Your Thoughts?

[1fever]

What do you think?

http://www.askmen.com/sports/foodcourt_400/488_17-day-diet.html

[Sanjh]

*warning: Nerd Rant*

For one the the author of the critique doesn't know his physics from biology.

Secondly, he invokes energy laws as if it were a closed system, when it's verifiably not.

So from a science aspect it leaves me a little annoyed.

*end of: Nerd Rant*

The two thoughts I have are:

I'm not a fan of diets that have a time frame on them; it seems like often the solution is only temporary.

I'm not really moved by book reviews where the author states "I did not read this book": it just comes off as a whiny, uninformed rant. At least if he had read the book he could have addressed it with a logic based argument.

[Raincloak]

The article just looks like a rant. What are we supposed to think about it?

[1fever]

The article just looks like a rant. What are we supposed to think about it?

If I knew what you were supposed to think I wouldn't have asked...but it seems ranty to me as well. But I'm looking more at what people think of the science behind his claims...especially since alot of people on here subscribe to the 4-hour body stuff.

[Brometheus]

"No matter what some wannabe diet guru tells you, weight loss is about calories in versus calories out"

I'm going to disagree with the whole article on that basis, thanks. It's more than calories. It's also about hormones. I am also trying to figure out if the author did read the book, didn't read the book, or just wants to argue about whether he should have read the book.

I find it more ludicrous that he immediately discounts fast weight loss or some of the stories about how they changed over a period of days. I know, it's hard to believe, but I had even better results than the 17 day diet testimonials with paleo.

Yeah, there's a lot of interesting info in the 4 hour body. I think that I have it better following paleo, but that's my approach to physical well-being. I view the 4 hour body more of a "how to self-diagnose and test your theories about yourself" than as anything I would follow.

[1fever]

"No matter what some wannabe diet guru tells you, weight loss is about calories in versus calories out"

I'm going to disagree with the whole article on that basis, thanks. It's more than calories. It's also about hormones. I am also trying to figure out if the author did read the book, didn't read the book, or just wants to argue about whether he should have read the book.

I find it more ludicrous that he immediately discounts fast weight loss or some of the stories about how they changed over a period of days. I know, it's hard to believe, but I had even better results than the 17 day diet testimonials with paleo.

Yeah, there's a lot of interesting info in the 4 hour body. I think that I have it better following paleo, but that's my approach to physical well-being. I view the 4 hour body more of a "how to self-diagnose and test your theories about yourself" than as anything I would follow.

Yeah I own the 4-hour body cuz I read everything on that kind of stuff...it was interesting and I used it to tailor some things here and there. Like his theories on fruit and such, I like, but some of it I believe is dangerous. Like even though you can pack on that much muscle in a short amount of time it would stress your heart to a crazy level and your cardio-vascular fitness and athletecism suffer.

I think this author has his heart in the right place in this article his approach is wrong though. His rant gets in the way. The thing about most fad diets is they work much like the V diet. They are just extremely hard and the average person fails at them 90% of the time. So he is simplifying it. The base line for "average joe don't give a rats ass about fitness" is that calories in vs. calories out is the simplest way to explain a good diet and the author is trying to convey that. If you eat less calories then you burn over time you will lose weight whether its fat or muscle you will lose weight. To combat that muscle loss you work out. His calory claims on the female examples he gave seems pretty spot on though. If he would have skipped the rant and used his data to prove a point it may have come across better.

[Glenndingo]

I think health, fitness, goals, whatever aren't going to be achieved through some miracle diet/drug/FoTM. An individual needs to be motivated to force change, our lives don't require 10 percent of the effort they did 200 years ago, and our bodies are tell tale signs of that. Look at the animal kingdom, they're still out there doing all the same things they were 200 years ago, whether predator or prey...their daily life revolves around kill or be killed, you must be on top of your game to not be: Food, or starve to death.

Us getting up and going to work in the morning isn't a life and death scenario it is simply we wake up, go to work, eat throughout the day and return to our home. There's no semblance of exercise in Human #3857's daily life therefore Human #3857's body packs on fat and loses muscle mass, athletic performance, and motor skills slowly...year by year. Obesity isn't a condition or a sickness, it's a lack of motivation to get up off our lazy asses and do something. Granted I know that there are people with conditions that require them to severely limit caloric intake and exercise at a more frequent interval than the average American.

Having said that, laziness and media together create an effect on the human mind. We see beautiful people every day on TV and in movies all laughing and having sex with each other because they are the chosen few to do so when in reality they wouldn't make the millions they make without looking good for the role and this requires them to maintain a physique dependent upon the required role (remember the movie 300? check out Gerard Butler now, he isn't nearly as ripped.) or look towards Benecio Del Toro who gained a lot of weight for the role in Fear and Loathing and got in better shape for Wolfman. The point being necessity breeds that motivation, if they couldn't change their bodies enough, they might not get the role. Your average desk warrior isn't required to do anything outside of show up on time, crank out (insert computer related job here) and go home. The average desk warrior sit sedentary for years until realizing they have spiraled far out of control...this is where the wonder diet/drug comes in and for 6 minutes of mediocre effort they can look like the people on TV.

