It is always better to eat more and exercise more, than it is to eat less without exercise .......

I agree but the food must be clean and unprocessed and not Lean Cuisine sort of stuff...

I'm proud as punch that Venuto talks about that quite a lot. Real food, good food ... like you picked it yourself.

Is this book only available as an ebook? I've gotten several recommendations to read BFL. One recenty from Sherry on Sonoma. If the first chapters are the same I am wondering which book would be better for me.

I'm very much a beginner at strength training.. but familiar with clean eating. Anyone close to finishing this book have a recommendation?

I think it's really important to have a book with pictures and instructions for lifting, so BFL might be best right now. My books (way to many for my income bracket) have come and gone but I still use Body Sculpting Bible something something ....

Let's see what the others have to say.

Gosh, there's a lot of good books, with good illustrations out lately. (I buy books for a living, so I look at lot of them - all for work of course! ) We had a thread about what we like not too long ago.

I The eat more move more thing! I calculated my calories according to him (Used the average for a maintenance figure) and I could be eating LOTS more! So i'm now setting my "losing weight" calories to 2000 and my maintenance (zig zag high day) to 2500!!!!! Just have to keep an eye on the scales at the same time!

Do you remember the title of that thread?

I'm re-reading the part about creating a calorie deficit by percentage. He recommends 15 to 20% of the maintenance level. Whats the maintenance level? On FitDay, my Basal is 1538 cals and my Lifestyle is 1000 cals - should I add them together then deduct 20%, do you think (making my daily cals 2030)? Or should I just take 20% off the Basal (making my daily cals 1239).

I'm also assuming that I don't add in the calories I burn through exercise before working out the deficit - have I got THAT right?

Sorry about this - maybe its me but the book isn't making it very clear - and I've reached a bit of a plateau so I need to get things moving again.

At the moment I average out to 1900 cals and, according to FitDay, I use around 900 for exercise.

Maintenance level is how many calories you'd need to eat to stay at the same weight, so Basal + exercise calories. I think Fitday is whacky with its "lifestyle" thing! I never figured it out. There's a bit in the book where you use your lean body mass and multiply it by something, then add about 350 then multiply by your "activity factor" which is how I got mine. I think you can do it without knowing your lean body mass.

I figured my maintenance level out at 2550, which is approximately 15.5 x my body weight. he gave a rough estimate of 15-16 x body weight as maintenance calories. I then took 20% off that to find what I should be eating to lose.

People advise that you shouldn't eat less than your basal no of calories. I think if you do you'll be starving!! I would say approx 2000 is cool for you, how about doing the zig-zag thing he suggested - 2000 for 3 days, then up to maintenance (2500) for a day, then back to 2000.

I'm already zigzagging - have been for ages 1900 is the average taken over the week.

What page is that calculation on? I haven't found that yet.

I'm going to give it another week and then 'tinker' with my calories - the question is do I increase or decrease them. I know he says to increase exercise rather than decrease calories but I think 3+ hours a day is enough!

Sarah? What do you perceive your problem to be? For instance mine is stubborn fat overlying a pretty good musculature.
I found I was quite mixed up during the parts of the book that read like "you should try this unless that, or if this and that ... you should try this" When I reread those parts, I read them already knowing some of the this's.

I under stood him to say that you should eat pretty close to your maintenance and your deficit should be mainly through exercise.

Would you agree that you've lost 66 lbs in 20 months? Am I reading that right?

I just have a minute to post and wanted to comment on the calories/day. I know for myself if I ate 2000+ cals/day, which I did at one time, I actually ate 1800 when I was following BFL a few years back, I found that I was maintaining at 1800, no matter how much I worked out, so at 2000+/day I know I would certainly gain weight. For me I would have to w/o intensely 2 times/day for 2+ hours to be able to eat that much.

In the last week I have been hovering around 1300 to 1500, I feel much better, haven't lost a pound though , but someone did say that I looked like I had lost weight...

So having said all this, I would suggest to increase gradually over the next couple of weeks, make sure you are eating super clean too...

Just my .02 cents

I've gone down from 252 lbs (18st) to my current weight since last September - which I know is good going.

This ALL started because I had a comment on my blog from someone who said I'm doing it all wrong. I'd been moaning because I feel tired all the time and (basically) she told me that I do too much exercise and each too much. I've deleted the comment but now I'm questioning whether I'm doing the right thing, especially combined with reading the Tom Venuto e-book.

I'm 'okay' with being on a plateau - its always been a fairly normal feature of my weight loss efforts in the past - but I've never felt tired like this before. I tried eating some extra calories yesterday and I didn't get the tiredness but I suppose, like anyone would, it seems a little strange to be adding on extra calories when I'm on a plateau.

I suppose, like the e-book says, its a question of trial and error to find out what works for me.

I was sitting around a bonfire last weekend and came up with an interesting analogy for what you described.

Think of a fire burning, and if you notice when there's a lot of wood on the fire, everything burns really quickly, but then if you don't add anymore wood, the wood that is on the fire still burns, but it burns slower. in fact, most of the time stubborn wood that just doesn't seem to want to burn completely. In order for that little bit of wood left to burn, the fire has to stay really hot, so you have to add more wood. The wood you add burns, and it also makes the fire hotter, which then helps contribute to imminent burning of that stubborn wood.

you're body is basically working in the same fashion. it will burn fat at the current rate based on your metabolism, but, at some point, the fat burning slows (balances), and can even stop (plateau). so in order to get the fat burning hotter, you've got to add some energy (calories).

so yes, you're best route is to try increasing your daily cals a little, maybe even just as little as 250 a day, and then see where you're at 2 weeks from now and adjust again.

Michael Navin, CSCS