The Business Plan for the Body [Paperback]

Jim Karas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2001

Are you unhappy with your body? Do you feel like you exercise and diet constantly but don’t get results? If you’re still struggling — or if you’re simply ready to get motivated and get fit once and for all — Jim Karas has the only weight-loss and exercise plan you’ll ever need: The Business Plan for the Body.

Karas is a Wharton-trained entrepreneur turned fitness professional whose CEO clients pay him $10,000 a week for his diet and exercise consultations. Now he’s going to share his highly valued secrets with you. Jim’s clients shed pounds and shape up because they use a tried-and-true tool: the principles found in a classic business plan. What works for them will work for you, and you don’t need to be a corporate mogul to make it happen. Jim will teach you how to:

Create your mission statement: Take a simple but powerful first step toward reaching your weight-loss and fitness goals
Research the competition: Discover why today’s hottest diet and exercise programs don’t work for the long term, but why The Business Plan for the Body works for a lifetime
Do the numbers: Calculate your basal metabolic rate (calories in minus calories out equals weight loss) — do the math to dramatically improve how your body looks and feels

Jim also explodes some common but popular myths about fat, food, and fitness (for instance, why aerobic exercise isn’t the key to weight loss) and offers up simple eating guidelines and an exercise solution you can live with for the rest of your life. The Business Plan for the Body provides everything you need — from motivation to information—to achieve your goals for weight loss and fitness, and most important, to maintain your success.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Are you unhappy with your body? Do you feel like you exercise and diet constantly but don?t get results? If you?re still struggling ? or if you?re simply ready to get motivated and get fit once and for all ? Jim Karas has the only weight-loss and exercise plan you?ll ever need: The Business Plan for the Body.

Karas is a Wharton-trained entrepreneur turned fitness professional whose CEO clients pay him $10,000 a week for his diet and exercise consultations. Now he?s going to share his highly valued secrets with you. Jim?s clients shed pounds and shape up because they use a tried-and-true tool: the principles found in a classic business plan. What works for them will work for you, and you don?t need to be a corporate mogul to make it happen. Jim will teach you how to:

Create your mission statement: Take a simple but powerful first step toward reaching your weight-loss and fitness goals
Research the competition: Discover why today?s hottest diet and exercise programs don?t work for the long term, but why The Business Plan for the Body works for a lifetime
Do the numbers: Calculate your basal metabolic rate (calories in minus calories out equals weight loss) ? do the math to dramatically improve how your body looks and feels

Jim also explodes some common but popular myths about fat, food, and fitness (for instance, why aerobic exercise isn?t the key to weight loss) and offers up simple eating guidelines and an exercise solution you can live with for the rest of your life. The Business Plan for the Body provides everything you need ? from motivation to information?to achieve your goals for weight loss and fitness, and most important, to maintain your success.

About the Author

JIM KARAS is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, attended the London School of Economics, worked as a highly successful private portfolio manager, and created Solo Sessions, the most successful weight-loss management firm in Chicago. In addition to lecturing and presenting workshops, he has been featured on ABC's Good Morning America. Jim resides in Chicago with his wife, Ellen, and their two children, Olivia and Evan.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (April 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609807420
• ISBN-13: 978-0609807422
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #627,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jim Karas is unique in the weight loss and fitness industry because he combines a degree from the Wharton School of Business with over twenty years of unparalleled success as a weight loss and fitness professional. Jim has skillfully blended his business education and passion for helping people look and feel their very best by designing solutions that are meant for our busy and failure-intolerant society. His absolute devotion to bottom-line, results-driven thinking and exceptional ability to inspire people to take action make Jim Karas the expert amid a marketplace saturated with confusion and contradiction.

Jim is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Business Plan for the Body, and, Flip The Switch. His new book, The Cardio-Free Diet, was recently published on April 10, 2007. In this latest, groundbreaking book, Jim presents a research-based solution that challenges one of the fundamental misconceptions facing Americans today. Jim makes the case that to lose weight and get in the best shape of your life, regardless of your age, you should only perform interval strength and resistance exercise and never, ever get on a treadmill, elliptical trainer, bike or stair stepper again. As Jim says quite simply, 'Cardio is a 1970s solution to a 21st century problem.'

Jim is also the Fitness Contributor on ABC's Good Morning America (he helped co-host Diane Sawyer lose over 25 pounds) in addition to being the host of Couch Potatoes on ABC News Now. Jim has served as a Contributing Editor for Good Housekeeping magazine and has written feature articles for countless other national publications, including 'O' The Oprah Magazine.

Jim is widely sought after as a keynote speaker for many of the country's most prominent corporations, trade associations, small businesses and special interest groups because his common sense approach lends clarity to many of the complex issues facing America today that could be solved by simply making smarter, healthier choices. Among some of these organizations are the Federal Reserve Bank, 'O' The Oprah Magazine, Health Care Service Corporation, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Beam Global Spirits & Wine, the World Presidents' Organization, Leaders Magazine, Coldwell Banker, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Lake Forest Hospital.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

187 of 193 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Celebrities & CEO's Have Paid $10K a Week to Learn, April 24, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Business Plan for the Body (Paperback)

Like everyone, I, too, enjoy a bargain and The Business Plan for the Body, written by Jim Karas, is exactly that. This guy has been charging celebrities and CEO's $10,000 a week for his weight management expertise - needless to say, I didn't pay anything like that for my copy. The title stems from Karas' business background - a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, Karas has cleverly used the analogy of a classic business plan to guide his readers along the path to successful weight loss.

