this diet.

I love Brussel sprouts and sauteed them with black beans and kale for breakfast with 2 whole organic eggs. I took an unearned cheat day since I only just started the diet. Ate at Fogo de Chao and had a little mashed potato and fried banana. Otherwise it wasn't too bad. Gotta be good this week!

Well...I had my second cheat day yesterday. It wasn't as overboard as the first. I was not uncomfortable at any point. I didn't go off track until around noon. I had a high-protein breakfast, complete with veggies and beans. Around noon, I had taco bell for lunch, but I only had 1 item - one of those new burritos with the fritos in them. Then I had a few oreos. We went to a birthday party later in the day...my main meal there was just tri-tip and salad (small portions of both, no dressing), but I did have a few tortilla chips with queso and several beers...and a genache-filled german chocolate cupcake. Later, after we got back, I had a bunch of goldfish crackers.

I didn't log it, but if I had to guess, I'd say my intake for the day was in the ballpark of 3,500 calories. Last week, I probably ate closer to 5,000 calories on cheat day. Today, my weight was up 3.5 lbs, which I'm actually pretty happy with. I drank 3 full liters of water with those goldfish, and I think that probably has more to do with the weight than anything. Last week, I was up 5 or 6 lbs after cheat day, so I feel pretty good about this. The way I feel right now (which is pretty terrific, actually), I think the cheat day weight will come off by Tuesday or Wednesday (whereas it took until Thursday last week).

The day was a success. I didn't go too crazy, and I got to eat some things I've been thinking about a little this week (like oreos and taco bell), and I'm ready to get back on track.

So - here's my question du jour:

What do you guys think about vegetable juice (V-8)? I really do enjoy vegetables, and I have been eating TONS of them since I started this, but, particularly after cheat day, eating veggies early in the morning isn't very appealing. The truth is, after my cheat day, eating in the morning isn't appealing at all. I'd rather just wait until lunch, but I know that's a no-no, so I try to have a small breakfast ready to go. Today, it was a hardboiled egg with a small piece of chicken, a small portion of refried beans and a small glass of V-8. I didn't even want this. It's not like I had to choke it down, but I'd have rather skipped it. If I had to add actual veggies to this meal, I dunno...it just sounded kind of gross this morning...

Alright, I am going to be bad and make my own list of slow carbs. I am aiming for the recommended beans as my carbs, but adding in oatmeal, popcorn, and even sweet potatoes on an as needed basis. I will keep a hard line on gluten, sugar, and dairy, etc, but I love doing my cardio and strength training and don't want to end up cheating post workout on the stuff I know makes me gain because my blood sugar dipped. If that inspires the group to kick me out, I'll understand

I've been on the diet now for a couple weeks and it's going well. I am wondering about protein bars, however, as a snack. I have some that have 20 grams of protein and only 2 grams of sugar. Does Ferris mention them anywhere in the book? I can't seem to find any reference to them.

Posting under my girlfriend's account

Firstly - good work everyone! Does anyone use body fat analysis scales? If not, you should - when your weight is fluctuating by 5lb's per day it is most likely water which these will show.

I've been doing the 4hb diet for the last couple of weeks while training up for a multisport event. To me, the keys are:

- minimise sugar & refined carbs (unless after training)
- up the protein to about 1g / lb of bodyweight (which I've also seen recommended elsewhere for muscle building)

the combination of these two makes it just about impossible to eat more than 1500cal/day I'm finding.

I think the cheat day is genius for several reasons:
- it allows you to not feel like you're on a diet, as you can have foods you like
- also you can put food off so hugely helps with motivation
- when you get to the day it is easier to control because you don't feel like undoing all the hard work
- the purported metabolism benefits (seems reasonable to me, but I've not seen any studies to confirm)

As has been posted, it isn't an original idea, it borrows a lot from South Beach/Atkins/Paleo etc etc. Just seems like sensible advice to me though.

Cheers,

Nick (/Lisa)

Any thoughts? has anyone tried Atkins or is an expert in Glycemic load and read the four hour body?

While I wouldn't disagree that a lot of the reasons slow-carb works may be a lot of the reason Atkins work, they're definitely not the same. He's very anti-dairy for reasons other than glycemic load (insulanic response). There's also no introduction of grains at any point. The biggest difference, though, is that, when you combine un-metered bean-eating with an all-out cheat day once per week, it seems unlikely that you will go into ketosis, and that's kind of the whole point of Atkins isn't it?

Someone else was asking about protein bars...I have some protein bars just like yours (20g protein, 2g sugar)...Pure Protein is the brand. I try to limit these to one every day or two. I haven't experienced ill effects, but that's largely because I'm using this diet as a means of getting myself to eat more whole, real foods and less processed stuff. He doesn't address them specifically in his book, though, I think he does mention protein shakes as an option for vegetarians. You may want to look that section over, because he's pretty specific about what type of protein you should use in those shakes. I kind of glossed over that, because I 'm not a vegetarian and didn't plan on drinking any shakes, but I now realize that the protein bars might fall under that same category.

I'm happy to say that the weight from my 2nd cheat day (Sunday) is gone today (Wednesday), which is a day earlier than last week. I'm pretty happy with this, especially considering that I've been sick and haven't exercised the last 2 days. My weight is actually down 0.3 lbs from my Sunday morning weight, so I think I'm in good shape eating the way I did on Sunday (3-4K calories). Hopefully this isn't just a weird water dip, and I can keep up with 1 lb / week, which is about right for the first two weeks...I think. The truth is, I lost about 6 lbs my first week, but I started that after probably about 2 weeks in a row of "cheat days", so I'm just figuring I lost about 1 actual pound that week too.

Coconut is definitely high in fat, but in that way, it's not really like any fruit at all except maybe avocado.

At any rate, my small amount of coconut creamer is going to be my diet modification, heh. It's adding such a small amount of anything (other than pleasure), so I can't imagine it's doing much harm. Coconut ice cream might be a different story.

i have a question about what we can eat after a workout - I like to have my green smoothie after a workout, which does have fruit in it, I assume this ok, right? And to stretch it further, is it ok to eat whatever you want (w/ in reason) after a workout? Like pizza or a brownie? not that I would do this every time, but if I'm having a very strong craving would it be detrimental to eat a brownie after a workout? i'm thinking if i really crave something bad, i could do a workout to "earn' the right to eat that item (this would be an exception, not a rule)

This is one of the most frustrating things about this book (for me). Ferris does say that you shouldn't eat any of certain types of foods (aside from cheat day), except after a resistance workout (I'm paraphrasing). However, he never gives any detail regarding how much or what types of things might be okay in this circumstance. Given the fact that you do have a cheat day, and you can eat whatever you've been craving then, seems like something like pizza or brownie might be a little overboard as in-week concession. On the other hand, you're doing so well, it may not hurt you.

My attitude is always to stick with what's working. If you're getting the results you want, that's really all that matters. If you go for the post-workout brownie or pizza, it will cause, at worst, a minor setback which you can learn from and move on. If you're not the type of person who gets completely derailed by those types of setbacks, then there's probably no reason not to try it.

For me, though, once I start doing stuff like that, it's all downhill.

i've been doing this for just over a week now and am down 3 pound. I've been sticking to the diet pretty much to a T. I have had a really hard time getting 1200 calories in. I also am running about 30 min a day beacause i love cardio, so I'm really behind by almost 500 calories a day. A few questions: can I drink mikl/protein drink after a workout? what are some snacks that are high in calories but still fall into this diet? I am about 15 pounds away from my goal weight so really want this to work.