Customer Reviews

The Cardio-Free Diet

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This book is intended for beginner's in weight training. It is an excellent book for someone who needs to be taught how to put together a beginning weight training program. If you already weight train on a regular basis this book is not going to benefit you. I am going to recommend my husband read and learn from the exercises.

Then you get to the section on diet and calories. I completely disagree with the diet recommended. The book recommends that all women start out with only 1,200 calories in Level 1, and throughout the course of the plan end up eating only 1,500 per day for maintenance. If I ate anywhere from 1,200 - 1,500 calories per day I would be starving and go crazy! I think that calorie level is way too low. In addition, it doesn't take into consideration the individual's size or daily activity level.

For the exercise section/plan I give it 5 stars, but had to reduce it to a 3 due to the diet plan.

People might get some positive experience with running.. and that's fine. maybe, it fights depression or whatever. That's fine, too. What ever works for you. However, from a bodybuilder and building 6 pack perspective, cardio is a muscle wasting exercise. You build nice body by building muscles aka strength training. If people do strength training nearly correct, it is also a cardiovascular exercise without ruining joints. You go get yourself a weight (20lb) and start doing 100 squats. If your heart isn't pumping with this strength training exercise, I don't know what will. This book is really cleverly written. I really like the content of the book. And this isn't one of those hyped up diet or exercise book. Nothing in this book suggested something that you shouldn't be doing. If you want to run around to loose weight, that's fine. But it is NOT better overall exercise than strength training exercises. Also, when you build muscle, you are raising resting metabolic rate. This is just win/win.

1. you don't waste muscle
2. you get fit and muscular
3. you can do these exercise almost anywhere.

If others who negatively reviewed this book read the book, they would understand where the author is coming from. There are more than one way to loose weight.. but the best way is not to waste the muscle... you need to build the muscle to maintain the muscle to burn more calories. Cardio doesn't achieve this better than strength training exercises.

I highly recommend this book. This book lays out its merits, and they are compelling.

What an amazing book! In a few short weeks my body has totally changed. Jim Karas knows his stuff. I train with his trainers and had a hard time letting go of the notion that I needed to do the old fashioned cardio.

I work just as hard (more) and my heart is still getting a great work-out. I challenge my muscles and am sculpting a new body to boot. I highly recommend this approach to anyone who wants to maximize their workouts in our busy time crunched schedules. I am convinced we need to be lifting weights if we want to keep our bodies and bones strong as we age.

Actually I like a lot of things about this book. The first few chapters (sampled above) are as good a look as you are likely to encounter on the fallacy of aerobics/cardio training for fat loss, at least in their general thrust. Anyone who has been trudging away on a treadmill for years in an unsuccessful attempt to get the body they want should have a look at Karas' opening chapters.

But while I like the central theme (building fast twitch muscle fiber and eating less food is the only way to get the body you want), there is so much wrong with the specifics that I can't really recommend this book for anyone but the rawest beginner.

First of all, "aerobic" training does have its place in anyone's health and fitness regime. Easy daily walks are superb for relaxation, mental health and active recovery from hard workouts. Likewise, interval training (wind sprints, hill running, etc) are also proven to boost metabolism and burn fat all out of proportion to the amount of time spent doing them. It's the "jogging" and the 10K runs that your average trainee needs to ditch, not the very easy and the very hard practices on the extreme ends of the spectrum. The author is simply wrong to group these in with "aerobic training", and this error weakens his argument.

In a similar vein, the author betrays a serious ignorance of the true purpose of a "real" hatha yoga practice. Every serious hatha yoga practioner knows that yoga's "real" weight loss benefits come from the increased sense of well being and sensitivity to the body's rhythms. Yoga is a practice, not a workout, and to treat it as one as Karas does betrays his limitations in a way he probably doesn't suspect. He also doesn't seem to really understand stretching as a rehab-prehab tool and his casual dismissal of it is a real disservice to his audience.

Second the author neglects to mention that people get hurt lifting weights all the time. It takes care, thought, experience and intelligence to adapt a resistance training regime around an individual's previously existing imbalances and problems, and Karas doesn't address this at all.

Third, any weight/resistance training program will work...for about 6 to 8 weeks. Then the gains will stop coming and the hard work will begin. And the programs Karas outlines here are all but useless for anyone looking for real muscle gains. If you seriously want to stay trim by building muscle, it's going to take more than these sets of weenie exercises for 20 minutes, 3 times a week. That's OK with me, since I enjoy the challenge and the discipline, but Karas isn't doing his audience any favors with his disingenous promises. And his suggestions for increasing the difficulty and effectiveness of the drills includes lifting while standing on Bosu balls and the like. In words of one syllable: No. Lifting on unstable surfaces is for stunts, or rehabilitation, or for skill in acrobatics and sports, not as a muscle building technique for the purposes emphasized here.

And the recipes...OK, Karas is just doing what every other diet-and-exercise beginners' book does; providing some recipes that offer a promised "magic" blend of ingredients that will somehow satisfy the reader for weeks on end. Sorry everyone...the only real solution is to learn how to cook with real, fresh ingredients, and learn to control your portion sizes. Anyone trying to "live" on these recipes will go nuts in 10 days or less. Just learn to cook and to savor and enjoy your food in a relaxed manner and the calorie input will take care of itself. Get one of the books on "mindful" eating (such as "The Slow Down Diet", "Mindless Eating" or "The French Don't Diet Plan") if you need help regulating your intake vs your satiation levels.

