While there are some good things in this book, its overall message is based on some bad science and its recommendations may lead you to gain weight, not lose it.
The short version of this review is this: weight training + no calorie control = weight gain (both muscle and fat) for many (probably most) people. It's called "bulking" in the body building world, and for good reason.
People buying a book called "The Abs Diet" probably want to lose fat, but for lots of them following the recommendations in this book will accomplish the exact opposite, and in fact you see that play out in some of the other one-star reviews of this book. For more on the science behind all this and some recommendations on better books for fat loss, read on ...
(A) EXERCISE: The central thesis of this book is that you can lose fat through weight training. Build those muscles (like your abs) and watch the fat melt off. That explains the title ("The Abs Diet").
This theory is fundamentally flawed. The primary basis for the author's argument is a claim that muscle tissue consumes 50 calories per pound of muscle per day (actually he says "up to," but that is easy to miss). According to this theory, if you add on a mere 10 pounds of muscle your metabolism will skyrocket by 500 calories per day and chew up all those unwanted fat pounds. The only problem with this is that, in reality, muscle tissue only consumes about 6 calories per pound per day. Fat tissue, meanwhile, also consumes about 2 calories per pound per day, so as you add muscle and lose fat, you will actually only make tiny changes in your daily calorie usage. And that daily calorie usage may very well drop, not increase, if you are losing a lot of fat.
Second, he neglects to tell you how difficult it is to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. It requires almost perfectly timed protein and carb boosts before and immediately after weight training, and even then, simply focusing on either muscle building or fat loss at one time, and switching back and forth (called bulking and cutting by body builders), may get you there faster. More generally, successful muscle building requires a calorie surplus, while fat loss requires a calorie deficit.
Overall, research suggests that the track record of exercise as a fat-loss strategy is actually pretty mixed, and minimal for many (its track record is better when it comes to preventing fat regain, though). Any contribution to fat loss is most likely to occur in a calorie-restricted environment, where the primary value is in the calories burned during and after exercise and the resulting avoidance of muscle loss, rather than muscle building. But while this strategy may work in theory, in practice it makes many people hungrier, making them eat more and thereby negating much or all of the benefit. For lots of people, exercise actually correlates more with muscle gain and increased (not lower) body fat, which is reflected in the bulking and cutting strategy mentioned earlier.
At best, this boils down to "your mileage may vary." If nothing else, it suggests that people who use exercise as a fat loss strategy should monitor their results to see if it is working as expected, preferably with measuring tape not a scale, since adding muscle will add pounds. My personal view is that exercise can contribute to fat loss when combined with calorie control, but this contribution is easily negated by poor dietary choices, which are far more important.
(B) DIET: This brings us to the primary determinant of fat loss, getting your diet right. Simply put, you can exercise all you want, but if you don't get your diet right then don't bother. The author acknowledges the importance of diet and includes a lot of dietary advice in the book. Unfortunately, a lot of that advice is off the mark.
First, the author completely glosses over the importance of controlling calories. Instead, he encourages you to ignore calories and just focus on eating certain "power foods", which he thinks will get you to consume fewer calories overall. Well, that may be true for some people but not for others. If you check the other one star reviews of this book, you will find plenty of people who gained weight following his recommendations. This probably isn't too surprising given the inclusion of peanut butter, nuts, and some other questionable items on his power food list. It is generally accepted that you need to reduce your net calorie consumption by 3,500 calories to lose a pound of body fat. How you accomplish this, though, matters a lot.
The best diet is one that human beings evolved to eat. The bulk of this evolution happened before agriculture, and well before the more recent disaster known as the modern Western Diet. Our ideal diet is lots and lots of vegetables supplemented with some fish or meat as a source of protein (or some vegetarian equivalent if you prefer that, though as a species we are omnivores and thus meat eaters), with some whole fruit (not juice or dried fruit) thrown in occasionally. Everything else should either be eaten in moderation or not at all, and even meat and fish should be eaten in moderation. Generally speaking, you only need about 50-150 grams of protein per day, depending on your size and exercise habits. Anything more than that will slow fat loss without adding appreciably to muscle gain.
Vegetables are the real stars in this diet. They feature both low calorie density and high fiber content. The first fills you up at a low calorie price and the second can slow down digestion (depending on whether it is soluble or insoluble fiber), thereby keeping you full longer. Coupled with a little protein, which has its own satiety properties, vegetables are anti-hunger dynamos.
Let's pause to think about hunger for a moment. It is the bane of most diets, and yet it is a wholly natural feeling - nature's way of making sure we don't starve. Other animals seem to deal successfully with it, eating what they need to without getting fat. When confronted with an abundant food supply, most animals multiply and thrive. They don't get fat and slothful, features that would tend to get you eaten by a predator. Humans are the only animal for whom hunger is a problem. The reason is we aren't eating human food -- the plant and animal diets we evolved to eat.
