Publisher Description

Eat like a man to look like a man. For years now, the so-called experts have told you to avoid the foods you love. That you're supposed to ditch the weight room and jog your way to maximum fitness. And that testosterone--the hormone that makes you a man--is actually a problem for you, rather than the solution to your problems. In the meantime, American men have kept getting fatter and more frustrated. Which is why we've looked into all this, and from what we've learned, we can tell you--the know-it-alls are know-nothings. The Testosterone Advantage Plan is about realizing your full potential as a man, and will: -show you how nature intended you to eat. -explain how the male body differs in its nutritional needs from the female body--especially when it comes to the proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that are not bad for you. -give you a superior workout regimen to help you attain the muscular physique you've always wanted. -explain how you can boost your testosterone and energy levels naturally, without supplements or quick-fix fads. -help you tick off the long list of benefits you'll likely reap in terms of energy and enthusiasm, power and potency, confidence and charisma. This much you know: What you've done in the past hasn't worked. Why not try it our way? You have everything to --and nothing to lose except your gut.

Back Cover

Eat Like a Man to Look Like a Man For years now, the so-called experts have told you to avoid the foods you love. That you're supposed to ditch the weight room and jog your way to maximum fitness. And that testosterone-the hormone that makes you a man-is actually a problem for you, rather than the solution to your problems. In the meantime, American men have kept getting fatter and more frustrated. Which is why we've looked into all this, and from what we've learned, we can tell you-the know-it-alls are know-nothings. The Testosterone Advantage PlanTM is about realizing your full potential as a man, and will * show you how nature intended you to eat. * explain how the male body differs in its nutritional needs from the female body-especially when it comes to the proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that are not bad for you. * give you a superior workout regimen to help you attain the muscular physique you've always wanted. * explain how you can boost your testosterone and energy levels naturally, without supplements or quick-fix fads. * help you tick off the long list of benefits you'll likely reap in terms of energy and enthusiasm, power and potency, confidence and charisma. This much you know: What you've done in the past hasn't worked. Why not try it our way? You have everything to gain-and nothing to lose except your gut.

Author Biography

Lou Schuler is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, a contributing editor to Men's Health magazine, and the author of many popular books about fitness and nutrition, including five in the New Rules of Lifting series with coauthor Alwyn Cosgrove. He recently published his first novel, Saints Alive.

Table of Contents

Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION PART ONE Chapter 1: Our Burgers, Ourselves Chapter 2: Why Almost Everything You Know about Fitness Is Probably Dead Wrong Chapter 3: The Cardio Conundrum Chapter 4: Testosterone: A Man's Key to Getting and Staying Fit PART TWO Chapter 5: The Men's Health T Chapter 6: The Meat/Muscle Connection Chapter 7: The Manly Fats Chapter 8: Carbohydrate Revisited Chapter 9: Putting Together the Food Plan Chapter 10: When You Eat, and Why It Matters Chapter 11: The 1-Week Meal Planner PART THREE Chapter 12: Introduction to the Testosterone Advantage Workout Chapter 13: Getting Ready to Lift Chapter 14: The Testosterone Advantage Workout: Phase 1 Chapter 15: The Testosterone Advantage Workout: Phase 2 Chapter 16: The Testosterone Advantage Workout: Phase 3 Chapter 17: Life at the Top ABOUT THE AUTHORS INDEX

Review

Susan M. Kleiner, R.D., Ph.D. author of Power Eating The more we learn about hormonal control of the body, the more we understand that there's almost nothing physiologically the same between men and women. The Testosterone Advantage Plan, written just for men, promotes scientifically based approaches to fat loss and muscle gain.

Review Quote

Susan M. Kleiner, R.D., Ph.D.author ofPower EatingThe more we learn about hormonal control of the body, the more we understand that there's almost nothing physiologically the same between men and women.The Testosterone Advantage Plan,written just for men, promotes scientifically based approaches to fat loss and muscle gain.

