exercise

Learn how to sit, stand, walk, and lie down like indigenous cultures free from back problems.

TIMOTHY FERRISS, nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007,” is author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been published in 35 languages.

Wired magazine has called Tim “The Superman of Silicon Valley” for his manipulation of the human body. He is a tango world record holder, former national kickboxing champion (Sanshou), guest lecturer at Princeton University, and faculty member at Singularity University, based at NASA Ames Research Center.

When not acting as a human guinea pig, Tim enjoys speaking to organizations ranging from Nike to the Harvard School of Public Health.

Oh man, this reminds me of this hilarious video

 For those of you who don't have time to watch videos, it's Michael Cera's parody on the hilariously arrogant video resume of Aleksey Vayner.

The video opens with a staged interview between Vayner and an offscreen voice. However, the "interview" ultimately consists of a single question, to which Vayner gives a lengthy, rambling response. Using considerable amounts of business-speak jargon, Vayner praises himself and shares his various insights on success, talent, and overcoming adversity. Interspliced with the interview are clips of Vayner performing various feats designed to look impressive, including bench pressing, skiing, playing tennis, ballroom dancing, and finally karate-chopping a stack of bricks. The video ends with a dedication to Radomir Kovacevic, and a fairly lengthy credits sequence.

Since moving to NYC, I've had the displeasure to meet many flaky young single men who idolize Tim Feriss. I was reminded of them recently when I saw this excellent Facebook Question: "Why is there such a strong correlation between the "paleo diet" movement and douchebags?" really worried that this would contain mostly douchebaggery, but then I heard Tim Feriss had become a man and gotten married. (Oops, this isn't true, which isn't surprising considering his relationship descriptions in the book, so I guess he's still out there testing his loathsome techniques on women).

So this book has got some great stuff.  It's more like a collection of blog entries, though they are very high-quality blog entries. That makes this a very hard book to review. Even more difficult because it contains 5 millions pictures of vaginas, which means I can't read it on the subway without getting paranoid that some creepy dude will read over my shoulder.

To boil water, the MED is 212°F (100°C) at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it “more boiled.” Higher temperatures just consume more resources that could be used for something else more productive.

That's kind of how I feel about this book. A lot of it is devoted to hacking your body in ways I simply can't be bothered to do. At least he admits that this is a sort of smorgasboard reference-type of book. Pick the chapters you need and just read those.

For me, that's not too many chapters. "How to Hold Your Breath Longer Than Houdini" Why would I want to do things like this? Maybe I'm just lazy though.

I'd love to sleep less, but the polyphasic thing sounds like torture to me. The "Slow carb" diet he pushes is kind of gross to me. He seems to be under the misconception that you need to eat beans for some reason.

"Vegetables are not calorically dense"

Um, no shit?

"so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load."

No, it's critical that you add fat for caloric load. It's clear people still get good results on his diet, but I think they would have better digestion and potentially eliminate autoimmune issues if they didn't bother with legumes.

BUT this book does feature some great foods: Kerrygold butter, raw milk, and grassfed beef for example. I think in 10 years maybe Tim's wife will civilize him and he'll come out with a book that has less powder, sugar-free Jello, Egg Beaters, and other things only single men consider edible.

MISTAKE #4: BELIEVING THAT YOU’LL COOK, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE A BACHELOR In a sentence: if you don’t normally cook, get canned and frozen food for the first few weeks. Don’t buy a bunch of food that requires cooking skills if you don’t have them. Don’t buy foods that spoil if you’ve never prepared a proper meal. Unfounded optimism will just result in rotten food and frustration.

How about getting married? Or even easier, taking a cooking class?

He's already starting to get it though:

Go fermented. Dr. Weston Price is famous for his studies of 12 traditional diets of near-disease-free indigenous communities spread around the globe. He found that the one common element was fermented foods, which were consumed daily. Cultural mainstays varied but included cheese, Japanese natto, kefir, kimchi (also spelled “kimchee”), sauerkraut, and fermented fish. Unsweetened plain yogurt and fermented kombucha tea are two additional choices. Fermented foods contain high levels of healthy bacteria and should be viewed as a mandatory piece of your dietary puzzle. I consume five forkfuls of sauerkraut each morning before breakfast and also add kimchi to almost all home-cooked meals.

