>>Joel Constable: Hi everyone. My name is
Joel Constable and I work in Leadership Development
as part of Google Edu and I'm thrilled today
to introduce our newest Authors@Google speaker,
Tim Ferriss.
Tim was nominated as one of FastCompany's
most innovative business people of 2007 and
is the author or the number one New York Times,
Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best
seller, The Four Hour Workweek, which has
been translated into 35 different languages.
Wired Magazine has called Tim the Superman
of Silicon Valley for his manipulation of
the human body.
A few interesting things about Tim: he is
actually a tango world record holder and a
former National Kickboxing Champion, which
I guess means that he could sweep you off
your feet in multiple different ways.
[laughter]
Tim is also a guest lecturer at Princeton
University and a faculty member at Singularity
University based at NASA Ames Research Center.
Today Tim is going to be talking about his
new book, The Four Hour Body: An Uncommon
Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and
Becoming Superhuman, which is perhaps why
all of you are here.
[laughter]
As a big fan of both Tim and becoming superhuman
I'm really excited to hear what he has to
say.
So please join me in welcoming Tim Ferris.
[applause]
>>Tim Ferriss: Alright, thank you for being
here everyone. I'm excited to be back at the
Googleplex yet again.
[pause]
It's all downhill from here after that introduction
so. [laughs]
This is delicious peppermint water. You don't
seem to have anything other than flavored
water.
So The Four Hour Body is the topic of a very
brief presentation today. I'm gonna keep it
exceptionally short. I wanna get to Q and
A as quickly as possible.
And I put masochism first in the subtitle
because that will be reflected in the video
that I'm going to show you. And then I'll
add commentary after that.
So I'll explain why I do such things to myself.
[video playing]
Male #1: This is a biopsy needle.
[sound of clapping]
>>Tim Ferriss: This is for comparative purposes.
>>male #1: Yes. It's about the thick ?
[sound of clapping]
just a little bit thinner than a pencil.
>>Tim Ferriss: Yes.
This might seem a little bit strange.
>>Tim Ferriss live: This is in Cape Town,
South Africa where you don't have to sign
a hundred thousand waivers to have such things
done to you. [chuckles]
[pause]
That is in the vastus lateralis on the right
thigh. I have a nice scar for that.
>>male #1: [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: So that's ?
>>male #1: That the depth that we've created
to [uintelligible].
>>Tim Ferriss: [sighs]
>>male #1: I'm going to get a sample.
[two people speaking Afrikaans]
>>Tim Ferriss live: That is Afrikaans for
those of you who speak Afrikaans here.
>>male #1: I'll say, I'll say "suction" and
you pull back a bit if you feel resistance
you just [inaudible]. And then I'll say "release."
Then I'll say "suction." And then I'll say
"release."
>>Tim Ferriss live: This is a hollow biopsy
tube and they use the suction to pull muscle
tissue, which doesn't have any pain receptors
as far as I could tell into the tube so they
can then sever it and use it for analysis.
>>male #1: Relax the leg for me as far as
possible. There we go. And just [inaudible].
[laughter]
And suction.
[pause]
And release.
[pause]
And suction.
[pause]
And release.
[pause]
And suction.
[pause]
>>Tim Ferriss: Did we get it?
>>Tim Ferriss live: [laughs] Alright, who
wants to sign up?
>>male #1: [inaudible] just take it off.
>>Tim Ferriss live: That wasn't my muscle
samples.
>>Tim Ferriss: Yeah, there we go. Thank you
a little Carpaccio, steak tar tare, Tim tar
tare. [laughs]
Okay so these will be used for the anti-[inaudible],
the fiber type ?
>>male #1: Yes.
>>Tim Ferriss: and the comparisons that we
talked about with the graphs.
>>male #1: Yes.
>>Tim Ferriss: And then that one over there
will hopefully be used for the ?
>>male #1: Yeah.
>>Tim Ferriss: contractility and all that
good stuff.
>>male #1: This is exactly ?
>>Tim Ferriss live: Okay, so there you have
it.
So I spent three years doing that type of
thing to myself.
Now why would you do such a thing?
Well, as it turns out that what you would
expect to happen based on tests like 23 amino
AVIgenics doesn't always pan out in the real
world when you actually look at, for example,
muscle fibers under the microscope so.
According to a number of genetic tests that
I had to look at my genotype I lack, or I
should say, I have a nonsense allele for actin
3 and that codes for fast twitch muscle fiber.
So I wanted to see what my potential was for
gaining muscle quickly or becoming an Olympic
sprinter.
The results came back, "Sorry, you're gonna
be really, really piss poor at both. But good
luck. You have a genetic predisposition."
Alright, so I had my muscle fibers removed
to look at my genetic potential for endurance
and this is what we turn out with.
So we're looking ? [laughs]
[laughter]
You can see right from the outset, not looking
good.
[laughter]
And Dr. Cohen who was one of the two doctors
performing the biopsy came in with the results
and before he described them he said, "I'm
going to speak simply because I'm a doctor
and I like to speak simply." I was like, "Alright."
He says, "You would have trouble finishing
a 10K.
[laughter]
No you would have trouble finishing a 5K."
I was like, "Alright." [laughs]
[laughter]
So here are a number of enzymes that limit
endurance potential in aerobic capacity among
other things. So you have citrate synthase
on the left which has been studied quite a
lot, [3H]AD, and so forth and so on.
And you have South African antelope in the
red, so I'm not gonna be beating them in 40
yard dash or 100 mile races anytime soon.
Then you have endurance athletes.
And then you have Tim Ferriss below the line;
below zero. [laughs]
I don't know how that's even possible; turns
out that the Y axis here is the enzyme activity
percentage of untrained humans. So if that
zero is Homer Simpson, then the green is me.
[laughter]
Is basically what that means.
So there's another graph that I didn't include
in this presentation which is equally instructive
and that was muscle fiber type.
Turns out I have very little slow twitch muscle
fiber, but I have a lot of what's called Type
IIa fast twitch muscle fiber; purely through
training.
Alright, so the genotype what you would expect
based on my genetic predisposition and what
I've been able to produce through training
are two very, very different realities.
