Cardio Free Diet

Author Jim Karas has a book out called “The Cardio Free Diet” and in it he suggests that instead of running one hour per day, five times per week that you should instead replace it with strength training exercises totaling 20 minutes per day, three times per week. Here is an excerpt from his popular yet controversial book:

Are you interested in losing weight, keeping it off and completely changing your body shape to the astonishment of all your friends? What if I told you this goal is best accomplished without ever stepping on a treadmill or elliptical machine again?

I know you are skeptical, but let me ask you something. Have you, like millions of Americans, spent hours and hours per week on the treadmill trying to lose weight? What about the elliptical trainer, bike, stair stepper, or versa climber? If so, have you dropped any pounds and kept them off? No? Well, what about spinning? Cross country skiing? Tae Bo? How about those nice long walks in the spring and summer? Did they help keep the pounds off? No, but they sure were pretty, weren’t they?

Aerobics class? Stepping? Hiking? Swimming? No. Snow shoeing? Rowing? Salsa Dancing. Sweating to the Oldies? Oh please, NO! The reason is both shocking and completely true: cardiovascular exercise alone won’t help you lose the weight and keep it off. “What?” you’re probably saying, “I’ve been told thousands of times that cardiovascular exercise is the key to weight loss!” That’s what we were all told. But that was simply the wrong advice.

I ask people all the time, “How are you exercising to lose weight?” Most answer, “cardio.” I ask them, “Is it working?” They say, “Well, no, but I just need to do it more often and for a longer period of time.” If something isn’t working, you are going to do more of it? You keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result? Albert Einstein had a name for this type of logic: insanity.

Cardio is mindless. You hop on the treadmill, jump on the bike, or step on the elliptical trainer, turn on the TV or pop in the earphones of your iPod, flip through your favorite magazines, and off you go&to nowhere fast. In the next 12 chapters, I will explain to you in detail what to do instead of cardio to get in the best shape of your life in only 8 weeks. Now, to be perfectly clear, exercise is essential to weight loss. Without it, you are doomed to fail. Don’t think you are getting off the hook by going cardio-free. You will exercise, but you will do the right kind of exercise to see and feel amazing results – in an amount of time anyone can commit to. By the end of the eighth week, you won’t believe the difference, and neither will your friends! I will also teach you the right way to eat to complement your new exercise program, so you’ll lose the weight and keep it off, once and for all. When you are finished with this book, you will understand exactly what to do to look the way you’ve always wanted and why that means never setting foot on an elliptical machine or treadmill again to lose weight!