And perhaps it might convince the general public that calories in=calories out is bunk? 

It wasn't until the end that I realize why so many young single men idolize Feriss: he's a nerd who's "made it." Hot women, buff body, tons of money. He can quote Dune and still have all these things. While I do worry he'll create a legion of wannabe Casanovas*, I'm happy he's warning men about the dangers of a modern lifestyle on their manhood and encouraging them to think about female orgasm from a technical perspective.

Also, it features two of my favorite bloggers Chris Masterjohn and Seth Roberts.

As for the bonus content...you have to hunt for passwords in the book? Talk about something I don't have time for.

*Honestly, if you want consistently good sex, a long term relationship/marriage is where you'll get it.

And this is the best review of the sex chapters ever:

I wanted to mention this in my initial review, but lacked the adequate time. The "15 Minute Orgasm" section is not nearly as enticing as it sounds. Basically, it's a trip to third base that is strange and just plain...ick. Ladies, picture a man grappling your lower body with his arms/legs pretzeled around your waist and thighs like he's wrestling a crocodile. Then, he uses his hands to spread your girl business open as if he's inspecting a large salmon fillet for stray bones. Now for the really sexy part: he uses his index finger to very gently stroke one tiny area of your little man in a boat for 15 minutes. That's all he does. FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES. Keep in mind, there's no other movement by either the male or female. Also, the woman shouldn't talk unless it's to answer specific questions. Why? Because women only talk during sex to distract themselves and not concentrate on enjoying it. Okaaaay. Thanks for the stereotype that we're all frigid and naturally inclined to deny ourselves any fun if it's left up to us. Hogwash.

It's funny because the whole evolutionary living community has so many sub-movements: evolutionary nutrition, barefoot running, natural movement, and crossfit to name a few. Interest in one often piques interest in another. I got into barefoot running through the paleo diet, but there are many people who did the opposite. 

The crossover for me was a reluctant one. I do not like to run, besides sprints. I was a competitive swimmer for most of my childhood and, like most swimmers, I did not take well to running. When I was on the rowing team I pushed myself very very hard to run medium distances because our coach would use our running ranking to stock boats. Plodding along the North Shore at the end of the pack for many tedious miles was my idea of misery.

When I started doing the paleo diet I heard about the overall benefits of using your feet the way they were evolved to move. I ditched all my high heels and started buying thin-soled shoes. Then when I started getting back in shape I bought Vibrams, but I didn't do much running in them. I did love the way they seemed to make my core more sculpted. Erwan's Movnat Workshop(my post on it) was the first time I ran in them seriously. We did some very challenging trail runs. They were tough, but the opposite of tedious. I had to pay attention to the trail constantly— adjusting myself to the flux of mangled branches or harrowing mosaics of sharp rocks. This was much more fun.

So I was a reluctant convert. When I heard about the NYC Barefoot Run planned by John Durant I was excited for the movement...but not really excited for running myself, especially since it was on pavement and I don't train on pavement. Only some nudging from friends made me register instead of only volunteer. I didn't run very fast or very far (I did a completely barefoot lap which mainly involved walking), but I had a blast and met some really cool people! Governor's Island was beautiful and it was exhilarating to see so many people who are into this! The funny part was that I went shopping at the New Amsterdam Market(MMM Lamb Sausage from Fleisher's) afterward and I saw several people with Vibrams. I asked if they had done the run and they didn't even know about it! Vibrams are clearly a shoe trend here.

