The Muscle and Strength Pyramid: Nutrition

This is an excellent book on nutrition. It covers everything you need to know. It shows you how to plan for weight gain, weight loss and maintenance. It cuts through all the hype, and isn’t connected to a commercial supplement company where you may not get an unbiased view. It shows that the authors know what they are talking about. The book is not a purchase but an investment in your health and knowledge. I use it for bodybuilding, but it fits all sports.

This book as the the Training book is excellent in it’s clear, evidence based approach to help you build and understand the concepts from most important to less important things. It’s really like holding someone in hand who teaches you what you should do, why you should do that and what you can except from it. The nutrition part has always been hard for me and I have tried to find and use some ”quick fixes” during the years and thus avoiding to look on it as a whole big picture. I’m confident that this book will allow me to gain the knowledge and confidence that I can be my own master and be able to make adjustments in my thinking as well in what I put in my mouth. There is a lot of information and as non native English it’s sometimes takes me time and effort to read and understand the concepts. And as someone who hoped that nutrition would be the ”easy” part to get and apply, I was really surprised with the amount and detail of information. I guess that it will take a loooong time to feel that you get it all and understand it. So, make sure that you purchase this book, and even better, together with the Training book and you will for sure be able to take your understanding to a whole new level. Thank you for these amazing books!!!

I've followed both Eric Helms and Andy Morgan for a good few years now - and both for the same reason; their masterful way of simplifying the science of nutrition (and training) and delivering it in an 'easily digestible' way! I remember thinking it was cool that Andy (via Ripped Body) used Eric's pyramids as an example on the hierarchy of importance on his site, but put his own unique and useful spin on it....then, when this led to them collaborating on the book, I was super stoked! These guys, along with Andrea are a triple threat; dropping serious science on all y'all. This book does a fantastic job of demystifying the mythology around macros (and nutrition in general) and presenting the often (simple) scientific approach that works! There's also some great insight into dieting for extreme leanness / stage - something for all coaches and, even trainees, looking to ensure they're following the best practice :-) Cheers! JK - The JK Way

I have followed the work of Eric Helms and Andy Morgan for a while now, so I knew the quality and clarity of content to expect from The Nutrition & Strength Pyramids, and I am not disappointed. What I did not expect, and am blown away by, is just how comprehensive these books are. Not only do they breakdown the concepts into clear and understandable chapters, but it is presented in a way where each section builds on the last, so your knowledge and understanding grows as the book progresses. The Nutrition Pyramid (this one) starts with the basic foundations of nutrition, before delving further into details on nutrition topics and areas such as Supplements and Nutrient Timing. The book then provides guidance on tailoring nutrition to specific scenarios such as Body Building and Power Lifting. The way the book is structured allows the content within to be valuable to both the general population and athletes. I cannot recommend this book enough if you want to gain an understanding of the principles of Nutrition and how to apply them.

Great book. Goes through everything you need to know in regards to nutrition, whether your goal is fat loss or muscle gain. I've been training and dieting for a number of years so feel like I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do to get the results I want. However this book has still added some great information that will no doubt help me in my future fat loss periods and muscle gain periods. This book is for the everyday lifter and also competitive bodybuilders / physique athletes / powerlifters etc. Followed Eric Helms and 3DMJ for a bit now and always find their work informative. Going to purchase the training book in this series too.

A very useful book full of great information!

Excellent; using a pyramid to lay the concepts methodically in order of importance, this book sets out everything you need to consider when setting up your nutrition, whether you are looking to cut weight, or gain muscle, and how to transition between these goals. This book is easy and enjoyable to read, and concisely covers what really matters when it comes to nutrition. A great companion to the training book.

You can tell Eric knows his stuff but his writing style is very difficult to follow, it reads like he can’t quite get down everything he wants to in concise sentences. Some points are very interesting but it feels more like he’s just writing down mad thoughts that are rushing through his head constantly, he could do with someone to proof read it. As another reviewer has mentioned, I’ve ended up putting a few points into AI as I’m struggling to understand what seem like conflicting information, at times. He’ll make one point and then back to back, the next point will basically sound like completely the opposite information.

