First, the elephant in the training room: this book does assume that you want to be thinner, leaner, and stronger. This is the companion book, written for women, to “Bigger, Stronger, Leaner”, which was written for men. Statistically, these assumptions are reasonable, even if the generalizations are imperfect. Also, this reviewer has a gripe with anything selling “thinner”. Leaner was already sufficient, and “stronger” is the key element here, so “thinner” is just marketing, and marketing something that’s often not unhealthy, to sell a book that’s actually full of good advice for building a healthy body.

In other words: don’t judge a book by the cover, however eyeroll-worthy it may be.

The book is broadly aimed at middle-aged readers, but boasts equal worth for young and old alike. If there’s something Matthews knows how to do well in his writing, it’s hedging his bets.

As for what’s in the book: it’s diet and exercise advice, aimed at long-term implementation (i.e. not a crash course, but a lifestyle change), for maximum body composition change results while not doing anything silly (like many extreme short-term courses do) and not compromising other aspects of one’s health, while also not taking up an inordinate amount of time.

The dietary advice is sensible, broadly consistent with what we’d advise here, and/but if you want to maximise your body composition change results, you’re going to need a pocket calculator (or be better than this writer is at mental arithmetic).

The exercise advice is detailed, and a lot more specific than “lift things”; there are programs of specifically how many sets and reps and so forth, and when to increase the weights and when not to.

A strength of this book is that it explains why all those numbers are what they are, instead of just expecting the reader to take on faith that the best for a given exercise is (for example) 3 sets of 8–10 reps of 70–75% of one’s single-rep max for that exercise. Because without the explanation, those numbers would seem very arbitrary indeed, and that wouldn’t help anyone stick with the program. And so on, for any advice he gives.

The style is… A little flashy for this reader’s taste, a little salesy (and yes he does try to upsell to his personal coaching, but really, anything you need is in the book already), but when it comes down to it, all that gym-boy bravado doesn’t take away from the fact his advice is sound and helpful.

Bottom line: if you would like your body to be the three things mentioned in the title, this book can certainly help you get there.

Click here to check out Thinner Leaner Stronger, and become thinner, leaner, stronger!

Carbs can indeed be confusing! We’ve written about it ourselves before, but there’s more to be said than fits in a single article, and sometimes a book is in order. This one is such a book.

The authors (an MD and a nutritionist) explain the ins and outs of carbohydrates of various kinds, insulin responses, and what that means for the body. They also then look at the partly-similar, partly-different processes that occur with the metabolism of fats of various kinds, and what that means for the body, too.

Ultimately they advocate for a simple and clear low-carb approach broadly consistent with keto diet macro principles, without getting too overly focused on “is this fruit/vegetable ok?” minutiae. This has the benefit of putting it well aside from the paleo diet, for example (which focuses more on pseudo-historical foods than it does on macros), and also makes it a lot easier on a practical level.

The style is very textbook-like, which makes for an easy read with plenty of information that should stick easily in most reader’s minds, rather than details getting lost in wall-of-text formatting. So, we approve of this.

There is not, by the way, a recipes section. It’s “here’s the information, now go forth and enjoy” and leaves us all to find/make our own recipes, rather than trying to guess our culinary preferences.

Bottom line: if you’d like an easy-to-read primer on understanding how carbs work, what it means for you, and what to do about it, then this is a fine book.

Click here to check out End Your Carb Confusion, and end your carb confusion!

This review pertains to the 2019 edition of the book, not the 2011 original, which will not have had all of the same research.

We are told, by scientific consensus, to enjoy plenty of whole grains as part of our diet. So, what does cardiologist Dr. William Davis have against wheat?

Firstly, not all grains are interchangeable, and wheat—in particular, modern strains of wheat—cannot be described as the same as the wheat of times past.

While this book does touch on the gluten aspect (and Celiac disease), and notes that modern wheat has a much higher gluten content than older strains, most of this book is about other harms that wheat can do to us.

Dr. Davis explores and explains the metabolic implications of wheat’s unique properties on organs such as our pancreas, liver, heart, and brain.

The book does also have recipes and meal plans, though in this reviewer’s opinion they were a little superfluous. Wheat is not hard to cut out unless you are living in a food desert or are experiencing food poverty, in which case, those recipes and meal plans would also not help.

Bottom line: this book, filled with plenty of actual science, makes a strong case against wheat, and again, mostly for reasons other than its gluten content. You might want to cut yours down!

Click here to check out Wheat Belly, and see if skipping the wheat could be good for you!