Review: Racing Weight Quick Start Guide

Recently read Racing Weight Quick Start Guide by Matt Fitzgerald, here are some of my thoughts.  He believes that you can't effectively lose weight and get fitter at the same time, after thinking about this it made more and more sense, if you're running a calorie deficit large enough to lose weight quickly you won’t be fuelling your body well enough to get more fit.  As a result this guide is intended to help athlete that are significantly heavier than they want to be, lose weight at the beginning (or before) of your season.

One thing that I thought was very good was that he doesn’t promote any fad or outrageous diet, it’s a diet that you maintain and be healthy, but not to achieve your maximum fitness.   He suggests increasing your protein to about 30% of your calorie intake, as opposed to 20% for your best training (reminiscent to the Atkins Diet, but not to extreme).  In addition to that increase protein intake he suggests eating unprocessed food, whole grains, fruits and vegetables (nothing that just about anyone wouldn’t suggest).

In terms of working-out one of the biggest things that he promotes in doing high intensity workouts, the big advantage of doing this is that the high intensity workouts increase how many calories you burn during the rest of the day.

There are obviously a lot that from the book that I haven’t discussed (specific workouts, meal plans, weight lifting suggestions), but I think for the intended audience (a triathlete, cyclist, or runner) who isn’t at the weight they would like to be for the season I think this book could be an extremely helpful tool.