Customer Reviews

Nutrition and Athletic Performance

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I've been using Dr Graham's 80/10/10 diet for over 2 years. It has dramatically improved my health and helped make me feel 20 again-instead of 49. All of his books have been money and time well spent.

Dr. Douglas N. Graham's ideas make total sense and really work! Clear mind, happy mood, boundless energy, high performance come from eating/living in this sensible simple way. Each of his books is a great contribution to human health! "The 80/10/10 Diet" and "Grain Damage" too are great books of his. Many people's lives have changed amazingly from these ways of living well. See [...]

This book is not just for serious athletes, although it will help them tremendously. It is about living a long-term healthy lifestyle that includes a lot of physical activity.

When I follow Graham's nutrition plan, I wake up in the morning and feel like doing pull-ups; I just have to use my muscles. Going to yoga is blissful, and I've started running just because it feels good.

Graham doesn't just tell you what to do, he talks about why he makes a recommendation. For me, this makes it a lot easier to incorporate his advice in my day-to-day life.

A brilliant book, highly recommended.

Update: I think that this diet is great on a short-term basis, but doesn't work for the long run. On a short-term basis, it eliminates almost all of the typical Western food that causes food intolerance, so will likely have you feeling much better. It also provides a lot of good nutrition, because there aren't any wasted calories.

On the downside, you are likely to be deficient in zinc, iodine, sodium, and B12, and you won't get enough omega-3/omega-6 fats to stay healthy. The other major issue is the very high levels of fructose, which over time cause uric acid levels to climb and leads to leptin/insulin resistance and can lead to non-alcoholic liver disease.

I enjoyed my time on this immensely, but am currently eating a very traditional diet, in the sense that everything I eat would be recognized as food by someone living 5,000 years ago. And I feel great, without any insulin/leptin resistance.

I'm using this book to do the 3 month "P90X" workout again. Now I know the real importance of recovery and exactly what to eat to help it. I feel I have the tools to eat the right fuel and cutout the bad foods. I'll never drink Gatorade or any sports drink again now that I've learned about electrolytes and hydration replacement.
This book is great for any athlete as you'll get an awesome performance advantage, but it's also for fans of Dr. G's famous "80-10-10" Diet book. Especially those interested in a vegan diet from an athletic perspective. He really does spell it out for the average person, I now have a better definition of human nutrition processes like metabolism and liver function. Be warned, his advice is based on science without regard for status quo and will more than likely involve massive changes to your daily routine.

Many of us cannot do 10 consecutive abdominal crunches.
Some would suffer in pain for a week after making such
an attempt. Others would cramp up and assume the fetal
position on the exercise mat. A few would have their
names appear in the next day's obit section of their
local newspaper after 10 abdominal crunches were
attempted. One or two might even go into cardiac
arrest after hearing the words "abdominal crunch."

To do a perfect abdominal crunch, you should lay down
on an exercise mat and bend your knees with your hands
either behind your head or across your chest. The next
part is the crunch. Pull your tummy towards your backbone
while flattening your lower back against the mat. Then
pull your shoulder blades a few inches off the mat. OK?
Traction, anyone?

I've revealed the method because I now want to reveal
the madness. Rudy Carti is the world record holder in
doing abdominal crunches. He's done 151,000 in 48 hours,
but who's counting? Don't click on your calculator
accessory. I've already figured this out. That's an
average of 3,145 crunches per hour. That's an average
of 52.4 crunches per minute, multiplied by two full
days with no rest.

This Amazon.com book review is not about Rudy. Today's
review is about Rudy's coach. Rudy's inspiration. Rudy's
Guru. A quote from Rudy:

"Using Dr. Graham's program and his special sports
drinks, there is no end to my endurance."

Whether you are an endurance runner or speed skater,
part-time athlete or couch potato, there is a method
to improving your athletic stamina that begins and
ends with the foods you eat.

Dr. Douglas Graham's disciples include tennis players
(Martina Navratilova for one), NBA basketball players
(Ron Grandison for one), Olympic and International
competitors and coaches (Doug Dickenson, Don Greene,
Arid Abrahamson, Pam Boteler, Aree Song, etc.), and
myself. The book:

"Nutrition and Athletic Performance"

The author's first sentence in his first chapter:

"It is my intention to clear the smoke from the
field of nutrition, metaphorically speaking, and
make sound nutritional choices simple for anyone,
athlete or not, who wants to eat the best foods
available."

