As someone in marketing and public relations, I could write for hours and hours about how idiotic it is to dilute the Netflix brand by renaming the DVD-by-mail service “Quickster.” And I could go on and on about how stupid it is to make customers who want to pay and additional 60% each month go through the process of re-registering with both Netflix and Quickster. But the jewel in the fool’s crown is forcing existing customers to justify two separate bills each month.

Whoever thought that making customers opt into a second bill for the same old service during a stagnant economy should be forced to dig his or her own professional grave with a plastic spoon. But I’m not going to get into all of that. I want to talk about why I’m walking away, and it has less to do with price than flagging service. I think it’s the reason most people are walking away, despite the sound and fury that’s overloading THETWITTERS!

I was a pretty early adopter of Netflix. I signed up in early 2003 and never looked back. I’ve always been a bit if a filmophile, so Netflix’s mail-order DVD service seemed like a natural fit for someone like me. It didn’t take long for me to realize that to game the system and ensure I got the new releases, I had to drop my movies in the mail on Saturday or Monday morning to secure the best titles, which almost always were released on Tuesdays. Being someone who’s seen thousands of films, I wasn’t very interested in the company’s back-catalog of older titles. Sure, I ended up watching the noteworthy classics that had somehow eluded me, and I introduced the wife to some of my favorite films, mini-series, and cult classics (the original Omen movies were my first three rentals). But I should stress that I was a customer who wanted to see new releases.

As the ranks of Netflix swelled, their customer service struggled to keep pace. On top of that, rates fluctuated. There was the price war with Blockbuster’s newly introduced delivery service that lowered my rate for a while. As usual, the prices went back up. When Netflix was getting squeezed by the studios and was fighting brick-and-mortar and cable service competition for titles, I didn’t mind loading my queue with shows like Jericho, Heroes, Mad Men, and anything else I’d heard was pretty good. I still thought the service was worth the money, and I didn’t mind waiting weeks, if not months, to get some of the newer releases.

But months and months of waiting for months and months to get a single movie goes a long way toward rubbing the polish off of a shiny, new toy. A couple of years ago, Netflix lost much of its luster in my opinion.

When the rates increased still further earlier this year, I dropped down to the two-DVD plan. I figured that not only was the quality of Hollywood films suffering, but so was Netflix’s ability to get me the few decent films I actually wanted to see. Twice in the past few months, I’ve had so many titles wait-listed that I had nothing mailed to me when they received my DVD.

I understand that Netflix is trying to position themselves for the future, and I understand that they’re once again getting squeezed by the studios and forced into a bidding war with their competitors. But to think that their online service as it exists today, which is really only good for old movies, shows and documentaries, is somehow going to compete for my entertainment dollars, is pretty ridiculous. Maybe if I didn’t have cable, Netflix’s online streaming service would be a decent substitute. But I have cable. And HBOGo. And the internet. And a well-stocked local library.

Since Netflix can no longer meet my needs, and since their online service is at least five years away from being something that draws my attention, I’m ending my relationship with the company. That I get to do so as a form of protest during their epic public relations meltdown is mere icing on the cake.

My friends and I used to go to all-you-can-eat buffets in college and say to one another, “let’s eat so much food that they rethink this concept.” Well, I kind of did that with Netflix.

During my time as a subscriber, I went through around 1335 DVDs, and that’s not counting the movies I watched online. That’s around 160 DVD rentals per year. I’ve rated 3039 films, which is probably pretty close to the total number of films I’ve ever seen. That might suggest that I have no social life, but many of those films were watched after the wife went to bed. I’ve never been a big sleeper, and I’ve always been put off by the “reality” TV shows that thrived over the last decade.

I’d say I got my money’s worth out of Netflix. But for every one of me, there were probably four other subscribers who paid the same monthly rate and let their unopened DVDs languish on top of the TV for months at a time. So you should’t feel too sorry for Netflix. I don’t.

So, goodbye Netflix. It’s been fun, but there’s a time and place for everything. And your time with me has passed.

I set my goal of 155 pounds artificially low. I figured that way, if I only got down to around 165 pounds, I’d still be happy with my progress. Since then, I’ve come to realize that some of this diet is hype. Tim Ferris boasts that you can lose 28 pounds of fat in 30 days without doing any exercise. I don’t think that’s likely unless you’re morbidly obese and are working overtime to maintain a huge caloric intake. Sure, Tim might have been able to do it, but just because something is possible doesn’t make it at all probable. If you’re a little overweight like I was/am, this diet will definitely knock off a few pounds. But it’s not a silver bullet.

Still, the guiding precepts of this diet are sound. I plan to follow them for life whenever it’s convenient. And since I cook most of my meals myself, it’s pretty damn convenient.

A lot of people have asked me how I got out of my 4-hour body weight loss plateau. The key was a simple one that I stumbled across out of laziness. According to the diet, you’re supposed to eat every few hours to keep your metabolism burning. I plateaued when I used this rule as an excuse to eat a lot of meat until I was full. That’s wrong. Once I changed my routine, the pounds started to fall off again. The secret for me was small, 8 oz cans of legumes. It sounds weird, right? It’s not.

