I had little idea that my article would create such a stir with around 5,000 people so far reading it and a fair few comments sent to me by email. I anticipate that this will be my last contribution to the debate. My view is that quinoa is a slow carb and is perfectly acceptable to eat on the four hour diet. Unless someone can convince me otherwise that is what I believe to be true. I will continue for a few more weeks to finish my weight loss and include quinoa in about one meal per day.

I had a few readers ask me what my actual meal plan is when I include quinoa. Well rather than give you a blow by blow account let me list the meals that I eat for the 3 meals I eat a day.

As Tim Ferris recommends I just have a few meals that I eat over and over again. The binge day gets over any cravings I might have. I attended a wedding yesterday which was a great opportunity for a huge binge so I went for it. That was a lot of fun.

So here is my meal plan or menu plan for the four hour body diet.

Drink lots of water all day.

Other drinks are Black coffee, coffee with cream, green tea and red wine.

I have no snacks at all. Just the 3 main meals each day.

Breakfast Meals (About 7.00 a.m.)

Bacon, spinach and lentil omelette

Beef steak with vegetables and black eyed beans

Scrambled Egg and fried bacon with mushrooms and peppers

Dinner Time Meals (About 1.00 p.m.)

Cooked Meal with salad and Tinned Mixed Bean Salad – (This does not change)

Evening Meals (About 7.00 p.m.)

Chilli Con Carne served with vegetables and quinoa

Stir fry Cajun Chicken with vegetables and quinoa

Beef Medallion steak with curried mixed beans and Vegetables

Binge Days – I eat anything I want and do not restrict portions at all. I also have the odd beer instead of wine.

The only problem I have found is the time to prepare all these meals. To overcome this I cook enough Chilli for 2 days. I also do this for the Cajun Chicken Stir Fry.

I have not been able to find Macadamia oil so I use Olive oil which I enjoy and use anyway.

This is my interpretation of the four hour body diet with the addition of quinoa. If you have read the book then you know that the information is scant to say the least. But it does work.

Please feel free to comment below and share your experiences with this diet. I read all comments. (I won’t allow trash and spam so don’t write it- sorry)

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Here is how the weight loss has gone.

Week 1 – 4 days on diet – lost 6 pounds. Then had the required binge day.

Week 2 – 6 days on the diet – lost 2 pounds. Second binge day.

Week 3 – 6 days on the diet with quinoa on four days – lost 2 pounds. Third binge day.

So it looks like I will lose around 2 pounds a week on the Tim Ferris Diet. This is just the right amount. Not too fast so that I crave other food. Not so slow that I give up.

The Four Hour Body Diet – Quinoa Mystery.

Those who read the previous post about the four hour diet and quinoa will remember that the author said that quinoa was not a permissible food on his diet. You can eat it on the binge day but not on the diet days. As one of quinoa’s main benefits is that it is a protein and a slow carb I was puzzled to see why it is excluded. My weight loss experiment whilst not very scientific show that eating quinoa is not stopping me losing weight. If I continue for a few more weeks and lose 2 lbs each week I will be satisfied with that. For me I will include quinoa in the normal way.

What About The Binge Day?

I understand the thinking about the binge day and it does help you to know that you can go wild one day a week. The Biggest Loser Show had a top trainers tip this week which talked about having a “Day Off” once a week. I found myself thinking about what I would eat on Saturday from Wednesday onwards. I must think about food more than I realised. As someone who eats pretty healthily I do not want to stuff myself with burgers and chips on binge day. I wouldn’t eat that anyhow. So I have eaten my normal foods with perhaps a cake or a pudding as an extra. I put on 4 pounds after the binge day this week. It takes some faith to believe this will fall of by Monday as Tim Ferris says. For me it takes till Wednesday and then there are 3 days left to lose extra weight.

Do I Recommend This Book?

I was asked by someone whether I was recommending this book. I read constantly and as I have the first book The Four Working Week, I was always going to buy this one. The Four Hour Body Diet is clearly well researched and full of great ideas. Some of the suggestions and plans for muscle building had me scratching my head with wonder. The book as a whole is best taken for the parts you want – If you read it from cover to cover then you will not get the best from it. Tim Ferris suggests this approach himself in the book. I still haven’t been brave enough to read the chapters on Better Sex.

So if you are buying to build muscle and great abs then just read those parts. If you want to try the 4 Hour Body Diet then you only have about 4 chapters to read – the first 2 and the 2 that specifically explain the diet. The writing style is not to my taste but the content is good so I do recommend this book.

More details about the Four Hour Body Diet Here

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The style is the same but the content is quite different. It is also in my opinion controversial. Nevertheless both books are very interesting to read and stimulate the reader to take action in their life.

My First Four Days On The Four Hour Body Diet

One of the sections in the new book is the four hour body diet. I have put on a few pounds and decided to try it out for a month and lose the 20lbs that the book claims I will lose. After 4 days I have lost 6 pounds in weight. So that’s a good start. I am on my cheat day today. Then I will go back to six more days on the slow carb part of the diet.

