It feels good to be hungry...and I know that tonight I feast. This is a great way to eat! I feel very sharp mentally, and have good energy. I don't agree with him regarding his philosophical explanations for things, but when he sticks to the science he seems to be right on, and it's working. I've only lost a few pounds, but that's in line with my goal, losing fat and gaining muscle and strength. (I lift weights 3 - 4 times a week and supplement with protein powder, glutamine and creatine.) I'm aiming at 10 percent body fat...I believe I will achieve this.

The problem with most diets is that they based exclusion of certain types of food or food groups. Modern nutritionists and modern society has forgot the single most important part of your dietary health, which is allowing your body time to convert the fat in your body into energy. This was my natural instinct when I was skinny little boy, but after over a decade of forced constant feeding, by the time I was in my teens I became overweight with virtually no muscle mass and was constantly getting sick. I even got in trouble with the teacher in elementary school one time for trying to skip lunch. Ofcourse now I'm skinnier, faster, stronger, and healthier, but I'm still striving to reach my ideal fitness level. You can eat the most healthy food we want, but there is no way you can burn off all the excess body fat without allowing your body time to detoxify itself, unless you follow the fitness routine of a professional athlete. Don't get it wrong, this is not a starve yourself during the day, binge on cheeseburgers at night diet. During the day you just eat raw uncooked veggies and fruits(try avoid the fruits with heavy sugar like grapes and water melon) and drink water while at night eating as much as you want of any and all food groups, preferably organic food. I've only been on this diet on and off for a few days, so I can't accurately tell you the results. But I can say that I feel better about myself on days that I practiced the diet then on days that I didn't.

This diet has worked wonders for me. I would not be so impressed if I had not already have been working out hard and "watching what I ate" for 6 months.

So basicaly the easy first 10 to 15 pounds were already long gone.

I lost 10 pounds the first week and 2 continue to loose 3 pounds a week.

Don't let the "fasting" hype scare you away.

Basicaly it involves a few basic principles.

1 breakfast isn't the most important meal of the day.

2 recognize the difference between being hungry and just wanting to eat something

3 you can and should chow down and go to sleep on a full stomach.

Overall I highly reccomend it !!!

I have not yet really studied this book in all the detail the author supplies. I'm just doing 'the basics' and find myself easily losing weight. The 'overeating' phase is my favorite . What the author says about dieting is certainly true for me, a month or two and I no longer have any interest in the program. This method seems one that is no real hardship, awareness of one's blood chemistry and adjusting during the day to bring weight loss is a piece of cake, especially after the first week or so. I am two months into it and see no reason I will go back to the old daytime carbs and sugar that seems to be The American Way.

Constant irrational hunger? Never full? Even when you restrict calories, does the fat cling to you for weeks? Have you failed over and over?

This book works. And you feel fully alive.

But it's full of hype and quasi history and fluff. This book is more motivational than informational. A better book is The Fast-5 Diet. It'll take you two hours to read. Then buy the Warrior Diet book for motivation and inspiration.

Dieting is a very popular activity nowadays. With obesity at record levels and body mass indices climbing higher and higher for most Americans each day, the physical condition of the public at large continues to deteriorate with each passing moment. And because of this fact, the diet and fitness business is booming like never before. The Warrior Diet attempts to assert itself into this growing market with a diet plan that is different from most others and that offers a workable plan that most can follow, often with very positive results.

After reading a couple of chapters, it is easy to see that The Warrior Diet is, indeed, different from most other diet plans. First, the Warrior concept is one that the author describes as getting back to mankind's original lifestyle when it comes to eating and fitness. Foods in the past were purer and more wholesome than the processed garbage that humans eat today. People in the past also used to be far more physically fit, mainly because their very survival depended on it. These natural instincts have been lost over the years due to modern technology and as a result, humans eat far worse food than in the past and are far less physically active than at any point in history. The Warrior Diet is about reclaiming that past by re- introducing the human body to a diet of raw, unprocessed food and organic meats. It is also about becoming more physically active than before in order to maintain the Warrior body once a satisfactory nutritional balance has been achieved.

Advice like eating organic foods and exercising is pretty commonplace in most diet books so I wasn't very surprised when I read these parts of The Warrior Diet. However, I was surprised by the specific eating advice and how the Warrior Plan is put into action. It starts with an undereating phase. This takes place each morning and afternoon and the idea is to avoid eating completely, with the exception being vegetable juice, fruit juice, coffee, yogurt, and a few other things. After that comes the overeating phase; a catch- up phase that takes place during the evening hours. At this time, the Warrior is permitted to eat pretty much anything he/she wants. This is very different from most diet plans and it is bound to be controversial among nutritionists.