And The Four Hour Body, The Three Hour Body's
next. Damn I already told you guys.
The Four Hour Body was a three year process
of testing all of this, whether it was fat
loss, endurance, sleep related, maximal strength
related, to see if the lab results or lab
expectations held up under field testing.
And it turns out that a lot of it does not
hold up and that I believe you can reach your
genetic potential in almost any one of these
physical performance areas in about six months.
And we can talk about some of those examples.
One of my inspirations was this girl right
here.
So Barry Ross, who trained one of his athletes
to break all of Marion Jones' records in high
school, and his athlete Allyson Felix ended
up becoming the first professional track athlete
right out of high school. Looks something
like this; this is another one of his trainees.
And I worked with him for maximal strength
development because he's very good at it with
sprinters.
So he sent me this photograph to illustrate
a movement called "The Torture Twist" which
is a horrible, horrible movement. I'm happy
to show you how to do it after the presentation.
This girl is a high school runner. She is
132 pounds; looks pretty normal from all indications;
and she deadlifts 405 pounds for repetitions.
And that alone was severely emasculating for
me. [laughs]
[laughter]
And inspired me to train, not harder, but
much more intelligently and I was able to
go from being able to pull roughly 300, 315
pounds off the floor to doing rack pulls with
about 650 with a double overhand grip, that's
not a hook grip.
So I'll let you guys Google that later, but
it's a hell of a lot harder than doing an
alternating grip using wraps.
And it was from training using less than five
minutes of tension per week in the deadlift.
The volume was exceptionally, exceptionally
low.
Alright, and that would be one example of
the minimum effective dose, which we will
come back to.
So the guiding tenet for this entire exploration
which started actually coincided with beginning
to invest in startup companies and advise
startup companies; so I'm in Twitter and Evernote
and StumbleUpon and others.
I wanted to see if you could apply split testing,
multi-variant testing, that type of data crunching
to the physical body, but in general the tenet
came from Mark Twain. "So whenever I found
myself on the side of the majority it was
time to pause and reflect." Not just pause
and reflect, but to test the opposite approach.
So if everyone's doing 20 to 30 hours of training
for Ironman, let's say, well could you do
4 or 5 hours of training and get better results?
Are there any outliers who have been able
to achieve that? It turns out there are.
[pause]
So I'm gonna keep the presentation based on
a number of what I would call, "first principles"
that are organizing principles for all of
the tactics. So these are more strategies
than anything else.
[pause]
Okay, [laughs] so the means inform the mean,
I think I read that incorrectly. The extremes
inform the mean, not vice versa.
How many people here have seen the movie Objectified?
Anyone? Wow, I'm amazed only three people.
Objectified also done by the director of Helvetica;
fantastic movie; and there's a moment, an
anecdote interview in that movie that involves
garden shears.
And Frog Design is being interviewed or they're
explaining how one of their clients came in
to ask them to develop a new type of garden
shears and they said, "Our average user is
a 45 year old woman, she is in this type of
job, she behaves this way." And they said,
"We don't care about your average. We wanna
know the extremes."
So on either side in each pole we wanna know
about let's say the 400 pound body builder
who can't brush his own teeth, and we wanna
know about the paraplegic and their limitations.
And if you handle the extremes then you cover
the means.
It just so happens it doesn't work in the
opposite direction.
So you've probably heard the joke about Bill
Gates walking into a bar and the average net
worth jumps to $150 million each.
The mean and the average oftentimes mean nothing,
from a practical standpoint.
So on the right hand side you have me posing
with a number of syringes that have three
inch needles. And they contain a number of
different things. And this is experimenting
with the mean, with the extremes rather, to
inform the mean.
And that particular cocktail is very simple;
it's effectively sugar water; its dextrose,
saline, a few other things, perhaps some glucosamine
which I have mixed feelings about, B12 for
injury repair.
Some of the others are a bit more aggressive.
They contain things like stem cell growth
factors that I flew in from Israel, IGF-1,
and some of my growth factor one. So some
pretty, pretty powerful stuff.
But what you realize is that when you look
at, let's say, how someone who is 400 pounds
lost their first 150 pounds of fat, then you
look at how the professional body builder
gets from 6 to 4% body fat, you learn a lot
more than if you're looking at anything in
between those two ranges.
So that's the first principle. Look for the
outliers and study the outliers.
Alright, tracking plus loss aversion is more
important than how-to.
So the emphasis in exercise and diet in particular
tends to focus on the latest and greatest.
And the business model seems to be complicate
to profit. So you can't publish a magazine
every month without new material. Unfortunately
that leads to a lot of confusion.
And what I realized very early on was that
the how-to does not matter as much as the
motivation for the behavioral change; and
spent time with people like BJ Fogg at Stanford
University in the Persuasion Lab, among other
people, to really drill down into the specifics
of this.
And this is a photograph of Chad Fowler before
and after who runs the RailsConf Conference,
among others.
And Chad knew what to do on some level, but
he didn't make the change until the pain was
painful enough. And I think that for many
people the tracking was the second piece that
he used to provide the feedback necessary
to compel him to continue.
So self-discipline, willpower all very overrated.
If you just use tracking you can oftentimes
catalyze a behavior change that you want to
make.
And a good example of that would be The Flash
Diet. The so-called Flash Diet. All that entails
is taking an iPhone or a camera phone of some
type and taking a picture of every meal before
you eat it.
It's a pattern interrupt that makes you aware
of your decisions that were previously subconscious
or habitual and leads to dramatically more
fat loss than even written food journals.
And if you were to take that as one option
and then personal trainers and a sophisticated
strict Zone Diet on the other, I would actually
bet on the people with the iPhones, based
on all the data that I've seen.
Loss aversion also is very, very important.
Let's see we have, where's Trevor? Trevor?
Trevor? Trevor, there he is.
So Trevor Claiborne here makes a guest appearance
in the book as well, and I think accentuates
I think one principle behavioral change that's
very undervalued.
In the U.S. in particular we tend to focus
on rewards and patting everybody on the back.
In fact fear of loss if you look at let's
say, bidding behavior at auctions. People
will overbid dramatically more to prevent
losing, let's say, $10 as opposed to gaining
$10. No big surprise.
