Step 1: Read the first chapter of the book for free

Step 2: Read these blog posts that summarizes the diet, and decide if you are on board.

List of foods allowed/disallowed (excluding cheat day):  http://4hourpeople.com/question/369/slow-carb-foods-allowed-not-allowed

Step 3: Now that you’re IN, Buy the book and Read these chapters on Subtracting Fat:

Obviously, I’m encouraging you to buy the book. It’s less than $20 and there’s a ton of information in it. It helped me out, so I’m asking you to support the author now that you’ve read a little.

Book: The Four Hour Body (Book on Amazon | Amazon Kindle Edition). I bought the Kindle version and it’s come in handy that I’ve had it on my phone whenever I was at the store trying to buy something and needed to review the rules. The printed book is a BEAST …. but keep in mind that this is NOT a read cover to cover type of book. You just read the intro chapters and then read whatever topics interest you.

The chapters are short and the writing style is engaging which makes it a quick read. If you want a physical book, just about any book store should carry it.

Chapters to read to get started on Slow Carb Diet

• The Slow- Carb Diet I: How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise
• The Slow-Carb Diet II: The Finer Points and Common Questions
• Damage Control: Preventing Fat Gain When You Binge
• The Four Horsemen of Fat-Loss

It would be best is you also read the introductory chapters that precede the Subtracting fat section. I also read the chapter on Building the Perfect Posterior (or Losing 100+ Pounds) — which is where my kettlebell workout came from. I haven’t done anything with the cold bath stuff or any of the other advanced topics. I also only eat 3 times a day.

Step 4: Choose a cheat day … and pick a day to start (should be at least 5 days before your 1st cheat day)

 

Saturday is my standard cheat day. I make adjustments when necessary though (Thanksgiving and Christmas day were my cheat days on those weeks, for example). Remember that it IS important that you eat a lot of calories on this day. The main purpose of this day is to prevent your body metabolism from switching to a low-calorie burn mode. Cheat day is a good mind trick too though. A couple of weeks ago, I fantasized about an Italian Feast that I planned to eat on Saturday night ALL WEEK.

Cheat days are no hold barred, but the author does have some cheat day strategies in the Damage Control chapter. I usually end up drinking a couple of small cans of grapefruit juice before high-carb meals on cheat days. REAL grapefruit juice was hard to find in cans, so I ordered this pack of 24 from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZI7I36/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details. I’ve even brought a couple of cans with me on trips.

Step 5: Measure Yourself before you start

 

Now I didn’t do this, but I wish I had. My first month, I only lost 7-8 lbs … but my body shape changed a lot. Net effect I was packing on a lot of muscle at the same time as I was losing fat. I could see big differences in how my clothes fit, but I couldn’t quantify the results because the only thing I was tracking was weight. Now the 2nd month, I lost like 25 or so …. despite still adding muscle.

Get a measuring tape (the kind that tailors use) and measure before you start and at least every couple of weeks. This article tells you how to measure: http://www.4hourlife.com/2011/04/09/4-hour-body-composition-body-fat-calculator-how-do-you-measure-up/

 

Step 6: Get started

Now you don’t HAVE to go through all of the previous steps before starting. But, at least read the first two chapters of the subtracting fat section of the book.

Step 7: Get your PAGG Stack supplements (optional)

 

This article covers the PAGG stack that the book discusses in the “Four Horsemen of Fat Loss” chapter. This is optional, but recommened — especially if you won’t be working-out much: http://www.fourhourbodycouple.com/2011/02/02/what-is-the-pagg-stack/

Don’t let not having these hold up starting the diet. They do sell All-In-One pills, but those run about $50/month.Here’s what I use:

Here is my PAGG Stack

 

• Policosanol – I couldn’t find locally, so I order from Amazon – click to see product (90 caps, so 1 bottle lasts 3 months)
• Alpha Lipoic Acid – HEB – they also sell these at walmart, but the mg per pill are lower and the price is higher
• Garlic comes from Walmart — I think I got these because it’s a good product at low price. $5, I think.
• Green Tea Extract — can’t remember why I go with the HEB one.

