Mark's Daily Apple

Raising Your Kids on Primal Foods (plus Mealtime Strategies for Picky Eaters)

2013-05-23T08:15:54Z

The fact is, feeding children is never for the faint of heart or stomach. It’s an entirely different solar system when it comes to dining experience – the noise, the spills, the frantic pattern of go-get-this, can-you-help-me, cut everyone’s food until your own is stone cold, precise timing of chewing to complement your expected participation in knock-knock jokes – you get it. In the years my children were small, Carrie and I would relish the times when we were able to go out to dinner alone or when family members took the kids and we had a solo meal at home. The silence and ability to eat – uninterrupted – at a normal pace were enough to make us ecstatic. I think most of the time we didn’t even talk – not a word, and we each understood exactly why.

I think it’s safe to say this mismatch in preferred ambience often coincides with a mismatch in tastes. While the Primal Blueprint can be plenty child-friendly, in many cases it’s a trickier proposition for the small set, particularly if they’re used to conventional fare. Although we’d all, I’m sure, like the same perfectly Primal family affair, a lot of us don’t end up there. As hard core as we might be, sometimes the kids just aren’t so much.

You’re Primal. Maybe even your spouse is Primal (or close enough). It’s not that you haven’t tried. You’ve spent weeks – maybe months trying to transition your child to the Primal eating plan. For some, maybe it’s recurring cycles of effort over the course of years! You’ve read the books and the boards for ideas. You’ve laid out carefully crafted menus, collected all the ingredients, and experimented with an insane number of recipes. You’ve perused and “pinned” hundreds of ways to manipulate the plate presentation. You buy mini-swords, doilies, and cocktail toothpicks in bulk. Martha Stewart would be proud. Your kids, however – meh.

Sometimes it’s the taste. Other times it’s the texture. For some, it’s just the sheer, staggering force of habit. They know what they like, and that’s it. Research confirms what parents have observed: a child’s familiarity with a food determines how full he’ll feel as a result of eating it. Familiar foods are just more satisfying to kids. After a while, even the biggest believers get worn down if they’re trying to instill a significant shift in their children’s diet. With hundreds of dollars of food thrown away and dozens of cooking hours gone, it’s hard to keep justifying the misery.

I know folks – good, healthy, well-intentioned people who are strongly committed to eating Primal – but feed their kids SAD. They themselves wouldn’t touch the Cheerios or Gold Fish crackers their kids are snacking on, but there’s the paradox. It boggles the mind, sure. Still, having had kids, I get it. Having been worn down by the fatigue and the arguments and the cajoling, fed up with the wasted time and money, they finally just throw up their hands. Though perhaps bothered by guilt in certain moments, over time they learn to justify it in their minds – as we all justify many things in life. The kids are so young, they tell themselves, their bodies will burn it off. They don’t see any obvious differences in behavior or general health. They give them a multivitamin. Maybe they look at the way they ate growing up and tell themselves, “If I survived that, my kids can too.” They’ve given up the internal conflict.

However much I identify with the fatigue and frustration – and respect parents’ needs to make independent compromises based on their given situations, the actual science is less understanding. Research suggests early nutrition impacts cognitive functioning in the adult years and even by the age of eight appears to reduce IQ. In terms of overall health, we know how nutrition sets us up for epigenetic changes – positive or negative. We know how even the roots of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity can begin in childhood.

In other words, good nutrition matters even more to them than it does to us. Though we might be motivated to stave off mortality or aging – i.e. maintain what we have longer, their bodies’ and brains’ very ability to reach their basic potential is on the line. What they eat today will determine what they’re capable of for the rest of their lives. Likewise, the habits they begin early on can cement pretty quickly. The older they are, the more the window closes on making dramatic change in diet and exercise. Unfortunately, there’s no way to sugar coat that point.