I have been on very few diets but I decided while I was reading this book that I would give this plan a try and see what happened. What I discovered is that this undereating phase is very difficult at first, and I could feel my stomach growling for hours during the morning and afternoon hours. But then, it gradually became easier and easier to do this and I didn't feel as hungry as I did on the first day. I also noticed that my nighttime meal was far more satisfying than my meals usually are. Like other people, I lead a busy life and have little time to enjoy my meals. Eating has become a chore and I try to get it over with as quickly as possible so that I can get on with the rest of my day. But with the Warrior Diet plan, I find that my evening meal tastes better and is met with greater anticipation. I look forward to eating it, and I enjoy myself more than before.

Physical fitness is an important part of any diet plan and The Warrior Diet includes many pages of exercises that are intended to complement the diet itself. Some of these exercises require using weights, but others do not. I don't engage in physical fitness as often as I should and what I like about this section of the book is that, like the rest of the book, it includes exercises that are a little out of the ordinary. Things like towel swiping, frog jumps, and the bow and arrow shoulder stretch are among the many unique exercise ideas promoted by The Warrior Diet.

Most of The Warrior Diet is easy to read, but author Ori Hofmekler does include quite a bit of nutritional and physiological tech talk. It was important to include this type of information because it helps to back up what is stated in the book. But for people like me who know little about this type of topic, I found that I often did not quite understand what Hofmekler was talking about at certain points. Comments about things like omega- 3 oils; the health benefits of Cruciferous indoles; etc., were over my head. During these moments, I just had to take his word for it. I don't even know if the things stated are completely true, but I am pretty sure they are.

Overall, I found The Warrior Diet an effective book about diet and nutrition and the plan seems to work, based on my brief experience. The Warrior Diet and the advice contained in this book is generally very thorough and very helpful and it presents a workable plan that is less restrictive overall when compared to other diets. Some of the advice is commonplace; other advice is more unique. But the bottom line goal of the Warrior Diet is one most people can certainly agree: To eliminate toxins from the body, eat better foods through improved eating habits, and develop the physical body into a lean, mean, Warrior- like machine. It's a good book for anyone who has an interest in improving ones' physical condition and maintaining the improvements for a long period of time.

In the past, I haven't had much luck with diets. I'm usually looking to drop that extra ten pounds or so, but I've tried Atkins, South Beach and The Zone diets with little success. The Warrior Diet is different. By changing the times that I eat (along with dropping highly refined foods), I've made steady progress towards my desired weight while maintaining high energy. It took me a week or so to transition into the system of fasting during the day and feasting at night, but once I got used to it, I found it to be almost a matter of instinct. After just a few weeks, I'm starting to lose that stubborn belly fat and I don't feel like I'm starving all the time. I am also following the exercise guidelines. This isn't a "Lose Weight While you Sleep," plan and it isn't a magic pill. It's just another approach to eating that seems to make a lot of sense.

After reading over 60 books on diet and healthy eating I was delighted to find a new way to eat that not only fit into what I previously had learned but added a way to balance fasting and eating my fill. The author covers all the needed dynamics of eating, covering insulin response and how the body works to store fat and burn calories. He shows the importance of eating whole foods and limiting your consumption of damaging foods like trans fats and refined carbs.
The diet is patterned after the eating habits of ancient warriors of Rome and Greece. He recommends eating very light during the day focusing on only fruits, vegatables, and light protein (eggs, whey protein, maybe a few raw nuts in the late afternoon). Then for dinner eat what you need to fill you up, and then stop eating for the night. It is recommended to eat mainly whole foods during this meal but it is very flexible. The beauty of this way of eating is that with an early dinner and a late light breakfast you give your body time to detoxify with out the endless flow of food into your digestive system. Also you will notice more energy during the day with no heavy breakfast or lunch weighing you down. The end of the book gives a great exercise regimen if you are interested in building a lean, strong body through short workouts that train you to resist fatigue but does not take you to complete muscle failure.
Ironically years ago after losing 50 pounds on the zone diet I naturally reverted to eating very similiar to this type of diet as maintenance and kept off my weight. I really enjoyed eating this way, it can be used for life.