The diet is a slow carb diet. This means you have to cut out all bread, rice, pasta and other starchy food. You also can’t eat any dairy foods or fruit. What you can eat is meat, vegetables, legumes and pulses. This is more limiting than it sounds but is quite workable. I had a bacon and spinach omelette for breakfasts, a salad and meat portion for lunch time and a stir fry meal for dinner.

The Mystery Of The Four Hour Body Diet And Quinoa

Being a Quinoa devotee I obviously turned my mind to including quinoa in this weeks menu. It turns out that quinoa is NOT allowed on the diet. You can only eat it on the cheat day. There is a post on Tim Ferris’s blog that tells you that certain foods are not allowed.

This is a mystery to me as I would say that quinoa is a slow carb food. I thought it would be ideal as part of the 4 hour body diet.

There is no explanation of exact why quinoa is not allowed. This is the mystery I am talking about. Why not eat quinoa?

Quinoa As A Slow Carbohydrate Food.

Most cooks think of quinoa as a substitute for rice or cous cous. In terms of cooking you can do this. In terms of nutrition quinoa is worlds apart from other seeds and grains. There are also 2 distinct types of carbohydrate. Rice and cous cous are soluble carbohydrates which can make you gain weight due to the way your body processes this type of carbohydrate.

Quinoa is an insoluble carbohydrate. This type of carbohydrate take a long time to break down in your body. Hence the name slow carbohydrates. There is little chance of your blood sugar going up. You will also not get hungry again when you eat quinoa and other slow carbohydrate food items.

Many experts consider quinoa to be a vegetable protein source, not a carbohydrate. Which again brings me round to ask the question – Why can’t you eat quinoa on the four hour diet? I might even join the Tim Ferris Forum to find out, we will see.

What I Am Going To Do?

I have decided to follow the example of Tim Ferris and use my own body as an experimenting medium. For next week I will not add quinoa to the diet and then check my weight next Saturday. Then I will add quinoa to one meal per day in the following week. I know its not very scientific but I want to see if quinoa really will have such a negative affect on my weight loss. Watch this space.

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There are some quite incredible claims that imbalance can make the difference to our emotional highs and lows as well as our physical health. It brings a whole new meaning to ideas that what we eat or drink affects who we are and who we become…

Apparently, it is to do with the way our bodies process foods and drinks that we have on a day to day basis. They are digested and converted into energy and used by our bodies. Most energies are passed around our bodies by our blood system and this is the important bit. Our blood PH level needs to be slightly alkaline (7.35 to 7.45). If it drops below 7 (which is neutral) then it becomes acidic (low in Oxygen) and we are exposed to symptoms and disease. It makes us more prone to stress and we find it harder to lose weight and stay positive and healthy. Our bodies will do everything they can to maintain a healthy PH level but that can lead to problems as it tries to get rid of the extra Acid as best it can.

Unfortunately, our modern western diet is mostly made up of acid forming foods (proteins, cereals, and sugars) rather than the alkaline range of foods (vegetables, etc). We obviously need protein but we need to balance them with alkaline foods so that we get the best nutritional benefit from them. Interestingly, stimulants like coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco are very acidic. Even Stress and too little or too much physical activity can add to the acidic problems too.

We really need to look at our day to day intake and try to move more towards alkaline foods and drinks. There is a big move to “home-cooking” but also a more practical approach that we consider easier and quicker methods of food preparation. Gone are the days when we had hours if not days to prepare foods for us and our families to consume. We need to update our methods of cooking, our range of food choices and spend our time economically in the kitchen. Stir fries are very quick and nutritious as are some home made biscuits and cakes. This means looking at the health benefits of foods such as Quinoa which is a grain/seed that is a complete protein, has all the amino acids, has iron, has fibre, and can be cooked in all sorts of ways as seen in The Quinoa Cookbook.

We’ve had various changes in our working world with improved methods of manufacture and business ideas. Perhaps the next major development needs to be sharing our different ways of cooking wholesome foods. We’ve had the re-discovery of Vitamins, Fibre, re-ducing salt, perhaps we should look at food as a friend to use wisely and help ward off many of our modern ailments like depression, stress, diabetes, obesity, etc.

Quinoa is a brilliant food. It is versatile and can be used in soups, salads, to thicken stir-fries, an option to rice, in fact there does not seem to be a limit to this very versatile food. It’s origins are the West Andes Mountains of South America, but it is destined for world wide use.

It is like a seed but like a grain too. It is not a grass and so avoids the allergic connections of grass. It is rinsed in water and cooked in a similar way to rice but not for so long. It is quite easy to cook and can be seen demonstrated on u-tube. Even the leaves can be used on salads or cooked like spinach.

It has another benefit in that it is an alkaline food. This means that it helps the blood to keep a healthy PH level. This is essential for good health.

