Interview with Tim Ferriss: Better Body + Better Mindset = Better Business

 

For this post, I go back to my audio vault for a podversation with Tim Ferriss.  I dig super-deep into the experiment called life that Tim has become famous for.  I grilled Tim on how a better body can actually lead to a better business.

I especially love Tim’s take on what 1 thing I should do to stay fit, focused and successful.  You just might be surprised by his answer.  

Here’s What to Expect in This Episode

If life was a science experiment, and it is according to Tim Ferriss, here’s what we’d be testing for:

• What made Tim the poster child of lifestyle design
• What little trick can improve your sleep every night?
• What’s Tim’s best new advice from 4 Hour Workweek?
• Why should you spend less time at work?
• What’s the key difference between busyness and productivity?
• What’s the difference between passive and active skepticism?
• How did Evernote CEO lose 30 pounds with this one tip?
• What does Tim Ferriss eat on his cheat day?
• For time-crunched business owners, what’s the easiest way to stay fit and energized?

 

Selected Links from the Episode

• Tim Ferriss
• FourHourBlog.com
• 4 Hour Workweek Book
• 4 Hour Body Book
• Slow Carb Diet

 

Here's the transcript.

(You can listen to the episode here. If you like what you read, here’s how you can leave a 5-Star Review. )

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Bill Baren: All right. So, the recording is going. So, welcome Tim. I’m so glad that you’re here and I'm excited to go deep into your work. 

 Tim Ferriss: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you for having me. 

 Bill Baren: Awesome. So, after writing "The 4-Hour Workweek" and really jumpstarting the outsourcing movement for the small business owner and becoming basically kind of like, the poster child of lifestyle design, why "The 4-Hour Body" next? And what really inspires you to go in this direction and write this new book, "The 4-Hour Body?" 

 Tim Ferriss: There were a few things that [capitalized 00:00:41.1] the book. The first was an interest in physical tracking that predated all of the time management by at least 10 years. So, this is actually referring to optimization of the human body is a more significant obsession and interest of mind than the time management, that's number one. Number two was, I saw it was very clear that I could use the same approaches to deconstruction throughout the testing, 80-20 principles for the "The 4-Hour Workweek" to find some very uncommon solutions to longstanding problems with the physical body and that was partially instigated by trying out my dad who had had a lot of difficulty losing weight and ended up helping him at age 65 lose 90 pounds of fat and gain 20 to 30 pounds of muscles and that came as all of the experimentation down with topside, Ph.D.’s., M.D.'s, Olympic coaches, professional athletes, et cetera and I didn't have access to those people until after "The 4-Hour Workweek." So, I think that the modern fears of mankind are getting fat and too much emails and I’ve dealt with emails with the first book, so thought it was time to deal with getting fat. 

 Bill Baren: Getting fat and too much email, we could just get down to the brass tacks, that's it. It's no longer public speaking, it's getting fat and too much email.   

 Tim Ferriss: Exactly. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. So, what is the 4-hour body?   

 Tim Ferriss: The 4-hour body is a minimalist guide to rapid body change. And the basic tenet of the book, "The Basic Assumption" is there is a minimum effective dose for any change that you want to produce and that simply means that if you’re trying to gain, let's say, muscular mass is one example, what is the exact stimulus you need to reach your objective of 10 pounds of muscle or 20 pounds of muscle? And it's surprisingly little, it's just your fat loss as well, but I was able to gain 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days and I did two 30-minute workouts per week. And they were very specific workouts, but that meant four hours of total gym time for the entire 28-day experiment. And I also reduced my cholesterol from 222 to 147 and lost three pounds of fat. So, gained 34 pounds of muscle and dramatically decreased my body’s fat percent, at the same time with four hours of total stimulus, so to speak and that's also true fat loss and with ultra endurance and with sleep and with sex and all these various topics that we explored. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. So, let's talk about this minimum dose. I know that homeopathy has very similar sort of philosophy to figure out the smallest dose to get you the best results. So, can you give us some real examples of that, from the book. 

 Tim Ferriss: Sure. So, one very simple change that produces dramatic results is eating 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. And the timing is important, the amount is important. And we replicated this with many, many people. My dad went from five pounds of fat loss per month on average to 18.75 pounds of fat loss after making this one change. That was the one thing that he made, 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. For improving quality of sleep or at least the feeling you have of restfulness when you wake up, a very simple tweak would be having two tablespoons of almond butter before you go to bed, because many of the people who feel fatigued in the morning are fatigued not because they didn't sleep enough, but because they have low blood sugar. And so, that will be another lateral approach to solving common problem that we’ve seen effective across dozens and hundreds of people who have tested it. 

