First, given the inevitable bitching that has probably already commenced, allow me to proffer the reasoning behind this post. I was standing in line at Bed, Bath and Beyond, waiting to return an air mattress, blithely unaware that the Skinny Bitch phenomenon had continued past their 15 minutes of initial fame. There, I overheard two portly housewives discuss the relative merits of a drink mixer called SkinnyGirl (which is apparently in no way related to the Skinny Bitch books, but is the product of some reality tv whore’s vanity). This turned into a discussion about how they’d both stopped eating meat due to the Skinny Bitch books, and how everyone (wink wink nod nod) who still eats meat is flirting with an imminent and grisly death. At that point I interjected, as I’m unwilling to stand idly by while anyone talks shit, especially in the South where I hate everyone, and these Type 2 diabetes cows weren’t going to titter over their Mint Juleps about how they got over on me. I started dropping actual scientific facts, which they rebutted by claiming that the Skinny Bitches disagreed, and assured me I should read their book for men. I was struck dumb by the fact that I had used historical references and scientific fact to rebut their claims and had been rebuffed with such bullshit, but I resolved to read this fucking book to see what lies were contained therein.
Though I disagree with most of what spews forth from his filthy Communist mouth, I agree with Zach de la Rocha when he says, “Know your enemy.”
Here is what I found-
1) The publisher Running Press has neither fact-checkers, nor editors with any background in biology or chemistry, and apparently everyone in their organization is bereft of conscience and soul.
2) The Skinny Bitches are apparently filled with discontent at the fact that they’ve merely spewed their insipid bile at one half of our species, and have thus returned in an attempt to finish what they started- namely, to destroy the human race. While that goal seems to have merit on its face, they’re not doing it in a cool way at all- nowhere are there zombies, robots, zombie-robot cyborg hybrids, hemorrhagic plagues, internecine strife, or even a good ol’ nuke. Instead, they are trying to bring about humanity’s downfall in the least cool way possible- by rendering us so impotent and weak that we simply die out of self-loathing and the sort of malaise that can only come when one realizes that they’d lose a fight to a poodle. Essentially, they want the apocalypse to be humanity’s transformation into the Eloi without any of the mechanisms necessary to support their bullshit society.
Feast your eyes on it folks- the guide to the coming apocalypse… Skinny Bastard. Clocking in at a touch over two hundred pages, it provides comprehensive coverage of some of the most impressive stupidity and willful ignorance ever committed to the printed page. In support of their outlandish nutritional theories, the Bitches have offered some of the most astonishing non- and pseudoscience that Skinny Bastard is truly breathtaking in its defiance of logic, scientific fact, research, and hatred for intelligent discourse and humanity in general.
For those of you who are too horrified to continue reading, here’s the short version: two whores with no business writing a book about anything compiled a bunch of factoids gleaned from vegan websites and pseudoscientific nutrition texts into a handbook on manning up, repeatedly enjoining their readers to stop being pussies… while not eating meat. Amidst their incessant rejoinders about what it takes to be a real man, a phenomenon about which women should probably refrain from giving advice anyway, they recommend that men drink red wine and herbal teas while abstaining from meat and doing some brisk cardio as their roadmap to manliness. That just happened. Yup- while making the authors of the ill-conceived Alpha Male Challenge (see the blog about this pile of horseshit here) look like paradigms of manliness, the Skinny Bitches managed to outdo their previous effort throughout the book. Additionally, the SBs seem to think that the liberal use of the word “fuck” validates their ridiculous foray into male diet advice, casually tossing the word about in spite of the fact that they appeared terrified of using the word “dick” in their hilarious treatment on erectile function, instead using the nomenclature of small children to make their point, a la “stick” or “cockadoodledoo”. I am not making that up. This book literally left me speechless.
The long version: It’s hard to know where to start with a book that I’ve got to pick apart page by page, so I’ll just start at the beginning, and I’ll hit the high points as bullets for ease of reading. Before you get too far into it, you might want to check out this blog on pH, since the Bitches blather on about it incessantly.