But you can use that to your advantage. So
Trevor, in particular, bet a co-worker, was
it one dollar a workout? So one dollar a workout;
if one of them missed their workout they had
to pay the other a dollar.
So in lifestyle impact one dollar does very
little, but from a psychological standpoint
it has a tremendous impact.
So focusing on tracking, using data to your
advantage, and that type of feedback to your
advantage, and then loss aversion beat the
method.
To give you a very clear example of how method
can fail.
I had a number of CEO's here in Silicon Valley
ask me for an index card. They said, "I don't
want the story. I don't want the details.
Give me an index card with the bullet points
for losing abdominal fat and I'll do it."
And so I gave each of them the index card
with the bullet points; success rate 0%.
Alright, so the reasons for change and the
feedback mechanisms are more important in
many cases than the actual how-to.
Then we have the minimum effective dose. So
the minimum effective dose is a way of looking
at exercise and diet, among other things,
as you would look at medicine or drugs.
So what is the minimum effective dose to achieve
a very precise, quantifiable outcome? Anything
above that produces side effects and the side
effects could be from over training, they
could certainly be from supplementation, they
could be from simply trying to maintain a
low calorie diet of 1200 calories that's unsustainable.
Alright, so in this particular case you have
two pictures. On the right hand side this
is a fairly typical meal of mine. I follow
a diet called The Slow Carb Diet and I could
go into great detail about that if you want
in the Q and A.
If people ask me the first step that they
should take I'm not gonna give them a list
of five things to change.
So if you talk to BJ Fogg, he'll tell you
if you ask, let's say people over 50, if you
try to teach them to learn to text in order
to lose weight or to quit smoking it won't
work because it's two behaviors.
So I say change your breakfast: 30 grams of
protein within 30 minutes of waking up.
My dad who ended up losing a total of more
than 90 pounds of fat and gaining 20 to 30
pounds of muscle at age 65, began with changing
his breakfast and he went from approximately
5 pounds of fat loss per month to 18.75 pounds
in the first month after changing his protein
intake within 30 minutes of waking up.
That's where I would have people change.
Another case study; a female who was running
five hours per week, five, six hours per week
and could not lose the last 10 to 15 pounds
changed her breakfast and lost 3% body fat
between four and five weeks; very small change
with a disproportionately large outcome; so
looking for that minimum effective dose as
the starting point.
On the left hand side you have Tracy.
Tracy lost 117 pounds with two or three 10
to 20 minute kettlebell workouts per week,
focusing on the two-handed swing which you
see here. That's the down swing. Mother of
two and it started with that minimum effect
dose of very short duration: kettlebell workouts
and then she also adopted the same diet.
[pause]
So, last but not least, [laughs]
[laughter]
You wanna keep improvement relative. So I
do not have the actin 3 to do that, nor do
I have perhaps the liver drug tolerance to
do that -- [laughs]
[laughter]
But the goal is not to be the best in the
world, necessarily.
The goal is to use numbers to be the best
you, the best version of yourself you can
possibly in these various domains; these various
areas of physical performance or appearance.
And that's it.
Those are the overarching principles that
you'll see in every single chapter of The
Four Hour Body.
All of the various self-destructive experiments
that I perform on myself so other people don't
have to, I'm happy to talk about anything
related to self-experimentation in the book
or otherwise, but that's the end of the presentation.
So thank you for listening.
[applause]
[pause]
Sorry.
[pause]
Oh, yes. We have a microphone. So you can
go to the microphone over here or you can
yell it out and I'll repeat your question.
[pause]
>>Charles: Hi Tim, I'm Charles.
>>Tim Ferriss: Hi Charles.
>>Charles: I lead design for our mobile products
and social products here at Google.
Big fan of what you do; it looks like the
least paritofied, if that's a word?
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>Charles: chapter of your book might be about
the endurance?
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>Charles: stuff; I don't know if that's a
fair statement. Seems like based on the analog
graph?
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>Charles: your endurance is something you're
kind of?
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>Charles: slow to love, maybe.
>>Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely
slow to love endurance.
>>Charles: And so I was just wondering, there's
like a little bit of a cliff hanger in the
book?
>>Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.
>>Charles: How did it come out?
>>Tim Ferriss: Okay.
>>Charles: And are you gonna continue?
>>Tim Ferris: Um-hum.
>>Charles: tryin' to?
>>Tim Ferriss: Uh-hum.
>>Charles: run long distances? That's my question?
>>Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Good question.
>>Charles: Thanks.
>>Tim Ferriss: So there is a cliff hanger
in the book with the endurance training.
So there are a few things I'd say.
The first is that the greatest progress that
I've made has been technically related; so
biomechanics related as far as running; really
a combination of Pose Method and a few other
methods.
For those people who are really into running
Pose Method does have its risks. There is
a sidebar in the book that discusses how the
forces get transferred from the knee to the
ankle; side note.
In my particular case I hate running. I hate
running. I really, really, really hate running,
so I knew that the best way to ensure that
I completed an ultramarathon which will be
my first goal; so I've never run a 10K but
I'm try to run a 50K minimum; is to do it
in front of the entire world while they're
watching.
So I'm actually gonna start that beginning
of next month. And I've been making sure that
my body is as symmetrically capable as possible
before beginning the training to avoid injury.
So the pre-hab chapter is what I've been focusing
on thus far. But I'm gonna start in earnest
next month and maybe do, I'm not sure if it'll
be the Quad Dipsea; a little too much vertical
[laughs] in the Quad Dipsea, but I will be
starting that in February and I'm expecting,
aiming within six months to complete; hopefully
sooner. I think it could be done in 12 if
I really focused on it and didn't have to
travel.
>>Charles: Um-hum.
>>Tim Ferriss: That's the goal.
Thanks.
Other questions?
[pause]
Um-hum.
[pause]
>>male #1: I was curious that I'm generally
comfortable with like a liquid diet a lot
of times. I can find that I can supplement
really almost anything in liquid form and
it's convenient and fast for me.
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #1: Have you seen any kind of like
psychological reports or analyses that follow
that? Because a lot times obviously I'm not
nearly as satisfied
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #1: when it comes to liquid diets comparative
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #1: to finding the same supplements
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #1: on a plate.