I don’t mean to throw those points out there in the interest of inciting a massive guilt trip. I didn’t feed my kids 100% perfectly all the time. It’s not passing judgment, but it is about passing on information. Doing so, with support and strategies, can help us individually brainstorm and prioritize. The fact is, I think there’s major stress in our culture – now more than ever – to be the perfect parent in dozens of ways that weren’t even on the radar screen when most of us were growing up. I’m sure we could go on for days talking about all the things we used to do that we’d never let our kids try today (e.g. lay on the floor during car trips, bike across town alone, etc.). I’d say the vast majority of today’s pushes toward perfection should be chucked, repudiated, scorned and named the worthless wastes of time and energy (and often hindrances to personal development) that they are. Nonetheless, one of the few genuine priorities worth having, I think, is nutrition. When it comes to kids’ food, fighting the good fight matters – as early and as often as you can.

Creating Strategic Versions/Substitutions

Many people find focusing on strategic substitutions allows them to preserve their sanity while making sure their kids are fed decently. Grass-fed organic hot dogs, sans buns can win over most kids. Homemade jerky or nut butter offers a healthier version of less desirous packaged foods. Parents learn to make gluten free versions of chicken fingers. They make their own sweet potato fries. They figure out how to make better fish sticks. They bake root veggie chips with healthier oil options and sea salt. I can’t tell you how many parents I’ve heard from already – on the boards and in emails – who say Primal Cravings has been a godsend (their words) for this very reason. The recipes look like food their kids would recognize and want to eat. There’s a mind to texture and simplicity that will work well with kids’ palates. Most children I know want uncomplicated food.

Using Copious Varieties (or Quantities) of Desired Condiments

There’s the assumption that most kids will eat a lot of things if they can put ketchup on them. Why not? I’d suggest making your own, but why limit it? Kids love the concept of dips and sauces, and I think I’ve got a good book somewhere for that, too.

Planting Forbidden Fruit

This defies reason, but sometimes the best strategy is to prepare a healthy (but kid-friendly) Primal dish and put it aside, tantalizingly almost – almost out of reach, in a place or position that makes the the child suspect it’s “for the adults” (for guests, even better) or not ready to be brought to the table. There’s something in children’s impish (or reptilian) little brains that makes forbidden food – even when healthy – seem that much more appealing. A friend’s daughter was so anti-meat that she wouldn’t even eat bacon. (Collective gasp.) One day, the husband was cooking a second batch of bacon for dinner and had put the plate with the first on a far counter to keep himself from eating it. His little girl ran in, saw the slightly obscured plate, gleefully grabbed a piece and absconded with it while he teasingly called after her to get back there and help, police. Within 10 minutes, she’d repeated the same move a few times and eaten half the batch. Since then, they’ve used the same technique to get her to eat other meats. For the “harder sells,” they go all out in making the platter look more enticing and forbidden looking (e.g. on the fancy china, in behind one of their wine glasses). Of course, it means she ends up eating most of her dinner on the run instead of at the table (so much for family dinner), but their perspective is this: at least she’s eating well!

Bartering Food for Freedom

This introduces another strategy – one we used with our children. Make certain foods or meals “roaming” approved. In other words, the parent grants freedom to skip sitting at the table if the kid will eat the healthy fare. Lay it out in a fun, festive, or otherwise eye-catching buffet style. Put on music. Teach and practice conventional manners at easier meals.

Some people might cringe at the idea of a toddler run amok and family dinner down the tubes – especially if there are other, older children. It highlights another important point. We all have our personal priorities, our chosen compromises, our sacred cows, our deal breakers as parents. This goes far beyond issues of decorum to the food itself. As I’ve said often, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Getting your kids to eat better isn’t an all or nothing proposition. It’s your call. Maybe you’re a solid no-GMO above all else. Maybe you’re first and foremost anti-gluten or grains. Perhaps your main goal is promoting veggie intake. Whatever goal you commit to, you’re making a positive difference in your children’s health and opening your mind – and theirs – to the idea that food choices matter.

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5 Helpful Analogies for Understanding Complex Health Issues

2013-05-22T05:41:10Z

For millennia, the best teachers have used stories, analogies, and parables to break down complicated concepts into understandable bits that everyone can grasp. Aesop’s fables, the greatest religious texts throughout history, and Plato’s allegory of the cave are some of the most famous, showing us how to live morally, contemplate our existence, and make our way through the dilemmas that comprise everyday life. Today, I’m going to discuss five simple analogies that can help you understand five complex health topics a bit better, or perhaps be able to introduce them to the people (often skeptical or less-than-scientifically-inclined friends and relatives) around you who could use the lesson.

