Originally Posted by
Sigi
SB, this is really interesting. Would you recommend The Big Book of Health and Fitness (seems to be Maffetone's latest release) as a comprehensive-enough reference for anyone considering this protocol? (My God, that man has written so many books!)
I think the Big Book of Health and Fitness has everything you would ever need to know to be your own doctor for the rest of your life. Well, to take control over your health anyway, and see a doctor only rarely. It's very general. It's kind of a compendium of all his writings. There are a couple of confusing parts in it and you can kind of see a trend if you look closely, a change in his thinking over time, mostly around fats. Where he starts out discussing fats he makes it seem like half your fats need to be stuff like soybean and corn oil. But then practically on the next page he's sharing anecdotes about making his patients remove those things from the diet and how they improved. I found that confusing and actually emailed him and he explained you should never eat soy and corn oil so I am going to print his email and store it in the book in case my boyfriend ever thumbs through it. Way in the back of the book, under brain health, he says to never eat corn and soy oil and eat lard and butter and olive oil and avocados instead.
He's not low carb and he does recommend eating lots of small meals through the day. But he also recommends doing a carb intolerance test on yourself and if you can't tolerate them, to not eat them. He also doesn't tell you not to eat grains, but says not to eat refined grains, which most are. He favors brown over white rice. Oat groats yes, oatmeal never. He also never explains why the fat in dairy is particularly bad although he says so frequently. So basically it's not the Primal Blueprint or Paleo diet but it hardly matters because if any general person ate that way, they'd improve their health just as well as the paleo diet.
The part about the heart rate exercise is just a chapter or so and he says if all you ever did was walk that would put you ahead of the game. He does explain the whole MAF thing and how to do it. He also says that the low heartrate stuff helps convert the body to fat-burning mode, and he talks about the benefits of that for endurance athletics. So there is cross-over for sure, but the audience is probably different from the one targeted by the endurance running book.
Originally Posted by
PureFunctionalFitness
I thought The Big Book Of Endurance was the latest??? Whichever you get it is pretty simple stuff, just you, a HR monitor, and lots of patience.
I think he says on his website somewhere that both Big Books are the latest. I think the H & F one is targeted to general health throughout your life with a little more variety of topics, including a few that are a little hippie-dippie, which is fine with me. He does live in the desert after all.
Female, 5'3", 48, Starting weight: 163lbs. Current weight: 135.
Starting bench press: 30lbs. Current bench press: 75lbs.
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