Weight Training for Dummies: Attn trainerdan
 

This one is for trainerdan. I just picked up Weight Training for Dummies (2nd Ed) and noticed a very strongly worded negative opinion regarding the Atkins Diet. I was just wondering if trainerdan has seen this book and would be interested in his opinion if he has. Anyone else is welcome to chime in as well. Sorry, I cannot post the relevant section, as all I have is hard copy.

Most people in the fitness industry have been brainwashed by the food pyramid. Plus they are not doctors, so have no clue as to what insulin resistance is nor probably have ever heard the term.

There are more enlightened individuals such as Lyle McDonald, TrainerDan and others that know low carbohydrate diets can and do work with exercise and fitness programs.

Personally if you are interested in a exercise program that includes weight lifting, you will probably need to increase your carbs around the workouts. Most of us have found out the hard way that muscle fatigue occurs when we don't get enough carbs to fuel heavy weight sessions.

Good luck to you ;)

yes
 

Most fitness "gurus' outside of bodybuilding and the LC WOE will bash Atkins or any other LC plan.

Ask them to produce proof of how/why it is bad for you, and they can't. It's all "my doctor said so" or "my trainer said it." No science backs it up.

Call them un-enlightened I suppose.

As Agony noted though, you may need to take is SOME carbs if you are training intensely with weights. There are LC plans that take this into account, so check out all of the plans and see which one works for you.

Thanks agonycat and Trainerdan for your replies.

The book did mention insulin resistance but stated that this was quite rare and most people did not experience it.

All I know is that in using Atkins I have lot about 30 pounds since September. Previous attmpts to control my weight using a more traditional high carb, low fat approach failed completely.

I really don't know of exercise books written for people who are on lowcarb diets - I just checked Amazon and had no luck. In fact if you look at both of the most popular exercise books (BFL and Body Rx) you will not see a lowcarb diet. In addition, Muscle Media magazine (the people behind BFL) recently put together interviews with several people and they generally put down lowcarb diets. But, this website has a BFL section so it looks like the best thing to do is to look at the exercise books for exercises and use your lowcarb books to determine diet (with the idea that you may have to play with your carb intake dependent on your exercise intensity level).

By the way, agonycat, do you know if Lyle has ever recommended lowcarb? Yes, he wrote a book of CKD/TKD, but his writings at Cyberpump and other places generally recommended reducing your carbs to around 60 - 70% because of exercise, etc. He was against high-carb diets that did not provide enough protein or good fats.

There is an exercise book for low-carbers out now. It's called the Slow Burn Fitness Revolution by Fredrick Hahn, co-authored by Michael and Mary Dan Eades, the folks who wrote the Protein Power books. It is almost all exercise, but there is a diet guide included which is, of course, low carb, in line with the Eades other books.

I've love to read the opinions of some of the fitness and exercise gurus around here about this book. The book gives some logical sounding explanations as to why weight work is far superior to aerobics, and why the slow burn method is superior to most other weight lifting routines. It sounds good to me.

I was particularly interested in the Eades claim that most of the conditioning effect of aerobic exercise is not due to changes in the heart and lungs, which they say are minimal, but due to the increase in muscle fitness. This being so, it makes more sense to work on the muscles to increase overall fitness, rather than running up and down the roads collecting aches, pains, and injuries.

For the most part if any nutrition or exercise plan, if it is not main stream ideas, like what you might read in the muscle magazines, the author's bash what they dont know or understand, contrary to what anyone says, the purpose of most of the strength training books or muscle magazines is to push their products or to buy more of their publications. Many decades ago their waa a bodybuilder named Vince Gironda, he was way before his time, he competed in the Mr America when it was a vaey prestigious event, he used a Low Carb diet for 9 months before the contest. He was so lean and muscular he was viewed as being kind of a freak, he was easily the best body builder in the contest, but was so far beyond the rest of the compertitors and beyond anything anyone had ever seen, he did not win. He always was a advocate of the high protien lower carb nutrition.

Thanks

Richard