>>Tim Ferriss: So the question of solid versus
liquid food. It's easier to over consume with
liquid and that's part of the reason that
if people are trying to gain mass; most controversial
topic in the book by far is the mass gain;
that's where like the meathead brigade has
come down upon me in force on the Internet.
But I gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days.
So I was supervised by a Ph.D. as San Jose
State University and to do that you have to
consume a pretty atrocious number of calories.
And the easiest way to do that is through
liquid.
But, as an example, so this morning I was
running out and didn't have much time to prepare
so I had unflavored whey protein with some
cinnamon and vanilla extract. And then I had
Brazil nuts and a handful of different seeds
and that was it. And that will keep me sated
because of the protein content for a number
of hours.
So as long as it has high protein percentage,
I don't see any problem with it.
I know people who've lost a tremendous amount
of weight doing using primarily liquid meals
and one or two whole meals per day.
But if you have the control to keep an eye
on the actual macronutrient and caloric intake
then I don't see a problem with it.
[pause]
If people don't wanna get up and walk over
that's fine too.
>>Peter: Hi, my name's Peter.
>>Tim Ferriss: Hi Peter.
>>Peter: So you showed the woman who lost
117 pounds of fat through changing her breakfast
and doing kettlebell swings. So I understand
the concept of minimum effect dose to accomplish
that goal of fat loss.
Did you evaluate whether those same techniques
actually were resulting in holistic, overall
health for her?
I understand she lost a lot of fat, but like
hormone markers, all kinds of other measures
of health, were those improved as well? And
is there like a minimum effective dose for
holistic, overall health?
>>Tim Ferris: Um-hum.
So the question is, is there a minimum effective
dose for minimum, I'm sorry, for overall,
holistic health?
>>Peter: Expansion of life span, that sort
of thing.
>>Tim Ferris: Yeah.
>>Peter: Like is she gonna live longer 'cause
of that?
>>Tim Ferris: Yeah.
So the health is like success in the sense
that it's defined differently by different
people. So we would have to sit down and actually
look at the actual markers.
What I would say is that in her particular
case, certainly by improving insulin sensitivity
and so forth I would wager that her life span
would be extended.
If you take anything to an extreme with physical
performance like power lifting; I mean I know,
a friend of mine is 145 pounds and he can
bench press 600 pounds, as an example. Or
running 100 mile races; he's done that in
competition too. I doubt any of that's terribly
good for the body long term.
But I think that many of the, if we're talking
about longevity specifically, there are a
few takeaways that I'd suggest looking closely
at.
One would be protein cycling and minimizing
complete amino acid profile intake for at
least 16 hours a week which isn't that hard;
things like wheat lack lysine, as an example.
Donating blood; many of the managers of centenarian
studies; I think Boston University most notably.
This is a male; donates blood because last
I checked men don't menstruate. That's one
of the hypotheses as to why women in general
live longer than men is the reduction of toxic
iron accumulation, things of that type.
But it would really come down to looking at
the markers individually I would say.
But if you're looking at, let's just say,
the general health markers of, let's say,
total cholesterol to HDL, triglyceride, fasting,
glucose, hemoglobin A1c, things of that type.
In these particular instances I would wager
they've all been improved.
For most of the case studies, certainly for
myself, I've done thousands of line item blood
tests over the last few years; most of those
have been improved longitudinally overtime.
But if I'm doing an experiment like I eat
nothing but meat and mixed nuts for 21 days
to see what effect it would have on those
markers. If you remove some of those more
extreme experiments, then I would say, for
the most part, they're being improved at the
same time.
>>Peter: Thanks.
>>Tim Ferris: Yeah. Welcome.
If you wanna talk about anything specific
markers afterwards, I'll hang out for a bit.
[pause]
Any other questions?
>>male #2: What happened when you ate nothing
but meat and nuts for 21 days?
[laughter]
>>Tim Ferriss: [laughs]
So I was in Nicaragua for this particular
test. I was doing some experimentation with
medical tourism. I ate grass fed beef, few
pounds a day, and almonds primarily; pretty
boring diet. [laughs]
My conventionally assessed cholesterol values
improved. So my HDL to total cholesterol ratio
improved.
There were a few things, let me think offhand,
it was an improvement on average over my baseline
beforehand.
And I think that underscores a point that
is neglected oftentimes which is, you are
what you eat, yes that's true. But you are
what you eat ate also. In the sense that I
would rather eat grass fed beef than grain
fed salmon, as an example.
So that was to try to highlight the importance
of understanding your sources.
[pause]
>>female #1: Hello.
>>Tim Ferriss: Hi. Nice shirt.
>>female #1: Thank you.
>>Tim Ferriss: [laughs]
>>female #1: I wondering what advice or warning
you would give to women who reading your book
as far as things that might need to be modified
or --
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>female #1: additional consideration.
>>Tim Ferriss: So good question. So things
in the book that might be modified for women
or emphasized for women; there are a few.
The first is that it is extremely important
on The Slow Carb diet to ensure that you're
getting enough calories.
So many women who have tried low carb diets
in the past will default to eating, let's
say, a chicken breast and leafy salad for
lunch.
And what you'll find, this is true on any
low calorie or sub maintenance diet, that
you could stop menstruating. It's very, very
common among athletes as well. And that's
generally not a good thing.
So I would say if you eat for fertility as
a woman you'll generally also get optimal
athletic performance and fat loss.
A few things related to fertility very quickly.
I've seen, this is dozens, I'm not talking
about one or two case studies of women who
have just gone from miscarriage, miscarriage,
miscarriage to pregnant.
And the two most common changes were removing
gluten from the diet. For a host of reasons
that affects hormone regulation; so removing
grains effectively.
Number two would be adding in increasing saturated
fat intake, oddly enough. So I don't know
if that's due to long chain fatty acids. I
don't know if it's due to replacing the gluten
and therefore increasing protein and fat intake
as a side effect.
But those were the two most common changes.
Otherwise, from a training standpoint, from
a dietary standpoint, men and women more or
less respond the same way. There is a lot
of variability between people but not as much
as we would sometimes like to think.