 Bill Baren: Yes, yes. It's interesting. I like both of those examples. And I'm glad you use those, because those are the two that I've actually done for myself over the last three weeks. And I know that the protein ... I know that the days where I don't do, the 30 grams of protein in the morning. My desire for food at night goes through the roof. But that's what I've noticed from myself. And then the other one with the teaspoons of butter, what I've been doing is I've also been tracking my sleep for a while using the Zeo. 

 Tim Ferriss: Yes. 

 Bill Baren: And I’ve notice that the amount of ... the number of times I wake up, when I do the almond butter or tahini or something that has a lot of protein, the number of times that I wake up in the night decreases with that extra protein, a little bit before going to sleep. 

 Tim Ferriss: Yes. Absolutely. It's very tractable. It doesn't need to be mysterious. And there are small changes that has very disproportionately big impact. And that's the focus of "The 4-Hour Body" is finding the smallest changes that produces results. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. So, I want to talk about it from a little bit of a different context. So, personally I believe, it's not how much time you spend doing something, it's how engaged you are in a particular activity that helps us create results we want. And so, having enough energy in our life and for our businesses, because every one that's listening here, the business owner is a vital piece of the puzzle. So, how does "The 4-Hour Body" help you to have a lot more energy for the most important things in our lives? 

 Tim Ferriss: I  think the easiest answer is that, to improve mental performance or energy reserves, the fact this path is improving physical performance. And that's why there's an anecdote in the very beginning of the book about Richard Branson and he was asked by a friend of mine on Necker Island, how do you become more productive? And his answer was, "Work Out." He said, "By working out, I get additional three to four hours of productive work done per day." And if you look at a book called, "SPARK" which is written by a Harvard MD, that looks very closely at the actual science, the data, that proofs that shows how you easy to [favor 00:07:10.14] academic performance using physical education among other things and heart rate monitors and so forth. So, I think the body is really the force multiplier here. 

 Bill Baren: Got it. Yes. Absolutely. And so, we often talk about in business what is known as the "KLT Factor," which is all about developing the sense that someone knows, likes and trust you. And you have certainly been able to create that "KLT Factor" with your books and with your blogs. So, how is the "The 4-Hour Body" and being fit and feeling good in your own skin help with likability and trust ability factors? I know you didn’t necessarily address this in the book but I imagine you have a pretty interesting take on it. 

 Tim Ferriss: You mean that for me personally or for someone who takes care of their physical body? You mean, how does it affect "KLT" for people who actually change their physical appearance? 

 Bill Baren: Yes, yes. Just feeling good and feeling fit and feeling good in your skin and your own body. How does that affect the perception other people have of you and thus solidify more of that "KLT Factor"? 

 Tim Ferriss: I think that it affects your self-confidence certainly and that will affect how you interact with everyone else, number one. I think that when you’re in better shape, people also make assumptions about you being organized and more effective in other areas of your life. Likewise, say conversely, if you’re out of shape, you will make assumptions that you are, let's say, disorganized or impulsive in other areas of your life. And my dad as an example, when he lost his tremendous amount of weight, he said he was, from a social stand point, "No longer invisible." People wanted to ask his advice. People listen to him more readily and it was a direct byproduct of him changing his physical appearance. So, I do think that it has tremendous impact on how other people relate to us, definitely. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. And including what do you think about the "trustability" as well? 

 Tim Ferriss: I think it will be increased, because the people have seen me to be more organized, more reliable for yourself then they would naturally, I think, have seen that extents to other people including themselves. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. Yes. Great. Thank you. So, one of my favorite concepts from the book and just from you in general is living your life as an experiment. So, I love this concept and after reading the book, I was really inspired to live my life as an experiment again, I’ve forgotten that that's what it's about. So, what does self-experimentation really mean to you? And what do you see as the true value of doing it? 

 Tim Ferriss: The true value of self-experimentation is learning to enjoy the process of discovery and part of that is developing a tolerance, a few dead-ends or things that failed, albeit temporarily. So, you can be more effective and expend your sphere of comfortable actions so that you can Zig with other people's Zag. I think it helps inoculate you against "sheep-like" behavior. So, if everyone is following a certain career path, if everyone's following a certain fitness model, if you treat your life, your body, your business as an ongoing experiment, it gives you permission to try the things that are ought to be in path. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. And I suspect that it also gives you some permission to fail, because it's just an experiment. 

 Tim Ferriss: Right. 

 Bill Baren: And then a big part of self-experimentation as I see it and as you mentioned is really the tracking part of it because you can't really experiment unless you are able to track the results and I know there's a great story in the book about a guy, if you can remind us about a guy who … the only thing that he changed was just tracking things and he got results just from the sheer value of that. Can you talk about tracking and maybe that story as well?   