'The Warrior Diet: Switch on Your Biological Powerhouse For High Energy, Explosive Strength, and a Leaner, Harder Body' is a different king of "dieting" book (I find it hard to even use the word diet here), instead it's a book that teaches you a different way to eat and live your life. The weight-loss industry makes billions a year and is one of the biggest money-makers in the world. There's all sorts of promises of how to lose weight, but the simple way to lost weight is to eat less, eat smarter, and exercise (it really IS that simple folks). What this book does it focus on how past cultures (warrior) used to eat in the past and see why they were lean and mean for the most part. What you learn from this book is that people in the past (men & women) were so busy during the day that they didn't have TIME (they REALLY didn't have time) to eat and eat and eat. The women hunted for the food while the women did the household chores and raised the young children. At the end of the day the families ate a large meal together, and POOF! look they didn't gain much weight and were leaner all together.

It's an interesting point of view but to be honest I think it's unrealistic for most people. Yes these are all truths but this isn't how society is any more in industrial countries. We don't have to hunt for food all day long and we are surrounded by food all day long that it's hard to resist (unrealistic?). Eating a large meal right before dinner might give you energy to have a better sex life but then it sits in your gut all night while you sleep. For the true warrior of the past this was fine because you weren't going to eat much for another 24 hours and had to live live like a python getting large meals when possible, providing plenty of nutrients for all the physical labor the following day.

I think this book is positive and is great from a historical perspective, but for everyday people I don't think it's very realistic or feasible. Times have changed and the "Warrior Diet" simply isn't the ways things are in the world for educated people. Having said all that, I don't think the book is bad, I just think it's another angle to help some people (key word: SOME) lose the pounds but for most it probably won't be that effective.

Try if you must but I feel that other books will provide better long term results than the ones listed here.

***

Many years ago when I was a young man I followed a diet similar to the one recommended here by Ori Hofmekler. It wasn't something that I planned or followed with any kind of rigor. I just more or less fell into it. I would get up in the morning and have coffee and toast with peanut butter and preserves or honey. (Of course Hofmekler's "warrior diet" does not recommend bread during the "undereating" phase.) I would then go most of the rest of the day without eating anything. In the evening I would reward myself with a huge meal. Sometimes I didn't eat that meal until sometime after midnight.

I was never hungry during the undereating phase. As anyone who has ever fasted can tell you, when you have eaten nothing for a while and are burning fat, you experience no hunger. You are serene. I also maintained the same weight for many years following this habit of only eating one large meal a day.

If looked at closely it can be seen that the essence of the warrior diet is mini-fasts and the avoidance of carbohydrates, especially the processed kind. Hofmekler is not entirely rigorous in that recommendation however, allowing one to eat fresh fruits and vegetables or even some protein during the undereating or fasting phase. Notice that this diet is similar to some of the low-carbs diets currently fashionable. Note also that mini-fasting results in a period of time in which the digestive system is given a rest. With no food in the system, the body is forced to burn fat. Fat burns clean, relatively speaking, as Hofmekler explains. This is quite a change from the days when we were taught that fat was the culprit. Today we know that concentrated, processed carbohydrates and such things as corn syrup are what is making America fat and frankly sick.

In essence the warrior diet is a return to the natural diet of humans as it was (per force) practiced in the Pleistocene prior to the rise of agriculture. When one looks at such a diet, which included, small animals, insects, roots, tubers, fruits, vegetables, and the occasional large animal, it is easy to see that it was almost impossible to get fat or at any rate stay fat for any length of time. The two main foods that are making Westerners fat are readily available carbohydrates and an abundance of fats and oils. In the prehistory there were oats and wheat and barley and such, but the seeds were relatively small and to make a meal required a lot of hand processing. I have experimented with some of the natural foods found here in California, acorns, black walnuts, pine nuts, wild oats, wild grapes; and the striking thing I have discovered is just how much time and energy it requires to process these foods. Using hand tools and existing on these foods along with fish and whatever meat I could get, I could never get fat.

So what Hofmekler is recommending is a return to such a way of living. Since the foods for us are readily available with little processing, the time that would have been spent in hand processing should now be spent in fasting (which was the case in the prehistory).