More tips

• Alcohol is limited to up to 2 glass of dry wine (low sugar) a day. No other alcohol allowed, except for your cheat day — on which there are no rules or restrictions.
• Do like the author says and keep your meals simple. Establish a rotation of 4-5 meals and stick with those. If you’re someone who doesn’t cook often, don’t run out to the store, buy up a ton of groceries, and tell yourself you’re going to start cooking everyday.
• For breakfast, the most important thing is to eat with 1 hour (preferably 30 mins) of waking up. I tried to keep it simple and have something that didn’t need cooking or prep time. So, I drink one of these just about every day: http://www.amazon.com/AdvantEDGE-Control-Strawberry-Cream-Carton/dp/B000UVCIHW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331002714&sr=8-1
• I often will also grab a few slices of sandwich meat (usually turkey or ham) to push the grams of protein up to 25-30.

Here are some common things that I would eat from restaurants:

• Chipotle – Salad with no dressing (lettuce, black beans, sautéed onions and peppers, chicken or carnitas, pico, hot sauce, corn, and either Guacamole or double meat)
• Salad from a sandwich shop with either balsamic vinaigrette or just oil and vinegar.
• A BBQ spot … brisket or ribs with little to no sauce. Side of beans.
• Mexican restaurant — Taco Salad (no shell) with double ground beef, beans, pico, jalapeños, and a little salsa for dressing
• American restaurants – Grilled pork chops (with no glaze) or steak, beans and veggies

Common things that I cooked (usually with salad, steamed broccoli, green beans) :

• Pot roast with no potatoes
• Chili
• Ribeye steak on grill or broiled on stove/oven

I’ve been working on bringing the website for the church I attend into the modern era and I think I just found the perfect theme.

It’s called Outreach, and it’s awesome.  Make sure you click on the “Test Drive” link to get the full effect.

Here it is: http://www.studiopress.com/releases/outreach-1-0-child-theme-released.htm

Tonight, Palm released WebOS 1.3.1 to Sprint customers here in the U.S.  Among it’s many fixes read this line:

• If you set up Contacts to synchronize with a Google account, the account synchronizes only entries in Google’s My Contacts, not all contacts.

My Pre is validating the download as we speak.  I’ll report back if there are any problems.

Hopefully the NuevaSync workaround served many of you well (I was getting a few dozen hits a day on that tutorial).  Of course, you can continue to use it if you want and I’ll leave the article up …. but I’ll be removing it from my phone.

In the comments, I’ve tried to help a couple of people who were having problems.  I decided that a follow up blog entry on troubleshooting would be a worthwile endevor.

As people report new problems, I’ll try to keep this entry updated.

Basic Troubleshooting

Give it some time: After you’ve finished the setup, you’re anxious to instantly see all of your contacts sync.  However, it may take a few minutes before your phone starts to download contacts.   Once it does start syncing, it may take several minutes for it to complete the process … depending on how many contacts you have.  So, before you assuming that the sky is falling, just wait 5-10 minutes to see what’s happening.

Check out the NuevaSync Detailed Status Page (screenshot below)
(https://www.nuevasync.com/PublicSite/user/detail-status.htm)
This page will show you which calendars and how many contacts are setup to sync.  If the numbers look right to you, then you know that NuevaSync is successfully accessing your Google Account.  If they don’t, go into the NuevaSync settings screen and double check your Google Account settings for both contacts and calendar.

Check out the NuevaSync Sync Status Page (screenshot below)
(https://www.nuevasync.com/PublicSite/user/sync-status.htm)
This page will show you whether or not your Pre is successfully syncing.  If there is no information there, then your Pre is not successfully connecting to NuevaSync.  Double check the sync settings in the Pre Contacts app for the NuevaSync Exchange server account.  If you see some weird error message that you can’t figure out, let me know and I’ll try to shed some light (read: guess what it means )

That’s all for now.  Let me know what problems you are having and I’ll see what I can come up with.

