The Goal:

Lose 20 pounds of fat. Gain 20 pounds of muscle. Do it in 2 months. Ambitious? Hell yes. Tim Ferriss makes some crazy-ass claims about his diet and exercise habits (among other things) in his book The 4-Hour Body. Quite frankly, I think Ferriss is at least a little bit crazy and a lotta bit OCD but the science is there in the pages and there are plenty of real-world examples that back up some of the outrageous case-studies of people losing 10-12 pounds in a week with diet alone. I'm cheating a bit, though. I'm following the diet to the letter and will be using the workout routine in the book that Ferriss cites as his method to gaining 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days but I'm not springing for the drug regimen that he used because it costs over $100 for an adequate supply. There's also no way in hell that I'm shelling out cash-money for an accurate body fat percentage measurement and I'm not measuring the diameter of my body parts because I really couldn't care less. These kinds of results will be obvious to the naked eye using only a scale and even though I cite hard numbers above, an approximation is what I'm really interested in.

The Method:

Using the Slow-Carb Diet outlined in the book The 4-Hour Body. Two workouts a week using the routine outlined in the book. Workouts in between as I've been doing for the last few months.

Starting weight: 210lbs

Height: 6'2"

Age: 35

Start date: 1/2/2011

Cheat day: Saturdays

Daily supplements:

Men's One-A-Day, Kre-Alkalyn (750mg before/750mg after workout, 750mg on days off of the gym), 1000mg flax seed oil

The Shopping List:

The whole Slow-Carb thing relies on eating only a few simple meals made from common ingredients. Over the next eight weeks, I'll be eating meals made from the following items:

Mixed vegetables

Common components of your average garden salad

Avocado

Spinach

Peas

Asparagus

Broccoli

Red beans

Black Beans

Lentils

Egg whites

Chicken

Home made guacamole

Balsamic Vinegar

Frank's Red Hot

Lentil Jambalaya

My lovely wife made this jambalaya substituting lentils for rice and it was awesome. I mentioned it on my meal reports for a couple of days and people started asking about here and over Twitter. So here's the recipe.

The Calendar:

Day One: January 2, 2011

Day Two: January 3, 2011

Day Three: January 4, 2011

Day Four: January 5, 2011

Day Five: January 6, 2011

Day Six: January 7, 2011

Day Seven: January 8, 2011

Day Eight, January 9, 2011

Day Nine, January 10, 2011

Day Ten, January 11, 2011

Day Eleven, January 12, 2011

Day Twelve, January 13, 2011

Day Thirteen, January 14, 2011

Day Fourteen, January 15, 2011

Day Fifteen, January 16, 2011

Day Sixteen, January 17, 2011

Day Seventeen, January 18, 2011

Day Eighteen, January 19, 2011

Day Nineteen, January 20, 2011

Day Twenty, January 21, 2011

VACATION GAP

Day Twenty Three, January 24, 2011