Living Low Carb (55 page)
Authors: Jonny Bowden
You determine which group you’re in by taking a test given in the early part of the book. Once you know your “type,” you simply follow the plan. “Slow oxidizers” require a higher percentage of carbs to lose weight and feel energized, “fast oxidizers” do better on a lower-carb (higher-protein) program, and “balanced oxidizers” are in between. She’s got shopping lists for each of the three types plus sample menus, and she’s not dogmatic about any of it, which is good.
There’s plenty of good stuff in here about the mind–body connection. And the exercise program is excellent, with plenty of variations, as you’d expect from a top trainer.
It’s a 30-day program, clearly aimed for people who want to drop the “last stubborn 10–20 pounds.” People who are really insulin-resistant or considerably more overweight might need a more structured low-carb program, but for many people—especially those who resonate with Michaels’s “no nonsense, empowerment” philosophy, this book will be just what the doctor ordered.
I have an editor friend at
Men’sHealth
who once told me that he has a shorthand way of evaluating the dozens of diet and fitness books that come his way to review every week: he simply picks a subject he knows a lot about, then goes to the section of the book where the author discusses that topic. He can tell pretty quickly whether the book is any good or not.
I didn’t have to look very far for my “representative chapter.”
Chapter 2
of
The 5-Factor Diet
is titled “Why Low Carb Diets Don’t Work.”
And it’s pretty darn awful.
In fact, the whole chapter might have been lifted from a high-school term paper in dietetics. It repeats every myth, every untruth, and every party line ever stated by the moribund American Dietetic Association, and there isn’t an original thought in it. Some samples: “Instead of losing fat you’re losing muscle and water,” he tells us authoritatively, even though all the research by Jeff Volek, PhD, RD and others has shown just the opposite. Want more? “Low carb diets are high in saturated fat,” he tells us, despite the fact that many low-carb diets are extremely
low
in saturated fat (unnecessarily, in my opinion). And of course, the stupidest and least informed line of all: “Low carb diets raise your cholesterol level and increase your risk of stroke, heart disease and diabetes” (that last one is particularly funny, and as a statement of fact it’s right up there with “the earth is flat”).
Pasternak also reminds us that
“low carb diets can cause a permanent loss of kidney function
,” a complete misreading of a study that showed that people with
existing
kidney disease should not overdo protein. (As I point out on page 112, there is not a single published study anywhere in the literature that indicates that low-carb diets impair kidney function in any way—for people with healthy kidneys. His statement is like saying that because a person with a broken leg shouldn’t do aerobics, aerobics cause broken legs.)
He even calls The Zone a “rigid high protein low carb diet” when even his most conservative colleagues and opponents of low-carb have stopped calling it that. There’s not a word about insulin—and he repeats the mantra that the only thing that causes weight loss on The Zone is the reduction of calories.
The whole “selling point” of the program is that you eat five times a day. Now you know.
Harley Pasternak is a good-looking young Hollywood trainer who lucked out with some terrific marketing and an A-list of superstar clients, which evidentially has caused him to think that he knows a great deal about nutrition.
He doesn’t.
The book gets a star because the exercise program itself is okay (although nothing remotely innovative or unusual) and the foods he
does
recommend are not bad.
And because I’m feeling generous.
I’m not really sure what the difference between this book and
The 5-Factor Diet
is—the big “concept” of the 5-Factor Diet is that you eat five times a day, and the big “concept” of this one is that you eat every three hours. If someone could point out the difference to me, I’d appreciate it.
It’s hard
not
to compare this to
The 5-Factor Diet
, because they have so much in common. They have the same formula: take one good-looking, media-friendly trainer with some celebrity clients, add book deal, and market brilliantly. Both are written by trainers with enormous selfconfidence who know somewhat less about nutrition and metabolic complexity than they think they do, and both are fairly ordinary books that did incredibly well.
The 3-Hour Diet
is basically a good magazine article stretched into a full-length book. The premise—eat every three hours—is no big deal and certainly no magic formula, though it may be a structure that helps ward off hunger and overeating for some people. For others, like those who respond with a ton of insulin to every meal, it may not even be the best idea.
The first half of the book is text; the rest is basically a journal you write in, where you keep track of the meals you eat every three hours.
Cruise’s earlier success,
8 Minutes in the Morning
, was an exercise book that was geared toward getting the most out of a minimal commitment to exercise, and was actually quite good. Here he explains that he wrote
The 3-Hour Diet
for people who didn’t want to exercise but still wanted results. (Maybe his next book will be for people who want results and don’t want to exercise
or
diet. Just kidding.)