 Tim Ferriss: Sure, Phil Libin, he's the CEO of Evernote which is one of the most popular and successful startups out there in Silicon Valley right now. And he simply weighed himself every morning and tracked it on a graph and he identified a line in his Excel graph that would be his ideal weight loss path. I think it was 230 to 200. And he had no diet, he had no exercise plan and he made a conservative effort not to change any of his behavior but he wanted to that awareness, just by weighing himself every day and looking at the graph will affected his subconscious positions, it was thousands of tiny decisions throughout the day, over weeks and months and it did. He lost his weight. 

 Bill Baren: And so, what do you recommend that people track? Just anything that we want to change? If we track it, do you think we’re going to get results, because of the kind of like you said, the subconscious decisions that we make on a daily basis, on a moment to moment basis. 

 Tim Ferriss: I think what we track depends on what our goals are, but in general, if you’re looking to let's say, focus on fat loss, I would say that you should track body fat percentage and if you, for whatever reason can't get accurate body fat testing done which is something like bud pod, B-U-D-P-U-D.com you can find locators there. If you can't do something like that, then simply using tape measure, measurements, let's say mid upper arm, abdomen, at widest, hips at widest and then mid thigh. Tracking your inch measurements, so that you can actually track fat loss, because if you’re gaining muscle at the same time which you generated on a diet with a "Slow-Carb Diet," which I recommend. The scale may not change, but your appearance and the inches will change. The inches will come off before the pounds do. And it's extremely critical that you track the right thing, so you don't perceive something as stagnant where you’re actually making a tremendous amount of progress. I think that's critical. So, that would be a starting point for a fat loss measurement, certainly. I also recommend people get blood testing done every three or six months. And one particular lab that's called "Spectra Cell" S-P-E-C-T-R-A-C-E-L-L.com allegedly used by Lance Armstrong and others and a lot of lead athletes use it to identify nutrient deficiencies. And I identified a selenium deficiency and as soon as I fixed that, I tripled my testosterone and doubled my sperm count. There were a few other changes I made but a small deficiency can cause big problems and I was not aware of this very significant but isolated formula deficiency. And I think that you need to start with the blood testing at some point. 

 Bill Baren: So, as you were talking about this, because this is obviously a deficiency that you had in your own system, but what drives you to want to know such intimate details about so many different things? Because you have such thirst of, I don't know, wanting to know these little things. What is this?  

 Tim Ferriss: I think it was partially from just my upbringing, my parents, my mom in particular made a point of exposing my brother and I to different environments. And whether that was an aquarium or the beach or a pond in the woods, it didn’t make much of a difference but she wanted us to become curious, to enjoy the process of learning. And for me, constantly learning is a very high priority and particularly, when it relates to areas that are confusing and problematic for many people. So, if I can … if I'm willing to do the testing and to determine that indeed if you do something like Spectra Cell, it makes sense to spend, let's say, $100 or $200 on that type of testing. If you’re spending that much on food in a given week or month, it gives me great for application to learn that for myself and then share it with other people. 

 Bill Baren: I got it, yes. So, I want to go wider with the book. So for myself, I've really broken down the main areas of the book into these four categories. This is for man and it's "The 4-Hour Mindset," it's the diet, it's the exercise and then its drugs and supplementation as you put them in the same category. So, I want to talk a little bit about each. So, what do you see as the most important mindset to cultivating and creating the "The 4-Hour Body?" 

 Tim Ferriss: the most important thing that is skepticism, I think and questioning the common knowledge that is repeated so often that people believe it's true. So, whether that you can't lose more than two pounds of fat per week or high cholesterol is bad for you or any number of things like that. You could ask, why? And where's your data? What is your evidence? When people give you these types of recommendations, they should be able to support them.  

 Bill Baren: Yes. And this is across the board in every area in your life, because in business, it's the same way. It's kind of like, what's the popular conventional thinking and just because it is so, that doesn't mean that it is the most effective thinking. 

 Tim Ferriss:  Right. So, if someone says to you, you can't give things away for free, because then people won’t value your content or your tool or your product, you should ask, "Really?" Number one; where, what's your evidence to support that? Number two; are there any exceptions? And of course, there's exceptions everywhere. We violate that and print millions of dollars per month. And I think that it’s as important in business as it is in physical change but the point of the skepticism is to identify the best course of action. It’s not to sit back on a couch or on the sideline off of a playing field and criticize the people who are actually trying the things to get things done and tripping as they do it. 

