Book Review of "The 16 Minute Body Sculpting Kit: Attain Your Dream Body In Just 16 Minutes A Day!"

The 16 Minute Body Sculpting Kit: Attain Your Dream Body In Just 16 Minutes A Day! [Paperback]

by Richard A. Walters & Mati Schwarcz

CreateSpace

ISBN-13: 978-1438235882

136 Pages (Includes front and back matter)

Entering the phrase “How to Lose Weight” in Google will produce over 2.5 million results. Certainly, America is obsessed with the latest fitness fads, whether they encourage using resistance bands, dumbbells, kettle bells, or simply avoiding the wrong type of carbohydrates. Regardless of what these fads may promise, one fact remains true: if you want to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume.

In spite of the math anxiety it seems to produce, the formula for losing weight is actually quite simple. It is generally accepted that a pound of fat contains approximately 3500 calories. If someone wants to lose a pound a week, he simply burns 500 calories more than he eats every day. In that way, 500 calories burned multiplied by seven days in the week equals 3500 calories. For safe weight loss, the maximum acceptable caloric deficit weekly is 7000 calories. This means that after all your calories are consumed for the week, as long as you have burned 7000 more than you have eaten, you should lose two pounds. Diets promising greater weight loss can be dangerous for your overall health.

The American Heart Association has published widely on what constitutes sufficient exercise. While the AHA is quick to underline the value of eating a healthy diet-the key to attaining fitness is to modify your lifestyle to include movement. For general health maintenance this means 30 minutes of prolonged activity, 5-7 times a week. For weight loss, however, the AHA recommends 60 minutes of prolonged activity, 5-7 times a week. Additionally, two of those days should include a full body, weight lifting regimen since an increase in muscle mass equals more calories burned at rest (and better overall vitality).

Is it possible to attain a dream body in 16 minutes a day? No, not hardly. This statistic is quoted to entice those that should read this book-individuals who have never seriously contemplated fitness as a lifestyle.

The book is filled with motivational tips, amateurish graphics, and sufficient exercise explanations to help anyone start and keep exercising. I was intrigued by the author’s take on bodybuilding where he includes a 60-30-10 plan for success. According to Walters, earning a dream body will be determined by your diet (60%), strength training (30%), and cardio/aerobics (10%). While much of the literature that bodybuilders produce intimate that diet is responsible for about 80% of your success, Walter’s formula will help you lose weight – initially.

Take, for example, his explanation of how many calories you should eat daily. Walters recommends that you take your ideal body weight and multiply it by 10 to establish your daily caloric intake. So, a man weighing 200 lbs, who wants to weigh 175, should eat 1,750 calories a day (in addition to doing the workouts prescribed in the book.). Would that cause you to lose weight? Yes, safe caloric restriction would inevitably cause anyone to lose weight–even if that person chose to do no exercises at all (which is not recommended).

A man fitting this description who engages in moderate activity would require a daily intake of 2121 calories to maintain his weight. Therefore, if this man ate only 1,750 calories, he would create an initial caloric deficit of 371 calories. If he were to maintain that strict caloric regimen for a week he would have created a weekly deficit of 2,597 calories. Not quite enough to lose a pound but close (about 3/4 of a pound or 75%). If this man exercised for 16 minutes with a moderate intensity, he would burn about 108 calories; or 756 calories for the week. Adding the caloric deficit (2597) to the calories burned exercising (756) would equal to almost a pound lost (3353 calories).

While it is beyond the scope of this review to provide an exhaustive discussion about daily caloric requirements to lose weight, the reader is cautioned to take gender, athletic activity, and age into consideration when determining daily caloric intake. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that daily caloric intake never fall below 1200 calories for women and 1800 calories for men. Getting too far below these numbers puts the body into catabolism: a state where the body feels it is being starved and holds onto-you guessed it-fat, to stay alive.

What is the verdict for Walter’s plan? Yes, anyone following this advice would initially lose weight. As your body weight dropped, however, the caloric deficit created by caloric restriction would decrease. To maintain the same amount of calories burned for weight loss, the dieter would be forced to increase calories earned through exercise to maintain the same effect. Very quickly, the dieter would realize that a mere 16 minutes of exercise daily would be insufficient to sustain weight loss.

I found the author’s food card kit to be an excellent way to have balanced nutrition while exercising. Dieters are encouraged to use cards that add up to their daily caloric needs to ensure nutritional variety. It was refreshing to see nutritional advice that serves to take all the guesswork out of eating for his constituents.

In conclusion, the body is made to move. The effects of a sedentary lifestyle will cause lethargy and weight gain. If you desire to have a dream physique, it is possible-but be prepared to count calories and make fitness an integral part of your life.

…that is going to take more than 16 minutes a day.

Review by Steven King, MBA, MEd