Full disclosure: I know people who know Jorge quite well, and from all reports he’s a terrific guy, very dedicated and very sincere. I don’t doubt that for a minute. What angers me is when a trainer claims to have “the answer” about nutrition and proceeds to trash the principles of low-carb eating without understanding them very well.
So if I’m hard on this book it’s only because it makes me mad. With all his influence, Cruise could be a real force for change in the way Americans think about diet and exercise; but—in this book, at least—he misses the boat and blows a terrific opportunity. Example: he proclaims with utter confidence and authority that “Low Carb Diets Make You Fat” (huh?) and proceeds to list all the things that low-carb diets can “cause,” including (I’m not making this up) loss of fertility and a shortened lifespan. (Interesting how he would know the effect of a low-carb diet on lifespan, since there’s no ongoing study anywhere that’s even
investigated
that, much less demonstrated it.)
Sorry. Because of the total misinformation on low-carb eating—and the aggressiveness with which it’s put forth—it’s very hard for me to recommend this book.
This book is a refreshing change—an excellent “get in shape” book by a Hollywood trainer who is actually humble about what she knows, doesn’t pretend to be expert at what she doesn’t know, and is great at what she does.
Gina Lombardi, truly someone worthy of the much-abused title “Trainer to the Stars,” has a very successful Los Angeles personal-training practice and a terrific television show on the Discovery Channel, and is a columnist for
Health
magazine. This is her first book, and it’s a winner.
The thing about Gina is that she’s a “real person.” People relate to her. She’s in her early forties, she’s had a baby, she’s fought to get “back in shape,” and she understands the multiple and overlapping demands of work, family, and how hard it can be to get (and stay) in shape in the midst of a busy life. Since a lot of Hollywood types go to her specifically to get in shape for a role, a wedding, an event, a television commercial where they have to be in their underwear, she premised the book—
Deadline Fitness
, get it?—on having to get results quickly. The subtitle says it all:
Tone Up and Slim Down When Every Minute Counts
.
One of the things that makes this book particularly good is that she spends a lot of time preparing you for the program. The book starts with a good, solid chapter on motivation, which is always a good place to start. Gina offers ten “rules” for the program that are several notches above the usual motivational pep-talk many fitness books offer. The rules include advice on how to “create small wins,” how to tailor the program to your specific lifestyle, and how to develop a clear method for measuring your results. She moves on to general rules about food and about saboteurs of weight loss (like not getting enough sleep), and she gives a lot of good information about body-fat testing and the use of a heart-rate monitor.
Lombardi is big on numbers—she has you take measurements of all your body parts before you start, which is a great idea since it provides objective feedback and a way of measuring results. She provides a formula that lets you calculate your basic daily caloric intake. One might quibble with the formula—I think for some people it’s going to give too high a caloric recommendation—but it’s a decent place to start, and you can always adjust.
The neat part of the program is that you put your caloric goal into a formula, and you can then choose which of two plans you want to follow, depending on how many times a day you want to eat. (Plan A is 4 meals; plan B is 3 meals plus 2 mini-snacks.) The calories are the same for both. Both plans are 45% carbs, 35% protein, and 20% fat, making it far from a “low-carb” diet, but definitely a huge improvement on standard dietary recommendations and one that will work for many people who are not especially metabolically resistant or carb-addicted.
The choices of food are good (okay, she recommends egg whites and soy hot dogs, which I’m not a fan of, but I’m being picky), and she even has a pretty good section on supplement basics. (Full disclosure: I consulted with her on the section on supplements, but she did a good job!) And on some issues—like caffeine—she gives a fair and non-dogmatic reading of the “pros” and the “cons” and lets you decide for yourself.
The exercise program is well illustrated, well thought-out, and thoroughly effective. You have the option of using machines, dumbbells, or in some cases body weight, so it’s a highly adaptable program. And she gets bonus points for including sections on how to make the exercises harder (or easier), adapting it so that it’s appropriate for three different levels of exercisers—beginners, intermediates, and advanced.
The book is all focused on deadlines and on coaching you through to the “finish” line. It’s filled with pithy little motivational sayings (“A goal is a dream with a deadline,” “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take”), and it has a really cool section in the end on how to “speed things up,” including “Body-Emergency: One Week Deadline.”
This book is highly rated not just for what it is—an excellent book on fitness and motivation, with some very decent nutritional basics—but for what it is not. She knows a lot, and she knows how to share it. She isn’t dogmatic, doesn’t trash low-carb diets, and doesn’t pretend to know more than she does. In a crowded field of authors who promise more and deliver less, this alone makes
Deadline Fitness
a welcome standout.