Rating

★★★★☆

Category

non-fiction

Read

2011-01-17

Pages

592

Not sure how to rate this book. On one hand it’s an addictive read. It’s a freaking tome and I was through it in a week. Tim’s commitment to self-experimentation is pretty amazing.

On the other I felt a lot of it was written from a perspective too far removed from my own to be useful. Tim’s background in the nutrition industry is obvious, and most chapters focus around some combination of drugs or micronutrients, and this is a persistent bias. The chapter on “perfecting the perfect sleep” doesn’t even mention trying dropping stimulants (caffeine), as if the idea never occurred to him. The small chapters on meatless diets were obviously written by a meat eater (though the inclusion of Scott Jurek’s shopping list was fascinating - three pages of it!), even though he included interviews with the right people (such as Mike Mahler).

Overall though it’s still inspiring. Worth reading.