Roar

ROAR: How to Match Your Food and Fitness to Your Unique Female Physiology for Optimum Performance, Great Health, and a Strong, Lean Body for Life by Stacy Sims
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was okay.

Main strength: Women are not little men, and training like little men does our body a disservice. I also like that Sims recommends using real food to meet your energy and hydration needs. I think this is wise advice.

I learned two things from this book:

1. A woman’s performance can be impacted by hormones (aka where she is in her cycle). Seems like a no brainer, but not something I had really read much about. In fact, I would have thought performance would be worse during the actual menstrual cycle, but she lays out the evidence for why this is not the case.

2. As women age, changes in their hormones impact how their body burns certain fuel. Again, makes sense and actually good to know. I'll be 49 in a few months, and I do feel as if my approach to training and diet has had to change.

Weakness of this book:

I felt as if beyond the two things I learned not much else was there. Above a few generalizations about hormones, by her own accounting, each athlete has specific needs, and the only way to fully understand what they need is to get tested and then use the results of those tests to tweak what they are doing.

I also don't agree with some of her dietary advice, which goes against other stuff I've read. For example, I think she shortchanges intermittent fasting. I've actually read several books on TRE which is a form of intermittent fasting that has been shown to have many health benefits. I personally have started a 8 hour window of eating with a tremendous amount of success. I'm not participating in an ironman, but I do train regularly. In fact, I think as a woman who is getting very close to menopause, it has helped me beyond expectations. I've never been leaner, stronger, or slept better with less overall effort. So there you go.

So, yeah. It was okay.