Let’s get right to it:

Insulin as Doorman at a Fat Cell Nightclub

From Kurt Harris’ “Insulin is a doorman at the fat cell nightclub, not a lock on the door“:

The hormones that are influenced by what you eat don’t work by locking the door or closing the nightclub and kicking everyone out. It’s not all or nothing. It’s not a switch. They work by changing the relative ease of entering or leaving the building. So think of fat storage in fat cells the same way. The same way patrons can leave and enter a nightclub simultaneously in opposite directions, fat is constantly being stored and released at the same time – the question is not “on or off” but what is the ratio of the two processes. Insulin is like a bouncer at the door – maybe he lets the prettier young women in, and maybe he tosses some obnoxious drunks. Maybe he is neutral when not many patrons are in the bar, maybe he turns you away if the joint is at capacity. But the door is not ever locked, and people come and go even as the number of drinkers grows and shrinks throughout the evening. And as you can see, other factors besides the doorman or bouncer affect the rate of patrons coming or going (time of day, the band is no good tonight, etc.) just as insulin’s action to promote fat storage is always in the context of other factors.

Although Kurt Harris no longer blogs much (if at all), he’s left a mark on the paleosphere. One post that always stuck with me was “Insulin is a doorman at the fat cell nightclub, not a lock on the door.” In it, he described the nuanced role of insulin in fat loss and deposition, using the analogy of insulin as discerning doorman to a fat cell nightclub. Like a doorman, insulin influences the flow of fat into and from a cell. Like a night club, the fat cell exists in a state of constant flux, with fat – or patrons – leaving and arriving all the time, at the same time. It’s not an on-off switch, where fat is either coming or going – it’s both at once with varying ratios. The doorman is a powerful influence on who goes in and out of the club, but he’s not responsible for all the reasons why patrons might be arriving or leaving. Maybe it’s morning and there’s not much of a demand for drinking. Point is, it’s not all up to the doorman. Insulin’s the same way. It’s a big determinant but not the only factor in fat deposition and loss.

The Crowded Restaurant

From Gary Taubes’ “The Inanity of Overeating”:

Say instead of talking about why fat tissue accumulates too much energy, we want to know why a particular restaurant gets so crowded. Now the energy we’re talking about is contained in entire people rather than just the fat in their fat tissue. Ten people contain so much energy; eleven people contain more, etc.. So what we want to know is why this restaurant is crowded and so over-stuffed with energy (i.e., people) and maybe why some other restaurant down the block has remained relatively empty — lean. If you asked me this question — why did this restaurant get crowded? — and I said, well, the restaurant got crowded (it got overstuffed with energy) because more people entered the restaurant than left it, you’d probably think I was being a wise guy or an idiot. (If I worked for the World Health Organization, I’d tell you that “the fundamental cause of the crowded restaurant is an energy imbalance between people entering on one hand, and people exiting on the other hand.”) Of course, more people entered than left, you’d say. That’s obvious. But why?

Much of the opposition to a Primal/paleo way of eating lies in the misguided assumption that we think calories are immaterial. That you can cram as much food into your mouth, as long as it’s Primal, without gaining weight. I said as much in a recent post, but I still see this misconception pop up, time and time again. At the same time, I see way too many people – even supposed health “experts” – claim that “it’s all about calories,” that “you need to burn more calories than you take in,” that people are fat because “they eat too many calories.” All those statements are technically true. Weight gain and loss does come down to caloric balance. If you want to lose weight, you have to expend more calories than you take in. And eating more calories than you expend can increase body weight. But so what? Who doesn’t agree with those statements? They aren’t telling us anything new. They’re just restating the problem.

