biscuitfarmer's Full Review: David Zinczenko et al - The Abs Diet: The Six-Week...
Everyone's heard of the sympathy weight that men put on during their wife's pregnancy. Unfortunately, I am one of the thousands of men that gain this extra weight every year. I don't know how it happens, but you try to be supportive of your partner and her new eating habits and you end up eating with her and gaining the weight, sometimes faster than her. While my wife only gained about 20 pounds during her pregnancy, and never really showed throughout, I definitely more than made up for it.
For the last several months my wife and I would joke about my gaining weight and that I need to lose it and all that jazz. Well, for Christmas, as sort of a, "no really" kinda gesture, she purchased the Abs Diet for me. Along with the book, was a letter and a picture, the letter told me about how great of shape I used to be in and how I played college basketball and all that great stuff. Then, she showed me a picture, when I didn't have to squint to see my abs, they were just obvious. So, I decided to read the book and start doing something about it.
The Concept
The concept of the book, like most is that it can help you to lose the weight that you want to lose and tighten your muscles at the same time. Of course, don't forget the sales pitch phrase that says that you can lose it in a certain amount of time. Well, this book promises you that if you stick to the diet and the workout routine, you can easily get a much firmer, stronger midsection. This was definitely something that I wanted, since it had been years since I had truly considered myself to be in great shape.
The Lessons
First the book addresses most of the things that we don't really understand about our own bodies. The things that they don't really tell us in health class during high school. The book goes into great detail about your metabolism and what each meal that you consume does to your body and thus your abs. The major concern is with educating you first, and then showing you what you can do differently that will have positive results later on.
There's a great debate within this book that talks about how unhealthy low carb diets are for you, because they take away your body's energy, which is why most people that go on a low carb diet, gain all of their weight back. The body requires that energy to maintain a healthy metabolism and by removing that energy, you are just slowing down your metabolism and once it is slowed down, it's hard to get it going again.
Of course, your weight gain, isn't your fault! The book talks about the conspiracy that food manufacturers have against us all. How they use different high fat products in their foods, in order to keep us desiring them, because of their flavor. However, these small but delicious meals are making us hungrier for more and making us fatter in the process.
Recipes are one of the key components to making this program work. They give you a large variety of recipes to try and if you don't, I don't know if this program will even work for you. The foods that they have you eat, are pretty much just power foods, that give you the carbs and the nutrients that you need and nothing more. They are very delicious meals however, so it makes this diet that much easier to follow.
Finally, it goes into great detail about the different exercises that can be done in conjuction with the different diet to help you create that perfect waistline. Unfortunately, the exercises can get somewhat old over time. I have found that once you reach around week three, which is one of the most important weeks, you find that you don't want to continue with the diet any longer. I think it would be much more helpful if my wife was doing the diet along with me, not just watching my progress. She did however, kick me in the butt whenever I wanted to quit, and made sure that I finished the program and at least gave it a shot.
End Result
Over the 6 weeks, I really didn't lose all that much, however, it did get me to continue the work into my 10th week now, and I have been noticing extreme results. I was already fairly thin myself though, so losing the weight wasn't that big of an issue and made it even harder to lose noticeable amounts of weight. However, if you are considerably heavier than myself, you may show substantial results that you could easily notice.
While I didn't see any of the results right away, I did notice that I was becoming a lot more disciplined and began to care about keeping up the program. The recipes were a great start and I continued adding to those recipes with ones that I found on my own. I tried to stick with common themes in the food, as to not upset the program. I soon started to see my midsection shrink considerably around the 8th or 9th week and now my abs are almost completely back to their original form.
I have made some adjustments over the book itself. I make sure that I take the time to run 5-10 miles a day now and I try to do situps 4 separate times per day. I have found that adding this during the 9th week, really accelerated my progress and I am noticing magnificent results.
Overview
While I don't think that the book will actually help you to lose weight through the program, because it's still all about mind over matter and you wouldn't have gained the weight in the first place if you had more control. However, it does really educate you and the different food that is consumed alone seems to be a huge part of the diet. I found that the food was great, and because it was great, I didn't try to stray from it. I keep it up even to this day and my wife enjoys the food as well, which makes it even easier to keep up with.
The major thing the book does is educate you about how your body treats food. This is a major step towards understanding why you gain weight, why you are tired at times, and why you can't think straight sometimes. This is one of the most important lessons that you learn throughout the book and I feel that it makes the book worthwhile more than anything.
If you are hoping for a miracle, this is definitely not the book as you are going to still need motivation in order to make the book work. The book does help to further educate you and make you aware of what you are eating and how it reacts inside your body. This alone, has pushed me to want to eat healthier and I think if nothing else, it could have that effect on you as well.
Whether you want to change your body to improve your health, your looks, your athletic performance, or your sex appeal, The Abs Diet offers you a simp...More at HotBookSale
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