Men’s Health Muscle Chow: More Than 150 Easy-to-Follow Recipes to Burn Fat and Feed Your Muscles: A Cookbook by Gregg Avedon

I have cooked several things from this book and they have all turned out fine.Some things are used in America but I have found most things in health shops, or I have used alternative.

This book is an excellent collection of recipes and practical information for those serious about their training and making sure they are getting the right nutrition.

Gregg has some sound advice and if you’re like me not knowing how to approach the diet in a way that will complement your training and just taking protein shakes, this book is invaluable as it gives some simple and clear advice and the recipes are very easy and taste great!!

The starting point was keeping a food log/diary and seeing how much usless calories I was consuiming and then replacing these meals with ones from Muscle Chow. Also with the food diary method I tried out carb cycling… The result? I have noticed that I am training harder and for longer and the protein shakes supplement my diet as opposed to being meals in themselves.

Great book

I wouldn’t listen to those people who say a lot of it is Americanised- yes some of it is, but if you can’t work out that Zucchini is just a big Courgette (thanks Google), then you’re a bit of a pleb.
This book keeps you on the dietary straight and narrow and I can’t recommend it enough.
I use a handful of the recipes on a daily basis and I’m content in the knowledge that my meals are as clean as a whistle.
Thanks Greg- you’re a legend!

Ok. I’ll start with this: I am a firefighter, not a bodybuilder or extreme athlete. So, I do NOT make a lot of money. Your average parking meter makes more than I do, as a matter of fact. I also never cooked once before joining the fire service. Plus I come from a Mexican upbringing, so you can imagine the food I am used to eating.

I bought this book mainly because I wanted a good cookbook so I could learn some cooking skills along with some healthy dishes. I am a pretty avid reader of Men’s Health, and after reading Greg’s columns I finally caved in and bought the book. This book is very greatly organized and gives some great tips for anyone who IS looking to increase muscle mass, or things like that. (such as tips on creatine intake) Now, it is also organized so it can also be a great resource for someone who just wants to get leaner or just wants to eat cleaner. The book starts by telling you that this book is also a diet program, which works in three phases. This program basically works by starting your diet nice and easy and then restricting it more and more throughout the workout program. By the most restricted phase of the program, you can only eat foods labeled “Ripped” in the book. And as I thumbed through the book, I thought to myself, “The ripped phase is gonna suck. There doesn’t seem to be many recipes that you can eat in this phase.”

Well it turned it around on me when I really focused on the chapters. There are a great amount of options you can choose from for this phase and they all ROCK! Not too mention, the Ripped phase is only for 2 weeks! Now, let me clear this up even more: there are three phases to this program. They are:

Relaxed: 1 Week
Lean: 5 Weeks
Ripped: 2 Weeks.

In the fire station, we usually never eat earlier than 11 PM. And even for me, the program was VERY easy to handle! I never got bored, or aggravated with repetitive recipes. My personal favorite recipe was the avocado toast. It is fantastic! My commitment was there, and I was sick of making excuses. If you have the same, this plan is EASY! Granted, you have enough money of course, which brings me to my next point.

Greg gives you two shopping lists in the book: one for ingredients and another for tools and utensils. ANYBODY who has ever been in a grocery store will tell you: Eating healthy is EXPENSIVE! Some of these ingredients are actually not very expensive at places like a Wal-mart or Costco. But finding things like organic ingredients can be a pretty big chore. I am lucky enough to have a store that provides these close-by but it can get quite expensive. But honestly, the shopping lists save you quite a bit of money if you go into a grocery store blindly looking for healthy foods. I didn’t see this until further down the road.

Now, for my last point. You’re not a huge fitness enthusiast? Neither am I! I hate counting calories like bodybuilders do. Greg made it VERY easy to balance out your meals for max effectiveness. The beginning of the book gives some priceless tips on general health, supplements, meal timing, what to eat more of and what to eat less of, etc. So even if you do not plan on following the diet like I did, the tips and recipes are worth it alone. I passed the book on to a fellow fireman because of his high cholesterol. Withing something like two months, he was a cardio machine. He did not follow the diet like I did, so the results were not as dramatic, but they were still awesome. Now I have the entire firehouse stealing recipes for our dinner from the Muscle Chow book. Trust me, that says a lot!

In closing, what do you have to lose? The book is inexpensive and if you have trouble with affording the ingredients, just save for a while and you will see it was worth it in the long run with all the stuff you learn. Especially if you don’t know the 1st thing about cooking. Try it and stick with it. You’ll see what I saw.