To use Taubes’ analogy, a more helpful question is ”Why are a lot of people entering that restaurant as opposed to this restaurant?”, or “Why are a lot of people staying in that crowded restaurant?” And you can’t just say “well, they just are, so there,” because that’s saying the same thing a different way. It’s about as helpful as saying a restaurant is crowded because there are lots of customers, or a kid got taller because he grew several inches, or you got a divorce because you signed the papers. Sure, if you want to be a smug jerk about it, you could say those things and “be right,” but what’s the point? It explains nothing.

I’ve found that using this analogy helps people understand why “eat less” is shoddy, incomplete advice. It’s not “wrong.” It’s just mostly useless. I encourage you to read the full article linked to above if you haven’t already.

LDL: Cars and Passengers

From “How to Interpret Cholesterol Results“:

Measuring the LDL/HDL-C and then making potentially life-changing health decisions based on the number is like counting the number of people riding in vehicles on a freeway to determine the severity of traffic. It’s data, and it might give you a rough approximation of the situation, but it’s not as useful as actually counting the number of vehicles. A reading of 100 could mean you’re dealing with a hundred compact cars, each carrying a single driver, or it could mean you’ve got four buses carrying 25 passengers each. Or it could be a couple buses and the rest cars. You simply don’t know how bad (or good) traffic is until you get a direct measurement of LDL and HDL particle number.

Cholesterol test results are confusing and often troubling. You’ve got a white coated doctor rattling off lifestyle and pharmaceutical prescriptions and scary triple digit numbers foretelling your impending vascular doom, all based on some numbers and acronyms that you don’t actually understand. LDL = bad, HDL = good, according to the lab, but what do they really mean? But isn’t there more to it? I mean, those aren’t just numbers and letters. They represent physiological processes occurring inside your body at this very moment. We vaguely think of cholesterol as a sort-of-fat that just kinda chills out in our blood and every so often gets stuck on or in the arterial walls, or something. You don’t really know. I doubt the doctor really does. What is LDL-C actually measuring? Who knows, most probably think.

The cars and passengers analogy lets those numbers and acronyms mean something. You don’t have to get the biochemistry of it. All you have to do is think of the basic traffic law that more vehicles (LDL particles) means more traffic jams and accidents (hardening of the arteries), all else being equal, and you get the gist of LDL-C versus LDL-P. A reading of 100 could mean you’re dealing with a hundred compact cars, each carrying a single driver, or it could mean you’ve got four buses carrying 25 passengers each. Or it could be a couple buses and the rest cars. You simply don’t know how bad (or good) traffic is until you get a direct measurement of LDL and HDL particle number.

Digging a Hole to Install a Ladder to Fix the Basement Windows

From the post of the same name:

Picture a house with absolutely filthy exterior basement windows, the kind that just barely peek out above ground level. The owner can’t see through the things, and they need a thorough washing. He could grab the bucket and a rag and squat or kneel down to commence cleaning. He could make it easy on himself, but for some bizarre reason, he doesn’t.

Instead, he spends the entire day slaving away with a shovel and a pick axe, hacking at the earth to loosen it and shoveling the loose dirt out. A deep hole appears, about eight feet in depth and wide enough to accommodate him and a ladder. In goes the ladder, and he follows with the wash bucket and rag. Dirty, grimy, sweaty, and disheveled, he ascends the ladder to finally reach the basement windows. He manages to clean them, but his alternate self in a parallel universe – that guy who decided to just kneel down to wash the windows – has clean windows, a killer tan from spending hours at the beach doing pushups and sprints, a couple racks of ribs on the barbecue, and a nice glass of Cab paired with a wedge of French brie. He enjoyed his day, while the ladder enthusiast had to work for hours just to arrive at the same point.

This encapsulates the ultimate goal of Primal living: to do things efficiently, to take shortcuts that don’t shortchange your results. This will give you more free time to do the stuff you truly enjoy, and make you healthier, happier, and more productive. It’s a nice way of saying don’t think you have to engage in hours of miserable cardio every week to get fitter (unless you enjoy it) when you can lift some weights, sprint a bit, and walk a lot and end up just as fit with more free time and less negative health effects. Or, don’t assume you have to agonize over counting calories, weighing yourself every day, and hiring a dietitian to get healthy when focusing on food quality, how you feel and look in a mirror, and trying the basic Primal laws will work better and save you time and effort.