Once you realize this, it becomes pretty obvious what you need to avoid - any processed, manufactured food that does not exist in nature. This probably includes the grain and rice-based carbs that low-carb practitioners dislike so much (principally because they heighten insulin and promote fat storage). Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that our dietary problems began with the adoption of agricultural practices that produced bread, cereals, pasta, rice and similar foods. You should probably also reduce or eliminate dairy. The only milk humans probably should consume is mother's milk when we are babies (there is a reason many people are lactose intolerant, and our Paleolithic ancestors were probably not milking a lot of wild cows).
But much more than the above foods, you truly need to avoid the manufactured techno-foods invented in the past few decades that are so packed with sugar, fat, salt, and calories. This includes most packaged foods in the supermarket and most food in most restaurants, particularly chains. Beyond the unusually high calorie density (well beyond that of the meat and vegetables we should be eating), many of these foods have been engineered to be so palatable that they actually trigger chemical reactions in our brains that are not terribly different from drugs. Sugar is particularly bad here, triggering dopamine and a variety of other chemicals associated with pleasure, which render it quite literally the crack cocaine of foods. There is a reason that food manufacturers add high fructose corn syrup to virtually everything, even foods you don't think of as sweet. You will be doing yourself a lot of good if you stop viewing these manufactured techno foods as food, and instead view them as the drugs they truly are.
A lot of people have noted the explosion in obesity that has occurred in the U.S. since the early 1980s. Once you realize the effects that the foods we eat have on the brain, and couple that with their associated calorie density, it is pretty easy to see why this is true. A lot of the arguments between low-carb and low-fat diet enthusiasts miss this. Is eliminating donuts, ice cream, potato chips, French fries, and pizza from your diet low carb or low fat? It's both.
In fairness, the dietary advice in this book doesn't take you that far astray from these principles (though, again the nuts and peanut butter recommendations are questionable, and low-carb enthusiasts probably won't like the whole grain and oatmeal recommendations). My more fundamental criticism is the earlier focus on weight training as an oversold dietary strategy, particularly when coupled with advice to ignore calories consumed. Muscle and fitness are good things, don't get me wrong, and if you are a sports enthusiast looking to get stronger or bulk up, it's good advice. But if you are looking to lose fat, this advice may be counter-productive. It's called the Abs-Diet, after all. This book is being marketed to people looking to lose fat. People in that category need to focus first and foremost on fixing their diets.
Toward that end, here are some other books you should consider, instead of or in addition to this book:
* The Paleo Diet, by Loren Cordain: This is the best set of dietary recommendations I have come across, and it is consistent with the recommendations found above.
* The End of Overeating, by David Kessler: This book describes some of the brain chemistry issues associated with processed food.
.
The short version of this review is this: weight training + no calorie control = weight gain (both muscle and fat) for many (probably most) people. It's called "bulking" in the body building world, and for good reason.
People buying a book called "The Abs Diet" probably want to lose fat, but for lots of them following the recommendations in this book will accomplish the exact opposite, and in fact you see that play out in some of the other one-star reviews of this book. For more on the science behind all this and some recommendations on better books for fat loss, read on ...
(A) EXERCISE: The central thesis of this book is that you can lose fat through weight training. Build those muscles (like your abs) and watch the fat melt off. That explains the title ("The Abs Diet").
This theory is fundamentally flawed. The primary basis for the author's argument is a claim that muscle tissue consumes 50 calories per pound of muscle per day (actually he says "up to," but that is easy to miss). According to this theory, if you add on a mere 10 pounds of muscle your metabolism will skyrocket by 500 calories per day and chew up all those unwanted fat pounds. The only problem with this is that, in reality, muscle tissue only consumes about 6 calories per pound per day. Fat tissue, meanwhile, also consumes about 2 calories per pound per day, so as you add muscle and lose fat, you will actually only make tiny changes in your daily calorie usage. And that daily calorie usage may very well drop, not increase, if you are losing a lot of fat.
Second, he neglects to tell you how difficult it is to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. It requires almost perfectly timed protein and carb boosts before and immediately after weight training, and even then, simply focusing on either muscle building or fat loss at one time, and switching back and forth (called bulking and cutting by body builders), may get you there faster. More generally, successful muscle building requires a calorie surplus, while fat loss requires a calorie deficit.
Overall, research suggests that the track record of exercise as a fat-loss strategy is actually pretty mixed, and minimal for many (its track record is better when it comes to preventing fat regain, though). Any contribution to fat loss is most likely to occur in a calorie-restricted environment, where the primary value is in the calories burned during and after exercise and the resulting avoidance of muscle loss, rather than muscle building. But while this strategy may work in theory, in practice it makes many people hungrier, making them eat more and thereby negating much or all of the benefit. For lots of people, exercise actually correlates more with muscle gain and increased (not lower) body fat, which is reflected in the bulking and cutting strategy mentioned earlier.
At best, this boils down to "your mileage may vary." If nothing else, it suggests that people who use exercise as a fat loss strategy should monitor their results to see if it is working as expected, preferably with measuring tape not a scale, since adding muscle will add pounds. My personal view is that exercise can contribute to fat loss when combined with calorie control, but this contribution is easily negated by poor dietary choices, which are far more important.
