CALORIE MYTH Paperback – Illustrated, December 15, 2014

I received an advance copy of the book in order to write this review. I'll tell you going in the book advocates a paleo diet and the banishment of grains, oats and other things.As someone who pretty much follows the Mediterranean Diet, this doesn't appeal to me. But, having said that, I found the book a goldmine of valuable information, most of which I know for a fact is based on science and does indeed work. That is why five stars.This book is actually the second edition of the popular Smarter Science of Slim.According to a statement in the front of the book, The Calorie Myth was "Previously published in a different form as The Smarter Science of Slim by Aavia Publishing in 2012."A reprinted or republished book is one which has been previously published in a different form (e.g. a paperback which was previously published in hardcover) and sometimes by a different publisher.THE CALORIE MYTH is the simplification and application of more than 1,300 academic studies. The supporting scientific literature and scientific documentation is included to back up what Bailor writes.While the book has some typos and a few editing errors, the writing is excellent and the ideas and information well presented.I have a copy of the the first book and some of the content is identical. Having said that, the new book is more professional and the material better laid out than in the 2012 version and if you did not read SSoS, you will benefit from reading the new edition. In addition, if you did read the previous book, you'll benefit from the new edition.In this book, Bailor provides a five-week plan to burn fat and shed pounds "quickly" and a lifestyle program to improve your health.One of the fascinating things you'll learn in The Calorie Myth is how to reset your set point. Of course, that was covered in the previous book too."Our set-point determines our long-term weight. If our weight is elevated, it's because our set-point is elevated thanks to what I call a hormonal clog," writes the author.He continues by giving an example of an elevated set-point being like a "clogged sink." "When our hormones change, our set-point changes. This is why we gain weight as we age."Bailor is against counting calories as are a good many experts in the health and fitness industry. It has proven to be a failure. I personally quit counting calories years ago and it's paid off.He writes, "Basing your diet on calorie count is like taking a medication that treats the symptoms of an illness, but doesn't cure the underlying cause.We can monitor our bodies all we want by tracking calories in versus calories out, but if we're not eating foods that fuel our biological processes and help to regulate our hormones, we're not curing our bodies."He adds, "You can count calories all day and will not set yourself up for long-term fat loss if you are eating low-quality calories that trigger excess body-fat storing hormones such as insulin."Numerous experts and health and fitness authors express their opinions in an effort to reinforce the studies quoted in the book. For example,"For the vast majority of people, being overweight is not caused by how much they eat but what they eat. The idea that people get heavy because they consume a high volume of food is a myth. Eating large amounts of the right food is your key to success." -- Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MDBailor suggests folks discard their scales. "As long as we focus on short-term weight loss, our efforts will not work out long term. We need to keep this critical perspective in mind because common things that do help us lose weight short term do not help us stay healthy and slim long term.The single most important step you can take to enable this mental shift is to get rid of tools that encourage starvation -- e.g., your scale -- and to set goals that will focus you on the long term. I know walking away from the scale is incredibly difficult. But until we free ourselves from worrying about our weight, we will risk relapsing back into our old approaches that we know do not work for the long term. Focus on getting healthier, not lighter. Your body will take care of the rest."I know for a fact this is true. I also know most people will have trouble with it because we're taught totally differently all our lives. Of course, even the tape measure doesn't always tell the truth because many people get a bit bloated from time to time and their waist may show a number that is not fat at all. I personally prefer to go by the calipers.The exercise section is excellent. I have done the short, intense and sometimes eccentric exercises for several years and the benefits are awesome. More and more professional athletes and just everyday people are discovering that long workouts are pretty useless and very boring. And, often, the rest of the day is spent being sedentary unless you spend very little time in your chair."While lifting weights helps boys feel like men, safely and slowly lowering weights enables us to use up to 40 percent more resistance. That enables more muscle fibers to be worked and more clog-clearing hormones to be triggered. That means more results in less time," he writes.There is a recipe section in the update. However, one of their sweeteners of choice is xylitol. I avoid this sweetener myself. To quote an article on The Mayo Clinic website, " . . . be cautious with sugar alcohols -- including mannitol, sorbitol and xylitol. Sugar alcohols can increase your blood sugar level. And for some people, sugar alcohols may cause diarrhea."If these are concerns you have, you might want to consider coconut palm sugar or some other sweetener. Stevia, although a processed food, is good as and also used in some of the recipes.I personally think we have to take the good out of what we read and discard the rest. There are those who will love this lifestyle in total and want to adopt it. Others may opt for a different eating style and perhaps exercise style.But everyone will find tremendous value in this book. It should be read carefully and fully absorbed. There's a lot of material here and, just as studies must be read carefully, so must this book. Skimming it is not the way to read it.Highly recommended.- Susanna K. HutchesonHealth & Fitness Researcher/Reviewer

