Book: 20190718 to 20190903，"The 4-Hour Body" by Timothy Ferriss

20190718， chapter 1. "Start Here"

This chapter introduces the foundation of this book: practical, feasible approach but not officially recognized by medical industry.

"Be proactively skeptical, not defensively skeptical."

Skepticism should not stop us from doing something. It should only make us doing things through different approach. For example, be more cautious, or try to verify it first.

"Understanding" is the key of everything.

20190720， chapter 2. "Fundamentals - First and Foremost"

MED: The Minimum Effective Dose.

Our body is not a machine made of metal. The formula "Distance=Speed*Time" doesn't work here.

In many cases, "Less" means "More".

Exercise itself doesn't consume much calory. Spending one hour climbing stairs only consumes an extra 7 calories. If we sit in sofa and watching TV, we consume 100 calories per hour. Even 5 hour Marathon only consumes 2600 calories, and we intake 2500 calories everyday.


The recommended losing fat target: lose 6.8kg fat and gain 2.3kg muscle at the same time, which means 3:1. In total, it's 9kg change.

To make effective fat losing, the most popular ratio of diet, exercise and drugs is: 6:3:1.

"The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit", So don't try to do the work in perfect way, but to do it in decent way, and productively.

"Calories is no even."

Rule 1: only the calories go into bloodstream matters.
A block of wood has a lot of calories, but it doesn't work no matter how much wood we eat.

Rule 2: the calories from carbohydrate, protein and fat are consumed at different ratio and speed.

20190720， chapter 3. "Ground Zero - Getting started and swaraj"

Like all other changes which affect our life style, it starts from minor ones.

Cannot do 30 air squats? No problem. Start from 5.

Cannot bear lentils? No problem, start from breakfast.

Don't wait for right "time", just start it!

20190730， chapter 4. "Subtracting Fat"

I compared the nutrition of lentils, rice and brown rice. The result is shocking!

Basically, brown rice is 5 times better than rice; lentils is 5 times better than brown rice!

Lentils has rich protein, fibre and mineral, which make it unique and netritious. I will try it in breakfast first, and then, eventually, use it for lunch and dinner.

Lentils normally doesn't cause farting. Just in case, to decrease farting,we can:

1. Eat organic lentils;
2. Eat canned lentils;
3. Soak the lentils in water for a few hours before cooking them;
4. Add Beano(Bean-zyme or epazote, available at Mexican grocery stores or online) to the beans.

To make lentils tasty, add some balsamic vinegar and garlic powder. Or add some spicy chili source.

Air squats and wall tricep extensions are pretty good 60 to 90 seconds HIT (high intensive training). Ideally, this should be done 10 minutes before meal, and 90 minutes after meal. Then, more calories will be transformed into muscle than fat. This is the effect of GLUT-4. 30 to 50 repetitions is good enough.

"Heat" can consume lots of calories. So, drinking cold (or icy) water helps! Cold water shower helps! Wear less cloth helps!

Garlic, cinnamon, lemon juice, grape juice, vinegar, green tea and coffee all help to reduce fat.

To gain more energy at gym, have drink/meal 40 to 90 minutes earlier! To gain more muscle, have meal as soon as possible after gym exercise.

Slow down (>30 minutes per meal) or eat less volume of food(even junk food) can reduce fat.

We have to rely on drugs to reduce fat from 8% to 4%.

Drug is not poison. Overdose drug is. Just like any other food/drink. Overdose kills, or else, it helps.

20190805， chapter 5. "Adding Muscle"

Minimize effort and maximize result.

It seems even just kettlebell swing is enough to keep one healthy and strong. With a 24kg kettlebell and 75 repetition, twice per week exercise.

Kettlebell swing focus on "core", but also improve the whole body.

Thy Myotatic Crunch and The Cat Vomit Exercise can also improve "core", and focus on Abs muscle.
 But to grow more muscle, we need to push the limit.

Still twice a week. Each time a few repetition set-to-fail. Give it enough recover/grow time, and enough nutrition. This is Occam’s Protocol.

Based on this theory, I can do a little bit differently.

