I think Tim's slow-carb diet is excellent for people who eat SAD. Apart from beans and a cheat day, it's a lot like paleo. If you're happily living the paleo lifestyle, I think it's probably a step in the wrong direction.

I tried it out for a month. For beans, I only ate lentils and black beans that I soaked overnight and prepared myself. I didn't notice any significant reaction to them. The cheat days did me in though. It would take my body four to five days to recover, even when I didn't consume any gluten. I'm quite content going back to paleo.

In defense of 4HB, I did enjoy reading it and there are lots of random non-food related things that I've started utilizing.

First time poster and fan of Tim Ferriss. I don't do the slow carb diet (I eat paleo). But I wanted to point out that he considers the beans optional for someone who knows how to eat enough calories to replace the carbs they're removing.

He didn't mention it in the book, but he's mentioned it in interviews. He doesn't want people to get hungry, think the diet doesn't work, and quit.

I stopped the diet because I felt terrible on cheat days. And I prefer eating sweet potatoes through the week, rather than only on cheat day. But I did lose weight. I think it would work well as a transition from SAD, and the results would make people start thinking about their food. I wouldn't be surprised if many people eventually find out about paleo as a result and transition.

p.s. I somehow only found out about this site a week ago, despite reading marks daily apple and robb wolf for 8 months. I've been here for the past week, and finally decided o post since I actually have something to add on this topic. I've only been full paleo for about a month, I still feel like a newbie.

I found 4HB a good transition to paleo. I went from being vegetarian, though, which might make a difference. I didn't lose any weight, and I did follow the program. I think it's entirely possible that I've really mucked up my metabolism with such a high carb diet for so long (30-ish years). I did start feeling better on 4HB. I feel even better on paleo. I'm also beginning to have some weight loss (I'm obese, middle aged, female - so any weight loss is pretty amazing).

There were other things in the 4HB book that I found interesting. The book also led me to look at Ferris' sources, which have been really interesting. Based on that, I can't say the book is a total waste of money for a lay person with little or no exposure to the information provided. If you are considering purchasing the book, you might want to thumb through and see if there's something that interests you beyond the dietary/weight loss information.

The book is about a lot of things. Nutrition is only a small part of it and among the nutrition advice, Ferriss has a lot of varying advice (since he consults a 100+ experts). For instance, he has a section on how to do vegetarianism in the appendix and then, in a section on raising your testosterone, he talks about eating practically nothing but red meat and nuts for a month.

What I found hilarious is that, during the section on endurance, the main expert consulted is Brian MacKenzie ... who founded CrossFit Endurance.... which of course recommends paleo as your fuel source. Keep in mind, we're talking in the context of actually being competitive at ultra endurance events. And Ferriss is totally on board. He says in a FAQ to eat paleo for endurance. In another chapter, he explicitly states that many of our health issues are caused by behaviors different from our stone age ancestors.

I think he steers away from a flat out recommendation of paleo overall because he's a clever marketer. He seriously likes naming things like the "slow carb" diet. Once he comes up with a new name and a slightly different approach (how many other diets are pushing beans/lentils so hard?), he can easily say he's invented it.

4HB has nothing against paleo. If anything, I think it is just saying that different diets can be used for different purposes, the corollary on that being don't trust anybody without seeing the results for yourself.

I have had success on the 4HB, but I only use canned beans and I don't always have a bunch of beans with every meal. Some meals, I won't have beans and just eat strict Paleo. The cheat day wasn't really all that for me. I just added some bread and cheese that day, but I didn't have a food orgy. I have experimented with different canned beans. That's my two cents. Hope it helps.

I saw the book at the store yesterday and was thinking about picking it up since I've heard so much about it lately. (just for info/curiosity, not because i was going to actually try it.) Thank you for your rant, now i don't have to waste my time. Beans at every meal? Really? You must have been farting up a storm, lol. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that carbs at every meal and an all out cheat day would wreak havoc on your insulin, hunger and cravings, and since high insulin is what causes all of my inflammatory conditions, this "diet" seems like it's the opposite of good for me. :) Thanks again!

It might be more successful if the 'cheat' day was more of a carb reload day using healthy carbs like potato. I agree switching it up might be a good idea but not if you are switching it up with a bunch of crap food and making yourself feel sick afterwards.

I was in the same boat. I gave it three weeks, and it didn't cut it for me. Left the "Slow Carb" diet, and all my symptoms were gone within 36 hours. You'll feel better.

Some of these nutritional plans and diets seem like that they are meant to appeal more to your inner toddler than to your rational self.

I swear I could sell a book extolling the benefits of coprophilia so long as it lets people eat cake on Sundays.