The 4HB Diet has us eating every four hours. I eat breakfast at around 6:00 am. That means I need to eat again around 10:00 am. Before, I was eating some bacon or sausage as a way to cram in some protein. It makes you look like a glutton if you’re at the company microwave heating up snacks at odd times. So out of laziness, I starting buying a bunch of little cans of green beans, wax beans, and lima beans. The name brand cans come with pop-tops that are easy to open. I just drain the liquid into the sink and eat them right out of the can with a fork. The whole exercise takes maybe two minutes. It tastes pretty good, but this isn’t supposed to be an exercise in pleasure. It’s strictly to boost my metabolism when the calories from breakfast are getting thin. Oddly enough, this small meal makes me so hungry for lunch that I can’t wait more than three hours to eat.

I’m not following Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Body Diet to the letter anymore. I ascribe to a common sense notion.

If you eat right 80% of the time, you can indulge yourself the other 20% of the time.

That doesn’t mean that if 80% of what’s on your plate is acceptable the rest can be carbs. That’s how you gain weight. It’s more in line with Tim’s idea of a cheat day, but without the excess. I allow myself to eat some things at late lunch and dinner that I didn’t eat in my first two months on the diet; things like cheese, sour cream, butter, heavy cream, etc. It just makes cooking at home a little easier and makes eating-on-the-go possible.

As you’ve probably noticed, the 4-Hour Body is a fork-friendly diet to say the least. Chopped or pulled BBQ with green beans is pretty easy to come by when looking for a restaurant that caters to slow-carb eating. Other than that, your choices are pretty much limited to Waffle House or a meat-and-three. All of those choices mean stopping the car. With heavy summer traveling, that’s not really a sustainable plan. Then again, the 4-Hour Body diet isn’t really sustainable in and of itself, and you should realize that no strict diet can be followed forever. Starting and stopping diets leads to yo-yo weight loss and weight gain. The solution can be found in applying some common sense to your daily food and beverage intake.

Like I said in a previous post: “You should eat like a king at breakfast, like a prince at lunch, and like a pauper at dinner.” I still believe that.

Here’s what I typically eat during the day

Breakfast – I drink 16 ounces of cold water and eat 3-5 eggs when I wake up (usually two whole eggs and two egg whites soft-scrambled over medium-low heat). I don’t fool with beans or spinach or anything like that unless leftovers or aging produce dictate that I make a fritatta or huevos rancheros.

Early Lunch – 8 oz can of legumes. Some people eat oatmeal at work to lower their cholesterol. I eat legumes. It doesn’t smell, it doesn’t have to be heated, and it’s gone so fast that no one ever notices I’m eating anyway. Of course, it’s odd to open a desk drawer and have someone ask if you’re one of those 2012 doomsayers, hoarding food in preparation for Armageddon, but I can live with that.

Late Lunch – Usually something left over from dinner (likely meat and vegetables).

Dinner – Whatever. I head to the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings and buy my vegetables for the week. I usually cook a meat, a fresh vegetable or two, and sometimes a can of something at dinner each night. If we ever have meatless meals, it’s usually because I’m out of meat. But if hot dogs were two-for-one at the grocery store, I’d have no qualms with eating chili dogs (and buns!) for dinner on this diet. Just not every night.

One trick I’ve discovered is to drink a full glass of water with a proper portion of dinner and then wait ten minutes before getting seconds. I’ve found that after a little while, I realize I’m full and am glad I didn’t stuff myself. If I get hungry later, I know I can have a big breakfast the following morning. That’s helped me more than anything else.

Before the 4-hour Body Diet, I never ate breakfast and gorged myself at dinner. Now I eat a lot in the morning when my body needs energy to burn and I eat relatively little at night. That way, I don’t feel too bad about occasionally going off-diet for dinner.

The last 100 days have been a truly educational journey. Like I said before, this is my first diet. Ever. It’s also the first time I’ve cared enough to learn how the body deals with sugar, fat, carbohydrates, etc. I learned more than I thought I would.

Everything I used to believe about nutrition is wrong.

My personal experience runs in direct contradiction to what I learned in school with the food pyramid.

As it turns out, fat is good for you. Of course, you want to minimize the saturated fat, but our bodies are amazing fat-processing-machines. Low-fat substitutes, which usually contain hydrogenated oils, are actually bad for you. Butter is in; margarine is out. Complex carbohydrates in seemingly healthy foods like breakfast cereals are bad for you. Cheerios are out; eggs and bacon are in. You have to moderate how much you eat, but this is a great development as far as taste is concerned.

Everyone knows that fat=flavor. Anytime you eat anything that’s low-fat, the fat has usually been substituted with sodium and sugar and other fillers that are worse for your nutrition than the original fat. So if you buy lots of “lite” food substitutes to augment your diet, you’re putting yourself behind the 8-ball. My family refuses to see through this fallacy and their diets never work.

But most importantly, I’ve learned that maintaining good health and reasonable weight is all about making choices. It’s not about choosing to eat healthy or not. Everything is relative. Bacon is always better to eat than sausage. Eggs are always better to eat than pancakes. Grilled chicken is always better to eat than fried chicken. As long as I make the good choice 80% of the time, I can make the bad choice the other 20%.

I still have another ten pounds to lose, but now I realize that I have to get off my ass to do it. I thought losing “28 pounds in 30 days” sounded too good to be true. It turns out I was right. Everything worth doing takes work. Always.

