One of the hottest posts on the 4HWW Blog is the topic of how Tim Ferris lost 20 pounds of fat in 30 days… without exercising. His basic method: eat 4 times a day, repeat the meals frequently, focus on low glycemic-index foods, cut out the “white carbs / starches”, take one day a week off, and focus on protein and veggies. Ok, nothing new here. Nothing revolutionary. But just like everything else in 4HWW, the idea is to focus, focus, focus on efficiency and just making it work. Cut out all else, and work to the bare essentials.
Coincidentally, another 4HWW blogger, my friend Brick at the 4-Hour Workweek Journal posted recently a Menu Planner that has helped him become more efficient with regards to meal preparation. He posted a nice spreadsheet to help with meal planning, and I found it to be an excellent tool. However, once I started focusing on the 4HWW diet, I realized that the meal planner as provided was still focused around the staid three-meals a day concept. So, I’ve tweaked the meal planner in a way to make it more 4HWW friendly.
Below, you can see the 4HWW-based Weekly Meal planner in action:
It’s just a simple planner focused around pre-planning your 4HWW-based 4-meal day (do you see a theme here?). Plan out your whole month and then you’ll be able to efficiently shop, cook, or outsource your meals without having to wander through the day eating, wasting time, and gaining weight (if that’s your problem). I’ll continue with this and check in periodically to let you know how it’s going.
You can also download the spreadsheet below if you want to use it. If you improve it, let me know and I’ll post a link to your post, or upload the file here for everyone else to share.
Excellent! You are quite correct, my meal planner is a rather simple exercise in batching the meal decisioning process for an entire week into a single event – without regard to what one might actually eat. Putting some nutritional guidelines in place (and from the FHWW blog no less) is a great evolution of the concept.
This is all well and good but dieting of any kind will only drive you towards the foods that you are trying to avoid. It’s one of those proven facts that is having a hard time breaking out to the public because the diet industry has still got its iron fist of control around the media. It’s in its final death throes though so keep an eye out for new information and new ways of thinking that will actually help you, rather than keep you trapped in a continuous cycle of food restriction and then overeating.
See foodphilosophy.blog.co.uk
How do I download/print the meal plan? It looks like a good place to start for a “starving artist” who is fond of ramen (boiling water for it right now in fact)