The Abs Diet Online - review
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The Abs Diet Online - review - 2/18/2006 10:40:37 PM
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gzinkl
Posts: 3212
Joined: 3/23/2005
From: Chicago, IL
Status: offline
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I have been doing this program for 4 weeks and mentioned it a couple of times on the forum. Here's my review (as far as the first four weeks go).
What is it?
Go to www.absdiet.com, and you'll see the usual--lose weight fast! The usual hype. The plan combines eating plans with weight lifting and cardio segments. It's all about losing body fat; this is not a bulking plan. The program is based on the Men's Health best-selling book of the same name that attempts to change our eating habits to center on "superfoods" (no, they don't come dressed in tights, a cape and a big "SF" logo over their chests). They are:
Superfood #1: Lean Meat - lean steak, chicken, turkey, fish
Superfood #2: Milk - skim, 1%, yogurt, cheese
Superfood #3: Nuts - unsalted nuts, especially almonds
Superfood #4: Eggs - includes Egg Beaters
Superfood #5: Peanut Butter - all-natural and sugar-free
Superfood #6: Beans - soybeans, black, kidney, pinto, chickpeas, lentils, peas, hommus, edamame
Superfood #7: Oatmeal - non-instant, also includes high fiber cereals
Superfood #8: Broccoli - cauliflower, brussel sprouts, spinach, green pepper, yellow pepper, red pepper, cucumber, asparagus
Superfood #9: Whole Grain Breads - brown rice, whole wheat pasta
Superfood #10: Berries - blueberries, red rasberries, includes all fruit, especially apples and grapefruit
Superfood #11: Whey Powder - to be used in daily Smoothies, ricotta cheese is also in this category
Superfood #12: Olive Oil - to be used in food preparation and dressings, includes canola, peanut, and sesame oils
There is nothing really revolutionary in this list--any DB reader who's lurked here for awhile will have picked up on the value of most, if not all these foods.
Why care about yet another plan, especially one that will cost me money?
You can buy the book, and it's accompanying supplement and accomplish the same thing as the on-line program. So what makes the on-line plan special besides the $30/3 months charge? The difference is who is doing the sweating--not in the gym, but in the planning.
When you sign up, you enter your stats into the program, a couple of convenience preferences for your diet (e.g., on-the-go all the time, or kitchen-dweller, or somewhere in between), and the number of push-ups you can do in one bout to use as a rough baseline in setting up your exercise program. You also put in your weight goal.
After that, the program spits out a weekly diet plan, weight lifting plan and cardio plan. It also can generate a grocery list based on your diet plan. I'll review each part in turn.
The diet plan
To me, this is the strength of the program. No more excuses for eating by the seat of your pants. You get six meals a day, one of which includes a smoothie (you tell the program when you want your smoothie); the portions are set out, and the calories you're supposed to ingest. You wake up in the morning, look at your print out (which can include recipes too, or just the menus), and you see that you are entitled to oatmeal, almonds, a 1/2 c. of milk, and an orange. You get a snack of roast beef on whole wheat. A lunch of . . . and so on. I've been doing the on-the-run version, and I can prepare my whole day's food up to dinner in less than 15 minutes (usually much less) each morning, provided that I have any chicken breasts, etc., ready to go (but even cooking those up fast is not a problem). Plop it all into a bag or cooler and you're set for the day. Kind of like Berardi's Precision Nutrition (another review some day!) program on steroids.
The diet is relaxed compared to real hard-core cutting plans. This isn't about shredding for competition; it's about getting your abs to show if they have disappeared, or never seen the light of day. So you can get wild recommendations like a small portion of sugar-free ice cream for part of a snack. But here's the sweet part: don't like a meal? Don't eat it--instead, go to the menu online and click "substitute meal". The program provides any alternatives, and you pick one of those. You can also tell the program that you never want to see a particular meal again. Poof! You're done.
You need to check in every day with the program. You log what you ate, and the program tells you how many calories you ate. It doesn't break the nutrition down much more than that. So if you disobey the menu, you're on your own for figuring out protein, fat and carbs. On the other hand, you tell the program what you ate (or approximate it; the database is huge, but it can't have your local greasy spoon's triple cheeseburger in there for obvious reasons(, and it tells you how bad a boy you were, calorie wise.
The program centers around smoothies that exploit the superfoods. Have a good blender. The recipes for the fruit-based smoothies are infinitely superior to the "chocolate" or other non-fruit flavored ones. But at the least, they are all drinkable, and some are quite tasty. I doctor the smoothies up with some added greens powder, although this can give them a slightly spinach-y taste if you think about it too long . . . BBs here might be aghast at how little protein powder goes into these, but the smoothies are not meant to be protein shakes--they are meant to be a way of getting superfoods down your gullet.