Resources that helped me

Eat This, Not That – This site compares the calories and health benefits of all kinds of foods, helping you understand what choices are good, better, and best. It provided me with some very useful benchmarks and comparisons.

Fat Head – A low-budget documentary that tests the conventional diet wisdom. If you can get past some of the silly jokes, it’s actually a pretty informative film. Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me was self-serving hype. Fat Head is more about the science behind weight gain and loss.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth – A 90-minute lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig explaining what fructose does to the body and how it impacts weight gain. You can pretty much minimize the screen and just listen to it while you work like a podcast.

Previous posts about 4HB

My Experience With The ’4-Hour Body’ Diet
Learning Proper Portion Sizes On The 4-Hour Body Diet

We’ve been using Charter Communications‘ bundled services for a few years. We switched from BellSouth because of the savings when we got a laptop and needed to add WIFI. We really don’t need a home phone line, but I’m a little nostalgic for my rotary phone. As we added services, the Charter people kept adding splitters and wires behind my entertainment center. Everything worked fine fine until the beginning of this year.

Around January, we noticed that the phone and internet signals were becoming intermittent. As service became less reliable, we became more irritated. We bought a new cordless phone system and that didn’t help. Before I dropped $150 for a new wireless router, I did some research to see if an external factor was causing the problems. Apparently, something had changed with Charter’s signal around the beginning of the year, or so I read. I was ready to walk away from their service entirely out of sheer frustration, but I thought I’d give them one more chance to win my business.

Coincidentally, some friends and I had a conversation about second chances over the weekend. I told them that I don’t really hold grudges. What I meant was that I don’t feel a need to bad-mouth a person, product, restaurant, etc. What’s the point? The truth will out. However, I do make a point to reward excellence whenever I come across it. As a marketing professional, I know how fast bad news can travel, especially in this new, global, “viral” marketplace. I try to go out of my way to praise good products and services with the vehemence that’s usually reserved for dissatisfied customers.

After hearing an earful from the wife, I called and complained to Charter on Monday night. They arranged for a tech to come out the next afternoon between 5:00 and 7:00 pm. You can imagine my mood when the tech didn’t show up until 7:15 pm and I had to abort our dinner plans. After an hour of looking at the spaghetti-style confluence of wires behind my entertainment center, the tech sighed and said, “this is all wrong.” It was pouring rain outside. He gave me the most heart-broken look as he glared out the dark, wet window and lamented, “I’m going to be here all night.”

I told him he was welcome to come back the next morning when the weather had cleared up. I stressed that it was more important to me that the work be done right than to have it done now.

He said he started his shift at 10:00 am the next day. If no one from Charter was at my house by then, I should call his cell phone. When no one had contacted me by 11:30 am the next morning, I called and left him a voicemail. When I still hadn’t heard anything from anyone at Charter by 2:00 pm, I accepted the fact that I would soon have an unsightly satellite dish attached to some part of my house.

At 3:00 pm, I was in the backyard when I heard someone calling my name. I turned and there were a half-dozen Charter employees in my driveway. They were as polite and apologetic as could be. I walked the supervisor through my house and he informed me that they were there to run new wiring from the telephone pole to a new junction box and to each room in my house. My wiring was simply too inefficient and out-of-date to handle the load. Best of all, it was to be done at no cost to me. A little while later, a third truck showed up with even more crew members and they finished the job in record time.

To say I was satisfied is an understatement. The tech from the prior night even returned to my house to make sure I had been taken care of.

Charter seems to understand that core product quality and adept customer service are the keys to success. You can throw all kinds of advertising dollars into our cluttered marketplace and media environment, but it’s no substitute for actual brand value. And it’s the customers who perceive and determine brand value, not the service providers.

I listened to one of The Dale Carnegie Association’s books called The Leader In You on last week’s fateful trip to Tuscaloosa, AL. Dale Carnegie was the original self-help guru. His most famous book, How To Win Friends and Influence People, is still prescient nearly 80 years later. The book included an anecdote about an employee of Cox Communications, a Charter competitor.

According to the book, the employee was visiting a Home Depot store on his vacation. While waiting for some lumber to be cut, he overheard a customer complaining about Cox cable to anyone who would listen. Instead of writing off the man as an unreasonable consumer, the employee explained that he worked for Cox, he talked with the customer to immediately assess the problem, and he had a crew sent directly to his house to fix the problem. Most importantly, someone from Cox followed up with the customer and credited his account for the down-time. This act probably only took the Cox employee a few minutes, but it likely earned the company a lifetime of positive word-of-mouth advertisement from the customer.

That kind of professional commitment, and the customer loyalty it engenders, is priceless.

Charter seems to have taken a similar approach to allaying customer dissatisfaction at any time and in any venue. The night I first complained to Charter about the problem, I also tweeted about my frustration with their phone and internet services. Charter has a team in place called Umatter2Charter that continually monitors social media and engages customers. Their web-based communication with me was very effective insofar as it put a virtual face to the corporation. Their rapid replies got me to focus my negative energy on getting the problem fixed. After the work was finished, I even got a couple of tweets from Charter’s social media crew making sure that everything was working fine.

