In the book, Better Than Steroids, Dr. Warren Willey proposes that a NATURAL trainer can achieve superior results to a steroid user IF the natural trainer follows a proper nutrition and training program.

In this article I will let you know if the doctor gives birth or if this book does not live up to expectations.

Dr. Wiley says that part of the reason steroid users get such good results is because they tend to eat better and train harder while taking steroids. On page 21 it states …

“I’m going to show you how to mimic anabolic steroids using diet and exercise!”

You then mention a success story from one of these clients. No names are given, and before and after images are presented. The client simply appears as “LD”

In just 12 weeks, the LD went from 182 pounds at 16.1% body fat to 177 pounds at 5.5% body fat. Which means that LD not only lost 19.56 pounds of fat, he also gained 14.57 pounds of muscle AT THE SAME TIME!

Here’s the catch: Dr. Wiley says LD was 60 at the time of this study and that he has had other clients gain 30 pounds of lean muscle WHILE losing 60 pounds of fat following the same principles.

Now, at this point, I smell something funny. Smells like Bull Sh * t.

But let’s go on. Doc goes on to talk about the importance of water and that food can be used as a drug. I liked this part of the book because all too often we forget how powerful food can be. Food can be used to increase or decrease insulin, just like medicine. And by scheduling your food intake – eating high carb foods around the time of your workout and cutting back on carbs for the rest of the day – you can take advantage of the drug-like qualities of foods. Good things here.

Then Willey talks about how to calculate the recommended daily calorie intake and even offers 4 different meal plans. The meal plans are as follows:

Isocaloric – Divide your daily caloric intake evenly between fat, carbohydrates, and protein.

Keto Run – Eat Ultra Low Carbs for 7-14 days at a time.

The Modified Carb Drop – Do a Keto Run, Then Follow Up with a Carb Load.

The Zig Zag: Eat a lot of calories one day, then low calories the next.

Overall nothing groundbreaking here. In fact, I saw many similarities between these recommendations and Dan Duchaine’s recommendations in his book Underground BodyOpus. They both talk about using an isocaloric approach at first, then a super low carb diet when weight loss stalls, and then adding carbs over the weekend to allow you to gain muscle while shedding fat.

The following chapters cover meals before and after training.

Then we come to Chapter 12: Glycogen Super Compensation.

For me, this is where the book falls apart.

Willey begins with the following case study detailing the “CV” experiences (again, full name and photos not shown).

CV started at 200 pounds and 8.9% body fat. He then did 10 days of a super low carb diet followed by 48 hours of a high carb diet.

He ended up weighing 212 pounds and 8.0% body fat. On the surface, this looks impressive. And Dr. Warren Willey exclaims …

“There are no typos in the table above! CV gained 12.8 pounds of muscle in a 48 hour load and actually lost some body fat!”

But this is completely wrong. He did not gain 12.8 pounds of muscle. It only has water. Because that’s what happens when you slash carbs and then flood your system with a high dose of carbs – your body ends up retaining extra water.

And that’s okay, many times this is a good thing. But you can’t confuse retaining more water with building muscle. Willey is a doctor; you should understand the difference between muscle and swelling.

But apparently it doesn’t because it continues to list even more examples of successful clients. In each case, it is clear what happens: the client ends up retaining excess water for a couple of days and Willey regards this as “muscle gain.”

But is not. You don’t gain 12 pounds of muscle in two days. No one does. Not even steroid users.

From there, the rest of the book offers some bodybuilding routines that sound like something out of a Joe Weider magazine: giant sets, super sets, 21, pre-escape training, etc.

Oddly enough, this style of bodybuilding training generally works better for steroid users than natural trainers.

Overall, the book doesn’t deliver on its main promise: Willey shows that you can retain extra water for a few days by loading carbs, but it doesn’t show that its strategies can help you gain muscle, and it certainly fails to show that these strategies can give up. better results than steroids.

So I would save your money and skip this book. If you’d like to learn more about carb loading and glycogen supercompensation, look for a copy of Underground Bodyopus by Dan Duchaine. The book is now 15 years old, but Duchaine does a better job of outlining the principles behind glycogen supercompensation.