Everyone’s trying to get to the same place, give or take a few details. We all want to be healthy and happy. Why not do it the more efficient way?

What Would You Feed a Lion?

From the PB Fundamentals:

What do you feed a lion?

Meat.

Meat is the obviously correct answer. You would feed the lion raw meat. I think even the most ardent vegan would admit that lions are supposed to eat meat.

Lions hunt and eat animals, and they and their feline ancestors have been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions, even. That’s the key.

The hunting, killing, and raw meat-eating informed the evolution of the lion over many millions of years. The lion’s genetic makeup was shaped by meat-eating.

Humans are animals, too. We may be relative newcomers to this planet, but we’ve been around for a good 200,000 years, and our ancestors have been around for millions of years. And for a good 190,000 years of that, we were hunter-gatherers, living off the land, big game hunters who feasted on plant and animal alike. If you accept that the biology of animals, like lions, functions best on ancestral, evolutionary diets, wouldn’t the same likely be true for humans?

This is a quick, easy way to get people to understand what this Primal thing is all about, on a gut level. People tend to think of animals as, well, animals. Natural beings subject to the objective laws of nature, passive creatures whisked along a path determined by outside forces. Meanwhile, humans are different. We’re animals, sure, but people don’t think of themselves as animals. We’re people. We’re above nature. We impose ourselves on nature. We create and shape our reality.

The lion analogy bridges that gap. People intellectually know that humans are animals, they just never think in those terms. If you get them to start thinking in those terms, you almost see thought bubbles form, lightbulbs go off. “Huh, that’s true. We technically are animals. If lions do best eating the types of foods they evolved eating, why not humans? Hey, what did humans evolve eating, anyway? And what about other stuff – I mean, I bet lions don’t like being cooped up in a tiny cage at the zoo. They’re probably happier out on the African plains…” You can pretty much set them up and let them go and watch the evolution of their notion of a healthy human environment unfold right before you. It’s pretty cool to watch.

That’s it for today. Do you find these analogies helpful? Do you have any to add to the list? If so, hit me up in the comment board!

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Mental Toughness Training in the Primal World

2013-05-20T08:35:57Z

This is a guest post from Jack Yee. Jack’s Primal Blueprint Real Life Story “Free at 50” was published a few weeks ago here on Mark’s Daily Apple. In this article, Jack shares his four strategies for conquering intense workouts, and becoming both physically and mentally stronger as a result. Enter Jack…

When I first made the transition from conventional bodybuilding training to full body primal workouts, I quickly realized it was one of the best things I ever did. I used to look forward to doing the primal workout of the week or the contest WODs that were sent in by some of you. There was something so liberating about pounding a sledgehammer, crawling on grass, or throwing a stone and running as if I was being chased by a saber-tooth predator (all while being outside soaking in some much needed vitamin D). The primal workouts were fun, but very difficult to get through due to the high intensity that each workout demands. Many times, I wanted to quit, but I didn’t. As a result of this training – along with the Primal eating plan – I was able to get in the best shape of my life. But, something unexpected also changed in me; I became mentally tougher.

Now whenever I coach an athlete or train a client I tell them my first priority is to get them mentally tougher. High intensity training will teach your mind how to push your body to do amazing things. The byproduct of mental toughness training is having a better body; by focusing on the mind first, the aesthetics will follow.

More importantly, I teach my clients how a strong mind will improve their overall quality of life by teaching them how to persevere. However, the majority of them couldn’t care less about being mentally tougher as they have the misconception that being mentally tough is about being a macho rough neck. This is hardly the mental toughness I teach my clients. Mental toughness is the ability to overcome adversity. It is a skill that can be honed and strengthened.

The problem is most people don’t see how advantageous it is be mentally strong. They think toughness development is only for competitive athletes. However, we all participate in the cruelest sport of them all – life. Just living day-to-day life is full of painful ordeals and unfairness. If you are weak, the harshness of this world can destroy your spirit and hinder your health recovery. When adversity strikes, it does not discriminate between age or gender. It doesn’t matter how great of shape you are in or how long you have been grain-free. If you are you are mentally weak, you will always be susceptible to falling apart during a personal crisis. This is why men and women, young and old can all benefit from some mental toughness training. We all need some improvements in learning how to stay in the fight.