Whereas the anecdote about Cox shows that their best employees take advantage of chances to improve the customer’s experience, Charter is proactively employing people to seek out dissatisfied customers and to do whatever it takes to convert them to satisfied brand ambassadors.

This is a case study in customer service excellence.

In an age where it’s routine for customers like me get to lost in Automated Response Hell (“para Español marque el numero dos”), it was a welcome departure to deal with several real, live human beings who seemed to actually care about my situation. As a result, Charter has earned not only my continued business, but also my confidence and trust

Bob Dylan has never claimed to be a particularly good melodist. That’s part of the reason why he constantly rearranges his older songs, which is what drives so many passive fans (including my mother) crazy about his concerts. But if you were on a “never-ending” concert tour, wouldn’t you want to mix things up as well? It’s this desire to experiment with different melodies that has created such a huge market for Bob Dylan’s throw-away tracks. And by Dylan releasing the songs himself, he’s keeping his works off the black market and in the public domain.

Many of the songs on Tell Tale Signs were recorded during the string of great albums that Dylan put out between 1997-2006 (click here for a chronological listing of Bob Dylan’s studio albums). Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind won three Grammy Awards in 1998 including Album of the Year. In 2000, he won the Academy Award for best original song with Things Have Changed from the film, Wonder Boys.

After basking in the glow of yet another “comeback,” Dylan began producing his own records under the pseudonym, Jack Frost. He drew on the kind of music that inspired him in his youth, such as blues, country, rockabilly, and early pop. He telegraphed this strategy by naming these albums Love And Theft (2001) and Modern Times (2006). It was a sly admission that he was stealing ideas and material from older songs and giving them a modern spin. It was a brilliant move despite the howls of many music critics. Not only was he tapping into classic songs that have stood the test of time, but he was doing it after they’d seen their copyrights expire.

The track list is below. The two new versions of Mississippi are very creative and the recording of Born In Time harkens back to the famously rare arrangement that I’ve blogged about before. Red River Shore, Huck’s Tune, and ‘Cross The Green Mountain represent some of his best work in the last twenty years, the latter of which tells the story of a young Civil War soldier from the Southern perspective. It’s both solemn and stirring at the same time.

I highly recommend buying the entire album, but if you wanted to sample the ten best songs before buying, I’d check these out first.

Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Volume 8

Disc 1

1. Mississippi (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
2. Most Of The Time (Alternate Version, Oh Mercy)
3. Dignity (Piano Demo, Oh Mercy)
4. Someday Baby (Alternate Version, Modern Times)
5. Red River Shore (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
6. Tell Ol’ Bill (Alternate Version, North Country Soundtrack)
7. Born In Time (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
8. Can’t Wait (Alternate Version, Time Out Of Mind)
9. Everything Is Broken (Alternate Version, Oh Mercy)
10. Dreamin’ Of You (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
11. Huck’s Tune (from Lucky You Soundtrack)
12. Marchin’ To The City (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
13. High Water (For Charley Patton) (Live, 2003)

Disc 2

1. Mississippi (Unreleased Version #2, Time Out Of Mind)
2. 32-20 Blues (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)
3. Series Of Dreams (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
4. God Knows (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
5. Can’t Escape From You (Unreleased, December 2005)
6. Dignity (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
7. Ring Them Bells (Live, The Supper Club, 1993)
8. Cocaine Blues (Live, 1997)
9. Ain’t Talkin’ (Alternate Version, Modern Times)
10. The Girl On The Greenbriar Shore (Live, 1992)
11. Lonesome Day Blues (Live, 2002)
12. Miss The Mississippi (Unreleased, 1992)
13. The Lonesome River (With Ralph Stanley)
14. ‘Cross The Green Mountain (From Gods And Generals Soundtrack)

If you downloaded these songs as well as the ones in my Suggested Track List For Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 4, you’d have a pretty good collection of Bob Dylan’s best songs since Oh Mercy was released in 1989.

Note: Huck’s Tune has the second-weirdest lyrics Dylan’s ever written in my opinion; “All the merry little elves can go hang themselves.” Obviously, the weirdest lyrics he ever wrote are from Tombstone Blues; “The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken.” Third place arguably goes to I Shall Be Free No. 10 with “Well, I set my monkey on the log and ordered him to do the Dog. He wagged his tail and shook his head and he went and did the Cat instead.” Actually, that whole song is really weird.

The biggest problem with the 4-hour body (4HB) diet is that Tim never goes into detail about proper portion sizes. He vaguely mentions you should eat until you’re full to avoid snacking between four hour intervals and you should eat beans and lentils so you don’t get low on energy. When I looked back at what I had been eating, I realized that my portion sizes were too big and full of fatty foods. I simply wasn’t cutting enough calories. Even worse, carbohydrates were stealthily lurking in my diet.

For instance, when I was in a hurry, I’d just warm up a can of Goya’s “Heat & Serve” Black Bean Soup for lunch. It’s pretty good, but you might as well join the cows at the salt lick. There are 2100 grams of sodium per can. To put that in perspective, you’re allowed to have 2400 grams of sodium per day. Like I told my friend Clare; “if this diet works, we’ll be the thinnest people ever to die of high blood pressure complications.” There are also 74 grams of carbohydrates and 1 gram of saturated fat. That means my metabolism is burning beans for energy instead of excess body fat.