“Citrus fruits are alkalizing because they’re high in potassium and calcium and alkaline salts.” (33) If you’re not already amused because potassium and calcium are alkaline salts, you should be. Prepare, however, to become more amused- citrus fruits aren’t even ranked among top calcium or potassium rich foods… but various meats are. Given that one major problem they have with meat is the fact that it acidifies one’s system, wouldn’t their shitbox logic hold in re the alkalizing effects of potassium and calcium? Ah well… the Silly Whores haven’t let fact get in the way of their fiction before, so there’s no sense in starting now, I suppose.
“Coffee is for pussies.” (13-14) Yep- the Bitches hate coffee because it contains caffeine, which they assert will cause you problems ranging from headaches to diarrhea to cortisol spikes, and a wide array of bullshit in between, while simultaneously allowing you to trumpet to the world that you’re a big bitch because you “need” stimulants to get you out of bed. Additionally, the SB’s contend, willfully ignorant of any and all studies ever conducted on coffee, that coffee will make you fat due to the fact that your body will form a protective layer of fat around your organs to fend off the evil acid in the coffee. Frankly, I’m at a loss to even scratch the surface of what they might be on about here- do they think coffee’s simply dumped into your system on top of your organs? That our internal systems are setup like an ancient Roman sewer? Have they heard of the circulatory system? Simply astonishing. Instead, manly men should drink “caffeine free herbal tea, because “if women see you drinking tea, they’ll think you’re smart and sensitive.” Sweet! I can miss out on all of the fat-loss benefits of a proven performance enhancer while getting fat, publicly emasculating myself, and drinking something that tastes like stewed cow shit.
- less likely to have type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia (Osterweil)
- have fewer cases of certain cancers, heart rhythm problems, and strokes (Ibid)
- lower the risk of prostate cancer (Wilson et al)
Caffeine also has myriad benefits, which I’ve elucidated in the past, but they range from performance enhancement to alertness to mental acuity. In short, stimulants fucking rule.
“Most Americans eat twice as much protein as necessary”(36), citing a guy named Lesley McPhatter who in turn cited old research and a sports nutrition text of which I’ve never heard. They go on recommend a protein level of Body Weight x .36, which provides a “large margin of safety”. Safety from what, you might ask? Their support of this statement was all over the map, ranging from the old wives’ tale about protein and renal failure, to a supposition that low carb diets have been linked with low testosterone levels, base on an uncited study. I found the study, however, and they and their soft-headed vegan compatriots all seem to have read the fucking thing incorrectly… likely because a diet the consists of naught but gruel is hardly conducive to deep analytical thinking. Instead of showing that a high protein diet led to low testosterone levels, the study showed that a diet high in ployunsaturated fat led to low testosterone levels. Rob Faigin was nice enough to point that little nugget out in Natural Hormone Enhancement, and I thought I’d reiterate it for you guys. (Faigin, 329-30)
Onto that old bullshit about high protein diets and renal failure… again, the Bitches’ research skills don’t extend beyond ancient and patently ridiculous sources. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of that argument, it goes that high protein (and ketogenic diets in particular) cause renal failure. This is completely unsubstantiated by science, and flies in the face of anecdotal evidence about the Inuit (whose diet consists of nothing but meat), and a year-long study of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who ate nothing but meat. In 1929 he
participated in a year long study in which he lived at a hospital and was subjected to a battery of tests, mostly directed at predicting what doctors considered to be his imminent death, and was found to be healthy as shit thereafter. Putting aside that, because the Silly Bitches enjoy their anecdotes but hate science, let’s see what science has to say, shall we?
The Bitches are more wrong than R. Kelly pissing in the mouth of a 14 year old. Kideney function adapts to increased protein consumption and in some cases functions better than on low-protein diets. (Skov et al, Poortmans et al, Brändle et al, Eades 138) In spite of all that… you know, science, and the fact that an entire robust and virile people have thrived for centuries on that diet, the Silly Bitches will continue to assert that a high protein diet will kill you outright and forthwith, and you’ll dissolve in a muddle of acidic muck . They’ll do this because they’re whores… they forgot because they’re stupid.