There does seem to be some carb cycling going on, but in multi-day cycles, not carbs in early days only. You get one cheat meal a week; in maintenance, you get a cheat day. Actually, the cheat meal is required.
Doing the food right requires a little planning and some money. Buying organic and as whole and natural food that I can, I have been spending a bout $100-130/week -- and this is for one person eating slightly less than 2000 calories a day! Part of this expense is because of the variety--you can't get eveyrthing in the small quantities that you need, but you do end up eating most everything over time, so little goes to waste. Having the shopping list is a great help and time saver. Of course, being a digital kind of guy, I cut and paste the list into my on-line grocer shop, and I'm off to the races. . .
The only other con is the checking in process can be a little laborious if you have deviated from the plan. This is more a function of the program being web-based than poorly design. So don't deviate! :)
The Lifting Plan
It's a whole body workout that uses a lot of compound movement exercises. If you've never worked your legs much, you might be crippled after this, but hey, it's good for you! You lift 3 days a week. Two of those days your target reps are 10-12/set (two sets for everything); and the third day is a ****--15 reps/set with the weights close to, if not the same, that you were lifting for 10 reps earlier in the week. You work hard. The workouts last about 30-40 minutes if you're doing the recommended rest intervals right and you don't have to wait for equipment. The regime is basically split into two circuits.
The generated lifting plan tells you the exercise, the weight, the reps you're shooting for, and the order. When you print the plan, it makes a nice, one page printout that gives you space to fill in what you did weight- and rep-wise. I've been printing them on card stock instead of paper, which makdes it great to cart around in the gym.
Like the diet plan, you record your results every workout. The program is "smart" and adjusts future workouts on the results of your previous workouts. Getting stronger seems to be required! I've easily added 30 lbs on my bench and 40-50 on my squat (although I started really light because of an arm injury) in the last month; I expect the weights to increase more slowly now. The site includes simple, but informative, animations of how to do the exercises, and you can print out written descriptions to take with you to the gym if you're unfamiliar with an exercise.
The selection of exercises is very good--besides using lots of compound movement exercises, you're using mostly barbells and dumbells. Only a couple of machines--leg extension, leg press, cable (for tricep pushdowns), and pull downs. The 15/rep day is extra ****y because you only do a few exercises twice that day. Instead, it's variations on your first circuit.
The one good thing the program does is require you to do a light cardio warm up. It's only 5 minutes, but the program wants you to record it.
Cons: well, warm ups on the particular exercises is mentioned, but not reinforced in record keeping. Dynamic stretching is not touched upon, and that's probably the best way to avoid injury. Incorporate some dynamic stretching after the light cardio warm up before lifting, and save static stretching for after the workout (which the program also doesn't cover well, if at all).
The Cardio Plan
Variety, apparently, is the spice of cardio life. On the days you aren't lifting, you're cardio-ing. The program has me currently doing a "brisk walk" for 45 minutes/session for the first two cardio sessions, then a form of HIIT (it truly is a ****), and then an "easy" bike ride for 45 minutes on the fourth day. You can always substitute.
You record, of course, your results with the program, which can give you bare-bones summary records on request. You record time, distance, and your average effort (categorized by heart rate).
Checking in
At an interval you determine, you check in with the program. You tell it how much your weight has changed, your stomach shrunk, and a bunch of other body measurements. One thing it doesn't do, at least explicitly, is measure body fat. This is a weakness in a way, but not too serious. Part of it, of course, is the difficulty in getting a real number. Part of it is that I think the program makes an estimage from all your measurements; and part of it is that what most guys doing the plan care about are losing inches off the stomach area.
Nice, Greg, but what about your results?
I've been following the diet about 80-90%, and been ever faithful on all the workouts. I've lost 4-5 pounds of weight, probably 5-7 pounds of fat, and put on maybe a 1-2 pounds of muscle (remember, I was out for awhile with an injury, so I'm getting some newbie-like results). It's not a tremendous amount of weight, but it's slow and steady. What I'm taking away most from this plan is the reinforcement of the many-meals-a-day idea, and I savor not having to make choices every day about what I'm to eat. We'll see where I'm at in another 3-8 weeks.
Recommendations
I recommend this program if you are the target audience for this program--a guy (or girl) who's either never seen their abs, or did a long time ago, but then they went into hiding. It's not for those of you prepping for shows--the diet is too relaxed for that. It's also good for helping establish new eating patterns (how often and how big) and content (what you eat). For $30/3 months, it's about the price of 7 lbs of whey protein, --I'll keep it for awhile until my eating habits are 90% :).
