Washington - It seems as though every mail delivery brings a new load of diet books to the Health & Science shelves.
But rarely is there such a confluence of titles as those that have turned up in the last few weeks: They're all about the time frame. Ready? Click that stopwatch:
The Thirty-Second Body: Eat Clean. Train Dirty. Live Hard
Adam Rosante, creator of a pay-what-you-can fitness boutique called the People's Bootcamp in New York, lays out “stacks” of about a dozen full-body exercises and has you do each one for 30 seconds. (What, you thought you'd have to exercise for only 30 seconds a day? Anyway, it goes up to 60 seconds each after three weeks.) The idea is that you eat a simple and healthful diet, work hard and efficiently, and leave a pool of sweat on the floor - that's the “dirty” part. This is “high-intensity interval training... at its finest,” he says.
The 20-Minute Body: 20 Minutes, 20 Days, 20 Inches
Like Rosante, Brett Hoebel - who has done a lot of TV and trains a variety of celebrities - is promoting a high-intensity workout, but he really does mean the 20-minute part. He explains how he came up with that workout schedule and warns that you have to step up your energy if you want to lose 20 inches in key body measurements in such a a short time. Ignore the scale, he says: Think “waist loss,” not weight loss. And as you might expect from a former trainer on “The Biggest Loser,” he focuses a lot on mental attitude, rejecting negativism and using such terms as “fitness from within.”
The 22-Day Revolution: The Plant-Based Program That Will Transform Your Body, Reset Your Habits, and Change Your Life
Marco Borges is an exercise physiologist, but that's not the focus of his book - it's all about changing what you eat. He lays out the case for a plant-based diet, aiming for 80 percent carbohydrates, 10 percent fat and 10 percent protein, and promising it will give you vitality, longevity and a great body. It's based on the principle that it takes 21 days to change a habit, so Day 22 of your new diet regime is a victory: “If you make it through three weeks, you can make it through forever!”
But face it: What probably will catch most people's attention is the foreword by Beyoncé, who writes that she grew up in Houston on fried chicken, barbecued shrimp and po' boys. Nevertheless, she says, she and her husband, Jay Z , decided to go on the plant-based diet with her friend and counsellor Borges, and it resulted in “increased energy, better sleep, weight loss, improved digestion, clarity” - plus, she was in “the best shape of my life.” And that's a pretty famous shape.
Washington Post