The Official 4 Hour Chef Site is Officially Up!

The 4 Hour Chef site is officially up!It’s officially official: there’s now a website!

The 4 Hour Chef finally has an official web presence with some basic material. Go check out the site at http://fourhourchef.com/

Book Tours

You’ll find a section for the book tours, so be sure to check back there often as Tim Ferriss might be headed towards your town soon! As of this writing, there are no dates, but I expect that to change soon.

Book Contents

The contents of the book are briefly mentioned. Obviously you’ll see recipes and cooking tips but something extra you might not have expected is this concept of “meta-learning”. I’ll write more about that later, but essentially Tim is going to show us some of his methods of hacking learning abilities to be able to live more efficiently. Very sciency, very nerdy, very awesome!

4 Hour Chef around the web

There are also several nodes to keep track of on the interweb for the book, so be sure to connect with them as well.

Four Hour Chef on Flickr
Four Hour Chef on Youtube
Four Hour Chef on Facebook
Tim Ferriss on Twitter

Things are starting to come together! Are you as excited as I am?

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February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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The 4 Hour Chef Christmas Countdown Experiment Unwrapped

4 Hour Chef app screen
If you’ve been keeping up with the announcements surrounding Tim Ferriss’ new book, The 4 Hour Chef, you’ve no doubt stumbled upon his Christmas Countdown Experiment teaser. In today’s blog, I’m going to tell you what’s in it and what I think of it all.

Main features

The truth is, the app, which is free on Kindle and iPad, is basically a really clever ad for the new book. But it’s a useful ad – probably the most useful ad I’ve come across for anything.

On the home screen you’ll have access to four recipes, including a couple for your cheat day. He’s also got a tip on wine and an interactive infographic on beef that I played with and studied for at least 5 minutes.

The other piece of this app is the actual experiment itself.

The fat los protocol

I’ve been really curious about what the fat loss tricks would be, and I honestly wasn’t expecting what I found.

Basically Tim guides you through an intermittent fasting protocol to lead you up to your Christmas Day chowfest. It starts with a cheat and ends with a cheat and doesn’t have a whole lot of eating in between.

If you’ve seen stuff written by Martin Berkhan, you know where Tim got his general ideas from (I think Tim even talks about that in the app). It’s all very specific (it’s not just skipping breakfast), and it also includes some workouts for maximum effect. The examples are done with a barbell, but Tim says he does his with a kettlebell, and I’ll do mine with dumbbells.

A couple supplements

To give yourself the best shot, you’ll need three supplements that are referenced in the protocol. I’m going to get mine this afternoon.

Overall impression

Generally, I think this is a very unique, clever way to promote a book. The app itself has a few glitches, but nothing that keeps you from enjoying the features.

It’s not a stellar app, and you won’t be playing with it much after you’ve made the recipes and done your fat loss protocol. But it gets the job done for now, and I suspect we’ll see more like it.

I bet I even would have paid $.99 for it, and I don’t think I would have been disappointed. The recipes alone are worth a buck or two. The cookies in particular are quite awesome.

My own experiment

My Kindle Fire came after the specific start of this experiment, but I want to wait until New Years to start.

Update: Here’s a link to my intermittent fasting experiment. Please check it out if you’re interested.

Have you experimented with intermittent fasting? Did you do Tim’s experiment?

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January 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Download The 4 Hour Chef App for iPad and Win A Free Roundtrip Flight

The 4 Hour Chef App is now available on iOSYou can now download the “A Christmas Countdown Experiment: The 4-Hour Chef” app from the iTunes store. It’s currently only available on iPad (and of course, Kindle Fire).

Here’s a link to the Apple Store: A Christmas Countdown Experiment

Free Round Trip Flight

Tim’s also holding yet another contest for users of the application.

There are some instructions involved, which you can read all about at his blog. Basically if you download the app, take your measurements, follow the Christmas Countdown, take after photos and measurements, and post the results in the comments on this blog post, you’ll be entered to win a free round trip flight to anywhere in the world that Star Alliance flies.

Check Tim’s post for all the details and legalese.

And don’t forget: pre-orders are still around for 50%-80% off! Tim’s making it sound like the price will go up, but no one knows when.

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December 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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A Little More About The 4 Hour Chef

The 4 Hour Chef, by Tim FerrissI posted the announcement about the pre-order for The 4 Hour Chef before I saw his announcement post on his own blog. You can read it here, but I’ll summarize it below.

