"eat sugar all day and laze around"
I've been following that regimen lately and am 5'10"/5'11" and 130 pounds. I am 19 years old though, there are probably a lot of people my age who manage the same trick. I've noticed there seem to be a lot more >6'1" skinny guys than <6'1". I'm not sure if that's just 'cuz better general genetic fitness, specializing in attractiveness, the mechanics of anatomy, halo effect, not-necessarily-genetic racial differences, and/or many other possible factors.
I am 19 years old though, there are probably a lot of people my age who manage the same trick
Like me! I'm a year younger, but our height/weight stats are incredibly similar (I think you're a bit taller).
I've just read the Four-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss. It seems on the face of it like ridiculously valuable material, if true - like what the completed version of Michael Vassar's proposed reboot of dietary science would look like at the finish point if dieting turned out to be more susceptible to Munchkinism than in my wildest dreams. Ferriss also talks the rationalist talk quite well in this book, much more so than in Four-Hour Workweek; he cites the experiments and occasionally says things like "I spent a lot of money on this and I expected it to work and it didn't work at all" or "I tried this and it seemed to work and I have no idea why it worked and I think it was probably a placebo effect."
Does the LessWrong hivemind have an opinion about 4HB? Has anyone tried it and found that it doesn't work, or that it does work, or that it works but not as well as Ferriss thinks it should work?