(B) DIET: This brings us to the primary determinant of fat loss, getting your diet right. Simply put, you can exercise all you want, but if you don't get your diet right then don't bother. The author acknowledges the importance of diet and includes a lot of dietary advice in the book. Unfortunately, a lot of that advice is off the mark.
First, the author completely glosses over the importance of controlling calories. Instead, he encourages you to ignore calories and just focus on eating certain "power foods", which he thinks will get you to consume fewer calories overall. Well, that may be true for some people but not for others. If you check the other one star reviews of this book, you will find plenty of people who gained weight following his recommendations. This probably isn't too surprising given the inclusion of peanut butter, nuts, and some other questionable items on his power food list. It is generally accepted that you need to reduce your net calorie consumption by 3,500 calories to lose a pound of body fat. How you accomplish this, though, matters a lot.
The best diet is one that human beings evolved to eat. The bulk of this evolution happened before agriculture, and well before the more recent disaster known as the modern Western Diet. Our ideal diet is lots and lots of vegetables supplemented with some fish or meat as a source of protein (or some vegetarian equivalent if you prefer that, though as a species we are omnivores and thus meat eaters), with some whole fruit (not juice or dried fruit) thrown in occasionally. Everything else should either be eaten in moderation or not at all, and even meat and fish should be eaten in moderation. Generally speaking, you only need about 50-150 grams of protein per day, depending on your size and exercise habits. Anything more than that will slow fat loss without adding appreciably to muscle gain.
Vegetables are the real stars in this diet. They feature both low calorie density and high fiber content. The first fills you up at a low calorie price and the second can slow down digestion (depending on whether it is soluble or insoluble fiber), thereby keeping you full longer. Coupled with a little protein, which has its own satiety properties, vegetables are anti-hunger dynamos.
Let's pause to think about hunger for a moment. It is the bane of most diets, and yet it is a wholly natural feeling - nature's way of making sure we don't starve. Other animals seem to deal successfully with it, eating what they need to without getting fat. When confronted with an abundant food supply, most animals multiply and thrive. They don't get fat and slothful, features that would tend to get you eaten by a predator. Humans are the only animal for whom hunger is a problem. The reason is we aren't eating human food -- the plant and animal diets we evolved to eat.
Once you realize this, it becomes pretty obvious what you need to avoid - any processed, manufactured food that does not exist in nature. This probably includes the grain and rice-based carbs that low-carb practitioners dislike so much (principally because they heighten insulin and promote fat storage). Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that our dietary problems began with the adoption of agricultural practices that produced bread, cereals, pasta, rice and similar foods. You should probably also reduce or eliminate dairy. The only milk humans probably should consume is mother's milk when we are babies (there is a reason many people are lactose intolerant, and our Paleolithic ancestors were probably not milking a lot of wild cows).
But much more than the above foods, you truly need to avoid the manufactured techno-foods invented in the past few decades that are so packed with sugar, fat, salt, and calories. This includes most packaged foods in the supermarket and most food in most restaurants, particularly chains. Beyond the unusually high calorie density (well beyond that of the meat and vegetables we should be eating), many of these foods have been engineered to be so palatable that they actually trigger chemical reactions in our brains that are not terribly different from drugs. Sugar is particularly bad here, triggering dopamine and a variety of other chemicals associated with pleasure, which render it quite literally the crack cocaine of foods. There is a reason that food manufacturers add high fructose corn syrup to virtually everything, even foods you don't think of as sweet. You will be doing yourself a lot of good if you stop viewing these manufactured techno foods as food, and instead view them as the drugs they truly are.
A lot of people have noted the explosion in obesity that has occurred in the U.S. since the early 1980s. Once you realize the effects that the foods we eat have on the brain, and couple that with their associated calorie density, it is pretty easy to see why this is true. A lot of the arguments between low-carb and low-fat diet enthusiasts miss this. Is eliminating donuts, ice cream, potato chips, French fries, and pizza from your diet low carb or low fat? It's both.
In fairness, the dietary advice in this book doesn't take you that far astray from these principles (though, again the nuts and peanut butter recommendations are questionable, and low-carb enthusiasts probably won't like the whole grain and oatmeal recommendations). My more fundamental criticism is the earlier focus on weight training as an oversold dietary strategy, particularly when coupled with advice to ignore calories consumed. Muscle and fitness are good things, don't get me wrong, and if you are a sports enthusiast looking to get stronger or bulk up, it's good advice. But if you are looking to lose fat, this advice may be counter-productive. It's called the Abs-Diet, after all. This book is being marketed to people looking to lose fat. People in that category need to focus first and foremost on fixing their diets.
Toward that end, here are some other books you should consider, instead of or in addition to this book:
* The Paleo Diet, by Loren Cordain: This is the best set of dietary recommendations I have come across, and it is consistent with the recommendations found above.
* The End of Overeating, by David Kessler: This book describes some of the brain chemistry issues associated with processed food.
.
