The 4-Hour Body: The Slow-Carb Diet - 5 Simple Rules That Work

This is the chapter where the book gets real. Chapter 7, “The Slow-Carb Diet I,” is the part most people bought The 4-Hour Body for. Five rules. No calorie counting. One day a week you eat like a maniac. Thousands of followers lost 20+ pounds.

Let me walk through exactly what Ferriss proposes.

The Setup

The chapter opens with Tim and his friend Chris texting each other photos of junk food on a Saturday. Pizza. Bear claws. Chocolate croissants. They’re basically having a food contest. On purpose.

This sounds like a prank, but it’s actually part of the system. Every Saturday, they eat garbage. And between those Saturdays, the average follower lost 19 pounds of fat. Some lost over 100 pounds total.

Tim himself cut from 180 to 165 pounds in six weeks while adding about 10 pounds of muscle. That’s roughly 25 pounds of pure fat gone. He says the Slow-Carb Diet is one of only two diets that gave him visible veins across his abdomen - the last place his body stores fat.

The whole thing runs on five rules.

Rule 1: Avoid White Carbohydrates

If a carb is white, or can be white, don’t eat it. That means no bread, rice (yes, including brown rice), cereal, potatoes, pasta, tortillas, or breaded fried food.

There’s one exception: within 30 minutes after a resistance-training workout. If you just lifted weights, you get a pass. Otherwise, skip it.

Ferriss throws in a fun science tidbit here. Chlorine dioxide, a chemical used to bleach flour, combines with residual protein in these foods to form alloxan. Researchers use alloxan to give lab rats diabetes. Literally - they use it to produce diabetes in animals for experiments. That’s what’s hanging out in your “enriched” white bread.

His summary: don’t eat white stuff unless you want to get fatter.

Rule 2: Eat the Same Few Meals Over and Over

This sounds boring. It is boring. It also works.

Ferriss says the most successful dieters - whether they want to lose fat or gain muscle - eat the same few meals on repeat. There are 47,000 products in the average American grocery store. Only a handful of them won’t make you fat.

You build each meal from three groups. Pick one from each:

Proteins: Egg whites with 1-2 whole eggs, chicken breast or thigh, beef (grass-fed is better), fish, pork.

Legumes: Lentils, black beans, pinto beans, red beans, soybeans.

Vegetables: Spinach, mixed vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, etc.), sauerkraut, kimchi, asparagus, peas, green beans.

Eat as much as you want from this list. Pick three or four meals and rotate them. That’s it.

One big warning here: don’t skip the legumes. A half-cup of rice is 300 calories. A half-cup of spinach is 15 calories. If you eat only vegetables and protein, you’ll be starving and miserable and you’ll quit. The beans are your calorie source. They keep you full and give you energy.

Tim’s own rotation was pretty simple:

• Breakfast: Scrambled egg whites with one whole egg, black beans, mixed vegetables
• Lunch: Grass-fed beef, pinto beans, mixed vegetables, extra guacamole (at a Mexican restaurant)
• Dinner: Grass-fed beef, lentils, mixed vegetables

He also spaces meals about four hours apart and eats his first meal within one hour of waking.

Rule 3: Don’t Drink Calories

Water, unsweetened tea, black coffee - all fine. You can put up to two tablespoons of cream in your coffee, or better yet use cinnamon instead.

What’s off the list: milk (including soy milk), regular soda, fruit juice. Even diet soda should be limited to 16 ounces a day because aspartame can mess with weight loss.

Now here’s the part wine drinkers will like. Red wine gets a pass. Tim drinks one to two glasses of red almost every evening and says it doesn’t hurt his fat loss at all. Red wine is allowed. White wine and beer are not.

Up to two glasses of red per night. No more.

Rule 4: Don’t Eat Fruit

This is the rule that shocks people. No fruit? Really?

Ferriss makes an evolutionary argument. If your ancestors were European, how much fruit were they eating in December, 500 years ago? Zero. They didn’t have Florida oranges shipped in. And the human race survived just fine.

The science part: fructose (the sugar in fruit) converts to glycerol phosphate very efficiently. Glycerol phosphate turns into triglycerides in your liver. Triglycerides become stored fat. Your body is really good at turning fruit sugar into body fat.

Tim actually tested this on himself. He ran two identical diets - one with no fructose, one where he added about 1.5 large glasses of orange juice per day. Just the orange juice, nothing else changed.

The results were bad:

• Cholesterol: 203 to 243 (out of healthy range)
• LDL: 127 to 165 (also out of range)
• Iron: 71 to 191 (through the roof)

The iron spike was the scary one. Men don’t have a good way to clear excess iron from the body, and high iron can be toxic.

Two exceptions to the no-fruit rule: tomatoes and avocados. Avocados in moderation - no more than one cup or one meal per day.

You skip fruit six days a week. On the seventh day, you can eat all the peach crepes and banana bread you want.

Rule 5: Take One Day Off Per Week

This is Ferriss’s “Dieters Gone Wild” day. He recommends Saturday.

On this day, eat whatever you want. Ice cream, Snickers bars, pizza, beer - all of it. Tim says he makes himself a little sick every Saturday, which kills any junk food cravings for the rest of the week.

But there’s an actual metabolic reason for this. When you restrict calories for an extended time, your metabolic rate drops. Your thyroid slows down. Your body fights you. A massive calorie spike once a week prevents this. It keeps your thyroid function (T4 to T3 conversion) from downshifting.

Eating pure crap, strategically, helps you lose fat. No calorie counting on cheat day. No calorie counting on any day, actually.

One practical tip: start the diet at least five days before your cheat day. If your cheat day is Saturday, start on Monday.

It’s Also Cheap

The chapter includes a case study of Andrew Hyde, a 6'5", 245-pound guy who lost 10 pounds in his first two weeks on the diet. His food cost was $37.70 per week. That’s $1.34 per meal. And this included organic grass-fed beef.

His shopping list was dead simple: eggs, beef, chicken, pork, mixed vegetables, spinach, asparagus, peas, black beans, pinto beans. He shopped at smaller stores, bought items near expiration date, and used a local Mexican grocery for dried beans.

Eating healthy being expensive is a myth. At least on this diet.

That’s the Whole Thing

Five rules. Ferriss says that if followed to the letter, he’s never seen this diet fail. Never. When you get confused by contradictory nutrition advice, come back to this:

1. Avoid white carbs
2. Eat the same few meals over and over
3. Don’t drink calories
4. Don’t eat fruit
5. Take one day off per week and go nuts

The next chapter covers the finer points - common mistakes, FAQ, and how to make the diet more enjoyable. But these five rules are the foundation. Everything else is detail.

Previous: How to Measure Bodyfat and Use Photos for Motivation

Next: Slow-Carb Diet FAQ and Common Mistakes

This is part of my 4-Hour Body retelling series. New posts every Saturday.