Oh, there’s more… much, much more, but I figure you guys have waited long enough for a blog. Coming up, another Ask the Asshole, more rebuttals of this nonsense you can use to browbeat idiots at the bar, and a couple of other goodies I’ve got half-baked. Also, in the next two weeks expect an article an video on an exercise that’s both awesome and nearly catastrophically stupid to perform without a spotter, which I will of course explain in detail since I do it all the time.
Brändle E, Sieberth HG, Hautmann RE. Effect of chronic dietary protein intake on the renal function in healthy subjects. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1996 Nov;50(11):734-40.
Eades, Michael. Protein Power.
Faigin, Rob. Natural Hormone Enhancement.
Gavaler, JS. Alcoholic Beverages as a Source of Estrogens. Alcohol Health and Research World. 1998;22(3):220-228. http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh22-3/220.pdf
Haugen T. B., Grotmol T. pH of Human Semen. Int J of Andro. 1998: 21(2) 105-108.
McPhatter, Lesley L. Too Much of a Good Thing: Limiting Protein Intake in Chronic Kidney Disease.
http://www.aakp.org/newsletters/KB-The-Magazine/Diet-Tips-&-Bits/Limiting-Protein-Intake/
Obara K, Mizutani M, Hitomi Y, Yajima H, Kondo K. Isohumulones, the bitter component of beer, improve hyperglycemia and decrease body fat in Japanese subjects with prediabetes. Clin Nut 2009: 28; 278–284.
http://www.herbalintegrity.com/content/products/Benefits-of-isohumulones-for-prediabetics.pdf
Osterweil, Neil. Coffee and Your Health. WebMD. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/coffee-new-health-food
Poortmans JR, Dellalieux O. Do regular high protein diets have potential health risks on kidney function in athletes? Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2000 Mar;10(1):28-38.
Skov AR, Toubro S, Bülow J, Krabbe K, Parving H, Astrup A. Changes in renal function during weight loss induced by high vs low-protein low-fat diets in overweight subjects. International Journal of Obesity. 1999;23:1170-1177.
Wilson KM, Kasperzyk JL, Rider JR, Kenfield S, van Dam RM, Stampfer MJ, Giovannucci E, Mucci LA. Coffee Consumption and Prostate Cancer Risk and Progression in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2011 May 17. [Epub ahead of print]
Yes! My critical-thinking challenged girlfriend has a library of these kinds of books, and begged me to read the Skinny Bitch series after seeing my red meat intake, linking her to this blog has made my fucking week.
If I were going to defend anyone, it would be Zach and RATM. Inside Out? NFW.
That said, hydrochloric acid is not a digestive enzyme. It's an important part of the digestive process, but not an enzyme.
Rant on.
Sweet, a new Ask the Asshole.
I've considered the "know your enemy" before and tried it once. I stopped halfway in the book because my brain was hating me for even starting. Although more power to you for not gouging your eyes out!
Rage Against The Machine = rock + rap.
Rock + rap = corny br0 music.
Corny br0 music = FUCK OUTTA' HERE.
Wow, excellent stuff. In the search for the next best/easiest answer, it's amazing how easily people will gloss over pseudoscience and anti-logic.
I'd be lying if I said hearing fat housewives smugly saying "such and such has shown me the way" didn't majorly raise my ire, but I've long since given up any attempt at debate.
Generally, when presented with differing opinions and, you know, facts/critical thinking, they appeal to authority.
I know the term "sheeple" is a meme and not taken seriously, but, damn.
Taken from google books preview:
Page 18 of Skinny Bastard reads "You don't need to spend seven days a week at the gym. In fact, you shouldn't, because too much exercise is bad for you(and men who work out too much look like fuckin' FREAKS). It can lead to dehydration, arthritis, osteoporosis, and injuries like strains, sprains, and fractures. Twenty minutes of cardiovascular a day, five days a week, is a good starting point."
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, I couldn't convince myself to read anymore of this pernicious tripe…
Yep, it's sad that these are the jackasses that elect themselves to speak for the vegetarian diet. Funnily enough, I discovered your blog and started taking an interest in your training approach right around the same time that I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about continuing to eat meat. For me, it had nothing to do with any of the asinine pseudo nutrition-based arguments of the Skinny Bitch ilk. It was just a matter of personally not being comfortable anymore with the ecology and ethics of meat production. On top of that, I started hearing more and more about guys like Mac Danzig, Jake Shields, Tony Gonzalez etc.: all pretty badass fellas who do just fine without meat.