Let me first say that this is an interesting book with many new ideas. It is well worth reading.For instance, the author introduced the idea of nutrients (such as protein, vitamins) per calorie as a way of evaluating food choices. This concept would lower the value of nuts, for instance, compared to arugula since arugula contains many fewer calories per pound and much more nutrition than a comparable weight of nuts. Although this is a simple observation, it never previously occurred to me. He also lists beans as a carbohydrate since that is mostly what they are, even though we often think of them as a protein source. These unique ways of viewing food data made the book interesting for me.Much of the book contains good information that is not new unless you are new to this type of book. If you are, you should also read Fuhrman’s “Eat To Live” and/or “Four Hour Body” by Ferris to mention a few. The essential takeaway is that sugar, flour, white rice and white potatoes should be avoided like the plague if you want to maintain a reasonable weight. You should also exercise more and concentrate on consuming protein, fiber and water to lose weight.Practically everybody agrees that traditional calorie counting doesn’t work. Ferris explained it most clearly by explaining that calorie ratings are derived by analysts by burning substances and measuring their calorie release. With that measure you could gain a huge amount of weight by eating fireplace logs, clearly ridiculous. This author carries the calorie concept further by explaining that different foods/composition have different effects on the body, which is why we will gain more weight eating a 1,000 calories of donuts compared to 1,000 calories of meat or vegetables. It’s not just the calories but the different way our bodies process carbohydrates, proteins fiber and fats. So far everybody I have been reading and my own common sense agree.Fuhrman, however, an avid vegetarian, presents a convincing chart which purports to show a higher death rate from consumption of protein from any source. Pesticides, hormones, anyone? Ferris encourages beans, yogurt, nuts, and other substitutes for meat. Your choice.My general criticism with the book is that the author overstates what’s known. His exercise regimen involving tension and eccentric movements were somewhat new to me. In general I agree that most experts overemphasize the amount of exercise needed. Plus, I don’t have time to hang around the gym all day. An hour every day is too much for me. Have you ever seen a lion doing pushups? They’re mostly landscape potatoes who run around and hunt once in a while to keep in shape.His modified form of Charles Atlas inside out dynamic tension also just doesn’t cut it for me. Regular vigorous exercise seems to clear out my system by raising my metabolism as well as burning more calories. Three or four hours a week is plenty.His claim that serious dieting leads to reduced muscle strength has not been my experience. If I diet and work out I do not lose muscle or stamina. His additional claim that working your legs will independently build your arms has not gained any traction in my scheme. This is an old idea introduced by Ken Cooper in “Aerobics” published I think I the 80’s. It might be true to some small extent and under some circumstances, but I wouldn’t bet on leg presses to build up my arms. Do marathon runners have big muscles or not? Common sense, folks. For many years I went for physical evaluations at the Cooper Clinic and no one seriously recommended this form of exercise.The author also believes in set points, although he is careful not to use the more classical term of homeostasis. In homeostasis, the body maintains 98.6 degrees among other metrics. Under set points, the body keeps your weight at a certain level unless you violate certain rules, such as consistently eating too much sugar and other unhealthy foods. In my opinion this is a simplistic notion that falls apart under closer examination. How many donuts equals how much set point change? No mention here. If you took a tiny microscope and traveled with it through my arteries to the appropriate data storage site you would find my set point listed as “blob.” Careful consumption keeps me in check.Another theme the author frequently returns to is what our distant ancestors ate. These people supposedly set the golden rule for fitness and never got fat. They are the same people who didn’t use toilet paper, wear shoes, cooked with wood fires in their unvented caves and tents, etc. Are you really sure you want to do what they did? If the bodies they developed and left us with in our genes are so good, why do these same bodies automatically conclude that donuts taste so good even after our storage needs are clearly satisfied? And if our bodies are so well designed, why is it that some of the holes are too close together? The logic in the book is obviously flawed here and there.Since the author is trying to generate a following and create sales beyond the purchase of the book, he is careful not to offend. He says that dieting doesn’t work and that exercise leads to more eating. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I dramatically reduce my consumption while eating more fruits and vegetables, my stomach shrinks and the hunger goes away. Also if I exercise while hungry, the hunger goes away and my muscle strength increases. My weight increases from time to time because I get careless and lose focus. It is also true that I have changed my food preferences through habit. Coffee with cream and sugar no longer holds an appeal over drinking it black. The exact relationships between these factors and their timing has yet to be fully understood by anyone. That’s why we’re willing to read books like this rather than just rely on the FDA and their “experts.”Want to try something fun not mentioned in this book? Get a bushel basket full of celery and the other items needed to follow the principles listed in this book. Then follow the scheme religiously for a week. After a week, go for a huge pigout for one day. How about some cognac and donuts for breakfast? Then back to the celery for another week. The net effect of the pigout will actually cause you to lose more weight than you would on two weeks of the straight program. This is a Tim Ferris idea. I like my bread and cognac.My guess is that the same people who fail at dieting will also wither under the strain of eating 10 servings of vegetables every day as recommended here. The first time you chug 60 asparagus spears or 80 baby carrots or 40 slices of onion or some combination of these and other choices listed in the book, that fireplace log will look better and better. You might even start thinking about donuts. The concepts work, but there are psychological hurdles that might get in the way, particularly when you are hanging from a pole in your bathroom doorway as recommended. The theory of weight loss is advancing slowly. The author pushes it forward a little bit. But the program outlined by any of my favorite authors is a work in progress.And then, of course, there are ideas that are good that need further development. If fiber cleans out your digestive system and makes you feel full and therefore less inclined to overeat, why not eat as much fiber as is healthy. And just what sort of things can we put in our pie holes other than ground up psyllium husks that will constitute beneficial fiber without making us sick, not to mention using up all of our toilet paper. Independent of this author, I discovered shirataki noodles (brushed over briefly in the book) which are fiber without calories. They’re not exactly like spaghetti, but if you can take a slight textural deviation, they are a very good product. Or how about some konjac powder—same basic stuff. Maybe I can make donuts out of it with a stevia stuffing of some sort!