 Bill Baren: Right. So, as opposed to passive skepticism, active skepticism is when are questioning everything and then combining that with experimentation that allows you to actually, for yourself, see how it works in your body, in your business, in your life, right? 

 Tim Ferriss: Exactly. 

 Bill Baren: All right. So, let's talk the diet piece. So, I know how important what we put in our body is as far as energy and also in creating the body that we want. Then I know personally, in the last three months, I've lost 25 pounds since I've gotten on the "Slow-Carb Diet." And more importantly, I don't even have any cravings for food outside of it. So, can you speak to what a "Slow-Carb Diet" is and why it works and why you recommend it?     

 Tim Ferriss: So, the "Slow-Carb Diet" was the last man standing of all the diets that we’ve tested. It had the best combination of effectiveness and convenience so, people actually follow the diet. It is important because you can follow something like the cyclical ketogenic diet which is very sophisticated, works very well, but most people will quit it after two weeks whereas the "Slow-Carb Diet," 58% of the people we tracked said that it was the first time they'd ever been able to follow the diet. So, "Slow-Carb Diet" is very simple, you follow the rules six days a week. And then you have one off day. So, I'll start with the off day. Get one day a week, eat all your comfort food, eat whatever you want, you don’t have to count calories, you could eat 5,000 of calories of Twix bars which I did on Halloween myself. I like Twix bars and not too many trick or treaters came by. So, you have one day off a week to go nuts, do whatever you want. So, that's number one. Number two is, in the other six days a week, you avoid white foods because that usually includes all bread, all grains. Anything that could be white like rice, brown rice is out. Whole grain bread out. Number two, you don’t drink calories. So no milk, no fruit juice, stick no unsweetened tea, green tea, water, et cetera. Then you will focus your meals on protein, some type of vegetables and then a legume or bean like black beans, tofu beans, lentils, my particular favorite and so you find that your breakfast will tend to be more of a lunch-type meal or you could use leftovers from dinner the night before or you can use a protein shake, very easily as well. And that's about it, those are the rules roughly. And they’re small tweaks here and there. If you want to avoid Gatorade six days a week as well, very important, but for the most part, those are the rules. And you can go to a French restaurant and enjoy your entire meal. You can go to a Thai restaurant, do the same thing. Mexican is very easy. So, there are people who use chipotle or [Inaudible 00:21:02.29] one of those fast food style Mexican restaurants without the tortillas to work in this "Slow-Carb Diet" and that's the basic premise and I think it works, because it produces, it helps you cause a cascade of fat burning hormones, number one. It illuminates cravings, exterminate the other foods, because it eliminates or minimizes the sharp spikes and drops in blood sugar. And it's easy to follow, most people have their default meals. It's easy to follow and I think that's totally the reason it has been so successful for thousands of people over the last few years. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And so, I want to talk a little bit about the "cheat day" and I love that idea. And I’ve been cheating once a week for the last three weeks. And it's been amazing and I'm still losing fat every week despite the fact that I eat everything and anything I want, one day a week. So, what are the benefits of this "cheat day" and I love for you to talk about on two levels, the psychological, as well as the physical? 

 Tim Ferriss: So, the first is that people are going to break their diets whether they plan it or not and by planning it once a week, number one, there's something to look forward to you. Number two, you don't view it as an unsustainable diet that keeps you from your favorite foods forever. And number three, it's simply more enjoyable, it allows you to be social. So, if you’re travelling or you can plan it for the holidays, I plan my cheat day to land on Christmas, of course, Thanksgiving, et cetera. And it makes it infinitely more compliant. It just makes it easier, psychologically. You don't feel like you're consistently denying yourself your favorite things at all. Secondly, technically, it does a number of things like improve thyroids conversion from T4 to T3. And thyroid T3 specifically is usually associated with fat burning and thermogenesis, among other things. So, it also improves your portfolio formulas, so that you can continue fat loss for longer period of time without plateauing. 

 Bill Baren: Got it. And, because I know what happened for me the first time that I did the cheat day. It was a really interesting experience, because I didn't have any cravings outside of the "Slow-Carb Diet" already, so, when I planned the cheat day, it was actually difficult to cheat. 

 Tim Ferriss: Yes. It is very, very common. And what you can do also on your cheat day, it doesn't mean that you have to eat crap food, although I certainly enjoy quite a few crap foods, croissants come to mind, but you don’t have to eat all crap. You can also simply load up on higher calories. So, you can just eat more food and you can include a few, some healthier grains like [Inaudible 00:24:09.9] for example. So, you just want to do, effectively carbo-load with things like [Inaudible 00:24:14.0] rice or preferably things like the yam or the sweet potatoes, if you wanted to expand your repertoire of food just a bit and eat more calories, that would also achieve … would achieve the same effect. So, it doesn’t have to be chocolate and sugar. 