Just finished reading this (and the Muscle & Strength - Training) books and can say they are absolutely excellent!! You see, I'm in a little different position than many people starting out - I'm mid-50s, coming from 16 years of sitting on my ass in front of a computer (engineering position) that I allowed to wreck my posture and conditioning, and am working to reverse the damage I allowed. In short, if I was going to reverse all this crap I let happen I was going to need help in 2 areas, Strength and Nutrition. Let's talk about the Nutrition (you can read my Training review under that product). I love eating!!!! And thankfully I love cooking too...because boy do I love eating!! I think you get that picture ;) I actually don't eat too bad. I'm not a junk fooder (yeah, I made that word up) and mostly good quality food. Actual food, not processed crap simply referred to as food at the stores. 90+% of the time it's home made meals from raw ingredients and rarely go out to eat at restaurants where there are days worth of sodium, sugar, and/or fat in one simple meal. But for a couple decades now, I slowly gained body fat to an unnecessary level (~25% at my worst a couple years ago). At 5'11" I got up to about 200lbs with weak muscles, you might think "not bad" but I'm active and that only served to hold me back from being as active as I like to be. Through strength training I got myself down to about 185lbs with about 21% BF. Yes, I suspect I lost a little muscle mass but here's where the information I got from Andy's site (RippedBody.com) comes in. I wasn't eating nearly enough protein for the approach I was taking to fix myself. Remember, I love food! But I thought I needed more veggies and fruits and oatmeal, and yogurt and..Bah...I was eating more than enough of that daily already, in fact, I was eating way too much of them! I neglected protein in favor of all the yummy stuff, carbs and fat! I knew from Andy's site that this book (ebook only up until a couple weeks ago) would have more detail, and it sure does. The additional information I got from this, just like the Training book, is just what I need to end the constant doubting if I was doing this right. I am all of 5'11" 166lbs at about 17.3%BF (Navy measure). I know I've lost additional muscle mass but I can see I was dieting a little too aggressively. Thanks to the way the additional info is conveyed in this book, I'm thankful to end that and get back to eating more before I wrecked myself going too far. Daily tracking (weighing myself and macro/calorie documenting), weekly averaging, combined with monthly measurements are showing my body is responding positively just the way Eric, Andy, and Andrea's information contained in these 2 books are supposed to. I now have the understanding to calm my impatience to "get this over with fast" and progress efficiently. I'm still impatient but knowledge is now keeping me from acting on it! I'm paraphrasing but the comment for people like me (non-competitor) questioning "...why we'd subject ourselves to a dieting extreme if we weren't preparing for a competition..." was gold! Just what I needed to hear! The bottom line with this book: It won't disappoint!

I’ve never come across a resource like it. Its genius is in how it manages to be both accessible and well-referenced at the same time. I thought I knew a lot about nutrition before, but a lot of this information was new to me. For example, I had previously thought DXA was the gold standard for bodyfat measurements. I had no idea the margin for error was around 10%. This is just one of many things I learnt from this book. I loved the suggestion to eat in maintenance calories for the first 6 months of your lifting career, or as long as you’re enjoying ‘newbie gains’. From there, you would have a better foundation from which to cut or bulk. This advice resonated with me because it was a live issue I was dealing with. This book helped me to resolve many of the concerns I had around food, supplements, bodyfat tracking etc. Where Instagram posts seem to bring confusion, this book brings clarity. I found the information about carb cycling/calorie cycling and refeeds to be particularly insightful. In theory, carb cycling sounds great, but as Helms points out; recovery and adaptations are occurring on our non-training days, so it makes no sense to be in a deficit then. Further to this, our energy expenditure on training and non-training days is only a difference of 200-400 calories, so not enough to justify huge swings in carb/calorie intake. While worthy of consideration, we don’t ‘know’ these strategies work and even if we had more data, individual responses vary. I expect I’ll always come back to this book for reference. It condenses the science, all we know about nutrition at this point in time; and packages it all up in one highly readable book. I have the deepest respect for Eric Helms and 3DMJ for this work, and I’m grateful to have found it. I’d definitely purchase updated editions.

El libro me encantó porque va directo al grano, no se anda con rodeos y te enseña las bases de la nutrición no solo para aficionados si no también para profesionales que se dediquen al fisicoculturismo, aparte es súper fácil de entender y no solo te dice que hacer pero también porque hacerlo ya que dice cómo es que reacciona el cuerpo a diferentes comidas

This book is amazing. Eric Helms and his co-authors are among the best experts when concerning fitness, bodybuilding and sport nutrition. Concepts are clearly explained, but the most important thing is that Eric Helm tells you the truth about sport nutrition and lays out the fundamental principles. If you seriously want to know more about sport nutrition, make yourself a gift and buy this book. You won't regret it!

Eric Helms and co-authors shared his knowledge and experience of years of coaching athletes e non-competing individuals in order to achieve their goals. This knowledge would save us years of trial and error and allow us to focus in the variables of nutrition that really matters! This book is beyond my expectations and made me really understand how can I progress and do in different scenarios. Congratulations to authors for this AMAZING book, we are changing lifes for better 🙂 I’m very grateful for this knowledge!