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
Erudite writing from an author struggling to find meaning through music.
An Ohio-based poet, columnist, and music critic takes the pulse of the nation while absorbing some of today’s most eclectic beats.
At first glance, discovering deep meaning in the performance of top-40 songstress Carly Rae Jepsen might seem like a tough assignment. However, Abdurraqib (The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, 2016) does more than just manage it; he dives in fully, uncovering aspects of love and adoration that are as illuminating and earnest as they are powerful and profound. If he can do that with Jepsen's pop, imagine what the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Prince, or Nina Simone might stir in him. But as iconic as those artists may be, the subjects found in these essays often serve to invoke deeper forays into the worlds surrounding the artists as much as the artists themselves. Although the author is interested in the success and appeal of The Weeknd or Chance the Rapper, he is also equally—if not more—intrigued with the sociopolitical and existential issues that they each managed to evoke in present-day America. In witnessing Zoe Saldana’s 2016 portrayal of Simone, for instance, Abdurraqib thinks back to his own childhood playing on the floor of his family home absorbing the powerful emotions caused by his mother’s 1964 recording of “Nina Simone in Concert”—and remembering the relentlessly stigmatized soul who, unlike Saldana, could not wash off her blackness at the end of the day. In listening to Springsteen, the author is reminded of the death of Michael Brown and how “the idea of hard, beautiful, romantic work is a dream sold a lot easier by someone who currently knows where their next meal is coming from.” In all of Abdurraqib’s poetic essays, there is the artist, the work, the nation, and himself. The author effortlessly navigates among these many points before ultimately arriving at conclusions that are sometimes hopeful, often sorrowful, and always visceral.
Erudite writing from an author struggling to find meaning through music.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937512-65-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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