Still, I will buy this book when it comes out in trade paperback because there is some good writing in here on what is wrong with cardio as a weight loss method. In spite of all the problems, that makes it worth three stars. I'm pretty sure that working out with Karas in person would be a worthwhile experience...but this book won't work without Karas himself to plug in all the stuff he had to leave out in order to make it fit.

I have been using this concept for the past 9 years in my practice with incredible success. There is such a massive amount of research out there to back up this information. After watching the 20/20 special I realised that the "experts" they interviewed must have based their arguments on the title of the book and not the content (based on their arguments I would bet they weren't even aware of the content). The basic idea of this thing is that we can get more benefit from high intensity interval strength training than we can from straight cardio exercise. This has been shown time and again to be true in controlled trials. Of course weight loss can be achieve with only cardio, but the best benefit is achieved with the type of workouts this author describes. Im excited to see this type of thing finally getting out into the mainstream. Kudos to Mr. Karas for stepping out of the cardio comfort zone!

I am a cardio-aholic, at least I used to be. I never could understand how I could continue to increase my miles and not lose an ounce! It's like my body "got used" to the work and didn't burn any more calories. As soon as I added weight training, the weight just dropped off. 15 pounds!! I can't believe I spent all those years adding "just one more mile" when I really should have been adding just one more set. If you're tired of the run-around, give this idea a try. I know it's what finally worked for me.

As a registered dietician and personal trainer, I have to say that I loved the concept of this book. I strongly believe that strength training is the way to go, if executed properly. By reading this book it is evident that cardioprotective heart rates are reached and maintained without the use of the treadmill. 1200 calories is not starvation, and beginning a program at this level, will provide quick and motivating results. I strongly reommend it, and suggest that those reviewing the book actually read it.

I've been on a version of the "cardio free diet" without realizing it for three years. I weight train three days a week with a mix of free weights/machines as well as monitor what I eat. I lost forty pounds the first year and have kept it off. More importantly to me, I actually look better physically than I ever did with heavy cardio and diet - which was my standard weight loss strategy before.

After reading Mr. Karas's book, I thought much of it correlated well with all those dozens of books,magazine articles, online websites, I've read. The "no cardio" does seem to contradict the majority of conventional wisdom, though I would point out that even Mr. Karas (in this book) says walking and recreational biking is fine. In interviews with Mr. Karas, if I recall correctly, he seemed to regard cardio more as an adjunct to weight loss than an evil. In any case, if you weight train as continuously and intensely as he recommends, you're like to have the increased heart rate and aerobic conditioning that conventional cardio creates.

Based on my experiences, I have some minor disagreements with some statements:

a) I've not noticed cardio increasing my appetite. While I've heard people say it does increase theirs, I'm inclined to think what's increased is the sense of "I deserve a reward." Many people who weight train have expressed similar claims of increased appetites. Either way, I do know that we often overeat regardless of actual hunger.

b) Twenty minutes exercise, three times a week, with bands and hand weights? I'd really be impressed if one could significantly change their muscle/fat body ratio with such exercise and time. I know that it took me months of heavy weight training for an hour a session, three times a week, before anyone besides myself noticed a difference. (I could never be sure my progress wasn't imaginary.) I think Karas' workout regimen would be effective mostly if you're out-of-shape - but it's sound advice for starting out. You just need to keep challenging yourself and I find it hard to think you can get beyond being an advanced beginner with just hand weights and bands for twenty minutes.

c) I think the metabolic increases are overrated. I've worked out with people who weight train as hard and as long as I do, but they're fat. We've worked out together for months and years, but they're still fat because they're going for a beer and pizza after. Weight training hasn't raised my or their metabolism(s) enough that we don't have to be careful. Very careful. The extra 10% or 15% metabolic increase - assuming it's happening - sadly doesn't go too far.

The Cardio-Free Diet is almost the perfect book for someone who's looking to lose weight and keep it off without spending all of their time exercising.

Pros: From the first page Karas begins building a logical case for strength training as the answer to controlling your weight and looking great. With the number of facts he throws at you, he's pretty convincing. His writing style makes for easy and enjoyable reading--you'll probably get through most of the book in one sitting. Overall, he has written an enjoyable book that convincingly presents concepts that are logical and will clearly work if you follow them.

Cons: Absolutely no cardio seems excessive (of course, that is what sells the book), and he doesn't particularly like yoga or think that stretching is good for you either. It's a bit of a letdown as you shake your head, knowing that he's off base here and wondering briefly if you should rethink the stuff that sounded right to you. However, the book is a diet book, not a fitness book, so he focuses on what you need to do to build your body into a calorie-burning machine (even when you are resting) that will burn the fat and leave you slimmer and stronger. The exercises depicted in the photos seem very wimpy (maybe for seniors who've never worked out) and the eating plans are dull. Once again, the basic concepts he introduces can be used to build a program that will work for you and cut the time you spend exercising--those make the book worth it!

When I worked with a trainer the first thing he did was to take me on a tour of the gym. He brought me thru the aerobics room and asked me how many people were fit and trim, I looked at the bunch of women that were so dedicated to the classes yet most of them were still struggling even after months of working out. Then he brought me over to the cardio room and asked same question. I looked around and saw the same people I've seen for years...still looking the...same. He then brought me to the weight lifting room and before he said anything all I did was look at average weight lifter and I knew what his point was.
If you want to see change. If you want to see muscles. If you want to see results from your work out....lift weights.

simple as that.

So this principle of the authors is what most good trainers will show you and when I did train with weights...I looked like the rest of the room, fit.

However, I still slip into mindless cardio becuase it's easier...and I have not seen results like I did when I trained with weights.