It's all crap! The real change people need to make in their lives is to eat better calories (not just less) and go do some damn hard work in the gym or on the streets for an hour or so a day. It isn't magic, it's not vastly superior genetics, it's just good old fashioned hard work.

I'm not writing this out as an attack, it's just my opinion.

[1fever]

I think health, fitness, goals, whatever aren't going to be achieved through some miracle diet/drug/FoTM. An individual needs to be motivated to force change, our lives don't require 10 percent of the effort they did 200 years ago, and our bodies are tell tale signs of that. Look at the animal kingdom, they're still out there doing all the same things they were 200 years ago, whether predator or prey...their daily life revolves around kill or be killed, you must be on top of your game to not be: Food, or starve to death.

Us getting up and going to work in the morning isn't a life and death scenario it is simply we wake up, go to work, eat throughout the day and return to our home. There's no semblance of exercise in Human #3857's daily life therefore Human #3857's body packs on fat and loses muscle mass, athletic performance, and motor skills slowly...year by year. Obesity isn't a condition or a sickness, it's a lack of motivation to get up off our lazy asses and do something. Granted I know that there are people with conditions that require them to severely limit caloric intake and exercise at a more frequent interval than the average American.

Having said that, laziness and media together create an effect on the human mind. We see beautiful people every day on TV and in movies all laughing and having sex with each other because they are the chosen few to do so when in reality they wouldn't make the millions they make without looking good for the role and this requires them to maintain a physique dependent upon the required role (remember the movie 300? check out Gerard Butler now, he isn't nearly as ripped.) or look towards Benecio Del Toro who gained a lot of weight for the role in Fear and Loathing and got in better shape for Wolfman. The point being necessity breeds that motivation, if they couldn't change their bodies enough, they might not get the role. Your average desk warrior isn't required to do anything outside of show up on time, crank out (insert computer related job here) and go home. The average desk warrior sit sedentary for years until realizing they have spiraled far out of control...this is where the wonder diet/drug comes in and for 6 minutes of mediocre effort they can look like the people on TV.

It's all crap! The real change people need to make in their lives is to eat better calories (not just less) and go do some damn hard work in the gym or on the streets for an hour or so a day. It isn't magic, it's not vastly superior genetics, it's just good old fashioned hard work.

I'm not writing this out as an attack, it's just my opinion.

I have a question for the group that has little to do with the original article but thought it could fit into your reply...you and I have jobs that require fitness at a very base level to keep our jobs/promote and at the extreme level stay alive if need be cuz sometimes you just gotta run. All politics aside, do you think average joe/jane American would benefit on a health and fitness level that comes with being forced into 2 years of military service like Israel? Meaning, if we forced Americans to deal with that get fit or fail and potentially die scenario would the obesity rate change? And, would people upon completion of said service obligation be more apt to stay fit, knowing the benefits? I think military and police on a smaller scale actually deal with the predator/prey scenario in real life so like in the animal kingdom they tend to be fitter.

[Glenndingo]

Hmm, on that note I think not, I'm sure you've been in long enough by now to have seen some people get out and get fat. It still falls down to the individual in my mind, I've seen plenty of my old buddies get out and swell up like broken arms. Nah, I don't think forced military service would really lower obesity rates by a drastic amount. I've seen a lot of fat cops, too...I just believe it all boils down to the individual, and we're all lazy by nature. It's ingrained in us with the whole "work smarter not harder" ethos, which is a great ethos and it's absolutely led to the development of great tools but I am getting off topic.

Our bodies are factories, we fuel them and they work...if there is a surplus of fuel and a lack of work we store that energy. If there is a surplus or work and a lack of fuel, the factory begins to burn itself as fuel creating a different problem. People just need to be educated and motivate themselves.

Also, think about the number of people who grow beards when they get out of military service because they couldn't, it's that binge and purge mentality, sure a slight percentage of them maintain fitness but overall we're still in a bad state as a human race (ESPECIALLY America). Forced service...while I don't fully disagree with it just couldn't/wouldn't work for us in society and it wouldn't really lower obesity rates in my mind because those rebel/refuse to train would reinforce themselves and create their own subgroup of American: the justified sloth. I do think forced service might help in some ways by bringing light to your average politician the woes of the E2's out there pulling working parties, sitting on post, being away from their family for up to a year or more at a time. I mean, look at the whole pay issue, there are people who have no clue what they're even talking about with the whole "military gets paid too much" movement that some people actually support (I'd like to introduce them to some of the lower enlisted people that are below poverty level as far as income goes).

I think it's America's mentality that needs to change and it begins with the individual.