There is an incredible amount of detail in this book as Hofmekler compares his diet to other diets, as he incorporates workouts, food preparation and recipes, and gets specific about all kinds of foods; but the hard kernel of truth here, in my opinion, is simply this: eat less, eat less often, exercise, and avoid denatured foods. Note that "eat less often" implies mini-fasts. Perhaps the biggest mistake we make is to eat from habit, to eat when we are not really hungry. If we always waited until we were ravenous before eating we would both enjoy the food more and be healthier.

I also like the idea of seeing oneself as something other than a couch potato, indoctrinated by corporate interests to a life of relative passivity and constant consumption. So the metaphor of "The Warrior Diet" is welcome in a marketing sense and more appealing (and sexier!) than what I think is more accurate, which is "A Hunter-Gatherer Diet." One of the reasons that Hofmekler uses the term "warrior" is to suggest in a somewhat subliminal way one of his prescriptions, that is to avoid what he considers estrogen-promoting foods such as "processed soy products...conventional produce, meats, poultry, and pork" and other foods. (See e.g., page 154, or better yet his previous book "The Anti-Estrogenic Diet" for the full story.)

By the way, I still practice a one square meal a day diet, although I must confess that I snack a little too much in-between! Hofmekler's book (incidentally in its second edition, which suggests its value) has come along just in time to inspire me to return to a more rigorous practice. This morning as I write this, 15 hours have passed since I ate anything. I am not the slightest bit hungry and this is after walking an hour in the rain and doing some chores. However I will enjoy my coffee and homemade bread soon.

I have a friend who is a well-known bodybuilder of the "Golden Era" and he uses this Warrior Diet with great success. He's a real proponent of it.

I found the book enlightening. Eat more at night? In all my years I've never heard that. I've been taught to eat most of my food during the day and very little at night. Only now is the fitness community learning that eating at night is a good thing. That's discussed in the book.

There are chapters on warrior meals and recipes, sex drive, potency and animal magnetism. There is also a chapter on personalizing the diet for women. (I'm sorry the author didn't realize from the beginning that women are warriors too!)

I think you'll find this a very enlightening book and highly recommend it.

While I do understand that not everyone will enjoy this diet, or even benefit from it, in my life it has altered my health and energy dramatically. I have tried eating the "clean" bodybuilders diet for the last 2 years to put on size. I have done my cardio, intervals and slow paced mileage. I don't care about that anymore. I want to feel alive, primal, loving, and in tune. And for me this diet is a cornerstone of that lifestyle. I have never felt the need to write a review of a book, this is my first, and it deserves to be read at the least.

Ori Hofmekler is fast becoming as highly regarded an expert on health through his advice on tending to the body and its fueling as he has been respected for his often controversial art: his name may not ring bells but a glance at his art will bring to mind moments of 'ah-ha!' we have noticed in the media and galleries. He is an original thinker and his current revised book, THE WARRIOR DIET, makes for not only fine reading but also as a guidebook to better health.

His source? History - just as it has been his source for imaging political statements on multiple matrices. With terse statements and research Hofmekler addresses the national 'malignancy' of obesity, the natural by-product of the sedentary computer focused society where exercise is gauged by the distance from the computer to the food machines and the microwave. With an at times seemingly unintentional wit (or sarcasm) Hofmekler looks backward to the time of the warriors, giving us evidence that the reason past men and women were in better shape to face the world had a lot to do with the way they consumed food.

Not to make this very informative book sound simplistic (there are certainly enough pages of theory on nutrition, exercise, mental adjustment, etc to keep the reader committed to Hofmekler's regimen), but the startling theory is the presentation of the eating pattern we have been told for years is incorrect. Hofmekler shows us how the correct way to make use of natural resources of energy and fortitude is to eat the right foods lightly during the day and save the main meal for the evening - the time when the Warrior in us needs to replenish particular energy patterns and storehouses and process not only the strains of the day on the mind and body, but to also physiologically mend the temple in which we dwell!

Not just another diet book, this, but instead an approach to reexamining life patterns is the main driver of Hofmekler's book. It is sound, readable, helpful, and a fine gift to each of us to make the next year healthier. Grady Harp, December 07

I loved The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler. This is a new revised editon. and it's a good one. I am a personal trainer and long time strength athlete. Standard advice is to eat 6 times a day, and who has time to do that? This works great for the person who isn't going to eat all day, and more importantly, it works better. Every book diet book claims that it will change your life, but this book really can.

Kevin Coolidge, personal trainer, author of "Hobo Finds A Home" and editor "Of A Predatory Heart"