The totally miserable guide to 10% body fat

There’s nothing sexy about sexy

Three years ago, in early winter 2010, Tim Ferriss’s diet was everywhere. If you worked in digital it was unavoidable. Even Gizmodo,not a bastion of health information, published an excerpt from his book, “The 4-Hour Body.”

The diet, which Ferriss calls the Slow-Carb Diet, consists of eating anything you want one day a week, and eating only protein and vegetables the other six. It seems very simple if you have the discipline.

For muscle growth, workouts consist of a don’t-leave-the-house minimalism based around kettlebell swings. Fat loss, the other goal of working out, is supported by a “stack”—bro-speak for taking several supplements at once—of policasonal, alpha lipoic acid, garlic, and green tea extract.

With all this came the promise of 10% body fat, which is the percentage of fat where abs become visible, per the collective wisdom of people who are not scientists.

Anyway, untold bottles of PAGG were sold, “4-Hour Body” was a best seller and kettlebells started appearing for sale in places like Target. The diet achieved traction in the truest sense of the word.

I was on the diet, a lot of my friends were on the diet, and I couldn’t help but notice it didn’t work for any of us.

Why? A few reasons. The whole eat-anything-you-want thing once a week is not difficult to maintain, it’s difficult to contain. For some friends, “cheat day” started Friday after work and went well into the early hours of Sunday. Their bad behavior wiped out that week’s caloric deficits—the cornerstone of fat loss. There was also too much hocus pocus, which is what attracted people to the book in the first place. Torture showers? Ice baths? My god, what a bunch of bullshit.

The overall problem with Ferriss’s approach is that it tried to convince guys that getting ripped is fun and potentially useful, even though it’s neither. It also championed the hacker mentality, because an entire generation of young men trying to “hack” everything is in no way depressing.

Like a lot of people, Ferriss’s approach didn’t work for me, so I went looking for one that would. It turned out I didn’t have time for it. Then this summer, as if fate were smiling upon me, some things changed in my personal life that allotted me the precious time needed to more wholly become a narcissistic social pariah. Below is a breakdown of what I did (and am doing) to further my very silly goal of becoming True Blood P90X Ripped®.

Lifting

Iron six days a week. One muscle group per day, staggering push and pull. So: Chest, arms, shoulders, back, legs, rest, repeat.

Workout timeline should be broken up into quarters, which you should know all about from your start-up. Each month in the quarter should focus on a different muscle response.

I’d recommend COGS. No, not cost of goods sold, but conditioning, growth, strength. Conditioning is 15 reps per exercise. Growth is 8 reps per exercise with heavier weights. Strength is 4 to 6 reps per exercise using holy-shit heavy weights. It’s cool to barf. Make sure your gym has a defibrillator.

Cardio

You have to do cardio—sucky, sucky, sucky cardio. It’s the filibuster of exercise. I’d recommend high-intensity intervals just to cut down on the time at the gym because it’s so boring. I know it’s tough but I’d really recommend becoming proficient at jumping rope. Interval training on a jump rope involves doing something called “double unders.” It took me about a year to be able to do 30 straight seconds of double unders.

So jumping rope is ever so slightly less monotonous than cardio machines. Plus you can learn tricks that impress children and the elderly and even some dogs.

Eating

My first trainer was a Korean psychopath named Paul. When I first met him, he took one look at all 130 pounds of me and said, “Whatever you’re eating double it. We’re lifting.”

More white rice and pizza? Rock and roll!

Doesn’t work. If you want to get lean and have abs and all that you have to create a caloric deficit.

A lot of diet guides say, “You will not have to count calories.” This reminds me of the saying, “You can ignore politics, but politics won’t ignore you.” You may not want to count calories but your body will because that is one of the main things that it does. And your body carries over excess calories into layers of fat that cover your precious muscles, thereby destroying your one shot at a decent life.

What works to lean out? Carb cycling. That is three or four low-carb days followed by a high-carb day. Carb-cycling shouldn’t last longer than eight weeks.

Carbs

What’s a low-carb day? One bowl of slow-cooked oatmeal in the morning. Have you ever fantasized about being a 19th century British orphan? You’re in luck. They still make gruel, they just call it slow-cooked oatmeal, and it’s the inverse of taste. Just eat it and get it over with.

What’s a high-carb day? One bowl of slow-cooked oatmeal, followed by two or three bowls of 100% shredded wheat throughout the day, you lucky dog.

Did you want that with milk? No pasteurized dairy, ever. The liquid you’ll be adding to your shredded wheat will be your whey protein mix. Shredded wheat on it’s own tastes like rope, but because of the protein shake you’ll have vaguely chocolatey rope instead. And because of this small victory, your tongue will live to fight another day.

That’s it for carbs except those from veggies. No bagels, pizza, or junk of any kind. No bread, no rice, no cheat meals, nothing. On a high-carb day you can have a piece of fruit immediately following resistance training if you think you deserve it. Do you deserve it? I doubt you do.

Fats

Fats come from raw whole nuts, which means none of that sneaky legume, Mr. Peanut, parading around in his top hat and monocle. Also avocado (half of one is enough for the day) and olive oil (which should be used sparingly). Fish oil, too, which I’ve taken enough of to grow gills. Do not view meat as a fat source.