The author's final challenge in chapter 19:

"Every aspect of fitness is directly affected
by the quality of the diet, or lack thereof, and
improves as the diet becomes more closely aligned
with the foods to which we are biologically
adapted. How long do you think it will be
before the low-fat, raw, vegan athlete becomes
the rule, rather than the exception? How long
will it take you to join the leaders?"

From first words to last, Dr. Graham eloquently
proves his points and inspires readers of this
new book to be the best that they can be. I hope
that you become motivated to read this book and
answer Doug Graham's calling.

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com

First of all, I've read the book and understand the concepts described. Furthermore, I've experimented on myself with the protocols contained in the book. It is in that knowledge that I can speak intelligently about the validity of the book. Well, I can speak about how the book has effected me; the information may not deliver the same result for others.

The one thing I can say without a shadow of a doubt is, the diet suggested in the book takes a great deal of discipline to undertake. To give the diet a fair chance, you have to be 100% committed to following the nutritional prescriptions to the letter. Otherwise, this diet will not do for you what you want it to do.

The first thing that I discovered when I started the diet described in the book was the sheer volume of food I had to eat: it was massive! I'm very active as well as having a naturally fast metabolism. This fact necessitates that I eat a great deal of calories (4,000 +)every day. When I say I had to eat a lot of fruit, I mean I ATE A LOT OF FRUIT!

A typical day of eating would consist of eating 2 pints of strawberries and blueberries, 6 large apples, 30-40 bananas, a large green salad (spinach or romaine with other vegetables) and maybe some pineapple. I said it was a lot of fruit, didn't I? Upon first glance, this looks like a lot of food and it is. However, because of the high fiber content and the fact that the fruit sugar is metabolized quickly, eating this amount of food is possible. Now, tolerating this volume of food and sugar takes some time to accustom too.

On my best days when I didn't deviate from the diet, I found the diet to be adequate in supplying all the nutrients I needed. Nevertheless, a surprising side effect occurs: you lose weight. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking 'how is that possible?' Well, typical diets tend to make you retain water because they are high in salt and protein. These two factors cause water retention. You'll notice when you're on a fruit diet that you'll lose weight, despite getting all the calories you require. This is because of all the excess water that is retained is discarded. I'll admit that this took a blow to my ego because I am used to carrying a certain amount of muscle mass and when I saw myself shrinking, I got worried and began to feel self conscious.

I knew going into this self experimentation process that I would lose some weight and experience a certain degree of discomfort, because I did some preliminary research about this type of diet beforehand. However, I didn't realize how dramatic a change it was until changes happened rapidly.

Let me simplify things. Here's the good parts about the diet. First of all, your body will alkalize and your immune system will get a boost. Because of the high water content of fruit and the amount of fruit you eat, you are virtually guaranteed to get all of the water you require in a day. As well, you will consume all the vitamins and antioxidants you need without taking supplements. Your muscular endurance or lactic acid threshold will increase. You will have regular bowel movements. Your energy level and blood sugar levels will be good, assuming you are eating enough and regularly. The diet detoxifies your body tremendously. Your will lose weight and become leaner.

Here's the bad parts about the diet. You will have to eat a ton of fruit. You may have to urinate frequently. If you skip a meal or go too long without eating, you will feel weak because the fruit sugar metabolizes so quickly. You will have a hard time holding onto muscle mass if you don't exercise regularly. You may or may not find that your testosterone levels drop because of the lack of fat in your diet (I did). If you require a large number of calories per day, you will find it hard to consume enough calories by eating only fruit. Unless you strictly adhere to the diet, you risk becoming nutritionally deficient. Furthermore, you may sabotage your bodies ability to secrete insulin if you deviate from the diet and eat a lot of fat (over 10-15% of daily calories consumed). You may become deficient in minerals if you do not consume adequate amounts of leafy greens. This diet can be expensive because it is recommended you only eat organic fruits and vegetables, as well as the large quantity of food you must buy. Depending on your friends, you may be a social outcast because of how drastically different the diet is from most people's diets; you may find eating at restaurants very difficult and awkward.