Now I’m steering away from cans of beans as meals in themselves. I think of them the same way people think of energy drinks. I’m sticking with eggs and meat for protein early in the morning and then eating vegetables throughout the day. The key is to keep my metabolism burning all day long. I don’t need to keep adding calories and fat to do that.

I never learned about correct portion sizing as a kid. In fact, my generation learned the exact opposite. Our grandparents came of age during the depression. They never took large meals for granted and subsequently force-fed our parents whenever they could afford it. Our parents thought that kind of “finish your plate or else / starving children in China” discipline was traditional and passed it on to us. In retrospect, it only served to cultivate poor eating habits.

“You should eat like a king at breakfast, like a prince at lunch, and like a pauper at dinner.”

My wife picked that saying up somewhere. The logic behind it dovetails nicely with 4HB in the sense that the most important thing to do on this diet is to eat a lot of protein as soon as you wake up. I’ve been rotating fritattas, huevos rancheros, and sausage scrambles each morning at around 6:00 am. As a variable, I started eating smaller, nonfat meals for my two “lunches” at 10:00 am and 2:00 pm. These snacks mostly consist of either sauteed mushrooms, sauteed spinach, or an 8 oz can of green or wax beans. I’ve been having a typical meat-and-two for dinner, but I’ve been putting less on my plate.

The wife informed me that a common rule of thumb for meat portions is to eat nothing bigger than the palm of your hand. I’ve been following that rule and watched as my capacity for food decreased over the course of a week. It’s amazing how fast your body accommodates and adjusts to change.

In my fourth week on the diet, I dropped down to 182 pounds. That puts me at 8 pounds down in total, meaning I lost around seven pounds in the first half of the month and only one pound the second half. That might seem discouraging, but I feel like I’m finally learning how to monitor my weight, diet and nutrition. Now that I’ve defined the problems, I can easily isolate and eliminate them. I expect to lose much more weight over the next two weeks. I already have people telling me that I look thinnner, mainly because my face and neck are slimming down a bit.

I really like this diet. Sure, I miss pizza, mac and cheese, and cheeseburgers, but that’s what Sunday/Cheat Day is for.

I’ve become a morning a person over the last five years and I love taking some time to relax and read the news while I eat breakfast. As a side benefit, I’ve finally mastered most methods of cooking eggs. That’s a picture of a typical breakfast to the right. I’m still working on poaching eggs in the microwave (example), since poaching them the traditional way is a little too time-intensive for weekday mornings. The only thing I miss is the social aspect of eating lunch, but I’ve almost always brought my lunch to work anyway, so that’s no big deal.

Once the weight is off, I think I’ll maintain my morning routine. If I’m exercising, I should be able to eat anything I want for dinner as long as the portion sizes are reasonable. I’m finally beginning to understand the meaning of the old adage, “everything in moderation.”

Update 7/5/2011: 100 Days On The 4-Hour Body Diet

Previous Post: My Experience With The ’4-Hour Body’ Diet

I want to get down to about 155 pounds, but I know I’ll inevitably gain 10-15 pounds of lean muscle by consuming so much protein and doing the minimal effective amount of exercise. So my goal is the equivalent of getting down to 140 pounds, which I haven’t been since my early years of college.

My five goals throughout this diet are:

• To learn how to properly monitor my nutrition
• To lose excess weight and keep it off
• To increase my energy level and outdoor activity
• To teach myself proper portion sizes
• To limit my alcohol intake

I’m starting this diet now because it dovetails nicely with the onset of spring and summer. I’m naturally more active when it’s warmer, there are no sports I follow on TV all weekend (besides the golf majors), and fresh produce should start popping up at my local farmers’ markets and my own backyard garden.

To prepare for the diet, I spent the last week of March buying high-protein ingredients. I made ten pounds of homemade (low-sodium) sausage and tested out some recipes for huevos rancheros and fritattas. I read and re-read the relevant chapters of the book and typed out a cheat sheet that’s taped to my refrigerator door. You can click on the image to the right to see and print the cheat sheet, but I’m going to reiterate that you need to buy the book. There’s a difference between knowing the rules and understanding the rules. There’s more information at Tim Ferriss’ website.

I’m a natural fit for this diet. I cook every day, so I have total control over what I eat. I’ve never liked sweets by nature, I gave up caffeine years ago when I quit smoking, and I’ve always enjoyed eating with a fork rather than a spoon at breakfast time. The things that have been hard for me to give up are cheese, cream sauces, potatoes, rice, and noodles. I used to eat a lot of pasta. But that’s what cheat day is for; on Sundays, I can eat as much pasta as I want.

The first few days I was on the diet, I felt like I was force-feeding myself. I’ve never been a big eater in the mornings and it was hard for me to put down 3-5 eggs along with extra ingredients. It was also difficult to eat beans over and over again, but I figured out a few ways to spice things up. I’m blogging some of these tips and recipes, so subscribe to get all of the updates (or click here to see a list of links).

When I started the diet, I weighed in at 189.5 pounds. In the two weeks since, I’ve lost around 7 pounds. That’s with no exercise that goes beyond my normal daily activity.

