Any opinions of John Berardi???

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imported_etothepii

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He has free access to a lot of articles on his web site, many about diet and nutrition. He has a PHD, and experience training athletes, but still, it's hard to know who to trust, especially on the internet. Anyone have any insights on the guy?
 
Haha. Yeah, I've got a few opinions about that con artist. I'll keep them to myself for now though.
 
He seems to have decent credentials. His methods are a little odd though. I think following his plan would be difficult, at best, leading to pretty high drop out rates. Given that, how good IS the plan anyway?

I'd love to hear what others have to say too.
 
i read a bit of his stuff a few yrs ago and to be honest i was 50/50 on most of what he wrote. by that i mean i liked some of the "big picture" bullet points he was trying to get across.....

massive eating is good read for those who cant understand why they cant gain.
importance of good fats, fruits and vegis, post w/o nutrition etc.

i cant say i really went along with some of his more detailed bullet points....

calorie is a calorie (conflicting info out there on this one) carbs w/fat vs carbs w/pro, cal amounts needed to cut etc, etc.

bottom line for me was it was good to reinforce some of the other stuff i was reading (his points i said i liked) but i couldnt buy into it all or found it not realistic for me.

in all honesty though i have not kept up on his stuff over the past yr or so.
 
hes a good guy !
....bluejacket he is not saying a calorie is a calorie , he ios saying a calorie is not a calorie !!!!

berardi is going the healthy way in his descriptions, no fast carbohydrates, no milk, many many many fruits and so on and so on....

but in my opinion he is right at the most points ! very good articles out there.... but for bulking we dont must see it too much like he sees the points with milk and fat and so on. but he is right anyway....

and the thing with
"carbs w/fat vs carbs w/pro" is surely right what he says !
but for us hobby bodybuilders and people with "good genetics" we shouldn`t see this too close...
and the articles are nice to read !
 
Actually, Berardi is full of crap on a lot of stuff. Yeah, he's right on some things, but he's not right on the "calorie is not a calorie" debate.

He sites a study to support his theory, and quotes parts of that study in a misleading way. Funny thing is, the study concluded that a calorie IS a calorie, which is totally contrary to what he was saying, and the opposite of what he said the study said.

He is a liar. I have no respect for someone who has to lie to try and support their theories and arguments.
 
Because milk was spawned by Satan. Apparently all people are at least somewhat lactose intolerant. I never knew that. I always figured milk was fine when I was drinking a gallon a day without any problems. It must have been a fluke though because they have all kinds of evidence proving that milk is the worst thing for you. You may as well start breathing in radon daily instead, it would be slightly better for you than drinking milk.

After reading about that, I told the wife that the next kid we have has to be put on foods right away, since milk is evil and will probably make him get cancer by the age of 2 or something. I'm sure the baby will cry about it and probably pretend to get sick, but milk is obviously horrible and I won't be having my kids touching any of that stuff.
 
The last 3 years of experimentation on my own body with nutrition, huge fat loss, some muscle gain could have been avoided if I'd read his articles first. I'd have just done it and had good results from the beginning.

The things he says are the things I've discovered for myself, about myself. Especailly the P/C, P/F, no C/F stuff.

Recently I've been doing as suggested in "massive eating", combined that with my new HST workouts and have gained 20lbs in the last month. 20 pounds of FFM. My BF went down. Of course I do know that it's mostly water - but muscle cells full of water are stronger and bigger than dried out muscle cells starving for nutrients that they aren't getting.

That's how things have worked for me. Each body and metabolism is different though. Each person has to find out for themselves if what he writes is helpful for them or garbage for them.
 
<div>
(vagrant @ Aug. 27 2006,12:45)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Recently I've been doing as suggested in &quot;massive eating&quot;, combined that with my new HST workouts and have gained 20lbs in the last month.  20 pounds of FFM.  My BF went down.  Of course I do know that it's mostly water - but muscle cells full of water are stronger and bigger than dried out muscle cells starving for nutrients that they aren't getting.</div>
20 Lbs in a month, all Fat Free mass?

Not disputing your results I just find that a little atypical.
 
Well, 20 lbs of lean mass gain in a month seems about in line with some of Berardi's more unrealistic claims. Something tells me someone's measurements are a bit off.
 
My cutting diet was made around berardi's conclusions. Just recently i stopped paying attention to the P/F, C/P, and no C/F. I have seen no difference at all.

I never worried about that pH stuff to begin with though. If you are getting enough fruits and veggies you are more than likely keeping your pH balance for whatever its worth.

The rest seems to be all the basic stuff that everyone recommends without the extra BS.
 
<div>
(Dan Moore @ Aug. 27 2006,13:40)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE"><div>
(vagrant @ Aug. 27 2006,12:45)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Recently I've been doing as suggested in &quot;massive eating&quot;, combined that with my new HST workouts and have gained 20lbs in the last month.  20 pounds of FFM.  My BF went down.  Of course I do know that it's mostly water - but muscle cells full of water are stronger and bigger than dried out muscle cells starving for nutrients that they aren't getting.</div>
20 Lbs in a month, all Fat Free mass?

Not disputing your results I just find that a little atypical.</div>
Mostly water I'm sure, following injury, pneumonia, dehydration, chronic undereating, severe carb depletion (for a month where I lost 15lbs I could eat almost nothing and lived only on protein shakes), very low testosterone level, pituitary dysfunction, thyroid labs were screwy, and still training at my maximum ability every day...