Monday and Thursday: Kettlebell swing.
Tuesday and Friday: Air squats.
Wednesday: Pull-ups or Push-ups.
Saturday and Sunday: 1.2km running. (Pull-ups or Push-ups if rain)

The target is: 30 minutes per week. Huge improvement in 4 weeks.

Thoughts: how about heart, lung and blood vessel? Are they going to get improved with muscle? Not sure. I think running or other aerobic exercise is still necessary.

20190812， chapter 6. "Improving Sex"

What a chapter!

Sex is related to so many things.

1. Love
2. Attitude to sex
3. Nutrition, such as brazil nuts and eggs
4. Skill, such as position and action
5. Exercise, including cold water bath/shower
6. Environment, such as mobile phone

Lack any of these items leads to unfortunateness.
I am considering turn on "airplane mode" most of the time.

In theory, WIFI is more harmful. 4G use 0.7GHz to 1.8GHz, WIFI 5 use 2.4GHz to 5GHz. However, as mobile data signal needs much more power than WIFI, I am not sure which one is more harmful, and there is no authoritative conclusion about it.

The best thing is to turn them both off, to avoid possible harm, and save much more attention!

PS: it seems that pesticide and mobile electromagnetic wave are causing grieving results. Bees are dying, and more and more man got infertility issue. The good news is, turn off mobile can solve the infertility issue in a few months. However, "screen" is sucking up all our precious attention.

20190815， chapter 7. "Perfecting Sleep"

Apart from meditation, temperature, light, exercise, cold shower and food affects sleep most.

Almond butter is mentioned many times in this book. It is rich in fat, fibre, iron and Potassium. Don't know why it helps sleep.

https://www.verywellfit.com/almond-butter-nutrition-facts-calories-and-health-benefits-4115426

From what I can see, it's good idea to use almond butter to replace peanut butter, if no budget restriction.
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/almond-butter-peanut-butter

Rich fat and fibre food in dinner helps perfect sleep.

The interesting section is about "polyphasic sleep". It actually means multiple REM sleep to increase the percentage of REM sleep. Comparing with monophasic sleep, most low efficient sleep time is avoided.

However, this is not compatible with our 9-5 worktime, and require strict timetable. I don't think I have any chance to try it.

Is it possible to increase the REM sleep time during midnight?

20190820， chapter 8. "Reversing Injuries"

High heel and professional leather shoes hurt. I never realized that. Good to know.

Egoscue: easy way to remove chronic pain through simple exercises. Definitely worth trying.

The content starts from 476/897:
1. Static Back
2. Static extension position on elbows
3. Shoulder bridge with pillow
4. Active bridges with pillow
5a. Supine groin progressive in tower
5b. Alternative: Supine groin on chair
6. Air bench

Skip "medication" and "mechanical reconstruction" sections at the moment.

Pre-hab:

Functional Movement Screen (FMS) to identify imbalances. "The most likely cause of injury is neither weakness nor tightness, but imbalance." FMS includes:

1. Deep squat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z65p0Bc0T-Q
2. Hurdle step
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3mEuUSum7Y
3. In-line lunge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBv9mmWNbU
4. Active straight leg raise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enz7jtRq_ik
5. Seated rotation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzwQMh-Ce7w

"The Critical Four Schedule" to fix the imblance problems:

1. Chop and lift (C&L)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLvPz8W00l4
2. Turkish get-up (TGU)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bWRPC49-KI
3. Two-arm single-leg deadlift (2SDL)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uA1PLNIWK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViVhUZGk6i4
 4. Cross-body one-arm single-leg deadlift (1SDL)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKb-rSzxQjY

20190826， chapter 9. "Running Faster And Farther"

"Lots of 400-meter repeats" for marathon! That's perfect! It explained my major confusion: what is the benefit of long distince running.

That means, train our body to use fat calories instead of carb based calories.

How to run properly:

1. Use gravity (via forward lean) for forward motion instead of push-off and muscular effort.

2. Land on the balls of the feet and aim to have the feet land under your center of gravity instead of in front of you.

3. Never fully straighten your legs. Keep a slight bend in your legs at all times to prevent push-off.

4. Pull each foot off the ground and towards your buttocks (rather than pushing off) using the hamstrings as soon as it passes under your center of gravity.