_____________________________
"If there's nothing else that's relevant, I'll be leaving now"
"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground"
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 2/23/2006 10:07:01 AM
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ChazRaz18
Posts: 70
Joined: 7/2/2005
Status: offline
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Good review. I really like abs diet, I use it more for refference for cutting because it has great nutritional information it. ver informative book.
When I was just trying to lose weight I lost 45 pounds when I applied the abs diet powerfoods and concepts to my life.
_____________________________
--Nitro Tech, Cell Tech, Nitrix, Tribulus Terrestris--
"Lift heavy or go home!"
"OBSESSED is a word used by the lazy to describe the DISCIPLINED"
Weight: 266lbs. 19 Stone 119-120kilograms
Height: 6'2"
(in reply to danmirage)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 2/25/2006 11:35:48 AM
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ebbearsfb1
Posts: 1071
Joined: 2/18/2006
Status: offline
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can u do it if ur trying to gain weight
(in reply to ChazRaz18)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 2/25/2006 11:56:09 AM
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gzinkl
Posts: 3212
Joined: 3/23/2005
From: Chicago, IL
Status: offline
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No, it's meant for losing weight, as far as I can tell.
_____________________________
"If there's nothing else that's relevant, I'll be leaving now"
"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground"
(in reply to ebbearsfb1)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 2/25/2006 12:24:44 PM
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ebbearsfb1
Posts: 1071
Joined: 2/18/2006
Status: offline
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im sure on money at the moment
im working at the gym next week though so i should start bringing in some more money
(in reply to danmirage)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 3/17/2006 2:51:06 PM
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AbsDietPower
Posts: 2
Joined: 3/17/2006
Status: offline
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I've been on the Abs diet for about 5 weeks and have really enjoyed it. My favorite part is the diet, it's easy to follow and makes good sense. I'm losing weight, gaining strength and regulating my cholesterol.
Check out my progress at my Abs Diet Blog below. Let me kow if you have any questions.
_____________________________
Check out my daily progress on the Abs diet: http://www.absdietpower.blogspot.com
(in reply to Chazz540)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 4/8/2006 8:47:41 AM
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Jimyster
Posts: 2
Joined: 4/8/2006
Status: offline
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Thanks for the excellent review gzinkl. Based on your review, I became a member here and also joined absonline.com. I figured for $30 for three months, it's worth trying out. Considering I've spent far more on fitness books and ebooks, some never really getting much out of them. In about an hour I was setup on absonline.com, and printed out my grocery list for the week. It's a very long list of food to get for the week. I just hope it doesn't spoil seeing I'm the only person in the household.
I will have to definately tweak the initial workout weights. They are having me do squats and bench presses with 25lbs. I can see starting out low, but please.
(in reply to gzinkl)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 4/13/2006 5:06:18 AM
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Jimyster
Posts: 2
Joined: 4/8/2006
Status: offline
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Well, I've tried the Abs Diet Online, and determined it's not for me. I find the diet plan far to picky, with some hard to find foods. And I was unable to changed my low weigh routine once my profile was submitted. It was telling me to use extremely low weight, and I have been training for some time now. This program is also not easily canceled. You click on cancel, and it tells you to call an 866 number. I call that and it tells me to either email them at a certain address, or call back later. But they don't show you the mail online, you have to write it down fast, and they only say it once quickly. As a someone using the Body for Life program for a few years, comparing it to the Abs Diet is no comparision to me, BFL all the way wins.
However, I do enjoy trying various canned workout and diet programs. I believe I have the workouts down; and even able to create my own routines now. However, I still lack in setting up my meals I believe. I can eat clean, but still seem to hang on to some weight. And am not really sure what I am doing wrong.
(in reply to Jimyster)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 4/14/2006 6:16:18 AM
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GLD1
Posts: 643
Joined: 3/29/2006
From: Wales, UK
Status: offline
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Both really,
Having considered all things, i think i should just cut for summer as opposed to trying to bulk and cut, not eniugh time to do either productively. The last day i can train before going away is June 24th...
Kinda hoping to look better than i do now by then....
Need to drastically reduce my body fat....
_____________________________
11.04.06:
Age: 22
Weight: 211 Lbs - 96 KG
Height: 6'
Body Fat: 22.13%
I LOVE LEG DAY!!
(in reply to danmirage)
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RE: The Abs Diet Online - review - 9/26/2007 8:47:47 PM
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41sde
Posts: 1
Joined: 9/26/2007
Status: offline
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Im thinking about trying this.I also want to start taking creatine would it be a problem adding this in as well as protein shakes. I wouldnt mind putting on some extra weight as long as it does not prevent me from seeing my abs.
(in reply to GLD1)
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