Herman Pontzer PhD

One of the best books related to fitness and health (in a broad category). I picked it up because of Keith Rabois' recco.

Like my favorite book Sapiens, it digs deep into the evolution of human beings from apes and very beautifully sets the context. Very crisply articulates about the importance of metabolism and demystifies a lot. My key takeaway from this book are these two points:

1. Exercise doesn’t change the number of calories you burn each day, but it does change how you spend them—and that makes all the difference.
2. Exercise won’t keep you thin, but it will keep you alive.

It took sometime for me to wrap my head around the fact that an Olympic athlete and a normal person's "daily energy expenditure" is more or less the same. Herman Pontzer writes so good on this and cites many research about metabolism. So the exercise does nothing to weight loss but necessary for living a vital life.

But the most tough pill to digest is the take on diet. Herman argues that keto, low-fat, vegan all diets are just calories, YMMV based on the total calorie count. This is hard to accept for me as I was influeneced a lot by Gary Taubes' school of thought, keto and low-carb. But Herman has engaged with Gary on keto and explains why it works for some and how to think about food and diet in a wholesome manner.

This is truly a keystone book for me that has given a new lens to look at fitness, diet and exercise. Fantastic read. Highly recommend it.… (más)