Customer Reviews

Eat Smart, Play Hard: Customized Food Plans for All Your Sports and Fitness Pursuits

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Eat Smart, Play Hard is great!!! It's perfect for the weekend warrior or the serious athlete. Dr. Applegate even writes about what to eat for yoga and golf in addition to marathons, bicycling, and weight lifting. There's super recent info on supplements and detailed meal plans for whenever you workout. It's straight-forward, easy to understand, fun, and has tons of great tips. A definite must-read for whatever exercise you do!

I thought I already knew every thing there was to know about eating right and exercising--until I read Eat Smart, Play Hard. I was amazed by how much new information and recearch has come out recently, just in the past few years. Applegate does a great job of highlighting the latest, most important eating strategies in an easy-to-read and understand format. I particularly liked her information on supplements. Her tips helped me to improve my running times, as well as my endurance in other sports such as cycling and hiking. This is a must-read.

This book, while probably good, is for the person getting 3-4 hours of heavy exercise per day. I found some good hints, but this is not applicable for the average person.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in improving their performance through diet. In one week of following the meal plans I was running faster, harder and had none of the aches or pains that had been plaguing me for months previous. I found her advice to be realistic and down-to-earth (especially regarding chocolate)and the meal plans filled with variety I had been missing out on. She covers crucial things for all athletes, such as proper hydration and recovery foods, as well as how many calories you should be taking in daily. In short, she covers all the bases in this one and it's well worth the money spent. And if you think you already know it all, then you especially need to buy this book.

I agree with others who have said this book is just too simplistic. I am not an expert but consider myself to be very knowledgeable in the area of nutrition and sports nutrition. This book did not offer anything I did not already know and in my opinion it has close to nothing to offer athletes. Liz Applegate writes a column for Runners World magazine in which she shares alot of useful information, unfortunatly she seems to have left it all out of this book. I usually do not write such poor reviews however I read runners world monthly and do not feel that the book deserves the "hype" it has recieved.

As a Fitness and Nutrition Professional, I recommned this book to my clients who are working towards weight loss or sports performance goals. The book gives great ideas for snacks prior to and post exercise which is nice. When clients need a little more personal advice I offer customized meal planning, but this book gives them basic ideas. One thing is for sure... you can't out train good nutrition. I use this book, customized meal planning and Advocare supplements to get the job done.

Pros: Easy To Understand,Good snack ideas,Informative,Relevant

Best Uses: Exercise performance,Sports nutrition,Weight loss

Chris Knight

Ms Applegate knows her stuff so listen up!
I've been a runner for many years - often times it was a struggle. This book has given me a guide to address my nutritional needs. It's given me a new love and energy to run. Bravo!!!

I bought this book because I was looking for some help in tayloring my food regimen better to the type of exercise I did in different periods. The title and description of the book gave me the idea that it would deliver to me exactly what i was looking for. But I was quite disappointed. I have read several nutrition/health books, so I have quite some data, I was just looking for something that would help me give the finishing touch, the "taylor-made" touch to an otherwise good food regimen. What I found was a lot of common knowledge-type info, things that you most likely already know if you attend the gym or run regularly. Since the author is someone with a background in nutrition/fitness, I was expecting more. I was expecting in-depth info of what is needed in terms of nutrients when practicing a specific sport as opposed to another one, while I found that this book contained also some falsehoods and suggestions that are not necessarily healthy. The meal plans are too much carbohydrate-based so they won't be of much help to someone who is exercising also for weightloss and for people who are sugar-sensitive (and there are a lot), but it's also non-optimal for any fitness enthusiast who wants to keep healthy through exercise.

The author does make distinctions between sports and acivities and puts the emphasis on special nutritional needs for some sports, and you can find some useful data on this aspect, and that's why I gave it 2 stars and not 1.