There's been some speculation that because
women have a higher percentage of slow twitch
muscle fibers they should train with a higher
repetition range in resistance training or
weight training.
My position on that is that you should train
for your desired outcome, not for your current
state.
Because if I train for my current state based
on my genetics testing it wouldn't go anywhere.
[laughs]
Like I would be well suited to I don't know
what sports; sliding down slides or
[laughter]
Monopoly.
[laughter]
So those would be the highlights.
But I would say that women are fortunate on
one hand because they have very clear indications
of their hormonal state through menstruation
and other things.
Whereas men are just kind of wandering around
not knowing what the hell's going on. And
then they're like, "Oh no my sperm count's
four times lower than it should be. Uh-oh;
didn't realize that until I wanted to have
kids."
Side note: the starting point for all of this
is comprehensive blood testing. So I would
highly, highly recommend once every three
or six months you get comprehensive blood
testing done. Certainly everyone here can
afford it.
And additional testing that I would recommend
is SpectraCell. S-p-e-c-t-r-a-C-e-l-l dot
com, allegedly used by Lance Armstrong and
others which wouldn't mean anything incriminating;
it's for nutrient deficiency.
I identified that I had a selenium deficiency.
How many people here track their selenium?
Probably not many. And selenium's very important
for spermatogenesis.
So I actually did a number of things: fixed
my selenium deficiency; used cold exposures;
and stopped carrying my cell phone in my pocket,
side note. And doubled my sperm count in three
months.
For those of you who are interested in such
things.
[laughter]
>>male #2: So as far as I can tell from the
quick look through the book, it pretty much
concentrates on what we would normally consider
physical attributes.
Do you have any research or anything interesting
on minimum effective dose either for balance
and coordination?
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #2: 'cause I didn't see much there.
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #2: And also mentally; Nootropics or
>>Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
>>male #2: or diet as sort of
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #2: opposed to mental
>>Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Good question.
So the, have I found anything for the minimum
effective dose for balance, agility, or mental
performance like Nootropics?
So I was as an undergrad first a neuroscience
major primarily because I wanted to focus
on smart drugs. [laughs]
I've seen a lot. There are many different
approaches you can take.
As far as balance goes, there's quite a lot
of debate in the PT and athletic training
community about whether balance is a general
skill you can train, just like if there exists
a general intelligence. Usually people would
segment it out into, for example, [pause]
muscular symmetry.
So one of the fastest ways to improve general
agility and balance, I would say, is by doing
an assessment called the FMS, the Functional
Movement Screen.
And I'm sure there are people at SF who can
do that. And that'll assess imbalances from
left to right or contra laterally. And when
you fix those it's pretty astounding. It's
in the pre-hab chapter.
But if you identify using, for example, there's
a movement called, or there are two movements
called the "chop and lift" where you're using,
generally speaking, a cable and you're doing
this type chopping diagonal movement and then
you're reversing it and going up.
And so you test your four quadrants and you'll
generally find that one quadrant is extremely
weak, relatively speaking. And when you fix
that it's incredible how many aches and pains,
how many problems, how many injuries just
disappear.
So I would say that from a functional standpoint
that would be one.
If we're talking about equilibrium I haven't
found anything to be particularly effective
for general balance.
For mental performance, this is something
that I really debated quite a lot because
I'm a huge fan of cognitive enhancement. And
I didn't include any chapter specifically
on that because I found looking at the literature
that improving physical performance, what
most people would divorce from their mind
or brain, is actually the best way to improve
cognitive performance.
And there's a great book called Spark which
is written by a Harvard M.D. that looks at
physical education in some very sophisticated
programs from improving academic performance
specifically by making students perform at
a certain heart rate immediately prior to
their worst subjects; really fascinating stuff.
But if we're talking about drugs. [laughs]
I'm sure there a few people in this audience
who probably tried Modafinil, among others.
So Provigil which is an anti-narcolepsy drug.
There are a lot of drugs that will improve
short term memory, working memory, reaction
speed.
Vasopressin which is an anti-diuretic hormone
that's used in, let's say, bedwetting in children
in some cases, also can improve short term
memory.
The reason that I have ended up staying away
from any of these drugs is that I've realized
in the course of doing all this research and
all this testing, that the brain is a very
sensitive instrument.
And the brain, well the body, likes homeostasis.
So if you interrupt any of the feedback loops
you can cause some really significant long
term problems.
That's certainly true if you look at, let's
say, anabolics' use. If you're using super-physiological
high dose, let's just say, testosterone cypionate,
then you can screw up your HPTA Axis. And
if you screw up your hypothalamus, boy you're
gonna have a lot of issues.
So I've ended up staying away from the smart
drugs most recently.
The exceptions would be Yerba Mate tea. I
love Yerba Mate. And it contains a handful
of stimulants that all have different pharmacokinetics
so you end up getting this nice extended,
like three to four hour buzz, which is great
for writing, among other things.
And the other, I would say, for mental performance
would be hunger.
So when you are in a fasted state whether
that's through intermittent fasting or otherwise,
you will experience a heightened level of
cognitive function and I think that does reflect
back to evolution. From an evolutionary standpoint
if you're hunting and gathering it's a good
idea to have better visual acuity if you're
really hungry [laughs] and you need to find
food, among other things. But that's somewhat
speculation.
Hopefully that helps.
Any other questions?
>>female #2: I was wondering if you could
talk a little bit about fruit and why you
don't recommend it and also beans and why
you recommend it [inaudible] ?
>>Tim Ferriss: Beans. Um-hum. Are you Paleo?
>>female #2: Uh ?
>>Tim Ferriss: Paleo person?
>>female #2: [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: Semi.
So the question was why do I recommend against
consuming fruit, for the most part, and why
do I allow beans on The Slow Carb Diet?
So the first fruit. Fruit as it existed 100,
200 years ago is very different from fruit
as it exists today. It's selectively bred
and modified to have the highest level of
fructose or fruit sugar possible.
And fructose is problematic for fat loss specifically.
So if you're not trying to lose fat, I have
no particular problem with consuming fruit.