5. Maintain at least a 180 step per minute rate, which means at least 90 steps per minute with each leg. This will use muscle elasticity to your advantage. Michael Johnson, who held the 200-meter world record for an astonishing 12 years, and also won four Olympic gold medals at different distances, was known for eschewing a high knee lift in favor of short steps. His per-minute step rate? Around 300.

I am surprised that Tim do Kettlebell swing with 40kg Kettlebell.

20190829， chapter 10. "Getting Stronger"

Anything we cannot measure, is our illusion.
Anything not measured, is not accurate. (so, things are not as good as we think, and it's not as bad as we believe)

I need to buy a wrist watch to measure my running exercise.

10 repetitions rule is awesome. 2*5 or 3*3, with a few minutes break, to get the best result.
Don't train to failure. Always leave one or two in bank.

Dynamic stretch before exercise, static stretch after exercise, to prevent injury. But this is different from pre-hab.

Question: do we really need more strength or faster speed to make ourselves healthier?

20190901， chapter 11. "From Swimming to Swinging"

Total Immersion is the way to go for better swimming. No doubt.

It almost completely rely on arm movements. It's more like "gliding" than "swimming". Amazing.

Swim on alternating side, not on stomach. Experiment with ahdn swapping as a drill.

Aqua sphere kaiman goggles is best (maybe), and the price is all right.
https://aquasphereswimstore.com.au/kaiman-swimming-goggles/

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." --- Albert Szent-Georgi

Skip "baseball" chapter.

"Holding breath" is removed from the paper edition I bought, but is still in the "EPUB" edition.
The trick is to soak your whole body in "oxygen" as much as possible, and lower physical and emotional activity as much as possible. Try to forget about time by focusing on some time consuming memory recall. Don't let air out during test.

20190902， chapter 12. "On Longer And Better Life"

One cheat day per week is not something we can do, but we have to do. We need to give our kidneys a break to intake less protein during that day.

Donating blood is necessary to extend our life. I think that's possiblly right. Just like fasting idet. We need to tell our body to work harder to stay in good status.

Life needs meaning (long term), and it also needs fun (short term).

20190903， chapter 13. "Closing Thoughts" and other parts

Physical exercise brings huge impact to our mental health.

We need strong body to release our inner potentials.

"Homo Sapiens - the brief history of human being" tells us that the combination of science and capital created miracles of modern civilization. However, it has its drawbacks.

If some theory doesn't need or bring in much capital, then scientists won't get funding to do the research around it. And, capital also affect the research result.

That's why "SELF-EXPERIMENTATION" is so important. It makes up the gap.

Now I start to understand why we need to practise standing by one foot: it's pefect feet massage. I believe that it not just improve our sleep, it is also able of adjusting incretion, balancing emotions and relaxing the nerve system.

I will try it for sure.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.   ———Richard Feynman

The big five to spot bad science:

1. IS A RELATIVE CHANGE (LIKE PERCENTAGES) BEING USED TO CONVINCE?

2. IS THIS AN OBSERVATIONAL STUDY CLAIMING TO SHOW CAUSE AND EFFECT?

3. DOES THIS STUDY DEPEND ON SELF-REPORTING OR SURVEYS?

4. IS THIS DIET STUDY CLAIMING A CONTROL GROUP?

5. DO THE FUNDERS OF THE STUDY HAVE A VESTED INTEREST IN A CERTAIN OUTCOME?

To demonstrate (or imply) cause-and-effect, the gold standard for studies is a p-value of less than 0.05 (p < 0.05), which means a less than 5% likelihood that the result can be attributed to chance. A p-value of less than 0.05 is also what most scientists mean when they say something is “statistically significant.”

The second section of "Bad Science" is amazing. There are so many tricks in research report! Everyone should study it in high school.

It is hard to say that vegan food is healthier than regular food. Quite possible, regular food is better. We just need to analyze the nutrition in those food carefully.