One of the components that I found especially interesting was Karas' emphasis on "doing one's own IPO." The author contends that most individuals begin a weight loss program intending to fail. Fail? Yes. They tell few people, if anyone, about their intent to lose weight and when they don't succeed, no one is the wiser. Karas, on the other hand, urges his readers to 'go public". Tell everyone your intent, urge them to monitor your progress (much the same way analysts would with a stock) and use that pressure as a positive in the weight management business.

Karas examines the "competition", and explains why today's so-called hottest diet and exercise programs don't produce "profits" for their users.

I've exercised for years and have done hours of cardio vascular, aerobic work- most to little or no avail. The Business Plan for the Body urges one to cut back on the cardio and increase dramatically the strength and resistance work. I was struck by a passage where the author urged his readers to go into a health club and check out where the most fit individuals tended to spend the majority of their time - I did check it out, and Karas is right, they are in the strength and resistance training rooms, the less fit seem continually drawn to the treadmills, ellipticals, etc.

Karas discusses weight management in terms of numbers, numbers numbers. Forget tyroid, bad metabolism, genes - it's basically calories in minus calories out. Creating lean muscle tissue helps burn those calories to create a caloric deficit.

The book is hard to put down, not what one expects with from a "how to" book. It's an easy read. It's loaded with extremely engaging anecdotes drawn from the author's experience helping the wealthy and celebrated manage their health. Additionally, it is the first weight management book that reads as if it were written based on a common sense strategy for weight control. Upon finishing the book, I felt that at long last I actually understood what weight gain/weight loss were all about. And, more importantly, I felt I had been given some intelligent tools to finally succeed. Would I pay $10K for this information? I'm not so sure, but at $12-15.00 I learned more than I've ever learned regarding weight management from any other source. I liked this book a great deal.

54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jim Karas can help you find your focus, June 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Business Plan for the Body (Paperback)

I have tried to continue to stay fit in my 20s and 30s by running and doing aerobics on and off for years. However, I never thought about how I truly looked or felt until I saw Jim Karas on Good Morning America. His question to Diane Sawyer, "Do you really want to look like that?" resonated with me.

I bought Karas' book and read it in one sitting. Though the subjects he discusses--among them, strength and resistance training, calories, food, etc--are not new, his approach is. Food is "revenue." Muscle is "capital." Weight-loss is "profit." Calories out are "expenses." You are "CEO" of your body. Somehow this made sense to me in a way it never had before.

Karas crystalizes the idea that getting fit and taking care of yourself is not something you try for two weeks or two months. It must become part of your life and, as Karas repeats throughout the book, to stay on plan, you must stay focused on "calories in - calories out = body weight". You are either on plan or not on plan--the switch is either "on" or "off." You realize that, like it or not, there is no "in between." Previously, I thought I could exercise when I had time or felt like it, eat like an 18-year-old at age 33, exercise to eat...and still be fit. Not so.

Is fitness and/or weight-loss simple? No. The hard part is flipping the switch, being real with yourself, and staying focused. Karas provides a plan for being "in the weight-loss business" (what I have also termed being in the "fitness" business). He gives terrific examples from experiences with clients and from his own fitness journey. Karas' approach is appealing to goal-oriented people because he helps you establish realistic goals, get on plan, and stay focused. He is also brutally honest. Weight-loss is not magic. You must be ready to embrace a plan and take responsibility for your own fitness.

When I purchased this book, I was just beginning work with a one-on-one trainer at a fitness/wellness center. The book helped me make a connection between my lifestyle (too much aerobic exercise, not enough strength training, too much food/overeating) and why I didn't look the way I wanted. It helped me calculate my basal metabolic rate and the total calories burned each day--something I'd never thought about . Being a woman, I also gained new insight into how much muscle women lose as we age and what we can do about it.

Anyone who is serious about fitness and/or weight-loss but who may need the information presented in a different way to get on plan and stay on plan should give this book a try.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a Winner!, November 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Business Plan for the Body (Paperback)

I bought this book right after seeing Jim Karas on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer. She looks amazing and has lost over twenty five pounds with Karas' plan. Once I started reading it, I couldn't stop. I have struggled with weight all my life and, for the first time in 52 years, have finally found a book that, at times, I felt spoke right to me. Yes, calories count. Yes, strength and resistance training is the answer. I always hated the treadmill, so when he said to "throw it out" I was inspired. I bought the SPRI tubing he recommends and found the exercise program easy to execute and it really produced results. I am down almost 30 pounds and my clothes are virtually falling off of me.

Do yourself a favor. Buy this book and throw all your other weight loss books out. This is a winner!