At the end, I’ll tell you how you can win a free copy of The 4-Hour Chef!

To the right, you can see the beta version of the cover (that just means it can change before release) that Tim posted on his blog. The one I had used yesterday was just a screen shot from the video I linked to.

A little about the book

According to Tim,

Intended to be “the cookbook for people who don’t buy cookbooks,” The 4-Hour Chef will use food as a vehicle to teach the art and science of meta-learning–the skill of learning skills.

I’m still trying to figure out how food will help me learn how to play the tuba or speak Japanese, but I guess that’s what makes him such a great writer: he’s great at teasers and blowing our minds.

You can buy the book in Hardcover ($15) or Kindle ($6), but Tim’s recommendation is the hardcover, and it’s more than just money:

Why might you buy the physical book, even in addition to the Kindle? Three reasons:

  1. It will be gorgeous, a wonderful tactile experience, and truly unlike any cookbook you’ve ever seen.
  2. I’ll be thinking up bonuses for people who buy the print edition early.
  3. It would really help me out. Inexplicably, The New York Times excludes all advice/how-to books from their e-book bestseller list, so only the print edition counts towards the bestseller list. Silly, but there you have it!

The bonuses for 4 Hour Body were pretty cool, so I’m excited about what we might get for this one.

Lots of interactivity

Because this is coming from Amazon, and they’ve got their own tablet, I think a lot of the preview material will be in app form. For example, the Christmas Countdown Experiment (I found out) is an app. Still waiting for it to come out on iPhone and Android, but it’s out for Kindle.

It looks pretty slick. There’s a calendar that helps guide you through the steps, and there are even cookies, it seems. Like literally the kind you can eat. In true-to-form Ferriss, he promises that we’ll be able to “enjoy wine, cookies, and all the other holiday vices… while losing fat.”

I’m definitely ready to take him up on it (as long as the Android app comes out before Christmas), and I’ll post results here!
If you want to join me, send me an email via the contact form and let me know. I’ll make a page for those of us doing the challenge!

And we only have to wait…9 months

So I guess the game is officially on. I’m hoping the book comes out closer to the April date he mentioned when he announced it, but we’ll see. Until then, I’ll keep reporting on everything I find, including the bonuses!

ps: Win a free copy of The 4 Hour Chef!

I’ve also decided that I’m going to buy a couple extra copies to give away. I’m not sure when, and I’m not sure how, but the people who will be eligible are the ones subscribed to the blog.

So stick your email address in the box at the top of the side bar, and I’ll be sure to let you know how you can win one. Obviously it’ll be a while from now, but might as well get in early!

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November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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4 Hour Chef Sneak Peek and Preorders Are Open!

4 Hour Chef Sneak Peek and Preorders are Open!This just in: preorders are open! Preorder 4 Hour Chef now to save HUGE (book’s $15 at the time I wrote this). I’ve already ordered mine!

We’ve been waiting for a long time, and I’m really thrilled to be able to bring you a first look at Tim Ferriss’ new book, The 4 Hour Chef. Well, Amazon’s got the release date up: September 25th, 2012. Just under a year.

Today I’m excited because I’ve got a few really juicy bits of teaser info for you guys!

Tim recently posted a video on Twitter giving us a *really* short, *very* intriguing look into the new book. It’s full title is “The 4-Hour Chef: The simple path to cooking like a pro, learning anything, and living the good life” It sounds like it’s going to be about more than we expected.

According to Tim, the book is about “using food as a medium to teach you how to learn, among other things.”

One of the most timely things he talks about, and I hope he shares with us soon, is his Christmas Countdown Experiment. In it, he’ll share with us secrets to actually losing fat during the holidays following a plan for 7 days leading up to Christmas. Isn’t that something we *all* want? Tips include what to eat, when to eat, and more.

He indicates in the video that there will be recipes, and even sections on enjoying the right wine and even cigars with your meal. I may ignore that cigar bit, but if you’re into it, go for it!

I also have it on good authority that he’s got a slow-carb recipe for chocolate chip cookies in there, which I’m excited to try out.

Head on over to the page on Amazon and check out his other video on wine and how to properly aerate it before drinking it.

Here’s the teaser video. Subscribe to his videos to get them when they come out!

