Other 4-Hour Body posts:

If you’ve been reading the 4-Hour Body, then you probably know that one of the techniques that can help you lose fat faster is to take cold showers. Cold showers burn fat in several ways:

  • They stimulate your brown fat cells, helping the ones you have reproduce, work harder
  • They cause your body to compensate for the loss of body heat through shivering and a higher metabolic rate.
But cold showers have many other benefits as well:
  • They can help reduce or avoid depression.
  • Improves circulation, which is good for overall cardiac health.
  • Strengthens your immune system
  • Increases testosterone and fertility.
But how do you take a cold shower? If you just jump into cold water, you’ll be miserable. There’s a good technique that minimize the unpleasantness and actually maximizes the benefit you’ll get, because you’ll be able to stick with it better.
  1. Start with a normal, hot shower.
  2. Shampoo your hair and rinse normally.
  3. Soap up in the hot water.
  4. Then, turn the temperature to a low luke-warm. Nothing that you’d identify as cold, just neither cold nor warm.
  5. Rinse off in this low luke-warm water. This gives your body time to adjust to the temperature.
  6. Now, turn your back to the water.
  7. Turn the temperature down slightly, just a few degrees cooler.
  8. Wait about 30-40 seconds. You can count off one-one thousand, two-one thousand, or you can sing the ABCs.
  9. Repeat 7 and 8, as many times as you can. I can now go about 6 cycles of gradually reducing the temperature.
  10. I usually stop the cycle after my teeth start chattering while singing the ABCs.
The reason this process works is:
  • You still get to enjoy a hot shower to start.
  • You gradually reduce the temperature so that it is never an unpleasant shock.
  • By the time the water temperature is getting really cold, your upper back and neck are already somewhat numb, so you hardly notice the temperature change.
  • Using this method, you should easily be able to spend 5-6 minutes in an increasingly cold shower.
You’ll finish feeling invigorated and refreshed. Give it a try!