Cardio-Free Diet Review

Jim Karas has come out with a new diet book, the Cardio-Free Diet, with a somewhat sensationalist premise: “cardio-kills.” Basically he is an advocate of strength training over cardio-exercise for weight loss. He claims “cardio kills” and is a recipe for failure because it:

• causes wear and tear on your joints. (an occupational hazard of any form of exercise including strength training)
• suppresses immunity. (he cites studies on marathon runners… not your typical person trying to lose weight)
• does not change your body shape. (while strength training is a great way to increase muscle mass and metabolism, cardio can also be effective especially when combined with circuit training)
• it’s not an efficient form of exercise. (states you will get faster results with strength training)
• makes you eat more. (you may gain weight because any calories burned by cardio exercise is more than offset by greater calorie consumption due to an increased appetite. - Dubious assertion at best. He cherry-picked one study to support his claim)

Cardio-Free Exercise Plan
The book presents exercises you can do at home with simple exercise tubing and free weights. He offers several workout tips:

• he recommends you should be hitting “failure,” indicated when you can’t complete another rep, by the tenth rep. If you’re not, then he recommends increasing the weight (free weights) or tension (exercise tubing) given that you’re not compromising your form or risk of injury.
• reps should take 2 counts on the way up and 4 counts on the way down. Muscle building is caused when the muscle lengthens (eccentric) so he recommends stressing the eccentric part of the exercise with a 4 count.
• he recommends spacing out your strength training to give the body time to heal. A sample schedule may include workouts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Cardio-Free Diet Plan
It’s is a calorie counting plan that recommends you:

• don’t skip breakfast, never skip meals
• eat 3 meals and 3 snacks a day to keep your blood sugar levels stable to avoid cravings
• eat protein with every meal.
• include 1200 milligrams of calcium and dairy every day. (this recommendation is flawed since calcium and dairy do not aid weight loss)
• consume high fiber carbohydrates to regulate blood sugar to reduce cravings
• skip liquid calories
• be careful with fat calories

The plan is divided into 4 phases, where you gradually increase your calorie intake as you progress with the diet. You start out at 1,200 calories for women and 1,500 calories for men in phase 1, increasing to 1,500 calories for women and 1,800 calories for men by phase 4.

Celebrity Diet Doctor Weigh in
My only guess as to why Mr Karas decided to go with “cardio kills” is based on the belief that “controversy sells.” While I do agree with the merits of strength training, cardio does not “kill.” Cardio-exercise has been shown in multiple studies to lower your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. In addition engaging in some form of cardio exercise is one of the strongest predictors of weight loss maintenance.

As far as weight loss, Mr Karas is correct in pointing out that exercise alone will not have a measurable impact on weight loss, despite what all the inflated “calories burned” readings on the elliptical trainers will have you believe. But he is missing the point on the role of exercise in weight loss. Studies show that you lose weight by cutting calories, and maintain weight loss through exercise. In fact the “biggest weight losers,” individuals who have lost an average of 70 pounds and kept if off for an average of about 6 years , engage in over 60 minutes of exercise each day. The most popular exercise in this group is not strength training but walking.

I like his emphasis on mixing up exercise routines to recruit more muscle fibers. Interesting the same philosophy of increasing muscle recruitment can be applied to cardio-exercise, through high intensity interval training. The point of the book, simply put, is that strength training is a great way to increase your lean muscle mass and your metabolism. Point taken. He starts to lose me when he says: lose the cardio to lose the weight…

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