And that's great, but I still see so many women in particular with shoes that are not only preventing their feet from working properly but actively damaging them. They are called high heels. I'm pretty lucky to work in an environment where high heels are pretty abnormal (well, there aren't very many women in my field...but that's another story). But unless you work in high fashion I truly doubt any of us would be fired for ditching them! Yes, I always liked the way they made me look, but they were the Snickers bar of fashion: tasty, but you feel terrible afterward. It's interesting because they possibly play on our evolutionary desires for women with prominent buttocks and long legs. I think of Kessler's book The End of Overeating where he talks about "hyper-palatability." Snickers bars contain nutrients we evolved to desire for good reasons, but in amounts not found in nature. Our natural desires cause us to harm ourselves. Anyway, trust me, there are other ways to be sexy. My favorite is to eat paleo so your skin is clear, your hair shiny, and your body sculpted :)

So what do I wear? Until quite recently I made very little money and couldn't afford anything like Terra Plana's Vivo Barefoot shoes. Vibrams are great, but I personally don't like the enough to wear them constantly and the ones that are really nice to wear in non-running situations are fairly pricey. I would go to thrift or discount stores and look for the shoes with the thinnest and most flexible soles. For winter I found some moccasin boots and for summer I found some gladiator sandals, both at Payless Shoes. Both were unfortunately synthetic, but they were reasonably stylish and affordable. I also had some nice flex-soed loafers and ballet flats left over from my anti-high-heel shoe purge.

Now that I have a decent income, I am investing in some leather moccasins. I'm looking at different brands right now and I'll report back with what I find (I ordered some Footskins today, sorry, Softstars weren't feminine enough for me :) I'm willing to ditch the high heels, but I still like looking medium-girly.). Good leather moccasins should last a long time, so I think they are a good investment. Eventually if I get into hunting I'd like to make my own from deerskin. Have any of you found good moccasins? I wore Minnetonka growing up, but I don't like the soles of the ones I saw at the store. And I thought it was cool that the Footskins are made of deerskin in the USA. They also do custom shoes, which might be an interesting option in the future.

Joe, who I met at the run today, was telling me how many moccasins are modernized for fashion's sake and still compress the toes. I think of these Sami (a native people from Scandinavia) shoes:

Look how boxy the toes are. That's more freedom for the toes. Inuit shoes are fairly similar in this way.

What if I told you there was something relative simple that could possibly make your taller, better looking, and less likely to suffer from sports injuries or joint pain? You probably wouldn't believe me, but there is and when I heard about it I couldn't believe I didn't think of it before.

When you look at pictures of hunter-gatherers and others living a traditional lifestyle, what you see depends on what you are looking for. To most Americans they just seem vaguely fit, but there is something more going on here. Physical therapist Esther Gokhale was looking for why so many modern humans suffer from back pain, but traditional cultures don't despite the fact that they often perform very laborious work. Esther noticed that they carried themselves differently and also noticed from old Western pictures that this used to be the norm. Now we are a nation of sloucher and it not only affects our back and our look, but internal organs as well.

This was a wake up call for me. As a former gymnast, I once had what I thought was decent posture, but over the years I've definitely developed the dreaded slouch by hunching at the computer. Last winter I suffered from awful upper back pain, which required a visit to a chiropractor. Thankfully it hasn't returned, but I've been on the lookout for something that could prevent an issue like that. Chris from Modern Paleo and Nick from Paleo DC raved about Esther, so I bought her book 8 Steps to a Pain Free Back. I've only completed one of the steps and already my physical wellness after a day of computer work is much improved. Another thing I noticed is that my mood is better. A day of hunching= a night of fatigue for me.

What's really cool about the book are the pictures of hunter-gatherers and agrarian peoples like the man above. It's interesting because she posits a theory that humans need to learn correct posture from parents and other elders. While that might seem counter-intuitive, it makes sense to me since I've read about ape populations losing important survival skills like this with domestication, especially if a zoo population is built out of orphans. 

So I'm definitely excited about this book and look forward to posting about my results. At the tech conf this weekend I started noticing how bad the posture problem is. Food is an issue, but disease of civilization are multi-factorial.