A clear, detailed road map to getting in shape for serious fitness enthusiasts.
Cut the calories and lift the weights—but in exactly the right ways—to get a muscular, athletic body, argues this second edition of a guide to dieting and exercise.
Lee (The Essential Guide to Sports Nutrition and Bodybuilding, 2018, etc.) starts with the insight that losing weight is a matter of burning more calories than people consume. But while it’s “really as simple as that,” this practice is far from straightforward. Once readers have adopted a diet that puts them in a calorie deficit—more burned than eaten—they have to get the right balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, the author asserts, as well as micronutrients, from vitamin A to selenium. And he points out the vexing ups and downs of dieting. As people lose weight, their metabolisms slow, making it harder to burn calories—Lee suggests periodic diet breaks and “re-feeds” to kick the metabolism back up a notch—and they face weight-loss plateaus, water-weight fluctuations, bloating, fatigue, and cravings. The author then analyzes the other half of the complex equation, building muscle through weight lifting. He distinguishes the different types of muscle fibers and the various exercise regimens to train them, using low-weight, high-rep lifts for endurance and high-weight, low-rep lifts for size and strength. Then he delves into the byzantine interactions between diet and exercise. Weight lifting burns carbs but not much fat, so Lee recommends a cycling diet of high carbs on gym days followed by high fat on jogging days. And growing new muscle requires a calorie surplus, which means additional fat gain, thus necessitating, in the author’s scheme, larger cycles in which people cut fat on a diet, then eat more to bulk up on muscle, then diet again to shrink the fat so as to reveal the muscle definition they want to show off. So there’s a lot to learn, ponder, and calculate in the author’s system; it’s not a cookie-cutter approach, and readers need to do some work and a little arithmetic in applying it. Fortunately, Lee makes this fairly easy with clear, step-by-step instructions and planning aids. He shows readers how to find their “maintenance” calorie intake and figure out how many calories they need to cut to reach an appropriate deficit along with procedures to reckon the amount of protein—1 gram per pound per day when dieting, a little more for bulking—carbs, and fat in their diets. Superplants packed with micronutrients—hail kale—are discussed along with bodybuilding nutritional supplements. (The author recommends whey protein, creatine phosphate, and yohimbine.) Lee provides weekly weight lifting schedules and routines for men and women, specifying everything from the number of sets of Bulgarian split squats and butt-blasters to the minutes of rest in between reps; templates for tracking calories and exercises; dozens of inspirational color photographs of magnificently toned, ripped, and cut gym rats; and even suggestions for a workout playlist. There’s a massive amount of information here, but the author manages to keep it well organized, lucid, and readable. He boils the material down into bullet-pointed insights, convenient tables, cut-and-dried formulas, easy-to-use rules, and aphorisms—“The longer it takes to lose the fat, the longer it takes to put it back on”—that are both sensible and pithy.
A clear, detailed road map to getting in shape for serious fitness enthusiasts.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-916410-53-4
Page Count: 477
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An exhaustive and exhausting marriage of Austen's Pride and a modern reader’s analysis of it.
A mammoth edition, including the novel, illustrations, maps, a chronology, and bibliography, but mostly thousands of annotations that run the gamut from revealing to ridiculous.
New editions of revered works usually exist either to dumb down or to illuminate the original. Since its appearance in 1813, Austen's most famous work has spawned numerous illustrated and abridged versions geared toward younger readers, as well as critical editions for the scholarly crowd. One would think that this three-pounder would fall squarely in the latter camp based on heft alone. But for various other reasons, Shapard's edition is not so easily boxed. Where Austen's work aimed at a wide spectrum of the 19th-century reading audience, Shapard's seems geared solely toward young lit students. No doubt conceived with the notion of highlighting Austen's brilliance, the 2,000-odd annotations–printed throughout on pages facing the novel's text–often end up dwarfing it. This sort of arrangement, which would work extremely well as hypertext, is disconcerting on the printed page. The notes range from helpful glosses of obscure terms to sprawling expositions on the perils awaiting the character at hand. At times, his comments are so frequent and encyclopedic that one might be tempted to dispense with Austen altogether; in fact, the author's prefatory note under "plot disclosures" kindly suggests that first-time readers might "prefer to read the text of the novel first, and then to read the annotations and introduction." Those with a term paper due in the morning might skip ahead to the eight-page chronology–not of Austen's life, but of the novel's plot–at the back. In the end, Shapard's herculean labor of love comes off as more scholastic than scholarly.
An exhaustive and exhausting marriage of Austen's Pride and a modern reader’s analysis of it.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-9745053-0-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Smart but meandering, inconsequential entertainment.
A frank battle cry from a 20-something woman in the modern-dating trenches of New York City.
Roberson, a freelance humorist and researcher at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, wields generous self-criticism to chronicle the current state of affairs among heteronormative singles on the hunt for love and/or just enough interaction with the opposite sex to keep the conversation about male idiocy going. Despite the catchy title, this book is neither a polemic against men nor a navigational how-to tome filled with advice. There is no narrative arc (chapters include, among others, “Crushes,” “Flirting,” and “Breaking Up”), catalyst for personal or romantic evolution, or tests of any real consequence for the author. Readers in search of deeply personal revelations should look elsewhere, but those seeking relatable accounts of just how unromantic the pursuits of romance actually are will be richly rewarded. Roberson’s great strengths are her blistering comedic sense and her cringeworthy, unexaggerated insights into her dealings with men. By “men,” clarifies the author, “I am talking in most cases about straight, cis, able-bodied white men…who have all the privilege in the world”—traits Roberson admits could be used to describe her. The author is as forthright about her sexual desires and lack of understanding of “ANY text ANY man” sends her as she is about her lack of experience with intimacy. Throughout the book, Roberson provides plenty of reasons for readers to laugh out loud. In a list of ways to kill time while waiting to answer a text, for example, she includes “Be in Peru and Have No Wi-Fi” and “Think About a Riddle.” She also satirizes The Rules, the notorious bestseller with archaic advice about how to catch a husband, and seamlessly weaves in pop-cultural references to countless sources. The so-called conclusion is a misstep; this book isn’t a story so it doesn’t have a beginning or end. Roberson doesn’t have a vendetta against men, only an understandable wish that they would be clear about their intentions and then take action.
Smart but meandering, inconsequential entertainment.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19342-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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