The PH level of blood is important as the more alkaline the easier our bodies find it to absorb all the vitamins and nutrients in our food. It also helps the body to function well and avoid illnesses. Another benefit is that it helps the body to maintain a good weight. It is even a key to loosing weight as if the blood ph level is too acidic (i.e. below 7 and lacking in oxygen) then it struggles to lose weight and control our stress levels. With regard to the sugar levels in the body as it is what is known as a slow release food, which means we don’t have the “sugar fix” that some foods have and we maintain a more even energy and stamina level.

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Growing My Own Quinoa

I bought special seeds from the Real Seed Company. I ordered 2 varieties although I have only sown the Rainbow seeds this year. I am saving the others for a second crop in a few months. These special quinoa seeds are for cold and damp growing conditions which is probably why they have grown so well.

Having said that the weather here in the UK has been hot and sunny now for 2 weeks. Since the photo was taken the plants have grown considerably and now stand at about 2 feet. I have been told that you can take leaves fron the plant and use them in salads. You can also cook them like spinach. I haven’t tried this yet but I will.

I ignored the sowing instructions as I always do and simply put seeds in a 2 inch seed pod tray for germination. They nearly all germinated and as I only had room for about 8 plants most of them were thrown away. I was not expecting them all to work so well. As soon as the quinoa seedlings were 6 inches high I planted them out into my small vegetable plot. This was about 5 weeks ago. I now have a set of healthy quinoa plants growing away. I have no idea how high they will grow or how long it will take for the quinoa grain to appear on my plant but I am full of anticipation.

I had some of my family visit this afternoon and they were very interested in seeing the plants. Non of them had ever seen a quinoa plant before. I am sure my relatives think I am nuts about quinoa and they are right. But they couldn’t hide their amazement at the success of me growing this quinoa. (They are not that good at acting!)

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Melon is 92 percent water and helps overcome dehydration. A two-cup serving of watermelon is an excellent source of vitamins A, B6 and C, and it provides 7 percent of the recommended daily value of potassium, with only 80 calories.

Watermelon is fat-free and also contains fibre. Its beautiful red color comes from all-natural lycopene, an antioxidant that can help keep our bodies healthy.

Watermelon can be eaten at any meal, breakfast, lunch or dinner, and it’s a wonderful snack for the whole family. Delicious on its own, watermelon is a fantastic ingredient in recipes, too. Previously just a summertime treat, tasty watermelon is now available year-round.

A watermelon can hold a fruit salad that looks good and tastes great. The salad inside can be as simple as a mixture of blueberries, seedless green grapes and balls of watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew melon.

Use this recipe as an alternative in the quinoa diet where it states “fresh fruit”.

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I now follow quite a strict diet similar to the GI diet involving quinoa, juicing and light main meals. It is this maintainence diet that provided the contents for my 7 Day Quinoa Diet.

I have included a full seven day eating plan in the diet. There are also 12 top quinoa articles that I have had published online and elsewhere. These articles are packed with health information and other background knowledge about quinoa.

To get your own copy I have included it as a bonus when you buy The Quinoa Cookbook which I wrote 2 years ago. I hope to have a new sales page for this book ready in september if you only want this particular book.

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It is a great accompniament to my own Quinoa Cookbook.

I highly recommend The Elimination Diet Cookbook as a way to healthier eating and to losing weight. If you click on the link below you will also get full information on Dax and his complete program.

Click Here to go to The Elimination Diet Website

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For example I regularly mix quinoa with a pile of fresh veg for a salad or spicy stir fry. The point is that with care all the added ingredients have a low GI. Assuming you are already shopping with low glycaemic index in mind you can happily throw in anything you have to hand and enjoy it safe in the knowledge that the GI will be nice and low.

The other point to make is that quinoa somehow goes better with healthy food and poorly with things like chocolate, sugar and other bad foods.

I am on the GI diet to maintain my weight loss and hopefully lose a bit more. Because I focus on low GI foods as my staples it becomes very easy to create recipe variations for these foods will very little imagination and a bit of flair.

I can order low GI at all my favourite restaurants as I have learnt over the last 5 months what I am allowed to eat on the GI diet. If there is part of the menu I ask for more salad as a replacement. The chef is always very happy to oblige – I think they like the challenge. For example ordering a veggie dish that is completely healthy apart from the cheese. Ask for it without the cheese and most chefs will enjoy the variation and chance to do a special.

I also like to vary menu’s so that I know that the meal has been especially cooked for me and wasn’t keeping warm on a hob somewhere. I must be very difficult to please. But I am not going to jeapordise my diet for anyone. I have just realised that I have never seen quinoa on a restaurant menu. Now there’s a challenge for someone!

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Quinoa is easy to include into any diet but because of its low GI and other health benefits, it is one of the best foods to eat regularly in your diet.

Quinoa can be combined with vegetables, fruit and other grains to produce delicious meals and snacks. The Low GI diet is great in itself but with quinoa in the diet it makes it even better. Quinoa is filling and full of protein.

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