But if you wanna get the best results possible
from a fat loss program, fructose is converted
to glycerol phosphate which is then converted
to body fat very, very efficiently. It's like
there's no more efficient pathway you could
find just about; the same reason that high
fructose corn syrup will make you really,
really fat.
Another note: same reason agave nectar will
make you very, very fat. It's 90 percent concentrated
fructose.
So looking at, again from an evolutionary
standpoint, the nutrient necessity of fruit;
if you get it once a week; I have the one
day off, the cheat day or the binge day once
per week on The Slow Carb Diet. That's more
than enough to satisfy any sweet tooth requirement
as it relates to fruit.
If you absolutely have to have fruit; and
I'm experimenting with fruit again in very
moderate doses using primarily berries because
it does have a fascinating effect on blood
glucose. It flat lines your blood glucose.
So I do recommend fruit on your off day; having
it in the beginning of the day, such as grapefruit,
which also includes Neurogenin which is interesting
for extending the half life of caffeine.
I implanted a Dexcom SEVEN device in my side.
It's a continuous glucose monitor used by
Type I diabetics. And I implanted it in my
side to track my blood glucose 24/7 for about
three weeks.
And what I noticed is when you have this small
amount of fruit in the morning it allows you
to keep your blood sugar below, I think its
100 nanograms per deciliter, milligrams per
deciliter. It allows you to keep it below
this critical threshold for fat loss which
is pretty fascinating.
But, in general, I would say just stay away
from fruit, from what I've seen. And I haven't
seen any deleterious health effects from that
at all.
Beans; so beans if anyone here is a strict
Paleo eater, beans and legumes are a big no-no.
For that same reason, peanuts are a big no-no;
and cashews; I love cashews.
But if you prepare beans properly; so if you're
soaking them let's say overnight, I simply
haven't seen the digestive issues that one
would expect based on how strongly they are
avoided on the Paleo diet. I just haven't
seen the problem.
So I do recommend lentils and other legumes
and beans for the simple reason, among others,
that if people are only consuming leafy vegetables
or steamed vegetables and protein, they're
almost always hypocaloric. And then they get
irritable, they get headaches, and they quit.
So that would be the main reason.
And I'm convinced someday I'll either be proven
right or wrong, as I suppose is the case with
everything.
Lentils, there's some property in lentils
that is just, it's a force multiplier for
fat loss. I cannot figure out, I don't know
what it is. I have my speculations, but lentils
are amazing; taste pretty good too.
No problem.
>>male #3: So did you put lots of sort of
distillation of successful experiments, do
you have any stories about things that went
wrong, maybe in a spectacular nature?
>>Tim Ferriss: [laughs]
[laughter]
Oh yeah.
Somebody asked me recently, "You seem to always
land on your feet." And I was like, "Really?"
[laughter]
And two of my doctors were in the audience.
I was like, "You should ask [laughs] them
how often I land on my head. It's pretty bad."
Spectacular or dangerous fashion?
Yeah, so I had a PRP injection. So PRP is
fascinating; there's some really good researchers
here in the Bay Area. Allan Mishra in particular
is fantastic; he's at Stanford.
PRP stands for platelet rich plasma and this
is a way of getting around the illegality
of anabolics, as a side note.
What many athletes will do is they'll have
their blood taken out; they'll have a blood
draw performed; they'll put that whole blood
into a special centrifuge and spin it so it
separates out the plasma and white blood cells
and growth factors that are associated. And
then they re-inject or they inject that locally
into the site of injury. And it works spectacularly
well.
There are a number of cases of Super Bowl
athletes; eight weeks out; one of them tears
an Achilles tendon; now what? PRP. And then
they compete.
I've seen world class sprinters win gold medals
at the world championships something like
12 weeks after hamstring or Achilles tendon
tears; PRP.
I'm sure there are other things being used
as well.
But I had a number of PRP injections and most
of them worked very well and then there was
on botched injection.
When I say botched injection it should have
been injected laterally on the elbow and it
was injected really right at the point of
the elbow where the skin is the thickest.
Now the bad part about thick skin is there's
a lot of bacteria, there's always bacteria
in skin, but the thicker it is, the more bacteria
there is.
And they pushed through the bacteria and gave
me a MRSA infection which is a antibiotic
resistant staph infection. And within 48 hours
my elbow was the size of a football.
And I was talking to a friend of mine who's
a Harvard trained doctor; I was eating lunch.
And she goes, "Put down you lunch. Get in
a taxi. Go to the emergency room." And she
said go to this particular emergency 'cause
she's based around here.
And I had to have emergency surgery. I was
put on intravenous antibiotics and had to
have emergency surgery. Because that can not
only eat your joint it can kill you dead.
So I would say that was probably one of my
more
[laughter]
"Don't try this at home. Not recommended to
my readers," mistake. And I did put that in
the book because I don't people to get trigger
happy with injections and things like that.
They can be really serious.
[pause]
>>female #3: Tell us a little bit about your
feelings around the amount of sleep
>>Tim Ferris: Um.
>>female #3: that you get. I thought I heard
some comment around like two hours of sleep?
>>Tim Ferris: Um-hum.
>>female #3: [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: So sleep; my opinions on sleep.
My opinions on sleep depend on how many sessions
of sleep you get per day.
So most people in this room will be familiar
with what's called "monophasic sleep;" that's
just go to bed, wake up. You get one session
of sleep.
If you're doing that or speaking from a personal
basis, if I'm doing that, I like to get 9
to 10 hours of sleep. I sleep a lot.
If, on the other hand, you're doing what's
called polyphasic sleep, where you break it
up into multiple segments per day. And that
can be taken to an extreme in something called
Uberman, which is I believe two and a half
hours of total sleep per day which is comprised
of 20 minute naps. [laughs] Not terribly social
as you can imagine.
[laughter]
That can be sustained. And there's a lot of
debate about this; there are long articles
online about why it's impossible.
I can't divulge it yet, but I can say right
now I'm using along with a few other groups
some pretty sophisticated equipment to demonstrate
that it is possible. We're tracking people
using EEG's while they sleep on Uberman.
So it can be done. Should you do it? That's
a separate question.
