Tim Ferriss' new best seller, The 4 Hour Body, recently hit the body fat-loss magic bullet market.  The Oz segment focused on 3 of Ferris' strategies for fast weight loss, specifically fat loss.

 

My concern here is what many viewers are probably going to get out of this.  Here are the 3 major recommendations for fat loss from Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Body and the problems I foresee for the public with them:

 

1)  4 Hour Body plan:  Pound down 30 grams of protein  for breakfast.

Supposedly, this is going to help you by to raising your metabolic rate.  High protein foods recommended are the usual animal-based proteins: meat, eggs, and fish, which are a workload for the body to digest. So is the idea here that we want to create a stress load for the body from which to recover in our desperation to lose weight?  Does the ends justify the means?

 

Response:  Most Americans are eating too much concentrated protein as it is.  And that's not the only problem.  I'm betting that those who employ the '30 grams at breakfast' tactic are going to simply add it to everything else they are eating, merely adding to the calorie overload and flooding the body with far more protein - and the fat that comes with it - than it needs.

 

The US RDA for protein is .8 grams per kg of body weight.  If your body weight is 150 lbs, to convert that to kg you take 150 and divide it by 2.2 = 68kg.  68 x .8 = 54 grams of protein.  Those 30 grams of protein out of 54 RDA comes out to 56% - over half of the protein - recommended for the day.  As an alternate, the USDA recommends for AI (adequate intake) protein for healthy adult females is 46 g per day, and 56 g per day for adult males. The AI is 9 to 52 g for children, and 71 g for pregnant and lactating women.

 

With this kind of protein overload at breakfast - 30 grams -  you would easily surpass your protein requirement for the day (30 out of 46 grams would be 65%), taxing the body system.   As long as you are eating a variety of whole foods and eating sufficient calories of vegetables, starchy vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes, and nuts and seeds, you easily fulfill your protein requirements.