Fat Loss Revealed by Will Brink
Rating: Highly Recommended!
Fat Loss Revealed is a no-nonsense book on losing fat, its not a fad diet, just solid science. I’ve been around bodybuilding a long time but I keep learning new things all the time – this book has taught me a thing or two. I’ve always been lean enough to have 6-pack abs but never truly ripped. The most valuable thing for me personally was learning how I could take my bodyfat down to the next level with carb cycling, that concept alone was worth the $47 price for me.
This is the second book of Will Brink’s that I have reviewed and its precisely because the first one was so excellent that I decided to review this one. His first book, Bodybuilding Revealed, is a nearly 700 page definitive encyclopedia of bodybuilding and contains exhaustive information on nutrition, supplements, gaining muscle, losing fat, and exercise. Want to learn how to lose fat from this excellent author without reading his whole 700 page tome? Fat Loss Revealed is for you! This book on the other hand is very specifically written for those that want to lose weight, not only is it short (under 300 pages) but it contains much more detailed information about losing weight than is available in his encyclopedia Don’t buy both his books, buy one or the other. If you are more interested in gaining muscle then buy BBR, if you are more interested in losing fat then buy Fat Loss Revealed. Both this book and Bodybuilding Revealed have access to his really great members area where there is the best meal planner I have ever used. The meal planner alone is worth the $47 purchase price of this book and you have lifetime access when you buy the book.
While I’m on the subject of comparisons, lets talk about how this book stacks up next to Tom Venuto’s excellent book Burn the Fat (read review). They are both excellent and have the same information, I think that the two authors may have even collaborated. The difference is that Tom Venuto’s book Burn the Fat spends a lot more time helping you with motivation and inspiration. Fat Loss Revealed by Will Brink on the other hand is very no-nonsense and straightforward, he doesn’t coddle the reader. Mr Brink’s approach is “Here is what you need to do, here is why you need to do it, and here is the research that backs me up”. I’m an engineer and a goal driven person, personally I don’t want to be coddled so I prefer Will Brink’s Fat Loss Revealed. Many others find the inspiration and motivation in Tom Venuto’s book Burn the Fat more to their liking. Both are great books, choose the approach that works best with your personality type. Alles Klar? One other big difference is that Fat Loss Revealed comes with an amazing online meal planner better than anything I have seen, Burn the Fat doesn’t.
Ok, enough with comparing this to other books – lets talk about Fat Loss Revealed. There are two types of readers and this book satisfies both of them. The first type of reader is short on time and wants results, they don’t necessarily want to waste time on background info – they just want an action plan to get them the results. The second type of reader always questions everything and wants to know exactly why they they are doing what they are doing. Will Brink does a great job at satisfying both types of readers. For example, the first chapter is a very short “Quickstart Guide” that gets you started on your weight loss plan in 10 minutes, it has a pre-made diet based on your weight and bodytype (online), a list of supplements, and a workout plan. The detailed oriented reader will skip the Quickstart Guide and go directly to the first meaty chapter, Supplements. This is the only impartial and scientific review of supplements for weight loss that I have found. He doesn’t rate brands of supplements or even mention them. What he does is talk about ingredients: what each is, what it does, real world experience, and medical research backing the claims. What a refreshing breath of fresh air! Use this section to help weed thru the supplement-jungle of exaggerated, ridiculous claims and tell the gems apart from the crap. He explains some of the terms you see on labels that are big warning signs – like “proprietary blend” or “scientifically formulated”. At the end of the supplement chapter his ranks the supplements into three groups: good for weight loss, might work for weight loss, and wont work for weight loss. I recommend you just read over the supplements in the first category and decide if any of those are of interest for you. Personally the one thing I’m going to use after reading his supplement section is green tea and possibly green tea extracts if I can find a brand I trust. Again I love his approach, all the detail is there for the people who want to know everything and make their own decision but for those who just want the short list, that’s there too. I do wish he would emphasize a bit more that supplements are not regulated and that unscrupulous manufactures can churn out deadly products, to his credit though he does mention the importance of choosing reputable supplement companies though.