Yeah, 173 to 196 then peed off enough to be down to 193.6 last doctor visit.  Lots of corrective medications involved, but I believe the biggest factor was actually eating enough - and the calculations I got from berardi's calculator matched almost exactly what my doc put me on.  The test hadn't even had time to start working yet when I was 196.  It seems to be working now...but sadly, I've lost weight since then - almost 3lbs.

However, like I said - water in the muscle cell is still weight, it still looks better than dessication (what do you think we take creatine for?)

Oh yeah, I find them a lot atypical - after 3 years of training very hard, I've gained very little muscle. I did lose a ton of fat (started as 300pounds of lard).

The measurements are probably accurate because they were taken in my physician's office by my physician...the one that is guiding me in all this and prescribing my meds, endless lab tests, and all that goes along with the kinds of therapy I'm on.
 
<div>
(vagrant @ Aug. 27 2006,23:00)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">The measurements are probably accurate because they were taken in my physician's office by my physician...the one that is guiding me in all this and prescribing my meds, endless lab tests, and all that goes along with the kinds of therapy I'm on.</div>

Well special circumstances then I would say.  But whatever works for your works for you.  I guess what I've noticed about all these diet gurus is that inevitably a person moving from a diet with no structure or control to one with structure and control and sound fundamentals, even if the total diet plan contains some more odd theories, will have good results. Not a comment on you or your previous diet Vagrant, obviously you were dealing with a lot at the time. Just making a general statement. Every diet switch seems to leave people 'feeling better' for a couple weeks and, if their original diet is anything like the typical American's, will usually give some positive results
 
Good points xharax.

My diet for the last 3 years has actually been pretty good - it was before that when it was atrocious.

I control my carbs when I need to, I eat extra carbs when I need to. More fat if the body is calling for it, less if it isn't.

My only problem with nutrition until very recently was simply - not enough of it. I needed 4K/day and was barely getting 3.

There is no way that the changes of recent weeks will be replicated in the rest of the HST cycle (I'm certainly not going to ever intentionally dehydrate myself so I can eat carbs and pick up some water). Or even over a year of HST cycles. I've been at this for a while now, I know how hard it is to gain muscle.

But, back on the topic of Berardi, his basic information is sound. Some of it may seem a bit off the wall and if it isn't applicable to someone - they should just not follow it.

About the evils of milk - I'm taking in 6 cups a day right now. I just used Berardi's calcs to get my caloric need sorted out. I had already learned on my own how I responded to P+C and P+F, and how I responded very badly to C+F. So based on my experience with my own body - his information is sound. Of course if you tried to say, &quot;he's the diet god&quot; and make everyone eat his way, there would be some with good results, some scrawny folks, and some new fatasses from it.
 
I read in a few articles that you cannot control your blood acidity or basicity through food. Food can only effect the acidity or basicity of your urine. Don't know who is right on that one

And I thought the reason Berardi didn't like milk was that it was too much carbs
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I followed some of Berardi's stuff, really didn't work that well.

Then I just started counting calories, Eating very low carb, high protein throughout the week and carbing up once every 2 weeks. The fat has been melting since and my strength has increased

Perhaps Berardi is making things more complicated then needed
 
Berardi just has some retarded theories. Like increasing calorie intake to lose fat. I think we all know that metabolism slows while dieting, so a refeed here and there, or maybe even a week or two at maintenance is a good idea to get the metabolism back up, but his ideas that someone will lose more fat by eating over maintenance is just retarded. You have to create a calorie deficit to lose weight - there is no way around that. It doesn't matter if you create the deficit through diet or exercise, but the deficit must exist or else your body has no reason to start dropping weight.

He likes to site studies to back up his claims, when the studies are either inapplicable or don't even support his claims. Then when you ask for proof of some of his statements, he says &quot;science doesn't know everything, my results speak for themselves&quot; yeah too bad no one can replicate his results. Hm... maybe because he is either exaggerating his results or leaving out important pertinent information about how he achieved those results?

Seriously, if other people follow his stuff to the letter and can't replicate his results, I think that says something. Or maybe they just weren't using enough of his Surge crap, and that's why they didn't get the results??

Whatever.

I also really hate the fact that he always has to talk about his credentials, like he has a self-esteem issue and must constantly assert himself to feel like he is worth anything. I really don't know why everyone is slobbering over this guy so much. He isn't even saying anything revolutionary (or correct)...
 
since we are on the berardi topic... picked up this book called scrawny to brawny about a year ago, training program is geared more of an athletic program not bbing. aside from that, the coauthor was berardi and he threw in the P+C, P+F meals vegetables, fruit, balancing ph. i didn't know how to eat right until i picked up this book along with precision nutrition which i shouldn't have paid what i did for it. anyway being an ecto, its hard to put on mass, find out what works best for your bodytype and go form there.
 
I did a bunch of searching on pub med about the C+F connection. Apparently it is true for saturated fats only. Saturated fats and carbs do tend to gravitate towards fat storage whereas unsaturated fats and carbs tend to lodge in muscle glycogen.

There were several studies that showed this relationship. It makes sense - if you eat a bunch of ice cream or bread &amp; butter you will probably put on fat. People who follow his plan will lose weight through healthier eating, not necessarily through some special combination.

The piece missing is individual reaction to carbs. Not everybody has a high insulin spike, especially if they are of normal weight and participate in an exercise program. But, those people probably won't shell out the $$ for Berardi's program.
 
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