BOOK REVIEW #5, 2022: EAT MEAT AND STOP JOGGING: ‘COMMON' ADVICE ON HOW TO GET FIT IS KEEPING YOU FAT AND MAKING YOU SICK

Nampa Chiropractor likes meat!

Title: Eat Meat and Stop Jogging: ‘Common’ Advice on How to Get Fit Is Keeping You Fat and Making You Sick
Author: Mike Sheridan aka Coach Mike

Year: 2014 Lean living Inc. (Now available for free on Mike’s website http://coachmikeblogs.com/start-here/)
Pages: 206 with references, about 165 of reading.

The title gives it away! Who would not be enticed to pick up a copy of this book? And if you only get the title, you still get the idea. I love a book that is as straightforward as this one, and Coach Mike has done his homework.

3 Sentence Summary:

We have been taught to eat wrongly
We have been taught to exercise wrongly
An alternative title would have been, in my opinion, “Eat Meat and Lift Weights”

Now if none of these things, particularly the last one, makes any sense or does not attract you, then please keep reading because I think Mike has something to say for any age or fitness level.

Who should read this book? Anyone that likes a contrarian approach to eating and exercise because coach Mike certainly delivers it. Another title that might work for the book is “Everything You Thought You Knew About Eating and Exercise is Wrong.”

The Review:
I like the organization of the book. Coach Mike has broken the chapters into “Mistakes” or common errors in the existing eating/exercising paradigm. This makes it fun to read because who doesn’t want to be a contrarian once in a while? And Coach Mike appears to have done his homework if the bibliography is any indication. He cites his sources and has done so in abundance for such a short book.

Mistakes?
For example-
Restricting calories to lose weight is a mistake.
Thinking protein causes too many health problems is a mistake.
Doing “cardio” to stay healthy is a mistake.

One of the things to keep in mind is that science, real honest to goodness science is not built on people agreeing (that’s the new “science” which demands that everyone agree). Briefly, science is about testing hypotheses or ideas. This is best accomplished with what in science is called a double blind, randomized controlled trial. Basically, two groups are divided as evenly as possible, and neither group, nor the ones implementing the research know what group is getting what. For instance, if we are testing aspirin to see if it relieves headaches, we get twenty people with headaches and divide them in half, 10 get aspirin, 10 get placebo, and neither group knows which one they got. Neither do the people who give out the pills. Obviously, someone does know who got what but nobody that is directly involved in the experiment. After this data is crunched, you have a conclusion. Did the group of 10 who got aspirin for headaches fair better than those that didn’t? These types of studies are the gold standard in science because every trace of subjectivity is minimized.

And these types of studies are notoriously difficult to perform when nutrition is involved. That is why there is so much disagreement about what constitutes a perfect diet and exercise.

A second thing to keep in mind, is putting a book like Coach Mike’s into some sort of framework that minimizes what is known as confirmation bias. Basically, confirmation bias is finding research that bolsters what you already believe. You are looking for stuff that says what you already think is correct. Intellectual cherry picking, if you will.

So, for all the research cited in the book, how much of it fits, A) the gold standard, double blind randomized controlled trial, and B) the confirmation bias of the author?

I don’t know the answer to either of these!!

Suffice it to say, most of what he writes about stacks up well with the knowledge of existing physiology. If he said something like, insulin is unnecessary for carbohydrate metabolism or you don’t really need a heart to make your blood pump, then we would be in weird territory. Coach Mike doesn’t do that. He simply challenges existing, less well-established, biologic principles. And he does it simply.

I hope you will give it a thoughtful read. (And you can get it free!)

Cheers
ks