Customer Reviews

Raw Power! Building Strength and Muscle Naturally

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is online, almost in its entirety.

Nearly 50% of the book are recipes and Schwarnezegger-type workouts, which are ridiculous to even attempt to do.

25% of the book is online at (the healthself website), under the title of "Underweight", and various other subjects. I don't know who plageurized off of who, but Dr. Bernarr says word for word what Arlin says in this book.

20% of the book is an "Interview with Stephen Arlin". What kind of person has someone interview him in his own book? You can read the interview in its entirety on (the rawfood website). Nothing new here.

The remaining 5% of the book talks about how a gorilla can bench press 5,000 lbs, how man is the only being that cooks its food, etc, etc, etc. Man is not a gorilla, not is he a bird, cheetah, leopard guinea pig, or dog. To make such comparisons is ludicrous. I do believe a diet of primarily raw foods is the healthy way to live.

One more thing.. the author, Arlin, contradicts himself in more than a few ways in this book. Example: when he describes what he eats on a daily basis, he maps out what he eats, and at what times. He eats about 5 or 6 meals a day. Later on in the book, he tells us that he only eats one or two huge meals at night, so he can put on weight like the sumo wreslers do. Things like this are what make me despise this book. Contact me if you want a copy.

I waited for this book for months, upon receiving my copy I eagerly read it in one sitting, only to be disappointed. The Author catalogs and promotes his company's products throughout the book. And strongly recommends books written by his partner 'David Wolfe'. Both raw-fooders since 1995!

To sum up the contents in this book. Raw Food is good for you, he lost a lot of weight when he went raw, After initial weight loss on raw diet, Stephen COULD NOT put on any weight for 2 years. Until he learned how to trick his body, by slowing down his metabolism (eating a heavy meal late in the day). The rest of the book is fillers.

In his other book 'Natures First Law', Stephen says that every animal on this earth can live on one food only ("Donkey gets everything from a blade of grass"). Yet he has failed to mention any single food for us Humans (he strongly recommends his company's bottled products instead).

What is the rest of the book? 1. A Lengthy Question and Answer session from his website
(http://www.rawfood.com/interviewsa1.html)
2. Recipies by his wife that do not claim to be Strength Builders.
3. A Catalog for his Business.
4. Workouts.

I've been an avid bodybuilder for years. Granted, I've recently considered switching to Raw Dieting to become 100% "Natural" as the book suggests, I found this book to be of little value. The objective I had in purchasing this book was to gain knowledge of what foods to eat, protein and carb content, tips of combining foods, facts to support findings, how the body works in conjunction with switching to this type of diet. I found nothing of substance. Instead, I found many very opinionated and dumbfounded comparisons to analogies which that of a middle school child could have come up with without substantial scientific backing.

There was honestly, very little in terms of how the body works in conjunction with the foods eaten, and looking at the author, I'm sorry to say, but he looks big but not at all like someone who lifts weights nor someone that looks like they even have alot of muscle under the fatty layers. He just looks big and smooth. You would think in forming a book of this nature, he would present his physique a little more appropriately and provide more substantial backing to his theories which are lacking. I've read many many books on raw dieting and this is one of the poorest written.

The book is just a big catalog of products and supplements that you can find on their website at Nature's First Law. Not worth the money, very little facts and alot of advertising and useless analogies. If you presented the content in this book to someone you were trying to convince to go raw, you may as well stand in a circuis and have everyone laught at you. You are better off buying a detailed raw cook book which provides background on tasty foods and cooking methods to help you in your quest for size and raw foodism....one such book I would personally recommend from an actual Raw Food Chef is: Living Cuisine by Renee Loux or The Raw Gourmet by Nomi Shannon which provides enough information on how to gain weight for the avid bodybuilder or athelete. I've learned more about nutrition in the beginning chapters of the two books mentioned above than I did with Raw Power 3rd Edition. They teach you about sprouting, details about the food categories, origins of, how to fuse the dishes together, talks about health and other vibrant factors that are detrimental to the way you nourish and build your body with solid backing and sound cultural research.

