Body Defining
Men are the bigger sex, writes Darden, but women are the fatter sex. A woman's hormones--coupled with pregnancy and childbirth--conspire to add fat throughout her life, making the average woman's body a little over 47 percent fat by the time she's 50.Darden believes that there's only one way to permanently change this equation--to turn on the body's natural fat-burning mechanisms--and it's not aerobic exercise. He's a passionate advocate of strength training as the best method for improving a body's ratio of muscle to fat. Darden also asserts that there's only one way to effectively strength train, and that's using the excruciatingly tedious Super Slow system. He makes a convincing argument for the system, but he's among a tiny handful of exercise professionals who believe that people should train one way and one way only for the rest of their lives. Virtually everyone else says you should frequently change training methods to keep your body from getting so used to one type of exercise that it stops making improvements.Those who have purchased one or more of Darden's 42 previous books will recognize most of the information in "Body Defining." But if you're new to his work, you'll find provocative ideas about how keeping your body cooler helps it burn more calories, and why you should drink much more water than you're consuming now. The actual exercise and nutrition programs are pretty strict, but Darden peppers the book with before-and-after photos of women for whom it worked.--Lou Schuler