Burn-rate

This book brings an interesting approach to eating and weight control based on two points. The first is that everybody has a built-in metabolic rate (or burn rate) that determines how a given level of calorie intake affects their weight. The second point is that dfferent foods "burn" at different rates, that is their intake will provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness for only so long (carbohydrates burn quickly and fats burn slowly). The trick to losing weight (assuming that is what most of us want to do) is to mix foods in our diet and spread our eating over the day so that we feel full and acknowledge what level of calories we need to take in (given our internal burn rate along with our level of exercise)to attain a certain weight level.

This diet (really a way of eating) is a very individualized approach that begins with a burn rate test diet in which you a eat specified for 2 weeks and see how that affects your weight. This lets you see if you have a high or low burn rate. From here, you eat pretty much without a lot of strict rules but take account of how the foods you eat are burned by your body and affect your desire to eat. The right mix of foods and the timing of your eating (given the burn rate of the foods) will help you feel full while allowing you to lose weight. As you lose weight, you should then be able to match your eating to your burn rate (which changes with your weight) to get a balance between the calories you take in through eating and those you expend through your basic metabolism of sustaining your body and the calories you spend on your activities, including exercise.

To me, the book seemed to present a credible theory of why people can eat very differently and still have the same weight (or eat the same and have different weights). The book has an good discussion of other diets (such as Atkins and the Zone diets) that links them to the framework of this book. My understanding is that this method of eating is fairly close to the zone diet, i.e., you eat foods over the course of the day with sense of how they affect your blood sugar and feeling of fullness.

The best part of this book is its confident support for the idea that being overweight is not a sign that you are mentally and psychologically deficient, as so many people would have overweight people believe. Being overweight usually means that you have a slow metabolism, something you were born with.

This book is one of two valuable new books on creating a more individualized approach to eating for better health and weight control. The other book is "Live Right for Your Type." I suggest that you read both of these books and apply their lessons together. If you are a woman, I suggest you also read "Outsmarting Female Fatigue" as a good complement to these two books.

One of Dr. Van Schoyck's best qualities is that he listens carefully to his patients when they describe their weight issues. While almost everyone has a stereotype of fat people as binge eaters with no self-control, he has found that "fewer than 20 percent of my patients actually overeat." The culprit instead is a slow metabolism, the rate at which the body burns calories. His book offers you a chance to find out the extent to which your weight level is maintained by overeating, by not enough exercise, and by a slow metabolism. For most overweight people, the last will be the primary reason.

The good news is that with the proper diet, you can actually increase your metabolism to its full potential (which still may not be that of the skinny person next to you) so that you can have a more enjoyable, healthy life. That may also mean that your ideal weight is not what the insurance companies and physicians use. It may be higher than that. But you will probably be healthier at that weight than at a lower one that is all but impossible for you to maintain. So this approach should help you avoid yo-yo weight loss and gain.

Getting started is the tough part. You have to follow a test diet that will tell you what your metabolism is for two weeks. Since I just got the book, I have not yet done that. The diet is not too difficult. It is not designed to cause you to lose weight, and you can substitute a lot. The diet is what a "normal" person could eat and maintain weight. So, for some people, it will be an increase in eating.

The book then tells you how to take the results (how much you gain or lose) and construct an on-going menu-planning system that fits your metabolism. You can also use the authors' web site (for free) to do this, which is what I would recommend. That's easier.

The book has an excellent discussion of other diets and what is right and wrong with them that you will find valuable. It also is very strong on the idea of customizing how you eat to fit yourself. There is a wonderful discussion of how the body burns newly-ingested food, and stored food already in the body that helped me to understand how to adapt how I eat. Some people (I am one of them) can live off of burning stored fat for more hours than others. I always find that I feel best when I only eat once or twice a day. That's because I am burning fat evenly the rest of the time. Other people feel fatigued when they are burning fat, and need frequent meals. My wife is a good example of that. So we each need to eat quite differently for our metabolisms to be optimized. It also happens that we have different blood types. I am an "O" and she is a "B." From reading "Live Right for Your Type" I had learned that we need to eat a different mix of foods. She should strive for balance and more frequent eating while I should emphasize proteins, especially beef, a bit more.

With the combined knowledge from these two books, I should be able to manage both my energy and my weight in much more healthful and easy ways. I look forward to the results!

By the way, if you like to snack, that may be just the right thing for you to do. And this book has many good suggestions for how to make snacking improve your energy and metabolism. You will also get to eat foods that I have never seen on another diet. In fact, it's not really a diet in the sense of a weight-loss diet. Rather it's a way of eating that will maintain your weight at its natural level.

I suggest that you also share this book with everyone else in your family. Since you will be eating a lot of meals together, that will make it easier for all of you to follow through on what makes sense for each of you. Otherwise, your new eating plans could simply cause disruptions in your relations with everyone else. I can still remember my Mother happily feeding us "O" people in the family her idea "A" meals. They didn't work very well for us, but she sure loved them.

May your life be filled with lots of health, happiness, peace, and prosperity as a result of the new understanding of your metabolism and how to eat that this book provides you!

I really liked this book and got to learn about the hardships entrepreneurs go through in a startup.I was also not much aware about the differences in thought between West Coast and East Coast IT companies.Finally, kudos to Michael Wolff for potraying an honest,funny and nerve wrecking real life story and am happy he is doing what he likes to do!!

Believe it or not, not every Internet entreprenuer gets out with a successful IPO. Wolff, a true New Media pioneer, gives us a marvelous insider's view that a winner simply could not provide, and the book is such a great, insightful read, I'm glad he failed so that we can get this peek. So much more than sour grapes, Wolff burns bridges and shows all the players with their masks off, himself included.

A book like this will always receive negative reviews from types who can't trust the motives of anyone who didn't come out a winner, but these same people readily accept as gospel any puff piece that states Steve Case's visionary genius built AOL rather than the marketing side kick with the simple idea sneak into American homes and fill the sock drawers with start up disks. Not every story is pretty, not every success is the inevitable result of brilliance and elbow grease. Do not write off this work because Wolff's business didn't work out. Rather, enjoy his sadder but wiser perspective. Enjoy a glimpse of everything that happens to successes, also, but somehow never makes it into the Business Week cover story.

This is certainly the best book I've read about the Internet industry and probably one of the best business books I've read ever. You can't put it down and you laugh out loud (truly) many time a chapter. The interesting thing is how much controversy this book his inspired--because in its way it's not controversial at all. It's just an incredibly good story. Even the terrible things Wolff supposedly says about people are really more comic than anything else. My guess is that there is just so little objectivity and self-awaresness and skepticism in the Internet business that one a honest point of view comes along people freak. Anyway this is not a book that anybody who is interestesting in technology, money, business, and the general state of American culture and American writing is going to want to miss. Also, if you just want several hours of cough-up-your-coke laughter, try it. I guarantee: you'll wish you had written it!