I must concur with some of the previous reviewers. As a weightlifter in the early stages of converting to raw foodism, I purchased this book in the hope that it would have much more detail in this one specific area than the other raw food books I've read. I wish I had skimmed it a little better in the store, first.
The book does contain some useful information, and the author's enthusiasm may be a turn-on for some (and a turn-off for others), but the same information is better stated in other sources and for me the writing style came across as more of an advertisement for the author's business than anything else. The claims are not well supported by biological explanations (a trend that is unfortunately quite common in books on raw food in general). However, I don't mean to imply that the author is wrong--simply that there could have been more background provided to substantiate the author's statements.
On the positive side, I happen to agree with the author on most of his judgements (for example, that many "scientific" studies are often directed by biased entities and must therefore be disregarded). I think he scores on the fresh, naturalistic, positive attitude that he obviously possesses himself and encourages in others. And from personal experience this attitude, and the corresponding health benefits, can be powerful stuff when one adheres to the raw foods diet. It's just that a better overall explanation of the whole can be found in other sources.

I have read Steve Arlin's "Raw Power" two or three times now. As a struggling "rawist" I find some parts to be helpful, and even inspirational. Other parts I find to be a bit self-aggrandizing, and not to functional.

Bottom line, if you are new to Raw Foodism, and want to lift weights, then-aside from the workouts being way to long- read it and get some ideas. I would suggest other works for a better grasp of weight lifting in, and of itself.

If you are a weight lifting veteran, and have been around the gym awhile, as so many have already stated, you won't be too impressed. For you stick with what you are doing, and phase in the raw food diet as you go.

I don't love the inside of this book as much.
I read this book a long time ago and I agree with positive thinking and eating raw foods in order to help build healthy muscles and gain more stamina.
But, this book didn't offer me any new information or really inspire me to build more strength or more muscle.
It is an easy read, but there are better raw food books and much better body-building books out there.

When I purchased this book about a month ago, there was about 3 reviews giving it an average rating of about 4. Then slowly more reviews, brought that rating down to 3, then 2. Finally I put my review in about 2 weeks ago, 1 star by the way, and now that I check and this book "hasn't been reviewed".

Hmm...is it Amazon's policy to remove badly rated books reviews?

So just in case the reviews are indeed gone, here's a quick synapsis: Don't waste your time. Eat raw if you want, I do, but this book is nothing but a catalog for the author's own store. Some of the food prep is good, but the workouts are a joke and would take about 3 hrs to complete, and the other "advice" he gives is to buy his friends books. It is poorly written and a complete waste of time.

There are better books out there concerning weightlifting than this one. And, there are better books out there on eating raw foods.

The combination in this book doesn't work.

As poster Mike Mahler stated, read Power to the People, or Super Squats, or Dinosaur Training. "Thor's" workouts look like he cut and pasted them from Ironman or Muscle and Fitness. They are long and I feel lead to over training.

I have this book sitting on a bookshelf. I wish that I had not bought it in the first place.

Anger is the one word I can think to describe me when I got about halfway through this book. I was sceptical from the first page when he spouted "There is more diesease, sickness and misery now than ever before in the human history". Now I always find it funny that a white male can say this kind of thing with a straight face, but if you ask a woman or a visible minorty if they'd prefer to live now, or back in the 50's I'm sure we know what 9 out of 10 would choose. So that licks the misery part, as for the other two, I guess we just have to check infant mortality rates to see that the world in general is healthier now than it was 100 years ago. Brash I know, but this is just an example of the kind of baseless "facts" littered throughout this book (and many other Raw Food books as well). Of course none of these facts have a references (unless the reference is to one of Arlin's own books), they always refer to "a study" that was done.

Now I was a bit peturbed about contridictions he makes regarding his own diet, but others' have mentioned this so I will let you read those reviews. But what angred me the most was page 97, The Ultimate Raw Bodybuilding Sample Menu. So let me get this straight, Mr. Raw fooder diet is half made up of suppliments that you can only buy from HIS store! I put it down and stopped reading right there.

If you are committed to a Raw Food diet, I say good for you. I am about 90% and feel great, but I stay steer clear of this garbage. The reason I gave this book 2 stars is because my girlfriend has found some useful reciepes inside.

This book is mostly a self proclaimed experts opinion. There is a part in the book that states if you go raw you will lose your current muscle then develop higher quality 'raw' muscle. I have tried to ask the author several times (via email) how he came
up with this idea. My mails where all ignored.

If you believe that food combining has merits this book ignores food combining principals, too.