Chubster: A Hipster’s Guide to Losing Weight While Staying Cool
Release date: 2012 / 240 pages
Synopsis(from Amazon): ARE YOUR SKINNY JEANS STARTING TO FEEL A LITTLE SNUG? You don’t have the right clothes for the gym. You don’t do protein powders, wonder berries, or green tea. The idea of going without beer makes you weak in the knees. But there’s no denying you are one. fat. hipster. Lucky for you, Martin Cizmar has come up with the least awful diet plan of all time. The Chubster way. It revolves around calorie counting (deal with it) and enjoyable undercover exercise (urban hiking and gum chewing). Martin gives you the tools to become a self-sufficient weight-loss machine capable of functioning in any environment. From frozen dinners and drive-through menus, ethnic eating to microbrews, he’ll point you to the responsible choice, steer you clear of the real diet killers, and dispel some of the myths giving you that tire around your waist. Like: That Stella you’re holding? It has more calories than Guinness. Dieting is never fun, but with Chubster, weight loss doesn’t have to cramp your style.
Review: In a market currently dominated by Andrew Weil and Micheal Pollan, whose diet advice consists of “Eat Food. Mostly Plants. Not too much,” Martin Cizmar’s Chubster is a “how to” guide for counting those calories most often consumed by the young and hip. Cizmar, inspired to lose 100 pounds before meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time, is unhampered by concerns regarding GMO crops, organic produce, free-range chicken, or grass-fed beef. Cizmar by-passes the morality of food and simply explains how to most easily and efficiently take in fewer calories than are burned — whether those calories are from a diner or fast food establishment. (Since, after all, this is truly the only way to lose weight).
Calorie-counting is covered in helpful depth — from which apps may be most accurate to what type of record-keeping might fit certain personalities (from the Music Snob Hipster who uses “a simple app for your out-of-date cell phone” to the Artsy Fashionista Hipster who might prefer a “vintage electronic organizer… an old 32kb Casio” perhaps).
He debunks many popular theories — that fast food is making us fat to spicy foods and lifting weights rev up metabolism — and simply insists on eating fewer calories while feeling as satiated as possible. He is also a realist and therefore includes an analysis of which frozen and fast foods he believes are most delicious, as well as those he considers “awful.”
Cizmar is chatty and witty throughout and readers will know within a few pages whether or not they are his intended audience. In many respects, Chubster is refreshing: readers who hope to lose weight, yet remaining “cool” is paramount, will find this quite helpful, as will those readers for whom health is more important than calories — still a good reminder that while quinoa or avocados may be the path to health, low-cal they are not.
Thank you to Shelf Awareness for allowing me to review this work!
Interested in winning a free copy? Just leave me a comment below!
Sounds like my kind of book. Would love to win it!
Ah yes — sounds like my kind of thinking about dieting.
Would love to lose weight the hipster way…
This book sounds great- i’d love the chance to win it!
I would love to win a copy!
Especially looking forward to reading that part about frozen foods, the only frozen foods I like are Zippy’s corn chowder.
An excellent book which would be helpful and interesting. Many thanks.
My skinny jeans are definitely feeling fat. Help!
Just what this chubster needs
Anything that deals with health and weight is always great.