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November 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Dear Tim Ferriss: Here’s What 4-Hour Chef Should Cover

Dear Tim Ferriss: Here's what 4-Hour Chef should coverTim had asked a question on Facebook to his followers:

What can I do to make this next book my best book yet? I really don’t want to let you guys down.

Mitch Fanning, who writes about the world according to him, responded to Tim Ferriss’ question about the 4-Hour Chef on his blog. If I could summarize his desires in one sentence, I’d say he’d like some different ways to hack the foods he’s already learned to eat and enjoy. I like where he’s going.

Here’s my own contribution, inspired by Mitch.

Dear Tim,

As a “home chef”, I’m pretty excited about your new book. I’m intrigued by the mystery of what it could have. Your other two revolutionized the topics they cover, so I can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with for cooking.

To answer your question, there are a few things I’d love to see after having spent the last year generally following your ideas.

A more comprehensive list of foods that are allowed

I think the biggest question we get is “is this allowed?”, and most people quote your response of “If you have to ask, probably not.” (link) Now, I’ve always thought that wasn’t very fair of you, so I think this book is a good place to clarify some things.

There are even websites that purport to know exactly what’s allowed. My position has always been if Tim didn’t say it’s not, I’m skeptical.

I’d love to see a larger list of approved slow-carb foods, especially some of the odd stuff like sweet potatoes, yucca, squash, coconut products, and different non-grain flours.

Something else similar that I think would really help is:

A more comprehensive list of foods that you’d THINK are allowed but aren’t

I think squash is perfectly fine, but I know a lot of people disagree. Coconut milk is something else I think is OK, but I’ve had some sharp opposition. A list of foods we might think are OK but aren’t would be awesome.

But even more than those two, I think I’d like…

The real list of guidelines behind making decisions about food

A lot of what I read in 4HB are legalistic points. Do this, don’t do that. This worked because of this. That didn’t work because of that. All of that is well and good, but I think you gave us a lot of that type of stuff without teaching us how to make decisions.

Especially since everyone’s different, some really solid guidelines would be awesome. For example, a food is OK on slow carb if it’s glycemic index or glycemic load or carb content or whatever is a certain way. I think most of us use glycemic load to determine whether or not we want to try a new food.

The Paleo Solution was great at giving me that kind of information. I’d love more of it from you!

Finally, I’d love to see some cooking hacks

We all know eggs are a great part of our slow-carb diet, but people get sick of scrambled eggs quickly. It would be awesome to have a section talking about different ways to prepare base foods, like 10 chicken recipes, 10 egg recipes, 10 ways to spruce up beans, things like that. That would keep people from getting bored.

Another thing that would be awesome is a chapter on spices and herbs, ideas on how to use them, and how they benefit your overall health!

And lastly, what is your vision for a minimalists kitchen? Which tools are necessary, and how few can we get away with?

Like I said, I’m pretty excited about what your book can be, and regardless of whether or not I see any of these things in it, I’m sure it’ll be another best-seller and help a ton of people.

Good luck, and thanks in advance!

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November 28, 2011 By 2 Comments
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Join the Daily Burn Discussion

Daily burn logoThe 4HB crew over at The Daily Burn are talking about the new book now too.

Head on over and join the 4 Hour Chef discussion.

While you’re at it, set yourself up some workouts and track your meals too!

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October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Video Testimonial: This guy really does need help

I spied this video on Youtube the other day. His name is G.R., and he’s “obsessed with getting (his) awesome on.”

He’s looking for help from Tim Ferriss to learn how to cook better. His 4HB foods are OK, but still kinda shaky. However, he got some great results on the program (see it around 3:10)

He’s a great example of why this book is necessary, so I hope he gets the book and revolutionizes his culinary abilities.

So if you’re reading this, Tim, give the dude a holler!

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September 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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4 Hour Chef is Also Now on Facebook!

Today I found an account up on Facebook. Seems to go along with the YouTube account I posted yesterday.

Check it out: 4 Hour Chef on Facebook

Both of these accounts seem to belong to this website, which is still under construction.

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September 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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4 Hour Chef on Youtube

Recently a few videos have popped up on Youtube under an account called “fourhourchef”. I’m not convinced that this is TF’s account, but the videos are of him.

Update: I’m convinced it’s him:
He tweeted the announcement.

Check out the channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/fourhourchef

Here are a couple of the videos

The 3 minute breakfast:

He also knows where to find good barbecue (I agree completely):

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September 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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