The nutrition chapter is quick and painless. It helps you calculate your daily caloric intake requirement and breaks it down my macro nutrient requirements (fats, carbs, protein). He covers the important subject of good fats and bad fats, good protein sources and bad protein sources, and good carbs bad carbs. The very important subject of Glycemic Index is covered as well.
Next up, Will Brink explains how to get started – Coming up with long term, short term and daily goals. I jumped up and clapped when I he said that people have this unhealthy obsession with the scale! I have always preached this myself, people do the most ridiculous and counterproductive things to cause a momentary dip on that scale needle. What matters is bodyfat percentage, not weight, and this chapter shows you how to measure your progress correctly. He also does a good job of helping people set realistic expectations, without this, any weight loss program is doomed. The chapter finishes with Will Brink’s “Ten Laws of Fat Loss” which summarizes in a straightforward way the whole fat loss process.
Then the important subject of planning your eating is covered. Just an aside, I like how he has been able to tightly integrate the book with the forum. Often you will see a link in the book saying “If you have a question about your diet, ask here” and it will take you to the diet board on the forum where you can post your question. He also heavily uses the web-based tools in his members area (which you get access to when you buy this book) to plan your nutrition. It will calculate your recommended daily caloric intake and macro nutrient rations and even plan your meals with the correct portion sizes if you want. He has some good basic tips on how to eat healthy meals without spending lots of time in the kitchen similar to what I mention on my website. One topic I miss entirely on my website that he covers well is portion control, I do a terrible job of this personally. Probably the best part of this chapter for many people is where he explains in simple terms what is required for optimum pre-workout and post-workout nutrition, this topic is mysterious black magic for most people (till they read this chapter).
The advanced fat loss section was particularly interesting to me and now I understand why it is that my body always seems to like to stay at about 8% bodyfat but not drop below that. With carb cycling one can fool the body into reducing bodyfat further without losing muscle mass. I’m actually going to be trying his technique over the next two months. I am a firm believer that the “low-carb” diets are really bad for you but I think I can do his carb cycling without depriving myself of all important fiber containing vegetables and beans that I love so much. I do wish he would emphasize the downside of low-carb diets and how its extra, extra important to make sure that every carb calorie that is consumed is “nutrient gold”.
Finally exercise is covered and its appropriate that its covered last in my opinion, fat loss is nutrition first and exercise second. One thing I intuitively knew but hadn’t quantified is how much more important weight training is than cardio to lose bodyfat because of the duration that the resting metabolic rate is elevated with weight training as compared to aerobic exercise. The one point where I seriously disagree with the author is in his statement that if you have limited time you should do the weights and skip the aerobics – I say the reverse. For health improvement, nothing is more important than 20-40min of daily cardio according to me and the American Heart Association. Of course, he is technically right I suppose if your goal is to optimize fat loss rather than health improvement.
One great thing that I haven’t seen anywhere else is a workout program specifically tailored for women, a severe shortcoming of my website. The womans resistance training section is about 25 pages long and illustrates how to do all the exercises. Excellent!
Of course there is also a workout section for men with various splits depending on experience level. Note though that the goal of this weightlifting program is to help you lose bodyfat, its not a look-like-Arnold-in-90-days program. If you are more interested in gaining muscle than losing bodyfat then as I mentioned earlier, I would get his Bodybuilding Revealed book.
I just want to reiterate again about the members area, if I read this correctly you get lifetime access when you buy the $47 book. The highlight here is the online meal planner! Nutrition is the hardest part of bodybuilding, especially for beginners and intermediates and the meal planner makes it easy. The first day or two it will be a bit time consuming to use because you will be entering all your meals as you eat them but since it lets you save meals, the tool will quickly become fast and easy. What I like about it is that it makes you very, very conscious of what’s going in your mouth and makes you realize that the quality of every calorie counts. One very minor complaint, the drop down list of foods is a bit cumbersome to use. Again, the meal planner was worth the $47
Review Date: 6/03/2010
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