I was making dinner the other night when it finally hit me, I knew EXACTLY what the difference was between eating healthy and the Tim Ferriss 4 Hour Body diet. However, before I let you in on that little secret, I need to fill you in on a bit of background.
My amazingly super awesome fiancé and I moved in together in January, right around the time when I was finishing up my first experiment with the 4 hour body diet, and we’ve been making an effort to cook more meals at home, something we’ve found to be fun and healthy. Back then, one of my favorite meals to make was a a few shredded pieces of chicken breast, tossed in a pan with a few pieces of chicken sausage and then stir fried with cajun seasoning. I would then add a bit of fresh greens and maybe some sliced up tomatoes and serve it up hot from the pan! Yummy!
Now, fast forward a few weeks and I’m now in the middle of my healthy eating experiment. We’re making a meal for ourselves and decided to try out Cajun jambalaya. So we start out pretty much the same way as that last meal a few weeks ago. I shred some chicken pieces, cut up a sausage or two and make a salad, but here’s where things change. Rather than stop there, we also opened up a package of Jambalaya rice. It seemed pretty innocent, it’s just small package of rice and seasoning with a relatively low number of total calories. I really paid no attention to it at the time, but later, when I thought about that meal it occurred to me that this little package of rice is the entire difference between healthy eating and the 4 hour body diet.
What A Difference A Grain Of Rice Makes…
Without that rice, our meal was a total of around 900 calories of protein and fresh veggies. I usually eat slightly more than my fiance, so I end up with 500 and she ends up with 400. We spend our meal chatting and eating relatively slowly. At the end, we’re full without being overly full and stay that way for the few hours before bed.
With that rice, our meal was a total of around 1600 calories of protein, carbs and fresh veggies. I usually eat slightly more than my fiance, so end up with 900 and she ends up with 700. We spend our meal chatting and eating relatively slowly. At the end, we’re full without being overly full and stay that way for the few hours before bed.
Almost the same, aren’t they? Except in the rice version we’re eating more than 50% more calories. And that’s the difference right there. The strict restrictions of the 4 Hour Body diet had us enjoying a full meal with far fewer calories. The looser restrictions of healthy eating caused us to add 60% more calories for very little extra enjoyment. Was the rice good? Sure, but the meal was fine without it. We would have had a wonderful time even without that rice and we would have been far healthier.
To me, that is the perfect summary of this entire experiment. Sure, I’m eating healthy and slowly losing weight, but I could be losing it faster and reach a lower equilibrium weight by sacrificing a few things (like that rice) that I wouldn’t really care about. There’s no magic here, no amazing digestive trick that causes you to burn more calories, just a very well thought out set of eating rules that allow you to eat well while minimizing calories intake.
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Still losing weight, even with the rice. Total of 3lbs lost so far compared to about 5lbs at this same point with the 4 Hour Body diet.