Protein

Tons of egg whites, chicken breast, canned tuna, turkey, shrimp—you get the idea. In the past three months, I’ve eaten well over 400 chicken breasts. Maybe a steak once a week if you want to let loose and go to Friday’s. Buy a vat of 100% whey protein isolate. You should have a shake in the morning, immediately following your workout, and, if you’re an ectomorph like me, intra-workout.

Overall, eating and exercise becomes somewhat of a part-time job, and this is the type of job where nobody wants to be around you while you’re working. It’s like being in the CIA, and you’re Special Agent Self-Obsessed. If you must dine out socially, recommend sushi and eat sashimi. If you start reaching for the white rice, have your friend stab you in the hand with their chop stick.

Supplements

You can quickly spend hundreds of dollars a month on supplements. It’s very easy to think, If I take this, it will help with that.

The only supplements I have found to work are BCAAs (branched-chained amino acids) taken in powder form intra-workout, and creatine taken in powder form during the growth/ strength periods of the quarterly routine.

In order for me not to have dry mouth and chapped lips while taking five to 10 grams of creatine per day, I have to drink over two gallons of water a day. I live in New York City and this makes commuting a total nightmare. If you mix six grams of creatine in 20 ounces of water, your mouth actually gets dry while you’re drinking it.

Are the results worth the hassle? Uh, yes.

Alcohol

Alcohol and creatine go together like alcohol and creatine. If I even look at a glass of wine I get dry mouth like I smoked a pound of weed.

It’s best to go totally dry while cutting body fat, as you shouldn’t be dehydrating yourself at all, especially with your supplement mix. Also, no matter how hard manufacturers try to make alcohol non-calorically dense, it’s still dense. And you generally consume these calories at night and don’t burn them off. (Sex burns off way less calories than you imagine—especially they way you’re doing it).

Also, do you really need to go to bars and drink, unless it’s client-facing? Bullshit work-buddy stories have a threshold. And how many random people do you need to make out with and give your number to?

How long does it take?

Back in the day I used to kick it this Puerto Rican goddess Cristina in the most half-assed way imaginable. Having grown up in the Bronx, my game with Island girls is slightly better than your average white boy, but when I got into my early twenties I got super lazy. My charm came down considerably and has stayed there every since.

Cristina’s body was supersonic. She had the type of ass Junot Diaz writes about when he writes about asses.One night I said, “Cristina, you want to go to my place and talk?” And she said, “My shit is not for free.”

I lacked the energy it took to volley such a declarative statement. Cristina was going to be a lot of hard work. Clearly. My point is your body is Cristina times ten. It’s not for free. And at 32, I find I have to work twice as hard as I did in my early twenties, when I was a bike messenger and able to drink forties of Coors Light and eat tons of pasta without putting on a pound.

When you’re mirror-checking, here’s how you’ll notice your diet is effective:

First your collar bone will pop out more and if you carry any fat on your sides and back, it will start dissipating.

After about four weeks, a few things should change. You should have vascularity on your biceps when flexing and your forearms while at rest. You should notice separation on your inner chest muscles, and if you’re benching properly (the bar needs to hit your rib cage) then you should begin to see your serratus—the bones beneath the sides of your chest.

After about eight weeks your obliques should be visible without flexing. Around this time you should start seeing vascularity on your lower abdomen. When lifting heavy weights with shoulders and biceps, veins should start popping out on your shoulders.

Abs are different for everybody. I see guys who have no clear vascularity on their bodies but have bulging abs and decent chest separation at around 12% body fat. If you’re an ectomorph, like me, you may need to cut down to 7 or 8% body fat to have clearly visible abs, even while sitting down.

Practical application in society

There is none.

I understand the generation younger than me has created the Stream of Infinite Selfies®, an innovation that deserves little to no applause. If you’re a guy and you take pictures of your self with your shirt off and put them on social networks to show everybody how big your muscles are, you’re a loser. Samesies for girls in bikinis. Next to power you want to know a really potent, high-IQ aphrodisiac? Modesty.

However, people have an innate desire to be fit, and in some people that desire is burning and they should go for it. My family is racked with diabetes and Alzheimer’s (both related to glucose), so I’m not taking any chances with them simple carbs, man.

Since everybody eats like shit and drinks, it’s easier to just kick it with them. One might call it a friction-less solution. If you must go for drinks and someone says, “Can I buy you a drink?” say, “I just ordered one,” and get a club soda with a lime in it. It’s a lot easier than saying, “I don’t drink.” Those three words bring out people’s insecurity like gangbusters. If you’re going to drink, have a dry red wine like pinot noir.

As for dinners and other social engagements, just don’t go. Work on that novel. You know that novel you’ve been working on? For the past three years? You know the one. Got a big stack of papers there, hm? Got a compelling protagonist with an obstacle for him to overcome? Nice little narrative with a beginning, middle and end, hm? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer for the experience? That novel. Or go to the gym, they usually close at 11.

The best trainer I ever had was this boxer named Justo. He dropped me, the bastard. But before doing so, he gave me a diet similar to the one I’ve described above and said,”you gotta eat a lot, but you gotta stay sexy.” That might be true, but sadly there’s nothing sexy about being sexy.