For most people it's gonna be completely untenable
and unsustainable. But there are people like
Matt Mullenweg, usually called the lead developer
or one of the lead developers of WordPress.
And while he was working on WordPress he had
his most productive year of coding; probably
produced, I'm just speculating here, but 60%
of the WordPress code in one year and he was
following Uberman.
To most people if you feel like you have to
sleep two hours a day to get more done, I
would say let's look at the time management
[laughs] first before we start cutting you
back to two hours.
But those would be my feelings.
[pause]
>>female #4: I'm a runner and I like run in
the morning
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>female #4: but I don't want to eat breakfast
before running.
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>female #4: What do you recommend that I
eat protein right after [inaudible] ?
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>female #4: but [inaudible].
>>Tim Ferriss: So if you're going to; the
question was I'm a runner, I don't like to
eat before I run. What's the distance?
>>female #4: Like six miles a day.
>>Tim Ferriss: Six miles; alright.
What I would suggest, if possible, it depends
on why you're running. If you're training
from competition it's one answer; if you're
doing it for, let's say, general fitness and
fat loss it'd be another answer.
But I would say that if you're consuming a
very quickly digested protein like whey protein,
whey protein isolate, it shouldn't cause too
much stomach upset.
If you don't want to eat prior to your workout
then, and you're doing it for training, I
would suggest consuming either during the
run or after a carbohydrate supplement like
Vitargo S2, which is a waxy maize starch which
will help you to replenish your glycogen,
particularly if you're following a diet that's
Paleo or Slow Carb or something like that.
Otherwise, if you wanna get extra fat loss
out of it you could just have a double espresso
before you go running.
But the cold water will also help quite a
lot.
So if you're doing it for fat loss or body
composition or recomposition purposes, 500
milliliters of ice water will do wonders.
I kid you not. It's pretty astounding the
difference that it makes.
[pause]
>>male #3: So fat loss [inaudible] nice because
you can have dietary [unintellgible] intervention
as a result of [inaudible].
So I was wondering what your research turned
out regarding HDL, LDL [inaudible].
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #3: [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #3: [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: Um-hum.
>>male #3: [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: Whew! This is a big question.
[laughs]
Very important question.
The question, correct me if I get this incorrect.
With dietary interventions, or I should say
with body fat loss or muscular gain, it's
very easy to see the short term consequences
or outcomes.
With something like cardiovascular health
or disease it's quite a bit harder because
you can look at the short term effects which
could be quite divergent from the long term
effects.
And what's my opinion or what are my theories
on cardiovascular health?
So the first I would say is that cardiovascular
is a good word to use. Aerobic is usually
co-opted by people trying to sell you something.
So like aerobics versus aerobic are very different.
You actually get a fantastic aerobic if we're
looking at the pathways workout after resistance
training when you're body's trying to clear
lactate and so forth; it's actually a fantastic
[laughs] aerobic workout usually called "after
burn" so post-workout oxygen consumption things
like that.
As far as cardiovascular health goes, there's
no consensus. That's part of the problem.
And my position, at the moment, is that it
is important to look at the sub-fractions
of, let's say, LDL or HDL. Berkeley Heart
Labs, I believe, does a very comprehensive
fractionated analysis.
But as with any type of data gathering the
problem is, "Okay. Well that's fine, but now
what do I do."
And my suggestion to most people is if you're
getting your fat from good sources, meaning
if it's an animal product the animals are
eating the feed they were intended to eat.
Or coconut milk, let's say; but not all coconut
milk is good for you and you have to look
at your ingredient list.
If you're consuming high quality fats as long
as you're not spiking your insulin levels
at the same time by consuming lots of carbohydrates,
I think it has a minimal effect; minimal negative
effect, if any, on cardiovascular, meaning
arterial health or blood vessel health.
That's my position at the moment.
So I've been following this diet for the last
seven years. Not to say that because as of
an end of one it works for me, it'll work
for everybody.
But looking at the blood tests, again I'm
not a doctor, I don't play one on the Internet,
but having looked at a lot of blood tests
longitudinally, I think as long as you separate
the carbohydrates from the protein and fats,
for the most part, then you're fine.
That's been my experience thus far, but I'm
not a cardiologist.
>>male #4: This is kind of a follow up to
that question which is: are you aware of the
published research on successfully reversing
heart disease, reversing diabetes, and slowing
down the growth of prostate cancer?
And I ask because the dietary recommendations
are precisely the opposite of what you have
in your book which is the recommendation that
you increase whole grains and starches; increase
fruit and vegetable consumption; and probably
you both would agree on fats so.
>>Tim Ferriss: So I would say, I appreciate
that.
The first thing is you should be skeptical
about everything that I say. I don't want
anyone to take my word for anything. And I
would say look at the data.
So while we're talking about published research,
I would also say that not all published research
equal. And in many of the, I'm not gonna name
names 'cause there's no purpose to it, but
in many of the multi-variable tests that show
reversal of heart disease, they're also doing
Yoga, they're also doing therapy, they're
also doing exercise, and then they have a
diet with grains. And they say, "Well, told
ya. It was the diet with grains."
And I think that's bad science.
So they're not controlling their variable
sufficiently in most of the tests.
What I would say is if anyone's interested
in looking at this topic in depth, read what
Gary Taubes has written; meticulously researched;
Good Calories, Bad Calories or Why We Get
Fat: And What To Do About It, which is his
most recent book. If you want to look at the
role of carbohydrates in endocrine health
and also as it relates to disease states.
If you have the patience and concentration
for it, Good Calories, Bad Calories has probably
100 pages just on the role of carbohydrates
in cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
I have seen people, I know a mother in particular
who reversed Type I diabetes in two of her
children. And she did it by eliminating carbohydrates.
In every other attempt up to that point using
what most people label as complex carbohydrates,
it had precisely the opposite effect.
And most recently, I know another woman; one
of her children is in ketosis or potentially
ketoacidosis. I'm waiting to hear what the
doctor's verdict is. And complex carbs; [snaps
finger] diabetic coma, like that.
So I think that based on the data I've seen
at least, the safest bet is removing any type
of refined carbohydrates or carbohydrates
that have been introduced into industrial
agriculture in the last 10,000 years.
It's just my experience.