So for the last half year or so I've thrown away the old moderate-weight 10×3 workouts I've done since high school—which have kept me moderately fit but with no real gains to be excited about—and adopted your training guidelines. Together with that I've been following Mike Mahler's vegetarian nutrition guidelines. It's pretty much the Veg. Paleo Diet with a lot of focus on proper hormone profiles etc., and the antithesis of the Skinny Bitch nonsense. The results have been great. Power's going way up, quickly; body fat's steadily declining (still not willing to give up all the beer and bourbon, which I don't believe helps); and have been feeling like a hundred dollars.
If the same assholes who buy Skinny Bitch would look into proper training and a valid high protein model like Mahler's they'd be a lot less fat and would not keep perpetuating the myth that a vegetarian diet will inevitably turn you into a hysterical pussy.
I think you might be part of a select cadre of your lifestyle compatriots who's not a hysterical pussy.
I'll have to look into Mahler's diet. Generally, I see kettlebells and move on with my life… "kettlebells are great for people too weak to lift real weights."
Mahler's not bad. Bud Jeffries was training with him recently and I believe he did a 96 pound stacked military press.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFaY-tcJWfg This is 106 actually.
Neil, I know what you're saying.
Keep tearing shit up, Jaime.
P/S: Why don't kettlebells measure up?
I guess I'll add in here. I was vegan for 6 years. all the way. when I decided to stop racing bikes and get real about lifting I gained 55lbs in a year on a vegan diet and got significantly stronger. no, I didn't turn into a fatass.
it just got mega boring and I stalled out. started eating meat (hard decision, morally) and added another 10 lbs in a few weeks and lifted more/recovered better. I just feel better now. I think it can be done on a vegetarian diet, but its super boring and uninteresting.
Joe- I was quoting Steve Pulcinella. Sort of an inside joke, but for the most part, it seems to hold. What's the heaviest kb you've seen? ~100 lbs? Not terribly taxing to lift, in my opinion, unless one goes jogging with it or something. Kettlebells are fun to play with, but real lifting's done with barbells, in my opinion.
Dray-
I just watched three mahler videos and all I came away with was the fact it's fun to watch his dog and it appears mahler dyed half of his goatee.
Actually, I've seen a 200 lb kettlebell (only one I think), and I think I've seen a 120 lb kettlebell for sale. Additionally, Hermann Goerner liked to stack them and go for runs or do a heavy max snatch with a couple. I think he got something between 180 and 220 pounds with two in a hand. So I guess if you're willing to shell out, like, 300 dollars for a single piece of equipment, kettlebells can offer some challenge. StrongerGrip is putting out an extension to their plateau buster so I think it would be cheaper to just grab that and some bulldog collars. (Or one could just do exercises on barbells like normal people.)
And I'm not really sure why Mahler would do something like that. Maybe he dropped a kettlebell on his skull.
http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/227220_10150177425967389_692322388_6684284_5775013_n.jpg
hey man, have been reading your blog for merely 2 months, but I think you are great. I'm blithe to hear that there will be a new ASK THE ASSHOLE. Well
-How to increase pullups without tendinitis?
-Is it really necessary to train 5 days a week to become strong? Why? I train with sandbags and bodyweight 3 days a weak and give it all in the 30 minutes. However I don't feel like progressing a lot.
Yes, we all know there's a picture of me. No need to froth with obsession.
Jamie, what do you think of Pavel Tsatsouline? He's so into kettlebells.
Don't let yourself drop to the bottom position when doing pull-ups and you won't get tendinitis!
It possible to put an ironmaster kettlebell up to 110 lbs if you have the right plates for it. It has a very long handle for a kettlebell so it makes the weight harder to move.
http://store.kettlebellinc.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=25
Justin, what you mean is a violent and uncontrolled drop or any kind of drop?
any kind of drop…Lower yourself under control. I'd bet my knife collection that 90% of people who fuck themselves up on pullups do it when they stop controlling the movement.
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