F. Michael Gloth III

I don't have much experience reviewing a book like this and I am certainly not an expert on exercise, diet or health so this review should be taken as a personal opinion only. Overall I found the book to be a balanced, complete, and safe program especially for the 50 and over set. There are several recipes which I haven't tried, but sound delicious. The data is well researched and the exercise program well planned. There are many photos, graphs and charts to simplify understanding. A good effort.… (mais)

"Fit at 50" isn't a thick volume, but it does a good job of concisely giving you the facts you need. The author talks about how different foods are metabolized by the body, how to exercise, how to diet and recipes by an award winning chef sprinkled throughout - I tried the Spicy Grilled Shrimp and they were very tasty. There is also a section on "falling off the wagon" that is a good reminder that we need to plan for that to happen, get over it, and move past it.

Getting very close to 50 myself and having more than a few extra pounds that need to go, I was looking forward to this book. If you're facing fifty or more and haven't kept up to date on exercise and diet facts, this is a great volume to start with.

I didn't find very much that was new (and it's tough to package motivation to
exercise in a book), but it was a great reminder of the basics. It will serve you
well past your fifties.… (mais)

The book doesn't break any new ground, but it is a very sensible and useful book for its intended audience. Certainly at the age of 50+, the goals are different than those who are still in their 20s and 30s, and the book is useful in identifying and recognizing the differences. The book ably describes the changes that the body goes through as it ages and suggests ways to help mitigate some of those effects. The discussion of metabolism was both interesting and helpful. The importance of tone and stretching was also useful. The recognition that exercise is not a one size fits all is properly reconized and considered.… (mais)

There are a few good tips buried here, but the organization of the book is so scattershot it took a lot of effort to find them. And for such a short book, there’s an awful lot of repetition. When the authors actually present a useful idea, such as the importance of effective calories, it’s repeated over and over again.

The constant bouncing back and forth between sections focusing on diet on those on exercise is confusing, and adds to the uncertain focus of the book. From the title of the book and the cover illustrations (which primarily feature people exercising), one would think it would be focused primarily on exercise, but there is actually much more emphasis on diet—which I guess is to be expected having been written by a nutrition expert and a chef. And despite the authors’ own admonition that the book “is not intended to be a cookbook,” nearly a quarter of the book is nothing but recipes (39 of 168 pages)!

What little information there is about exercise is glossed over in a fairly perfunctory fashion. For instance, there’s brief mention of the fact that it takes longer for older people to recover their fitness level after even a brief layoff, but the idea is dropped without any clear explanation of why that is, and little emphasis on the steps and precautions that need to be taken to avoid injuries during exercise in the first place. The longest section that is devoted solely to exercise consists mainly of an inordinate proportion of photographs of people modeling standard exercises (sit-ups, push ups, chin ups, curls, etc.), all of which most people should be pretty familiar with in the first place, and very little associated elaboration and analysis of how each exercise might be best performed in conjunction with a comprehensive exercise program.

There’s an unusual amount of detail provided regarding caloric intake, food and drug interactions, and other dietary considerations, but really short shrift given to developing a useful exercise program and the need for altering that exercise regimen as you get older. And a lot of the nutritional information is presented in a manner that skates close to the boundary between something accessible to a layperson and something intended for publication in an academic journal.… (mais)