I wanted to see if the diet was working before I started exercising. I figured if I’m going to alter my eating schedule, I’m going to make sure I’m not crediting the diet for my workout results. I should add that I’m strictly following the diet regimen. And I didn’t cheat very much on either Sunday, so I didn’t see the weight increases that are typical for Mondays. Or, to be more specific, I ate like a glutton each weekend, but I ate diet-sanctioned meals like BBQ ribs and chicken carnitas. As you can see on the cheat sheet, I have my usual breakfast on Sundays, but I allow myself to cheat at lunch. Honestly, I’m so full after lunch that I don’t have much of a desire to gorge myself later anyway. I do, however, allow myself to drink some white wine.

I’ll update my results every two weeks through June.

Notes

I was talking with the wife about the benefits of the 4-Hour Body Diet (since I do most of the cooking, she’s also on it) and I thought I’d list them here.

Since I started this diet, I’ve felt a lot better, physically. Unexpectedly, I’m sleeping a lot better too. And I’ve only had to take my heartburn medicine twice; it used to be a daily occurance. My digestion is much less aberrant and I seem to have more energy. Some people describe having less energy on this diet, but that’s because they’re going heavy on the vegetables and not getting enough calories.

All in all, I think I’m going to adopt some aspects of this diet permanently. I’ve already drilled it into my head that “sugar in = sugar out” and “protein in = fat out.” Meaning, if I eat sugar, my body burns sugar first. It’s like an uncontrollable accounting scheme. But by simply minimizing sugar, my body will inevitably burn fat to create energy. Why wasn’t I informed about this earlier?

Updates

Learning Proper Portion Sizes On The 4-Hour Body Diet
100 Days On The 4-Hour Body Diet

10. Dances With Wolves (1990)
Some people have issues with Dances With Wolves, but I love it. It’s yet another lazy iteration of the Brown = Good & Natural / White = Evil & Destructive narrative, and it employs the semi-racist “White Messiah” storyline, but it’s an entertaining look into a clash of civilizations that defined the tumultuous time. I liked it much better than the futuristic sequel where they painted the natives blue and put tentacles in their ponytails.

9. How The West Was Won (1962)
How The West Was Won is to the western genre what The Longest Day is to the WWII (specifically D-Day) genre – an epic summary of a greater story. The cinematography and live action sequences are so impressive that you could watch the movie with no sound and still come away satisfied. It’s basically a series of short stories that follows a few families from the land rush to manifest destiny and the taming of the wild west.

8. Tombstone (1993)
Maybe it’s just that this film came out when I was in high school and going through my macho phase, but I love Tombstone. The bravado is over the top, but no more than the actual mythology that still surrounds the Earp brothers and the shootout at the OK Corral. This might be the best performance ever by Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, and Kurt Russell pulled his own as the iconic lawman Wyatt Earp.

7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
This might be the most well-made film on the list. You have Robert Redford and Paul Newman playing lovable outlaws. Their adventures make the west look like a playground until the heat gets too hot and they have to escape to South America. The ending is a lesson for anyone who thinks you can escape your nature.

6. Lonesome Dove (1989)
This made-for-TV drama is one of the best ways to nurse a hangover. I spent many a Sunday on the couch in college watching almost eight hours of Lonesome Dove. The cast is stellar, the story is compelling, and the characters are endearing. Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall are outstanding as the former Texas rangers who decide to open the first ranch in Montana.

5. Open Range (2003)
This film cleverly combines two of the arch-narratives in American westerns – the wandering good Samaritan (best exhibited in Shane) and the legendary cattle wars (Lincoln County/Billy The Kid). In Open Range, the wanderers get drawn into conflict by a cattle baron who is waging a war against free rangers. It ends how you expect it to, but good character performances all around make the film stand out.

4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
You can’t go wrong when you put John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart in a western together. This film focuses on the critical period when the west was transitioning from law by the gun to law by the books. John Wayne represents the cynical old guard and Jimmy Stewart represents the optimistic new guard. Together, they stand up to an outlaw who has no place in the new west.

3. The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976)
In most westerns, the protagonist has a shady past but has changed his ways. In The Outlaw Josie Wales, the protagonist is memorable because he doesn’t evolve. Much like Eastwood’s role in Unforgiven, the main character is more or less apathetic to human life. He’s a hero only because the situation calls for someone to get their hands dirty, and he happens to save the day by doing what comes natural. It’s odd for a bad guy to be so endearing to an audience, but it has an authenticity that sets it apart from so many other singing cowboy yarns.

2. High Noon (1952)
This is one of the most tense movies ever made. It takes place in real time (around 90 minutes until the showdown), so we feel the seconds ticking down and we empathize with the protagonist as his chances look more and more grim. This incredible story of courage in the face of overwhelming odds was co-opted by the Czechs during the “Prague Spring” uprising in 1968. The protesters printed posters of the film as imagery that cast themselves as heroes standing alone against their evil Soviet oppressors while the rest of the world cowered in shame.

1. Shane (1953)
Like I’ve said before, Shane is the apex western. The plot is so simple and so effective that any movie following this basic outline will find success. Pale Rider employs almost the exact same story structure and is still considered a classic because of it. See if this sounds familiar – a robberbaron uses his wealth and power to force families off their hard-earned land. Then out of the blue, a stranger with a shady past shows up and inspires the underdogs to stand up to the villain and his henchmen. A fight breaks out, the protagonist does his duty with no thought of reward, and then rides off alone in questionable health.