I have been Primal (grain free, low-carb, minimal processed foods, high-fat dairy) for almost 2 years and the only time I have cravings of any sort is when I have carbs earlier in the day. If I really need to eat fruit or chocolate I do so in the evenings before I goto bed just so I am past the cravings for more sugar by the time I wake up. The cravings remind me of nicotine cravings. I have not tried to just have a deep breath or the like to see if that would help them pass, but they do usually go away within a few minutes. Maybe I am just addicted to insulin or something.

I have found that even the smallest amounts of sugar can have an affect on me, my appetite, and mood.

I don't believe that there is a viable reason to cheat on the diet. It is kind of like drinking and being an alcoholic. A person can have a drink from time to time and enjoy themselves with no ill effect, fine, but alkies need to stay away from the booze. If you were a "Carbie" like I was then you got to stay away.

The book is quite entertaining and Tim is funny writer but from a strictly nutritional view, it's easily worse than Paleo Solution/Perfect Diet/Primal Blueprint.

My husband tried 4HB for about 2 weeks (I was still WAPF.) He hates legumes but was really hungry without them. At some point I was reading up on the diet and someone referred to it as "paleo-ish" so I took to investigating just what this "Paleo" concept was. Hahahahaha And now we find ourselves here 3 months later still doing Paleo. 4HB was a good stepping stone though I think the cheat day was really bad for carb addicts like us. Also, we really do better with high fat. Especially my husband. I seriously thought I would NEVER get that man off His daily madelines and ice cream... Enter butter, coconut oil, and lard and he doesn't whine about sugar anymore at all. His treats are once a month he gets some hagaan daz 5 ingredient ice cream or a local brand he likes that's minimal on the additives and once a week he has some home fries (real roasted taters) at a local foods restaurant with his brunch. I'm Grateful to 4hb for opening him up to real foods, though. He was really skeptical about Grassfed meats before.

4HB did help my husband and I transition from a diet overloaded with carbs (white rice), wheat and 'healthy fats' such as canola oil. We never did any beans as we don't do well on them, just occasionally we would have some legumes (dhal). At the moment Cheat Day has become a single cheat meal per week for my hubby. I, on the other hand, am now at my goal weight after 3 months, so I allow myself a little bit of white rice. I think I am addicted to the stuff. Hubby seems to be doing fine without carbs.

okay, you've managed to convince yourself paleo is gorgeous as usual and ferris' slow-carb 4hb is bs; so far so good;

just the fact that you had beans at every meal (?!) tells me you've got the 4HB slow-carb diet simply wrong, to begin with; and yes, jumping to the conclusions after just one week is not serious at all, and makes your review irrelevant

okay, now let us continue with our "bs diet" (that works amazingly by the way)

I've seen the same basic ideas on the cheat day in other diets. You eat a cheat day to deal with cravings AND to switch things up on the body.

The "problem" with the human body is it works to be the most efficient at things. If you do one exercise a lot, you won't burn the same amount of calories doing that exercise at 10 months that you did at 1 week. If you eat the same food all the time, you become really efficient at metabolising it (your body ramps down to meet the incoming calories) and your fat loss stalls. So the idea behind the cheat day is to ramp up your metabolism by providing more calories on one day. Think of it as two steps forward and one step back on the path to your fat loss goals.

That said, is it really necessary to have a cheat day? It depends on how accurately you are tracking things. If you know your weight/body fat percentage accurately, you can tell how you are losing over the weeks, and will see when your loss stalls. When loss stalls, put in a cheat day. Seems straightforward, but not everyone tracks it accurately and to that detail day in and day out (thus the general suggestions of once a week or once every couple weeks).

In re. the beans, Tim mentioned that it was to meet caloric goals, because in his experience, people eat too little otherwise. Doesn't really tell me that it's required.

I read the parts of the book that interested me, but did not try the diet because I'm doing quite nicely on my fairly good version of Paleo, having lost 68 pounds since 3/16/10. But I have been trying the ice pack for 30 minutes a day, the 4 Horsemen supplements, and 2 minutes of exercise just before I eat. Too early to tell what, if anything, is working. I also have started doing Slowburn weight training, and Ferriss helped motivate me to do that. The cheat days are suggested by quite a few "gurus" these days to reset leptin when you plateau. I have had some success with that, but all-out pigouts are counter-productive, imo. Every 2 weeks or so, I'll have some ice cream or some other treat, and that's it.

4HB is an interested log of n=1 experiments, but there's not enough "natural" improvement. The diet info. is useful only from a transitional perspective (to paleo eating), and too much of the rest of the book relies on taking supplements to bring about change rather than focusing on real food. There are a couple notable sections, like on the aforementioned cold showers, or on using cinnamon, but I don't know if these tidbits justify the book purchase.

After playing around with the Occam's workout protocol, I'm also questioning how well it works compared to more "primal" workout routines.

so you didn't read what the diet is and judge it? Maybe you should read the book first, no where does it say you have to eat beans every day. Talk about lazy, at least don't post like you did the diet if you didn't even read it.