The 4 Hr Body

A couple of weeks ago I decided to tackle all 571 pages of the 4 hour body by Tim Ferris. What a good book. Some crazy stuff but really good. It was an easy read too. When you look at it, it looks impossible....like a big hard back text book but surprisingly I read it really fast in about a week. He encourages you to skip around which I did; reading the sections that interested me the most and then the fluff.

It is way too much information to give you a real review. I can't say that I agreed with all of it but a lot of it does make sense. I have reduced my carbohydrate intake dramatically since reading it. I have also done more kettle bell training. His writing style is definitely not boring and it was easy to just keep turning the pages. He lays it out really well too so you can read more details or less if you want to. I am kind of a science geek so I loved reading all the details of his testing.

I thought about writing a full review but then I thought that someone else probably has probably already done that. Here is a nice review. If you want more details...click here.

Believe It, Be It

So the other night I decided that it was about time to read a new book. I had heard that the first woman to win Biggest Loser, Ali Vincent, had recently wrote a book, Believe It, Be It. I went to the kindle app on my phone to see if it was available and quickly downloaded it. Having two small kids, I usually don't get a chance to read much but this book was easy reading and all the stars were aligned..so I read the whole thing in one night and morning.

It was a good read and inspring. Her transformation truly was amazing. Always a beautiful person she now has the beautiful outside to reflect her beauty inside. She talked a lot about her experience on the show. She always thought that she would be the first female Biggest Loser. It came much to her surprise when the game play worked against her even though she had lost a lot of weight and she was sent home. She lost tons of weight at home and got an opportunity to come back. When she came back she never went below the yellow line and went on to win the finale.

In the book she talked a lot about why she felt like she had gained weight and what she was hiding behind her fat. I really started psycho analyzing my own life and wondering what it was that has lead to my own weight gain. I think I may of figured out a part of it and plan to blog about it at a later time.

Here are a couple great quotes/excerpts from the book that I liked:

"I want to empower others through empowering myself. I want to prove that the impossible is possible. That a journey of 1,00 miles really does start with just one step, just one, and that anybody who can imagine that journey does have the strength and courage it takes to pick their foot up and take that first step."

"To think about your life is to create it. You have to take ownership of where you are right now and know where you are right now and know where you want to o before you can get there. Keep collecting evidence for your success. You can believe it, and you can be it. Start right now."

"Every time I exercise, I have a conversation with myself. Why? BEcause I don't do stuff that I am comfortable doing. If I'm comfortable , then it's not doing anything for me and I don't consider it working out"

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle

So I am starting a new book. It is called "Burn the fat, feed the muscle". Here is a little review of the book that I found online. I will be doing my own review after I read it.

Introduction
In burn the fat feed the muscle, Tom Venuto stresses the importance of some principles such as no quick fixes, weight loss is not the same as fat loss and that the book is not even just about fat loss but more about making people healthier.

Goal setting, strategies and motivation.
As we all know goal setting is very important to reaching what you want with your health and although I have written extensively about this subject in the past Tom Venuto has done a fantastic job in burn the fat feed the muscle of really crystallizing the art of goal setting so that it will work much better for almost anyone.

Body types, how to identify what you need
This is the first place in burn the fat feed the muscle where I like the way that Tom Venuto has really broken down how people have different body types. Almost every trainer I have ever seen thinks that every person’s body will react the same way with the same diet and exercise and this book stops that idea dead in its tracks.

Eating, Food, Liquids, and actual meal plans
Tom Venuto covers a couple of very important points that are very often overlooked in most other books and those are proper intake of liquids and foods that you should eat. Tom Venuto uses about 20 pages to cover foods that you should and should not eat including replacements for some of the bad foods that you are already eating.

Supplements
Tom Venuto, in Burn the fat feed the muscle, and I are of essentially the same mind on the use of supplements and how this industry is very good at marketing many overpriced products with very little benefits to almost any user unless they are in a very sickly state. Let’s face it, in North America our prosperity has not lead most people to under eat so the supplementation is not the most important thing.

However, Tom Venuto has included information on the most important supplements and I was a little surprised but happy to see how straightforward he is about many of the supplements in the bodybuilding industry and the effect that magazines advertising has had on the objectiveness if those magazines.

Cardio training
We all know how important exercise is in losing weight and the diet that has been created in Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle is definitely geared toward having both cardio and weight training as an essential part of the package. I have never seen a diet that did not at least mention exercise but this book stresses it as very important part of the equation and many other diets would do their followers more justice by stressing a lot more exercise.

Weight training
What would you expect from a natural bodybuilding champion. Tom Venuto covers the exercises that you should do to gain strength and muscle as easily as possible and goes into a lot of detail with tactics that you have never seen before.

source:http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/burn-the-fat-feed-the-muscle-complete-review.html

Women, Food and God

So my friend sent me a text saying that she was reading this book "Women, Food and God" and that I should check it out. I had never heard of the book but thought the next time I went to the book store (Now that we live in the country and have our two kids we usually only make it to B&N about once every 6 weeks, we used to go all the time, maybe it's time for a date night there) I would look for it. Later that day I went to Walmart to pick up a couple of things and low and behold there was an entire rack of these books.

I threw it in the cart, not really knowing anything about it. So far, I have only read the prologue and first two chapters but the gist of it is that we all eat for a reason and usually it is not hunger. It is usually something mental, something emotional, a way to deal with issues. After I am done reading it, I will be giving it a formal book review. Not sure if I will agree with all of it but an interesting perspective if nothing else. Does make you think. Even yesterday I stopped to think..why am I eating this??