Excerpt from Book

Chapter 1: Our Burgers, Ourselves Are you a man who''s interested in looking his best? Being his best? Staying physically and physiologically at the top of his game? We feel for you. We really do. That''s because you''ve been overlooked. And you''ve been misled. For 20 years, the fitness and weight-loss industries have had little to offer you. For 20 years, you''ve been overfed but undernourished. Overworked but underexercised. Overanalyzed but still misunderstood. Along the way, well-meaning people -- often with impressive credentials -- have tried to help you. They began by steering you away from the foods you enjoy. When you didn''t take an immediate liking to the foods they wanted you to eat instead, other friendly folks in the packaged-food business stepped up with better-tasting versions. When the more palatable food made you fat, yet another group of sincere individuals chimed in to show you a type of exercise that helped you lose some of the fat -- but also caused your body to lose a lot of its muscle and your joints to cry out in protest. At the end of it all, not only are you still out of shape but now you have weak, arthritic knees. Why? Because all those wonderful diets and fitness programs you were given don''t work. Not for you. Not for most men. You''re going to be exposed to a lot of eyebrow-raising notions in this book. We''ll tell you that the Food Guide Pyramid doesn''t work for us men. A low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet doesn''t work for us. (Except, maybe, for the marathoners among us. For the rest of the male population, a low-calorie diet consisting mostly of carbs is a metabolic and physiological disaster waiting to happen.) Most forms of aerobic exercise don''t work for us. For that matter, even weight lifting, as you were traditionally taught it -- "Grab X number of pounds, lift 10 times, do three sets, repeat" -- doesn''t work. Not the way it''s supposed to. On what do we base such bold assertions? For starters, decades after the American Heart Association and other leading voices began singing the praises of "low fat" and "exercise," the average guy is more out of shape than his 1960s predecessor. Between 1960 and 1994, the percentage of obese men leaped from 10.4 to 19.9 percent of the total U.S. male population, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Sounds pretty bad? Some estimates are worse. Indeed, the latest government statistics tell us that more than half of all Americans are now overweight. Frankly, we''re angry about all this. We''re angry with the nutrition establishment, which bullied us into eating less fat, less protein, and much, much more carbohydrate. This much-ballyhooed dietary template has made us fatter than ever before, slowing our metabolisms and screwing with our hormones -- specifically, our testosterone. We''re angry with the food industry, which has co-opted the low-fat paradigm and drained whatever virtue it may have contained, replacing fat with sugar and giving us foods we can''t stop eating, despite the fact that they never fill us up. And we''re angry with the exercise movement, which decided early on that "fitness" meant "aerobic exercise" and pushed a gullible public into pursuing workout routines that were fine for keeping skinny people skinny but did surprisingly little for the emerging overweight majority. None of this had to happen. There''s a better way to eat and a better way to exercise. We''re going to present a new paradigm. We''re going to present a diet that''s based on the healthiest nutritional model in the world, a diet that will allow you to eat less but feel as if you''ve eaten more, a diet that will increase your metabolism and boost your testosterone. We''re going to show you a workout program that will build muscle, further increase your metabolism, and introduce you to the lean, vital man you want to be. INFLATIONARY TRENDS We live a lifestyle that''s almost designed to make us fat, in a world that''s determined to help things along in any way possible. Increasing numbers of us sit in front of computers all day, then go home and sit in front of TVs till bedtime. The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association tells us that just 20.5 percent of Americans exercised three or more times a week in 1999. Meanwhile, we go out for dinner and manage to pack away 1,000 or more calories before the main course arrives. (Ever share one of those deep-fried onion-wedge appetizers with a buddy or a girlfriend? With the dipping sauce, that''s more than 1,000 calories right there. For each of you. There''s a difference between "eating more fat" and "eating humongous quantities of crap." All this will become clearer as we move along.) We''re drowning in "value meals," offers of two pepperoni pizzas for the