Now, you may notice that I listed more good things than bad. That does not mean that the diet won't work for you. Quite the contrary, actually. The bad parts of the diet I listed are all dependent on the individual, their means, tolerances and beliefs. Actually, I'm quite convinced that this diet is not only healthy but optimal under good circumstances. If the price of food were cheaper, the food more readily available and untampered (not genetically modified) with, the amount of diseases and illnesses would be virtually abolished. I sincerely believe that.

This diet, I find, is not very practical for the average person. Like I said, you must be very disciplined and committed to derive success from this diet. However, that has more to do with an individual than it does with the diet. The diet itself is good, but because of the variable factors related to human behaviour and thinking, it's success is largely dependent on the individual employing the diet and the success or failure of that individual on the diet is not really a reflection of the effectiveness of the diet.

That being said, there are other factors that may influence the effectiveness of the diet. I read a book a while back about eating according to your ethnicity. It basically argues that not all people will respond to food the same way and that's because our ancestors were accustomed to eating different types of food, based on where they lived. This is definitely a factor you should consider and look into. Myself, for example, I find if I don't have some meat in my diet, I don't feel well at all. Of course, this might be psychological as well as physical. However, certain types of food my body likes and dislikes. That is normal for all people.

When choosing a diet, gauge its effectiveness based on all of the following factors: how it makes you feel, how it makes you perform, how it contributes to how you look and the practical application of the diet. The diet described in "Nutrition and Athletic Performance" can work for many people. Even if you don't commit to the diet in the long term, you will derive positive results from it, depending on what your goals are. However, the diet is not for everyone.

The one thing that I've learned from the diet is, consuming a large amount of calories from fresh fruit and vegetables while decreasing your meat consumption and processed foods, you will increase your health and vitality tremendously. Just remember that no two people are the same and that finding what works best for you is a trial and error process.

Over a decade ago, Dr. Graham published a short booklet called Nutrition & Athletic Performance. He recently expanded it in this short but information-filled book.

The new edition of this book definitely belongs to the bookshelf of any athlete or fitness enthusiast wanting to improve their performance with a raw food diet. It features a ton of useful information on a wide range of topics, including:

- How to create your home-made raw sports "recovery" drink, better than the crap at the store
- How to avoid injuries
- The best foods for athletes
- How to feed to gain a competitive edge

A reviewer wrote a bad review, criticizing this book as lacking evidence and studies. While this is not your typical book filled with references, it is still based in sound sports physiology science. More importantly: Dr. Graham IS an athlete and has worked with top athletes all over the world.

In the book, you'll read interesting stories of athletes who have accomplished incredible feats following this diet.

I have personally attended many events with Dr. Graham and to date, have never met anyone of his age as fit as he is.

This book is short and sweet. It's barely 120 pages, but covers everything you need to know.

My wife bought this book for me several years before I actually read it. We've been on a variety of raw diets, on and off, for nearly seven years. When I read, and tried, Dr. Graham's diet I was coming off my longest non-raw stretch which resulted in weight gain of about 35-lbs.

Tired of looking at the new, fat me in the mirror I decided to try the diet and hire a personal trainer.

I stuck with the personal trainer for 6 weeks - and with the diet for three weeks. The net result (working out three times per week for 1 hour) was a loss of 12lbs of body fat and a gain of 6lbs of muscle. Most of that progress did occur during the initial 3 weeks when I adhered to the diet.

Now, I'd have preferred to have stayed on the diet the entire time but that's a real challenge, even for someone accustomed to eating raw. There were items that I simply don't enjoy eating that you're required / encouraged to eat a ton of. Essentially Dr. Graham cuts out all fats (which I now strongly disagree with) and consuming adequate calories by eating enough tomatoes or bananas or watermelon or lettuce to achieve the adequate calorie goal. That's a lot of lettuce! As much as I enjoy watermelon it's a challenge to start the day by eating it until you can't stand to eat another bite, and then eating some more.

Crazy as it may sound, I'd try this diet again. I do believe it produced results in the form of weight loss and muscle gain. And after the first few transition days my energy was abundant. But personally, I can't imagine living this diet long-term unless I lived in a tropical paradise.

I am very please with this product !The contenant is simple to anderstand and make so mush sanse . The paragraphes are shurt and easy to read . This book help me redefine my approche to exercices and nutrition .