Honorable Mention

The Searchers (1956)
John Wayne’s life is interrupted when his niece is kidnapped by Comanches. He spends years searching for her and his hatred for Indians grows the whole time. When he finally finds her and it’s obvious she’s adopted Comanche ways, his hatred clouds his conscience.

The Jack Bull (1999)
A surprisingly good western about a horse trader (well-played by John Cusack) who is wronged by a much more politically-connected rancher. When he uses the legal system to seek justice, he’s blocked at every turn. He finally takes matters into his own hands and draws attention to the injustice in the territory.

Deadwood, Season 1 (2004)
While not a film, this HBO series about the boomtown in Deadwood, South Dakota offers a raw and uncensored glimpse into everyday life in the wild west. It features Wild Bill Hickok as a character, so you know how the season has to end. It doesn’t disappoint.

Young Guns (1988)
Once again, I’m completely biased here. This movie came out when I was in 5th grade and it made me want a six-shooter more than anything else in the world. I was eventually given a BB gun. But not a real BB gun. I got a weak little plastic gun that shot those crappy, yellow, rubber pellets. It was embarrassing. I found solace by watching Young Guns over and over again on VHS and pretending I was one of the foolhardy Regulators.

Three Amigos (1986)
Who says a western has to be serious? This is one of the funniest films ever made. It’s Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short at their comedic best. If you can’t recite every word of this film by heart, then you obviously hate America. Traitor.

Overrated Films

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
This film is visual Valium. Honestly, I know all about the making of the film and I think it’s an interesting endeavor, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the story is just plain flat.

True Grit (1969)
What do people see in this movie? John Wayne is good as usual, but not great. The girl is okay, but what’s the story here? Why do I, the viewer, care what happens to the characters? Maybe people just love eye patches and cowboys named “Rooster” with a questionable moral pedigree.

The Wild Bunch (1969)
Once again, it’s an okay movie, but I’ve never had the desire to see it a second time. Maybe the people who love it and True Grit saw it during impressionable times of their lives, kind of like me with Tombstone and Young Guns. I was equally unimpressed with The Magnificent Seven.

Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (1973)
James Coburn is pretty good as Pat and Kris Kristofferson is okay as Billy. The only really redeeming aspect of this movie is Bob Dylan’s music. This film introduced Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door to the world. To be fair, some of the film was destroyed during the editing phase and was never reproduced, so the final version is not the finished product, so to speak.

Winchester ’73 (1950)
This film starts off alright but then it rambles through a few interconnected scenes. The stand against the Indians is exciting, but the oversall story is inconsistent at best. You’ve failed to connect with your audience if they care more about what happens to the rifle than what happens to the main characters.

As you can see, this isn’t an exhaustive list. I should also add that I’ve never seen Red River or The Gunfighter, although I’ve wanted to ever since I first heard Bob Dylan’s Brownsville Girl. Nor have I seen a slew of the really old cowboy flicks. But I’ve seen enough westerns to know what I like. And even if there are some movies that you think belong on this list that were omitted, you have to admit that you won’t go wrong watching any of these fine films.

If this list gets some younger people out there to see a movie that’s not larded up with excess background music and special effects, then I’ll feel like my work has been done.

UPDATE 3/2/11: I watched The Gunfighter last week. Gregory Peck was great as usual, but the film’s only okay. I guess knowing how it ends kind of ruined the redemption story arc they were trying to build. I still think the best Western/Wilderness film (if you can call it that) that Peck carried was The Yearling. The Big Country is pretty good too.

UPDATE 3/16/11: I just watched Red River. It was very good. John Wayne is at his best when he plays a good guy with a bad streak. The tension mounts as he slowly becomes more tyrannical and aggressive, kind of like Humphrey Bogart’s performance in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. The stampede scene is incredible. It’s like a tsunami of cattle. I don’t know how they filmed it without anyone getting killed. It stands in stark contrast to the CGI stampede scene in the recent faux-epic, Australia. You know it’s fake and it removes the ‘wow factor’ from the scene and the impact it’s supposed to have on the developing characters and the overall story.

I should add that Australia had its own Wild West and there are several very good films that depict the era:

5. Quigley Down Under (1990)
4. Ned Kelly (2003)
3. The Proposition (2005)
2. The Thorn Birds (1983)
1. The Man From Snowy River (1982)

Bob Dylan is known for spreading compilations over two CDs even though the music would fit on one. That’s so the consumer will perceive more value and justify the high cost. Knowing that, I would offer seventeen songs across two CDs with additional bonus tracks of older material to entice fans to buy early/online. I think this track list would make a good “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits 4″ album covering the material he’s released since 1994.

The studio songs, in chronological order:

1. “Trying To Get To Heaven” from the album, Time Out Of Mind.
2. “Not Dark Yet” from the album, Time Out Of Mind.
3. “Cold Irons Bound” from the album, Time Out Of Mind.
4. “Things Have Changed,” released on The Essential Bob Dylan.
5. “Mississippi” from the album Love And Theft.
6. “Po Boy” from the album Love And Theft.
7. “Working Man’s Blues #2″ from the album, Modern Times.
8. “Make You Feel My Love” from the album, Modern Times.
9. “Someday Baby” from the album, Modern Times.
10. “Dreamin’ Of You” from the single of the same name.
11. “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” from the album, Together Through Life.
12. “Dreamer’” from the album, Together Through Life.

