Review - The Foolproof No Fail Guide to Flexible Fat Loss

Remember those times in school that you'd be given a text, or told to choose a text and were then instructed to write a review on it? I do, and for the most part I wasn't a fan of it. However, I seem to have softened at my grand old age of 22, and I find that reading and reviewing texts is something that can be quite enjoyable (as long as they're on the right subjects), so guess what I'll be treating you to in my next few posts! Don't worry, I'll be doing one per post and they're all health and fitness related (this is a health and fitness blog after all!). 

First up, is this gem.

The Foolproof, No Fail Guide to Flexible Fat Loss - Mike Samuels

The Foolproof, No Fail Guide to Flexible Fat Loss

I've started with this book as I'll be taking each e-book in the order that I read them. This was incidentally the first fitness related book that I'd ever purchased and read fully. For a long time I'd struggled with my nutrition. There's a lot of information out there regarding healthy eating and dieting (which has always been my focus), but I found that most of it was either extremely over-complicated or just extreme to the point of ridiculousness. The only factor that was consistent in the majority of the information that I found was focused on clean eating, demonising carbs, no sugary foods whatsoever etc. If you're like me, then your brain tries to apply logic to solve problems - that's exactly what I did with regards to finding the diet that I needed. I picked out the common factors that I've outlined and applied it to my own nutrition. I cut out sugar and anything that I deemed as junk food, I ate mostly salads, vegetables, rice, tuna, eggs and chicken, and scoffed at anyone that ate anything that I considered to be unhealthy. I even dabbled with the paleo diet for a while (until I realised that it was costing me a ridiculous amount of money). Out of my experience, I can tell you a few things:

1. It didn't help me to make much progress

2. I was miserable

3. Points 1 and 2 combined were enough to throw me into a mindset of 'fuck it'. Basically, I ignored everything that I thought I'd learned about nutrition and focused on just eating what I classed as healthy foods (Ones I'd now class as nutritionally dense), and allowed myself junk food in moderation. 

My new approach had kind of worked, but I needed something more to help me make sustainable and informed progress, I needed the knowledge that would finally give me control of my nutrition. Enter Healthy Living Heavy Lifting. I'd actually heard about the site through a post from Nick Cheadle (if you don't know who he is, check him out - he's kind of a big deal). Amongst all of the great content that I found on the website, laid The Foolproof, No Fail Guide to Flexible Fat Loss. I was immediately pulled in by the synopsis of the book and instantly searched for a few reviews, all of which came back pretty complimentary!

So I went ahead and purchased the book for around £12 (I say book, but its actually a comprehensive series of books). The three parts break down as follows:

Part one - This book explains the basics of calories and macronutrients and teaches you how to calculate your own macros for dieting. 

Part two - FAQs, basically if there are any questions that arise from your reading of the first instalment, then this pretty much answers them all.

Part three - Troubleshooting, it's designed to combat any problems that may arise as you proceed with your diet, including hitting those familiar plateaus. 

So as you can see from a quick breakdown of the texts, it looks pretty comprehensive. The book promises to arm you with the knowledge that will enable you to work out your very own calorie and macronutrient needs and how to manipulate them for dieting, and by applying a bit of logic it also gives a tip of the hat towards gaining weight. That's quite a lot to promise for £12, and let me tell you - it more than delivers.

Meet the man behind the books

First of all, we're introduced to Mike Samuels (he's the author, a coach and the owner of Healthy Living Heavy Lifting). The first statement he makes is more of a confession, telling the reader of how he fully subscribed to the strict dieting culture and restricted himself from certain foods. He tells us of how he became out of shape and decided to make a change through flexible dieting, the secrets(or lack thereof) of which he'll share with us.

The Basics

So after a quick introduction, we jump straight into the main event - calories. Mike explains the basics of calories and then proceeds to explain how to calculate your basal metabolic rate (that's the rate at which your body burns calories at rest), and then combines it with your activity level which results in your daily calorie intake. After that, you'll be shown how to use that numbers to calculate calories for dieting. That's very much a whistle stop tour of that section, but Mike explains it precisely and clearly and makes it extremely easy to understand. Plus, when it clicks, you'll realise just how logical and simple it is.

After calories comes macronutrients. For anyone that doesn't know what they are, they consist of:

- Protein
- Carbohydrates
- Fat

Mike explains how many calories are in each nutrient per gram, gives you the basics of each nutrient and then explains how to calculate exactly how many grams of each you need each day. Again, that seems rather quick but it's all explained clearly and is very easy to follow. He follows his explanation for this with a few examples just in case you're a little stuck.

Next up in the book is the topic of refeeding. Most people will 'eat clean' during the week and spoil the progress that they have made by blowing out with a cheat meal at the weekend. Mike directly addresses this and goes on to tell us about a way that you can still have more calories at the weekend without actually coming out of a calorie deficit. It's a method that I swear by and that has given me many days of great food without it affecting my progress. He explains this in a way that is detailed enough for the reader to understand without blinding us with jargon and science (something that's common in all of his writing).

Tracking your progress

The great thing about this book is that it not only teaches you how to take control of your diet, it also teaches you how to measure and track the results that you'll undoubtedly see by using the knowledge that you gained in the book. There's a detailed section on different things to expect and how to deal with managing your progress. After that, he runs through a list of foods that could be useful to any flexible dieter due to their high nutritional values. Don't get me wrong, he doesn't tell you exactly what you should be eating, more tries to give you a better idea of foods that are easier to fit into your own custom meal plan.

That's just book one! Book two actually addresses any FAQs that its predecessor may have brought up and tries to answer them in the best way possible. Book three then continues down the support route and offers help and advice in the form of troubleshooting. It focuses on overcoming plateaus, which can become a big problem when dieting. Between books two and three, Mike has all of the bases covered!

So there you have it, a whistle stop tour of Mike Samuels' The Foolproof No Fail Guide to Flexible Fat Loss! I honestly can't recommend this book enough if you're looking to get serious about your diet and lifestyle. It's really accessible and is made really easy to read so there's no need to worry about things going over your head. This book helped me to take control of my diet and further my knowledge on nutrition to the point at which I now have a sustainable approach to my nutrition that I could happily keep up for the rest of my life. It's also great value for money, so head over to Healthy Living Heavy Lifting and get your copy!