Book Review: The Belly Off! Diet

The Belly Off! Diet
By Jess Csatari and the editors of Men's Health.
306 pages, published 2009
$18.95

This book is another of a line of Men's Health books aimed at two things - burning off the fat, and exercising to look better and feel better. Like similar books - the Abs Diet, the Better Body Blueprint, or even The New Rules of Lifting - it covers the ground of "why train?", "why train like this?", and "what do I eat?"

The book is divided into four parts: Join the Belly Off! Club, The Belly Off! Diet Workouts, The Belly Off! Diet Real Meal Plan, and Making the Belly Off! Diet Work For You.

The first part is basically selling you on the idea of doing this diet, and exercising in this fashion. Nothing new here, but it's certainly convincing on why visceral belly fat is going to kill you if you don't get rid of it first.

The Belly Off! Diet Workouts are
Much emphasis is put on daily exercise - the "2 minute drill" is an every-day bodyweight workout that takes no equipment and 2 minutes to complete. It's meant to get you started and burn the habit of exercise into your schedule. Bodyweight exercises are also the basis of the Bodyweight 100 and Bodyweight 500. These are circuits of exercises, all bodyweight only, which total in reps to the number in the name. Do one circuit of the Bodyweight 100, you've done 100 reps of various movements. These are hard and fast movements, too - not a bunch of crunches, but squats, mountain climbers, jumps, chinups, and so on. It's not all bodyweight, though, and there is a solid section on weight training. Interestingly, it's all dumbbells except for inverted rows (which don't really need a barbell, just a bar to hang from.) The emphasis is on circuits and speed, not building up raw strength, so don't expect squats and deadlifts (although you'll see dumbbell versions of both). It's got enough information to get you started, but you'll want a book on exercise technique to supplement this.

Extra credit to the book for including a section on getting pullups - either getting your first or improving your numbers. They don't treat everyone the same, either, so the guy needing to nail his first double-digit chinups and the man or woman struggling to get to one rep get different approaches to follow.

The Real Meal section is very well done. You get a solid approach to meals. They're lower fat than typical American food, but also higher fiber, higher protein, and more nutritious. They aim for a good mix of fats, with no trans fats, and balanced meals at every turn. You'll eat six times a day on this plan, so special attention is paid to recipes. Bonus points for listing the calories and macronutrient breakdown of the food. And the food is good, too - I've made their chili and it's excellent, and they make grilled asparagus the same way I do. It's hardly a "diet" in the normal sense it is used. It's a plan to eat better food instead of junk.

Points off for the shopping lists - you get a meal plan, with specific meals for a week, and a shopping list...which omits any amounts of food. They say "eggs" or "broccoli" but they do not say how much of either. So you have to go do the totals yourself. This doesn't save any steps, which is really unfortunate as it makes the shopping lists much less useful.

The final section is all about making the diet work for you - workouts on the road, how to workout on the playground while you're out with the kids, fitting the meal plan into the all-you-can-eat buffet, and so on. It's well written and good - it feels like it's written by parents and travelers. Fact not theory.

Interspersed throughout the book are "success stories" of people who've done the diet. These are usually nice but useless. Here, though, there are tips - advice from these successful folks on how they did it. What was important to them and what made it work. It's generally good advice, and it prevents these from being waste space ("Okay, worked for them, but what do I need to do?")

Rating:
Content: 4 out of 5. Excellent stuff, but you've seen it all before in Men's Health.
Presentation: 5 out of 5. As usual for a Men's Health book, it's well put together with attractive pictures and easy to read text. But it could have been more cohesive.

Overall: If you're looking for a diet and exercise plan and don't know where to start, you can start here. If you've already got one, this won't add anything new.