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
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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