A friend kindly loaned me this book and as a health conscious athlete I read it. It is a very quick read - not because it's a good book, but because it is so ridiculously thin when it comes to any meaningful scientific evidence. Don't bother buying this book, I can give you the gist of it in a few words: eat raw food, a lot of fruit, mostly bananas. Seriously. (Note the pun with Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is intended - a fantastic book that distills healthy eating down to a handful of useful principles, including, as the subtitle says, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.")

I approached Nutrition and Athletic Performance with an open mind and at first agreed with some of the author's points. For instance, I agree that supplements are mostly a waste of money and more about marketing than good nutritional sense. I also agree that adequate sleep and hydration are important. But when it comes to actual dietary recommendations this guy is crazy, bananas actually.

There are essentially three kinds of scientific studies when it comes to nutrition and health: (1) experimental studies, (2) case control studies, and (3) large cohort studies. Each has its advantages and limitations. Experimental studies (randomized controlled trials in particular) are the best (only) method for identifying cause and effect, but the cost, difficulty in implementing dietary changes, short time horizon, and typically narrow physiological endpoints (e.g., nutrient levels in the blood) make them of limited relevance. Cohort and case-control studies allow a look at more relevant health outcomes like heart disease rates, diabetes, cancer, life expectancy, etc, but it then becomes almost impossible to isolate the health effects of specific dietary modifications. The best we can do are large cohort studies that suggest that some general types of diets are healthier than others.

What kind of evidence does Graham cite in this book? Well, actually none of these. That isn't entirely his fault because there really isn't very much evidence about strict raw food diets if you bother to look it up in PubMed. But he doesn't bother to tell us that or to review the limited evidence that does exist. If you do look up the evidence you'll see that the evidence is mixed, suggesting that raw food diets are related to favorable LDL and triglyceride levels, and high beta-carotene levels (considered good), but low HDL levels, dental erosion, reduced bone density, and amenorrhea (considered bad).

But the typical reader of this book isn't interested in whether a raw food diet is healthier than the "average" (i.e., really bad) Western diet. What I would like to know is how does it compare to other healthy diets for which we have considerable evidence of their healthiness from those cohort studies, such as the Mediterranean diet, Asian diet, etc? There is plenty of evidence that the Mediterranean diet is associated with low levels of heart disease, low cancer rates, and longer life span. The Mediterranean diet includes lots of fruits and vegetables, but it also includes lots of whole grains, modest amounts of meat (mostly fish), coffee, and alcohol. The author, however, totally neglects these issues and this large body of research.

Instead of evidence he offers some lame testimonials at the end of the book. He also makes lots of conjecture - e.g., that because some dietary habit was part of our human evolution that it must be better for us than what we eat today. But this totally neglects a number of important facts, here are a few: (1) evidence suggests that agriculture, including both grains and animals, is related to the growth of human civilization thousands of years ago (read about this here: The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, (2) the majority of humans would not have evolved eating bananas - they are a relatively recent addition to our diet, originating in southeast Asia and only introduced to other continents within the last 2000 years, and (3) most importantly, the improvement of human nutrition (especially in the last 100 years) is one factor responsible for a huge increase in health and life expectancy.

Finally, he also maligns foods that have considerable evidence demonstrating their health benefits. For instance, he repeatedly refers to coffee as a toxin. But this "toxin" is high in antioxidants and studies have shown that it reduces diabetes, liver cancer, Parkinson's, and provides a huge boost in athletic performance (supposedly the point of this book!). For a summary about coffee and health I refer you to Higdon and Frei, Coffee and Health: A Review of Recent Human Research, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2006;46:101-123.

Like so many fad nutrition books this one is written by a "true believer" for true believers. If you want to believe in a raw food diet to satisfy some ideological urge, then by all means get this book. But if you really want to eat healthier and perform better athletically based on scientific evidence then don't waste your time or money. If you think I'm unfairly picking on this book consider the following promise from the back cover: "Are you curious as to what science really says about nutrition and performance?" Sorry, but this is false advertising.

If I still haven't convinced you, then consider your palate and this passage: "Athletes who need to consume over 4,000 calories a day may find that three meals per day are insufficient, and they may wish to add an extra meal. Bananas make the most effective and satiating meal. They supply approximately 90 calories per banana. It is common for athletes to eat from 10 to 20 bananas at one sitting, and sometimes more."

If you are bananas about bananas, then this may be just the book for you!!! If not, I suggest you read In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto instead.