>>male #5: Yeah, I think we agree on refined
carbohydrates being bad.
But Good Calories, Bad Calories has a lot
of omission of key science. For example, it
doesn't address the fact that the entire nation
of China lives on primarily carbohydrates
and they have a much lower rate of heart disease
and diabetes than we have here.
He just doesn't deal with that in his book.
So if you omit key data?
>>Tim Ferriss: I don't think, I would say
that we should invite Gary and you can take
him up on it. Gary would be happy to debate.
But what I would say is that gluten and rice
are very different, number one.
Number two, if you look at the disease states
as recorded in China and the data gathering
is not very good in China. I'm very familiar
with The China Study, the monograph, the original
monograph not the book, which I think is largely
propaganda.
I think that we'll see a lot of changes in
China if they're not occurring already.
But, needless to say, I think it's an area
worth a lot of additional research, but just
based on everything that I've seen, that I've
measured directly and watched, omitting carbohydrates
is, and not all carbohydrates, but omitting
grains, starches; I have yet to see any negative
impact from that.
>>male #5: Yeah, thanks for the response.
>>Tim Ferriss: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for
the question.
[pause]
>>female #4: So the event description had
a bullet point that said something about 15
minute female orgasm?
>>Tim Ferris: [laughs]
[laughter]
>>female #4: [inaudible]
[laughter]
>>Tim Ferriss: I'll give you your $50 bill
later. Thank you for bringing that up. I thought
we might miss it.
[laughter]
Right. So, [laughs] 15 minute female orgasm.
[sighs] Where to begin with this?
[laughter]
So this chapter, it's actually two chapters,
were included at the request of female friends
and female readers.
The book was originally gonna be titled, Becoming
Superhuman and it was gonna focus on muscular
gain and fat loss and that was it.
And what happened was looking at limiters
of muscular hypertrophy pretty quickly you
have to look at testosterone.
So I was looking at testosterone; did a number
of experiments; tripled my testosterone; that
has a number of interesting positive sexual
side effects.
And so I was talking about this with a number
of my friends over dinner; two of them were
female and they're like, "What is this, a
dude's club? [laughs] Why aren't you gonna
write about anything that has to do with female
sexuality."
Okay.
So I looked into it and I was amazed at how
problematic sex is for a very high percentage
of women in terms of, how explicit can I get
here, pretty explicit?
In terms of
[laughter]
Let's say, let's just say what most people
would consider the involuntary contractions
that characterize vaginal orgasm through intercourse.
>>female in audience: How's it?
>>Tim Ferriss: Everybody okay?
[laughter]
Okay.
[laughter]
Very problematic. It has a lot to do with
the distance, well I'm not gonna even get
into it.
But
[laughter]
Anyway.
I guess I lost my composure there for a second.
[laughs; clears throat]
So let me give one, but where I'm going with
this is, sex is a very sensitive topic in
the U.S.
I was told by a number of morning shows in
the U.S., very popular morning shows that
have had me on as a guest before and were
very happy, "We'd love to have you on, but
we can't because you have sex in the subtitle."
And that, I think, has led to a lot of broken
relationships. Sex makes or breaks relationships;
makes or breaks marriages. Therefore, makes
or breaks families. I think it's a very important
topic.
Your choices, if you want to self-educate,
are usually I'm gonna go to some fairly strange
cult-like environment where it's like worshipping
the Goddess Noonie, which most people don't
want to do.
Or I can deal with this very nebulous sexual
advice that's based on a book, that's based
on a book, that's based on a book. There's
no testing.
So the 15 minute orgasm I set out to sacrifice
myself for science.
[laughter]
to identify what best practices, what techniques
could be used that would have the highest
success rate.
I'm not gonna go too far into this, but for
those interested, how can I do this?
[pause]
Let's say this is a clock face. Alright, so
this is a clock face. And that clock face
represents the clitoris if you're looking
at it from between the legs.
[laughter]
On, I would say, 95 plus percent of women
the most sensitive part is gonna be between
1:00 and 1:30. Okay?
Look on Twitter if you don't think this works.
[laughs]
It sounds like some hocus pocus nonsense and
I'll just leave you with that so.
Very important topic and I think that for
many people the sex and the sleep will have
the greatest impact on quality of life.
I'll answer follow up questions, but unprompted
I don't wanna go into all the [laughs] particulars.
>>female in audience: [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: Yep.
Oh, one more question? Okay.
>>female #5: So I'm trying to just look from
diet so do you have any advice for people
who are vegan versus [inaudible]
>>Tim Ferriss: No, I, okay.
So the question was can you follow The Slow
Carb Diet if you're a vegan.
The answer is yes.
So there are two appendices in the book called
The Meatless Machine I and II and I do profile
Mark who, Mark Bozeman, who is a vegan and
followed The Slow Carb Diet.
And you can move that direction; you will
most likely have to supplement with different
types of protein.
It's challenging and the reason it's challenging
is that you will very often end up including
things that I would prefer be avoided like
soy.
[pause]
I think soy, soy milk, isolated soy is extremely
risky as an endocrine disrupter. And if you
look at reproductive specialists at different
centers, there's one in Edinborough who's
name escapes me at the moment, but he said,
"Until I see data that refutes everything
I have seen I will not feed soy to my children,
specifically because of the effect on reproductive
health."
It can be done; it can be done. And I do have
readers who have done it successfully.
What I would say is take another look at the
Meatless Machine chapters in the appendices
and then also go to the blog post that catalyzed
this entire thing, which is just how to lose
20 pounds in 30 days without exercise [chuckles]
on my blog.
There are 4,000 comments or 5,000 comments
so just search "vegan" and I think you'll
probably find a number of suggestions there
as well.
>>female #5: Thank you.
>>Tim Ferriss: You're welcome.
It's made a lot easier if you do make the
allowance to have let's say whey protein or
cottage cheese or eggs, let's just say, with
yokes. It makes a big different; it's a lot
easier.
But if you if you're not willing to do that,
which is a personal decision, I would just
say to look at the comments as well.
[pause]
Okay, I think that's it guys. I'll hang out
for a little bit longer if people have questions.
Thank you for coming.
[applause]