price of one, and other incentives to stuff ourselves to the point of self-loathing. But that alone isn''t the problem -- or at least, it''s not the sole problem. Because guess what? "Eating right" isn''t the answer, either. Not the way you were taught to do it, growing up. At this point we''d like to lay out for you four simple, straightforward truths that will occupy us for the rest of this book. Fact One: Low-fat diets lower testosterone, making it harder to build muscle and easier to store fat. Fact Two: Aerobic exercise programs make it still harder to build muscle. Not only is there no muscle-building stimulus, there are actually muscle- eroding physiological shifts associated with serious endurance exercise. And it''s hard on the joints to boot. Fact Three: Less muscle means a slower metabolism -- which means still more fat down the road. Fact Four: Since weight training can enhance the structural integrity of joints and connective tissues -- rather than wear them down -- it stands to reason that it should be the first exercise choice for men. So what happened here? How did we get so far removed from the kind of diet-and-exercise regimen that really works for men? Let''s go back to the Food Guide Pyramid for a moment. In 1980, the U.S. government formalized a series of Dietary Guidelines that were themselves an outgrowth of the "four food groups" model that began to take hold during the 1950s. The Food Guide Pyramid was created in 1992 and added to the Dietary Guidelines in 1995 as a teaching tool to illustrate the number of servings that you should eat from each food group. Today, the main USDA mantra is "Let the pyramid guide your food choices." Basically, it emphasizes large amounts of carbohydrate (the so-called healthy base of the pyramid), somewhat smaller amounts of fruits and vegetables, even smaller amounts of protein, and very, very small amounts of fat. It bears noting that the final shaping and composition of the pyramid was not exactly a scientifically pristine process, as many groups (including the meat and dairy industries) lobbied the USDA as well as the Department of Health and Human Services to protect their interests in the matter.r Nonetheless, even if we take the Food Guide Pyramid at face value, there are so many errors and inconsistencies as to make it functionally worthless as a tool for governing our dietary choices. For starters, while the pyramid sets forth a fairly straightforward account of the relative amounts we should be eating from the major food groups, it makes no distinctions among the legitimate subcategories that exist within each group. For instance, in the pyramid, grains are grains, whether you''re talking about a hearty bowl of old-fashioned oatmeal or a nutritionally worthless slice of white bread -- and despite the huge differences in the nutritional and metabolic values of whole grain and refined flour (vitamin enrichment aside). In the same way, though the Food Guide Pyramid does not specifically mention proteins by name, it lumps most types of protein-based foods in the same group, even though nutritionists say animal proteins (like the burgers we love) are a more complete form of protein than vegetable proteins in their ability to provide B vitamins and essential amino acids. Neither does the pyramid take into account the fact that there''s a world of difference between a helping of salmon, which is rich in heart-healthy omega-3 oils, and a helping of bologna, which is rich in not very much. Just as bad -- maybe even worse, for our purposes -- all fats are imprisoned together in a tiny cell at the top (and remember, in the pyramid, the higher you go, the less desirable a food supposedly is). As a final insult, the sweets are also thrown right in there with the fats. Thus, in the maddeningly simplistic hierarchy of government-sponsored eating, healthy fats like olive and fish oils are equal partners with doughnuts and DingDongs. Now and then, you''ll hear the pyramid''s defenders point to the declining death rate from heart disease as evidence that the pyramid is paying dividends. To this we reply: Nonsense. To credit the pyramid alone with the drop in cardiac mortality is to ignore the major advances in cardiac surgery and drug therapy over the past few decades. That''s an omission bordering on fraud. And ask yourself this: If the Food Guide Pyramid were really making Americans healthier, wouldn''t it also be making them thinner? In other words, if the pyramid is responsible for declining cardiac death rates, that must mean an awful lot of people are using it to plan their meals. But if that''s the case -- and if the pyramid actually does what it says it does -- then why the hell is America so fat? No less a bastion of conventional thought

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