The additional bootlegs/outtakes/live recordings in no particular order:

1. “Blind Willie McTell,” released on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3.
2. “I Shall Be Released,” live recording from The Last Waltz.
3. “John Brown” from the live album, MTV Unplugged.
4. “Born In Time,” released on Tell Tale Signs.
5. “Red River Shore,” released on Tell Tale Signs.

Bonus Tracks:

1. “Journey Through Dark Heat (Where Are You Tonight)” from Street-Legal.
2. “Every Grain Of Sand” from Shot Of Love.
3. “Cat’s In The Well” from Under The Red Sky.

That’s 20 songs that would give listeners a taste of what Dylan’s been up to since 1994, as well as introduce them to some standards from a few of his older albums. Of course, the real bonus disc would probably plug The Mono Recordings and The Witmark Demos, but I think Dylan’s people would be better served to focus on his work from the 1970s and 80s. There are some really good songs on those albums that often get lost in the conversation about Dylan’s music. In an age where listeners can cherry-pick one or two songs to download off an otherwise average album, why not try to get some more water out of those overlooked wells?

I’ve written more on Bob Dylan’s music here:

• Born In Time Lyrics (Oh Mercy Outtakes)
• Dylan And A Day In The Mountains
• Bob Dylan’s Best Music: A Cheat Sheet
• A Better Version of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3
• I’m Not There (I’m Gone) Lyrics

Two more outtakes, “Born In Time” and “God Knows”, were set aside and later re-written and re-recorded for Dylan’s next album, Under the Red Sky. Versions of both songs from the Oh Mercy sessions were also included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs. “The Oh Mercy outtake of ‘Born In Time’ was one of those Dylan performances that so surrendered itself to the moment that to decry the lyrical slips would be to mock sincerity itself,” wrote an enamored Heylin.

The stripped-down bootleg of Born In Time is a classic. Though the audio quality is pretty poor, the depth of emotion in Dylan’s voice soars above the scratches and hisses on the tape. The later version of the song that appeared on Under The Red Sky was a soulless iteration. It’s almost comical in comparison. Dylan tried to rectify his error by releasing an earlier recording of the song on Tell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol. 8. It came pretty close to capturing the passion of the original, but it’s just not the same. Because there are several versions of the song floating around, including Eric Clapton’s decent cover, it can be hard to track down a proper set of lyrics for the original recording. The words differ from the lyrics on Bob Dylan’s official website, so I thought I’d post them here for posterity.

Born In Time Lyrics, Oh Mercy Outtakes, 1988

In the lonely night
In the stardust of a pale blue light
I think of you in black and white
When we were made of dreams

I walk alone through the shakin’ street
Listenin’ to my heart beat
In the record-breaking heat
When we were born in time

Just when I knew you were gone, you came back
Just when I knew it was for certain
You were high, you were low
You were so easy to know
Oh babe, now it’s time to raise the curtain
I’m hurtin’

On the risin’ curve
Where the ways of nature will test every nerve
I took you close and got what I deserved
When we were born in time

Just when I knew who to thank, you went blank
And just when the whole fire was smokin’
You were snow
You were rain
You were stripes
You were plain
Oh babe, truer words have not been spoken
Or broken

In the hills of mystery
In the foggy web of destiny
I think of you from deep inside of me
When we were born in time

It should point out that these lyrics differer slightly from the version released on Tell Tale Signs (specifically the third verse), even though that re-recording mirrors the original pretty well.

I’ve written more on Bob Dylan’s music here:

• Dylan And A Day In The Mountains
• Bob Dylan’s Best Music: A Cheat Sheet
• A Better Version of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3
• I’m Not There (I’m Gone) Lyrics

How do you know when you have a Mexican coke? You see this:

I don’t have a dog in this fight, since I don’t typically drink sodas; I just wanted to see if the hype was warranted. If Mexican Coke is truly higher quality, and the cost difference is negligible, then I’ll be happy to buy it for house guests.

I popped the tops and poured the two Cokes into identical glasses. I had the wife, an avid Coke fanatic, taste the two and give me her immediate impressions.

She said Coke A smelled better than Coke B. She noticed that Coke B retained fizz better than Coke A. After tasting the two several times, she decided that there was in fact a difference between the two, but that the difference wasn’t enough to really declare one superior to the other. She said Coke A had more “pop,” meaning that the flavors were more exciting. Coke B had a thicker, more “syrupy” texture that tasted a tiny bit sweeter. She said the sweetness was okay, but the texture was too thick. In the end, she preferred Coke A. Before showing her the results, I asked her to clarify if she was trying to pick “her Coke” or “the best Coke,” and she conceded that Coke A was slightly superior to Coke B. I completely agreed.

So we learned that there is in fact a difference between the two Cokes, but the difference isn’t noticeable even to obsessive Coke drinkers unless they’re presented with both examples simultaneously.

As I expected, young foodies’ obsession for Mexican Coke seems to have more to do with contrarianism than quality.