Customer Reviews

Underground Bodyopus: Militant Weight Loss & Recomposition

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First off, I'm not a steroid using bodybuilder. In fact, this book doesn't really advocate using steroids either. It just gives you the facts and lets you make up your own mind.

I've used this book for about 8 weeks so far, and the results are incredible. I've been into bodybuilding for a little over ten years. I started as a teenager and have since been able to gain about 80 lbs of mostly lean muscle without any drugs. I can gain weight fairly easy for a natural guy, but going through a dieting phase would always result in more muscle loss than I wanted. There are several reasons natural bodybuilders experience this (discussed in the book) with the traditional methods like we have all been taught reading "Muscle and Fitness" magazines. Dan's approach is very thoroughly explained, which makes it far more than just a cook book. So, as long as you are patient enough to extract the information from the book (keep notes as you read, you'll need them), you will walk away with a diet that really works well.

Earlier I stated that I've done the diet for about 8 weeks so far. Actually, I've done it for about 12, but four weeks of that was based on Lyle McDonald's book "Ultimate Diet 2.0", which is an update to Body Opus with his own tweaks. That is a great book as well, but I noticed that I couldn't maintain his full body workout approach for too many weeks without overtraining and loosing a bit of muscle size, strength, and overall shape. In all fairness, Lyle does recommend that you take a break from his approach about every 6-8 weeks. What I noticed on his routine may have actually been the result of being on the Body Opus diet for several weeks prior to his. In any case, I'm not a fan of full body workouts, so I ended up sticking to Dan's approach sprinkled with some of the additional science Lyle McDonald's book adds.

One last bit of advice. Search for Lyle McDonald's Body Opus journal on Google and compare it to your notes after reading the book. Also, the first 2-3 cycles/weeks are the hardest in my opinion.

I learned more about human digestive processes through this book then anywhere else. Dan goes into minute detail on what makes you grow, what makes you fat, and how to hold onto muscle as you drop weight. He spells out several diets, then he hits the big one "Ketogenisis" for the really hardcore lifters. (The bodybuilders version of the Atkins diet.)

One thing I liked about Dan is that he doesn't pull any punches and doesn't play the PC game. For people looking for maximum gains (or loss) he tells you to use steroids, insulin and anything else you can get your hands on, in order to improve performance.

I would recommend this book for anyone entering the realm of weight loss, weightlifting or improving his/her diet.

I did the Body Opus diet several years back and I did very well with it. I started out at 10-12% bodyfat and dropped to 7% within 10 weeks. I found it fairly easy to do and got lots of compliments on my physique.

Positives:
1) Very well written, informative, and motivating. He doesn't waste a whole lot of time talking to the general public. He gets right down to what serious athletes want to know.
2) I found that the ketogenic phase during the week suited my appetite very well. I guess I'm a born carnivore.
3)It's fun to see your depleted muscles swell up with an enormous pump on the weekends as you eat lots of carbs.

Negatives: (Why I didn't stick with it)
1) The ketogenic phase can make your brain very sluggish as you convert from glucose to ketone brain-fuel. This happens mid-week, and I was tired of difficult Wednesdays.
2) I plateaued at 7% bodyfat.
3) Dan Duchaine himself said that you could get the same results with a simpler diet (I actually thought this was a pretty simple diet, but I liked Dan's integrity and wanted to state that he didn't think, after studying the results, that Body Opus was the end-all be-all for athletic diets)

Although I did fine, a friend of mine became extremely constipated on this diet. Make sure you drink lots of water and keep your fiber up during the ketogenic phase.

Another book you may want to check out is "Natural Hormone Enhancement" by Rob Faigin. This is a well written book that follows similar principles but seems to avoid some of the discomforts of sluggish ketosis that Body Opus subjected me to. Faigin, however, doesn't speak to the successful athlete. He keeps trying to explain that it's the high carb/low fat eating that we've been convinced to follow that causes all our problems. This gets pretty old since at least half of the nutrition books in the last 6-8 years have said the same thing. But it's definitely worth a read. You'll have to search the web for it since it's not available through Amazon.com yet. I don't have personal results of this diet yet. I'll be starting when I come back from summer vacation.

