The Abs Diet: The six-week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach And Keep You Lean for Life by Ted Spiker and David Zinczenko (2005, Paperback, Reprint)

The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life is not the book that I would necessarily recommend for those looking to eat healthier and live healthier (my preference is Body for Life)... but, I have only heard rave reviews and success stories about The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life.

While Ted Spiker provides excellent content in the Abs Diet (the meat of the book is very strong, if you will) but I am quite turned off by the approach - suggesting that healthier eating and living should be done so that readers / dieters have better looking abs is silly to me. In fact, I think its the wrong approach to entering a diet. That said, Spiker's route to achieving better abs is a good one - it suggests balance and general lifestyle healthiness.

From the book synopsis: "How do you lose weight? Diet and exercise, they say. How do you lose weight and look good? By eating and by working out according to a sensible plan. The critical difference is in this book by Men's Health magazine editor Dave Zinczenko, who offers basic, rational lifestyle adjustments that are intended to make a big difference on the body. He offers a six-week plan that eliminates foods from the diet that he considers especially bad and adds things that will help, without totally eliminating fun food. His exercise workouts help build muscle and improve metabolism. Nothing extreme here, no starvation required, and he builds in a maintenance plan to use after the initial six weeks."

Summary: If you like Men's Health, you'll certainly enjoy this book. Its intelligently written and suggested a permanet life and eating change - both positives in my mind. My only critique is that dieting shouldn't be started purely to achieve abs - because, if thats the motivation, diets usually aren't successful for more than a few months.

I thought the book gave a lot of useful information between explaining ceratin health terms to giving the effects of both good and bad for particular foods. The book gave a day to day meal plan that was easy to follow as well as guide on an exercise program. This diet seems to be a long term diet that is easy to follow in comparison to all the other diets that are on the market today. I would recoomend this book to anyone who is looking to get their body into shape for summer or even to get into shape permanantly.

Interesting! If you are looking for a life-long healthy lifestyle, this is the book for you. The author not only provide you with extensive recipes with 5 minutes, probably a bit longer, meals. Easy to make and easy to shop for. He is not an illusionist like many other dietitians, and hey, that's great. Also the book tells you what is really making you fat, and you will be surprise it is not just eating too much, there is more to it. Also, a third of the book is full of the simple, idiot-proof exercises you have to make, it gives you the basic one for the gym (if you go there) or/and the home variation (in case you do not want to go to the gym) for home. All the "home" exercises require two dumbbells though. That's it. Everything is really easy to stick to and follow. Good luck.

The Abs Diet is an excellent book offering meal plan, subtle lifestyle changes and the tools to help you succeed. Wonderfully written and at times even humorous, this book is a great read and is very helpful! I advise anyone wanting to chege their health through diet and exercise to get this book!

I love it! I lost four pounds in the first week and still going strong. Even though I am a woman, and the book greatly talks about men, I think it is still extremely applicable.

Great read. Should be on everyone's shelf at home, especially if you want to improve your health and lose a little weight while your at it!