A must read book for all health conscious people

Muito interessante a ótica abordada pelo autor dando um enfoque totalmente diferente de livros de dieta e do papel da nutrição

I read and then followed the  The Smarter Science of Slim: What the Actual Experts Have Proven about Weight Loss, Health, and Fitness  for over a year now and it completely changed my life. The Calorie Myth is the follow up to that book and contains all the vital information from the SSoS and more. It is even easier to understand and comes with a guide to kickstart your new SANEr life.Rather than regurgitate the same old rubbish we've been sold for 50 years to eat less and exercise more, Jonathan Bailor has clearly explained the science that shows that we don't need to starve ourselves or spend our lives a the gym. We can eat mounds of delicious healthy foods and live full and active lives without having to consciously think about it.I battled for years to eat less and less, was eternally hungry and obsessed about foods, only to get fatter and sicker and when I sought medical help to be told to eat even less. When that didn't work I was told I was obviously cheating!! Finally I am armed with the right information to make the right choices. I'm no longer fooled by the low-fat high-sugar fake-food marketing efforts and no longer struggle with my weight or my health!Jonathan has explained the science that supports our optimal health. If you want be in optimal form then you need would to follow his directions exactly. However he also shows how regular people who just want to live a normal healthy and fit life can do so without having to spend their lives counting calories and exercising till they drop. He explains the research that shows that your metabolism is damaged by eating poor quality foods, and explains science shows it can be repaired by changing to a high quality diet.Read it for yourself and arm yourself with the right information! The Smarter Science of Slim: What the Actual Experts Have Proven about Weight Loss, Health, and Fitness

Ach, es ist so wohltuend. Jonathan Bailor schaut sich einmal die Studien an, auf denen unsere Abnehmweisheiten beruhen, und siehe da: sie sind schlecht durchgeführt, haben eine geringe Stichprobe, es wurden falsche Schlüsse gezogen etc.Tatsache ist, niemand kann abnehmen, indem er oder sie die Kalorienzufuhr senkt und/oder exzessiv Sport betreibt. Beide Methoden haben kurzfristigen Erfolg, aber der mittelfristige Misserfolg ist vorprogrammiert, denn der Stoffwechsel stellt sich auf die neue Situation um und senkt den Grundumsatz.Wie erhält man also den Grundumsatz und nimmt trotzdem ab? Indem man die Ernährung umstellt (= auf Lebensmittel mit hohem Zucker- oder Stärkeanteil weitgehend verzichtet) und mittels eines sehr gemäßigten Übungsprogramms dafür sorgt, dass die Muskel nicht abgebaut werden. Ähnliche Ansätze sind ja schon lange bekannt und werden von Montignac, Worm & Co. vertreten, aber ich fand dieses Buch am überzeugendsten.

I have been reading this book flat out since it arrived this morning, I pre-ordered in december! I have been following Jonathan Bailor's Smarter Science of Slim program since October 2013. In the first month of eating more, and feeling fuller all day I lost 4 inches off my waist. This book explains how and why!I am not some sort of serial book nerd / diet nerd / super fitness fanatic, this is my first ever book review - I am a 43yr old man who put a lot of weight on after leaving the military. I was eating what i considered to be generally healthy food - however the weight kept piling on. This book explains why the whole popular belief of what is healthy and what is unhealthy is a myth - hence the name of the book I suppose. Its not about the amount of calories you eat, its the quality of the calories. Why is 100 calories of cauliflower better than 100 calories of potato's? My resting heart rate has also dropped from 90bpm to around 60-65 bpm. I am assured this is going to reduce my risk of coronary heart disease.This isnt selling a diet, its a healthy eating lifestyle - described as SANE. If you follow this you will lose weight without ever feeling hungry again. I sleep better, I feel better, I eat more, I eat more often, I still enjoy the occasional glass of wine. I recommend you read this book, make your own mind up - try it for a month you WILL feel better - I did (and still do)