Is a Ketogenic Diet hands down the most effective way to burn fat? The answer is Heck Yeah! More than anything, this book is an educational experience. Now you tell me..how can we reclaim our health (Physical and Mental) when the so-called "Health Care Professionals" who have been charged with caring for us, put up roadblocks to that desired end. The answer is that you have to arm yourself with this unique brand of knowledge and wisdom and snatch back your health and well-being. Dan Duchaine is one of many of todays fitness heroes who is providing knowledge and inspiration to those people who are taking responsibility for their own health. True the BodyOpus diet can and has been refined (See Mr. Duchaine's newsletter or Lyle McDonald's BodyOpus FAQ's all over the Web) but you gotta give it to Dan for having the Cajones to publish such a book; and he did it in a bold and scholarly manner. Now I can finish my book and we can continue to kick the sorry butts of the AMA and FDA and all the others who want to keep our brothers and sisters fat, unhealthy and mad at God because they're sick all the time! If you're a real radical man or woman, you'll not only buy this book, you'll try this book!

This book is very informative. I didn't get the impression that he was pushing steroids, just giving information.

He has the best explanation that I've ever heard as to why the ketogenic diet is not harmful. He uses the Eskimos' eating habits as an example of a people whose staple food source is all fat and protein and yet they're all okay. This is because they burn ketones because they keep moving. That's the secret to preventing negative health effects of ketosis.

I actually didn't bother to eat normally on the weekends because I didn't like the ups & downs so I maintained the ketogenic diet and took fiber pills (a must!). I'm female, average build, and I lost 12lbs in 4 weeks AND increased my strength, so I'm assuming that I gained muscle and lost fat at the same time. I dropped 2 sizes. I weightlifted 3days a week, cardio twice/week. There were also 2 intense mountain biking outings during the 4 weeks that I'm sure helped.

I never felt fatigued. But that's just my experience. Everyone seems to be affected differently by the ketogenic diet.

If nothing else, this book is very interesting reading.

To steal a phrase from Dan Duchaine, this book details how an average person can transform their diet and become extraordinary. The results are really amazing. And this book will become your diet bible for the rest of your life. No book has ever captured by attention and changed my way of thinking about dieting. Both men and women will benefit from Body Opus. A definite must for all people who want to go beyond "normal".

This book is really one of the best books written about fat loss. Not by any guessing but by easy to follow methods to help any bodybuilder or fitness head decrease body fat and preparing for contests if thats your thing. I got hold of this book a few years ago and at the time the low carb diets were laughed at in Australia and now they are all the rage. Dan was truly ahead of his time but his calculations and his science that he applies are truly amazing. Yeah there is all the knockers out there who will whinge about constapation and head spins. How about knocking the results- wont hear too many of those. RESULTS. Any way I vary the diet and it suits me and is easy to follow. The drug section is very detailed also especially in the diretics and thyroid area.
Also there is no index on this book but you can find it easily on the web.

This guy knows of what he speaks. He used to work with Bill Phillips and Muscle Media 2000 back when it was cutting-edge publication, and this is even more hard-core info if you remember those days. This is the 2nd copy I have bought as my 1st one "disappeared". I was even a subscriber to D'Duchaine's newsletter. This is for those people tired of stop-gaps and half-measures. Simply put, Dan knows what he knows and this diet works. Good luck - and stay HARD!

The now passed author wrote this highly informative book on supplements, dieting strategies as well as bodybuilding pre-contest preparation. This book is not only a MUST HAVE for any competitive bodybuilder, but it should be their BIBLE. The information provided in this book is Life Altering, to say the least. Any serious bodybuilder, athlete or dieter should own this book and read it at least 10 times over, as the information is very extensive and useful. Like most exercise and diet books, the book is lacking in attention to detail in the vocabulary/grammatical sense as well as poor content and subject matter organization.

I was expecting more from this book. Don't get me wrong it was good and I liked it, but I felt like the author (God rest his soul) was egotistical and it sort of put me off. The book is full of good information although some of it is out of date most of it was ahead of it's time. This is a good book to get along with The Ketogenic Diet by Lyle McDonald.