 Bill Baren: Right. Right. Yes. Exactly. So, and as far as exercise, so, I know there's an incredible body of knowledge about exercise in your book. So, what would be the simplest thing that you say ... what would be the smallest possible dose using your own language that would give us great results?   

 Tim Ferriss: I would say wake up first thing in the morning and drink 500 milliliters, that’s 2/3 of a bottle of wine in volume, drink 500 milliliters of very cold water. And then go for a very brisk 15 minute walk. And do that 3 times a week. Let’s just say Monday, Wednesday and Friday before breakfast. So, you wake up and pretty much immediately drink your water. Go out to your walk, come straight back, eat your protein and that should start your day. 

 Bill Baren: Wow. Thank you. I was surprised by your answer. I was ... the kettle bells become such a huge hit because of your book. 

 Tim Ferriss: That will do the other recommendation. People want to add one more thing, it would be one long set of kettle bells swings three times a week, two or three times a week. That would be the second recommendation. 

 Bill Baren: Got it. Got it. And by the way, I recommend every one create their makeshift kettle bells, because I did that three weeks ago, it took almost no time to put together but I do have to say, because of your recommendation to get weights at Goodwill and places like that, all the Goodwills are out of all the weights. So people might actually [Crosstalk 00:26:25.18]. 

 Tim Ferriss: Yes, it's a good problem. 

 Bill Baren: It's a good problem, it's a good problem to have. So, and as far as, so we've talked about the three of the four categories that I’ve talked about, the mindset, the diet, the exercise so let's talk about the supplementation. So, what would again, if I was to do one thing as far as supplementation, what would it be? 

 Tim Ferriss: First thing in the mornings, I know I'm repeating myself, there are other supplements you can take, but you could use for example the [Pag 00:27:01.24] stack for fat loss, the [Inaudible 00:27:03.01] acid, green tea and garlic. I would say protein. Most people will not follow that advice and they will look for a pill where in fact, the [inaudible 00:27:15.8] fat loss, buying unflavored whey protein and some type of shake without sugar added that you can take first thing in the morning, will be the best investment capital. 

 Bill Baren: Or eggs as well, right?  

 Tim Ferriss: Right.   

 Bill Baren: Yes, so, in closing. The people that are listening to this call are business owners. 

 Tim Ferriss: Right.

Bill Baren: And so what advice would you have for a business owner who is wanting to incorporate "The 4-Hour Body" principles into their life? 

 Tim Ferriss: What I would say is, view the book, there’s a buffet of options as a "Choose Your Adventure" guide and enjoy it and whatever strikes your fancies is what you focus on. But what I would say is that it’s very important to have at least one performance goal in addition to your body composition goal. So, changing how you look is fine, but you should also track how you perform and that will help to diversify your identity outside of your business. And what I mean by this is many business owners and start-up founders become completely dependent for their self-worth on the performance of their business and there are things outside of your control. So, if it’s a good day to your office and you feel good about yourself, bad day at the office, you feel bad about yourself, you get depressed. You need to have another identity. You need to have another objective that allows you to hedge to that. And I think it's like an insurance policy. So for me, putting someone in the gym or in a swimming pool, on a track and giving them a goal that they can track, allows you to even if everything goes wrong to your business, have a good week. You add another 10 pounds in your bed lift, you cut 10 seconds off your mile run, you can still have a good week and I think that even for sheer sustainability of business performance, it makes a lot of sense to have at least one physical performance goal in addition to any type of appearance goal. 

 Bill Baren: Yes. Thank you. So, we’re definitely going to be sending out people links to both of your books. And what … how does someone enter your world? Is there newsletter that we can subscribe to? Is there a report that we can get? 

 Tim Ferriss: The best way to enter my world is simply to go to my blog which is where I've really dealt the following that I have. We’re on Top 19 Blogs in The World to bookmark now according to Inc. magazine. And that’s just fourhourblog, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com. And I have some very, very smart readers who post on the blog as well. And about 300 articles of different types and they’re all organized by categories filled with languages. If you want to put this on the body, if you want to automate your business, they’re all organized by categories, but I would say going to the blog is the best way to get exposure for what I'm going to do. 

 Bill Baren: All right. Well, thank you. This has been a wonderful. I know that you’re a wealth of knowledge and information. And if anybody ever has an opportunity to hear Tim speak in person, it is absolutely a treat. So, thank you Tim. I really appreciate you being here. 

 Tim Ferriss: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Have a nice day. 

 Bill Baren: You too, bye.