The Abs Diet is an amazing fitness program, it's put quite simple - workout, eat right, and ta-da you get muscles and no fat. No pills, no bs, just the truth of it all - you gotta exercise to stay fit. It takes a page from the Bowflex, and gives you 3 days, 20min workouts, while the rest of those 'off days' involve walking, and various cardio. For the food aspect, I've always been that loser that never really liked doughnuts, and other sweet crap, I blame the healthy and bland diet I was raised with. For the most part - expensive health foods. I have always told my friends and co-workers, the real reason why America is fat is because we can't afford to eat right. (milk is almost 5 bucks, where as soda is barely a dollar) So the food is steep, I saw a boost in my food bill 65%. The weekly cost for my family went from 120 a week to 190-230. Also may I add, you get *one* day a week you can eat whatever (I use this bonus for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my Birthday, those Holidays) but It's only once a week. Normally it was biscuits and gravy for me, then lean for lunch, and whatever Holiday/Restaurant meal I wanted for Dinner. For the stats, I lost only 12lbs, and packed on the muscle (initially lost 19 in the first 6 weeks of 'basic training' with the book). My BMI shrank from 27% to 6% in just a year. My Doctor flipped out, and the nurses battling their own weight confided. The book is all around easy formatted, plenty of guilds and recipes, and damn worth the money.Read full review
The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life is not the book that I would necessarily recommend for those looking to eat healthier and live healthier (my preference is Body for Life)... but, I have only heard rave reviews and success stories about The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life. While Ted Spiker provides excellent content in the Abs Diet (the meat of the book is very strong, if you will) but I am quite turned off by the approach - suggesting that healthier eating and living should be done so that readers / dieters have better looking abs is silly to me. In fact, I think its the wrong approach to entering a diet. That said, Spiker's route to achieving better abs is a good one - it suggests balance and general lifestyle healthiness. From the book synopsis: "How do you lose weight? Diet and exercise, they say. How do you lose weight and look good? By eating and by working out according to a sensible plan. The critical difference is in this book by Men's Health magazine editor Dave Zinczenko, who offers basic, rational lifestyle adjustments that are intended to make a big difference on the body. He offers a six-week plan that eliminates foods from the diet that he considers especially bad and adds things that will help, without totally eliminating fun food. His exercise workouts help build muscle and improve metabolism. Nothing extreme here, no starvation required, and he builds in a maintenance plan to use after the initial six weeks." Summary: If you like Men's Health, you'll certainly enjoy this book. Its intelligently written and suggested a permanet life and eating change - both positives in my mind. My only critique is that dieting shouldn't be started purely to achieve abs - because, if thats the motivation, diets usually aren't successful for more than a few months.Read full review
I would have given this book a four star review, save for the constant self-promotion throughout the book. For gosh sakes! We are already READING the book, can't you save the advertising for someplace else? In addition, the author bashes every other diet he can think of--with the exception of Body for Life (which has nothing he can bash, so he ignored it). No need for that. I'd rather read what's good about THIS and why we need the certain things he touts, rather than read about how bad these other diets are. As we know, Atkins works for a lot of people. The Abs Diet is one of the only books I know about that is pretty much exclusively for men. A lot of women, however, have found this book to be right for them, too. With this in mind, I wish the author would have specified the fact that women really need smaller portion sizes than men and less calories, as well. This is a criticism I really believe is well-founded. I haven't read the updated version that was exclusively sold by Rodale yet. Maybe that information is in there. The Abs Diet is founded on solid and current information. It's important to eat approximately every three hours so that our metabolism is at optimal speed. When we do not eat and skip snacks, not only are we more likely to feel we're "starving", and overeat later, our bodies are also more likely to go into starvation mode--and begin to burn muscle for fuel. . . a state we want to avoid. The author explains how our body utilizes different foods (although I thought the acronym made out of ABS DIET (something else, I forgot), was not useful for me), how our body responds to exercise and rest and how to go about beginning this program. It's an entertaining read, as well, and the recipes are pretty tasty!Read full review
My husband bought the Abs Diet book and talked me into trying it with him. We were already pretty healthy eaters and exercised regularly, but wanted to shed those last few pounds (15 for him, 10 for me). To be honest, I didn't read the book cover to cover, I used it more as a reference guide and did try to focus on choosing the power 12 foods and just making better choices (i.e., eating more veggies and smaller portions). The main changes we made were eating throughout the day, and instead of large dinners just having a big salad with tons of veggies, grilled chicken breast and vinegar and oil, about 3 days a week. I did, however, change my exercise program from the Body for Life style to what the Abs Diet recommends. I dropped 10 pounds in about 2 months, not starving myself in any way (but not eating dessert everyday, either). The key for me was the metabolic workout. I did the weight program 3 days a week, twice through the cycle each time; and I did cardio for 30-45 minutes an additional 2 days a week. The weight workout takes me 45 minutes (not the 20 min the book says) to go through it twice, and I do the hardest "legs" day every time, really challenging myself with the weight. I sweat a lot (more than any other weight program I have ever done in the past 15 years) and breathe heavy throughout the workout. I am definitely stronger and more defined muscularly. For women, I think the book is worth buying for the information it offers, and if you are looking for a change in weight workouts, it is worth a try. I think I just burned more calories than I consumed. Also, my husband followed the Abs Diet dilegently for 10 weeks and while he dropped weight, he found that actually altering every 3 months from Body for Life to the Abs Diet weight workouts works best for him to maintain muscle and keep the weight off. He is still working toward the six pack :)Read full review
I decided to buy this book because I had heard that it was an excellent diet to try. What I discovered is that the book is more of a lifestyle change than a diet. Diets are restricting and temporary, but the Abs Diet gives you guidelines for healthy eating that are very easy to follow and keep with. There is no magic trick to this diet, or elimination of one food group. The book provides you with easy, simple guidelines to nutrition. The book shows you that by eating the right foods, you can lose weight and never feel hungry. The book was also an easy read, and filled with success stories. I enjoyed reading this book and am trying to incorporate what the book has taught me into my daily eating habits.
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