I’m excited to see all of the work being done on precentral.net and predev.wikidot.com on Palm Pre hacking/development.  One of my main reasons for Palm Pre excitement was the notion that I’d be able to build apps without learning Objective-C or some other language.

I’m just not THAT into doing web development all day at work and then coming home to learn a new language.  Actually, I prefer not to look at my home computer much at all.

I guess the first “real” homebrew app was released today … a Tip Calculator.  Check it out here: http://www.jwz.org/tipcalculator/.  I downloaded the source code and looked around a little bit.  Looks pretty approachable.  I will probably put my Pre in to Programmer’s mode (or just download the image) and see what other application source code I can look through.

I guess it’s time for me to pick up a Javascript framework  (prototype, mootools, etc) and start messing around with it.  I’ve never done any MVC Javascript programming, but I suppose my Adobe Flex experience will pay off from an architecture standpoint.

That’s fine for limited, but probably not if you need to test dates that span many years or need to run the function 1,000s of times.  Anyway, here’s a SQL Server UDF solution.  It’s late, so hopefully the comments in the code suffice.  It should be straightforward to rewrite this in ColdFusion.

This is an improved version of the solution presented here.  That solution fails when the timespan is less than 7 days long and contains at least one weekend day.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[dateDiffWeekdays] (
@startdaytime DATETIME;
@enddaytime DATETIME;
)
RETURNS INT
AS
BEGIN
 
DECLARE @answer INT;
SET @answer = 0
 
-- Strip Times
SELECT @START = dateadd(dd,0, datediff(dd,0,@startdaytime))
SELECT @END = dateadd(dd,0, datediff(dd,0,@enddaytime))
 
-- handle end conditions
DECLARE @firstWeekDayInRange datetime, @lastWeekDayInRange datetime;
SELECT @firstWeekDayInRange =
CASE
-- If Saturday, add two days
WHEN datepart(dw,@START) = 7 THEN dateadd(DAY,2,@START)
-- If Sunday, add one day
WHEN datepart(dw,@START) = 1 THEN dateadd(DAY,1,@START)
ELSE @START
END
 
SELECT @lastWeekDayInRange =
CASE
-- If Saturday, substract one day
WHEN datepart(dw,@END) = 7 THEN dateadd(DAY,-1,@END)
-- If Sunday, substract two days
WHEN datepart(dw,@END) = 1 THEN dateadd(DAY,-2,@END)
ELSE @END
END
 
-- add one day to answer (to count Friday) if enddate was on a weekend
IF @END != @lastWeekDayInRange
SET @answer = 1
 
SELECT @answer = @answer +
CASE
-- triggered if start and end date are on same weekend
WHEN dateDiff(DAY,@firstWeekDayInRange,@lastWeekDayInRange) < 0 THEN (@answer * -1)
-- otherwise count the days and substract 2 days per weekend in between dates
ELSE (DateDiff(DAY, @firstWeekDayInRange, @lastWeekDayInRange) - DateDiff(week, @firstWeekDayInRange, @lastWeekDayInRange)*2)
END
 
RETURN @answer
END
 
-- Call created function
SELECT dbo.dateDiffWeekdays('6/1/2009','6/13/2009')

This process described below is no longer necessary. As of Web OS 1.3.1 (released mid-November 2009), WebOS devices automatically limit Google contact syncing to records in  ”My Contacts”. I have stopped using the method below, but I will leave this blog entry online for historical purposes.

Original Post:

As most early adopters of the Palm Pre know, Synergy with GMail pulls in records from “All Contacts” instead of “My Contacts.” The result for heavy GMail users is a contact record for virtually everyone you have ever emailed.

After about an hour of messing around, I was finally able to figure out how to get email and clean contacts from my GMail account.

If anyone is interested in setting this up on their phone, please follow the directions closely. There is a reason for every step. There are a few places that you can get tripped up.

