More Notes on Four Hour Body

I checked out The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss again to refresh a few points. Here are a few more notes from the book. (I previously reviewed it here.)

You can lose weight by exposing yourself to cold. An engineer looked at swimmers, and calculated they could not expend enough energy swimming to account for their physiques. He realized that because they were in water their bodies were expending energy to keep warm. Apparently the water is usually around 78 degrees F. So now this guy drinks cold water first thing in the morning, takes cold showers, and dresses more lightly in the wintertime. I try to take cool showers. I have never been into hot showers. So I start the water on warm, and every few seconds turn the water down a little bit. Sometimes I get it pretty cold. But I cannot start cold.

He also references gut bacteria, and their effect on physique. You can control your gut bacteria based on what you eat. Pickles and sauerkraut are good. Kimchi is the best, but if you are not Korean be careful. I had a Korean roommate in college. If you are not careful, everything will smell like kimchi. You can find more about it here and here.

The two strains of bacteria are bacteroidetes  and firmicutes. Lean people have more bacteroidetes than firmicutes, and for obese people it is the opposite. (I would guess that firm people would have more of the bacteria with the word “firm” in it.)

Splenda is bad. Probiotics and prebiotics are good to eat, as are kefir, cheese, kimchi and sauerkraut.

I try to get pickles from SprawlMart, but usually I forget.

Fun fact: A human body contains more bacteria cells than human cells.

Image from the Four Hour Body website