Tim Ferriss: Avoid This Mistake For Fat-Loss (#30)

A common error on Ferriss' "Slow Carb Diet"

Jan 20, 2024

Tim Ferriss is our first repeat guest on OGT.

In Tim’s first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, Ferriss talks about the importance of big goals and why “It is easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000.”

But, this being Diet January, I had to bring Tim back for a think related to his second book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman.

In the 4HB, Tim reveals his famous, “Slow Carb1 Diet”:

By April 6, 2007, as an example, I had cut from nearly 180 pounds to 165 pounds in six weeks, while adding about 10 pounds of muscle, which means I lost approximately 25 pounds of fat. The changes aren’t subtle. The diet that I’ll introduce in this chapter—the Slow-Carb Diet—is the only diet besides the rather extreme Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD) that has produced veins across my abdomen, which is the last place I lose fat.

What’s the diet? Basically meat, beans, “healthy fat,” and vegetables. It’s the Paleo diet plus beans, minus fruit.

Mix and match from the following list, constructing each meal with one pick from each of the three groups. I’ve starred the choices that produce the fastest fat-loss for me:

Proteins *Egg whites with 1–2 whole eggs for flavor (or, if organic, 2–5 whole eggs, including yolks) *Chicken breast or thigh *Beef (preferably grass-fed) *Fish Pork
Legumes *Lentils (also called “dal” or “daal”) *Black beans Pinto beans Red beans Soybeans
Vegetables *Spinach *Mixed vegetables (including broccoli, cauliflower, or any other cruciferous vegetables) *Sauerkraut, kimchee (full explanation of these later in “Damage Control”) Asparagus Peas Broccoli Green beans

Eat those same foods everyday and follow Tim’s five, simple diet rules.

Avoid “white” carbohydrates (or anything that can be white).
Eat the same few meals over and over again.
Don’t drink calories.
Don’t eat fruit.
Take one day off per week and go nuts.

But though it can certainly be a viable diet, this OGT is not about the diet itself. All diets basically work for weight loss.2

Tim’s great ideas come not from the diet itself, but its implementation. One of the best is putting a name to a mistake that almost everyone makes when dieting.

Avoid it, and save yourself tons of wasted calories.

Beware: “Domino Foods”

There are certain foods that, while technically fine to eat on the diet, are prone to portion abuse. I call these “domino foods,” as eating one portion often creates a domino effect of oversnacking.

Domino Foods, ones that are simultaneously “healthy” but, like Homer’s Sirens’ song, so good that you cannot avoid their allure. For me, its peanut butter. For others, it’s hummus or guac or whole wheat pasta.

For Tim, it’s almonds:

My fat-loss has plateaued three times due to almonds, which are easy to consume by the handful and simple to excuse as nutritious. Unfortunately, they also contain 824 calories per cup, 146 calories more than a Whopper from Burger King (678 kilocalories). A few almonds is just fine (5–10), but no one eats just a few almonds.

For the purposes of dieting, Tim equates a Domino Food to junk food.

Not because it’s as “unhealthy” as loaded potato skins or tater tots, but because it’s benefit is outweighed by it’s susceptibility to nonstop consumption. It simply too taxing on willpower to be worth it:

Think you’ll just have one cookie or a couple of potato chips? Not if there’s a bag of either in the kitchen. Self-discipline is overrated and undependable. Don’t eat anything that requires portion control.
Get domino foods out of the house and out of reach.

The OGT

“Now pay attention to what I am about to tell you,” the sorceress, Circe, says to Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. With a warning that looks an awful lot like Domino Foods, she continues:

First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song… Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men's ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope's ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster.

I disagree with a lot what Ferriss says in the 4HB.3

His most compelling ideas aren’t about what to eat, but how to get yourself to eat it.

The concept of Domino Foods is one of these great ideas. For like the Siren’s song, they too will warble you to death with the sweetness of their song.

Ferriss advises the best defense: abstinence. I agree, if you can get these out of the house, do so immediately. But what if you live with someone who really likes peanut butter and pasta and hummus and cashews?

Follow Circe’s advice to Odysseus: stuff your ears with wax and chain yourself to the mast. Practically, that means using strategies, rules, tricks to keep yourself away from those foods.

But more on those in future OGTs.

For now, better grab a chain and find yourself a good mast.

Pair Ferriss’ advice with Penn Jillette’s strategy to keep weight off once you’ve lost it and Professor Kelly McGonical’s advice for spotting weaknesses like Domino Foods.

Then revisit author Haruki Murakami on the surprising way to quickly quit a lifelong habit and Dr. Greger on the science of weight-loss.

One Good Think

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