Theory: Use Synergy with Nuevasync’s Exchange server emulation to sync Contacts and Synergy with setup GMail in the Pre for email and calendar.

End Results: Exchange Server Profile on Pre syncing via Nuevasync Google for Contacts and Calendar. Pre getting email directly from GMail and a useless Exchange email account that can’t be deleted. (I suppose everything can’t be perfect.)

References:

Palm Pre Manual: Pre User Guide
page 144 – Stop Sync of Contacts with an Online Account
page 144 – Connect to an online calendar through the Palm Synergy feature
page 155 – Stop Sync of Calendar With an Online Account

Requirements:

• Pre updated to 1.0.2 (may not be required — but it made the error messages in my trial and error process informative)
• GMail account (of course)
• Free nuevasync.com account (let’s you use Active Sync to sync phone with GMail, Google Calendar, and Plaxo) Go set one up after reading the note below.
• Verify that you preferences on nuevasync.com are setup to give it access to your GMail and Google Calendar account. Pretty straightforward setup.

Important Notes:

• In order to get around a Pre Limitation/Safeguard, the email address on your NuevaSync accountMUST not match your GMail address. Since you cannot change your email address, I had to setup a new NuevaSync account.
• Workaround Tip: Most people don’t know that GMail disregards periods in your GMail email address. If you email address is username@gmail.com, then mail sent to user.name@gmail.com also gets delivered to your account. Give it a try with your own address if you like. Knowing this, I created my new Nuevasync account and just put a period in my normal Gmail email address. Before doing that I tried, myusername@googlemail.com … but the Pre knows that gmail.com and googlemail.com are the same thing.
• I’m not sure if the tip above works with Google Apps accounts.

Steps: I don’t think that the order really matters. But I’m going to assume that most of you have your GMail account already setup. So I’ll make that step one.

Step 1: If not already done, setup your Google account on your Pre. Doesn’t matter if you add it from the email, contacts, or calendar app.

Step 2: Go to preferences under the contacts app. Open the Google account and press “Remove Account” …. don’t be scared … it only removes it from the contacts app. It will not affect your mail settings for Google. Refer to page 144 of the User’s Guide for verification. Once you hit “Remove” you’ll be taken back to the preference screen. The Google account will continue to be shown for a couple of minutes while the Pre removes those contacts from your phone.

Step 3: From the preferences panel of the Contacts App, choose “Add an account.” Choose Exchange Server as the type. When you are prompted for your email address and password, choose “Manual Setup” from the menu in the upper left-hand corner.

Use these settings:

Email Address: The email address on your NuevaSync account. Remember, this must not exactly match your GMail account. If it does, you will get an error saying there is already an account for that email address on the phone.

Incoming Mail Server: https://www.nuevasync.com
Domain: LEAVE BLANK (this differs from the nuevasync instructions for Windows Mobile)

Username: Your Nuevasync Username
Password: Your Nuevasync Password

Once that is all entered …. press Sign in and cross your fingers. If it says that your username/password do not match … make sure that you left the domain box empty and verify your username/password.

If you get some other kind of syncing problem. Click the troubleshooting link from within your account on nuevasync.com. There is a link within it that will show you the syncing errors with your account. Make sure that you have authorized Nuevasync to access your Google account.

Step 5: Go to preferences from within the CALENDAR app and remove the Google Calendar account.

Unfortunately, you cannot remove the Exchange account. Unlike other account types, removing an Exchange Account removes it from Calendar, Contacts, and Mail.

For this same reason, you can’t delete the Exchange account from within the mail app. I just removed it’s Inbox as a favorite and sorted my accounts so that mail profile was at the bottom.

IMO, small price to pay to not have an extra 1000 trash contacts from GMail. Maybe a future update will allow us to define what the Exchange account should since with.

Update on 7/20/2008: Does this work for you?

• If so, leave a comment and let me know.  I’d like to think that people find this useful, but I’m not sure.
• If not, check out my troubleshooting post – http://www.aaronterry.com/2009/07/palm-pre-troubleshooting-nuevasync-google-contacts/