The best thing about mental toughness training is that you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to join a navy SEAL boot camp and get yelled at by a muscle bound sergeant. But, you do have to go through some difficult and challenging physical training to get there. There just isn’t a shortcut to become mentally tougher. This doesn’t mean you have to give up your current workout protocol. All you have to do is add one high intensity workout per week to your schedule. Mark’s recent article on 10 Full Body Workouts You Can Do in 10 Minutes Flat is loaded with great workouts that will test your perseverance skills. CrossFit WODs or the Workout of the Week from the Primal Blueprint Fitness series also fit the bill.

Now, let’s take a look at my four strategies for destroying tough workouts and cultivating mental toughness in the process:

Strategy #1 – Prepare Yourself to Be the Aggressor

When it comes down to the workouts, there are only two outcomes – either you get through them or you don’t. Aggression is a primal instinct necessary for survival. It doesn’t need to be expressed through violence. It can manifest from your mind into positive action. The behavior you want to achieve is to finish the workouts. How you prepare for each workout will ultimately be the difference in your mental toughness progression or regression. Sun Tze’s “Art of War” is all based on winning the battle before you begin the fight. Same philosophy with this program as well.

One of the best ways to develop the mindset of one who is relentless is to understand your need to be mentally tough. Ask yourself empowering self-questions like, “Why do I need to become mentally tough?”, “What is my purpose with my training today?” Confront yourself for the truth in your preparation. Dig deep in yourself for personal reasons.

A wide range of emotions from desire to passion will be sure to surface. Stimulating your emotions can be a very powerful source of self-motivation. It doesn’t matter what the emotions are as long as they provoke aggressive ideas and thoughts to you. The more personal your answers, the more provoking they will be to arouse you to become the aggressor in the upcoming feud between you and the primal workouts. If you do not have a strong purpose or need, you are not going to be able to handle the demands from the training sessions. Finding a sense of great urgency with your purpose and need will help you pack some much needed heat going into the fight. You should do it before every training session. Let it be a ritual where you load and reload your mind’s chamber. You can go over your purpose and need when you drive to the gym or think about it during your warm-ups. Just let it build up and stew with you until you begin the workout. You want your mind and body overflowing with pure aggression before the workout. I don’t care if you are a law abiding citizen, mild-mannered person, soccer mom, or a nerd like me. When it comes to getting ready for a tough workout like Mark’s burpee ladder, you must transform your soul to become a merciless caveman with primitive aggression with only one thing in mind – you will finish the workout, no matter what.

Strategy #2 – Strengthen Your Connection with Your Will

Your ability to overcome obstacles is all dependent on your will. Your will is what imposes your thoughts and desire into action. You have to think of your will as something concrete that can be molded and shaped.

The primal workouts is a great system that you show you how powerful your will is. Constantly putting your will to the physical test and demands of these workouts is how you raise your pain and fatigue tolerance. If you don’t quit during the workouts, you are teaching your will to be defiant. With repeated practice at even higher levels of discomfort is how you develop a will that is indomitable. The only caveat is that the workouts must provide some level of anguish like Mark’s brutal car pushing workout. When you’re struggling to get a single inch out of the car push, you have to remind yourself over and over that what you are doing is honing your skill to persevere.

After you finish each workout, you must acknowledge your will as one of the sole reasons for your accomplishment of getting through them. The more you recognize your will, the less elusive it becomes. As your will becomes more accessible, it becomes a solid tool or better yet, a weapon that you can use against any adversity that is trying to break your morale. Being mentally tough means continuing the fight, no matter how much your strength seems to be fading.

On the contrary, let the discomfort you are feeling stimulate your will even more, so it can deliver strength to your body. This is the “second wind” great athletes all have as they are able to supply a rush of energy from the power of their will. The more your mind practices pushing your body to do things it doesn’t want to, the stronger your will becomes. The ultimate sign of a tough-minded person with a strong will is they have the ability to come back stronger than ever even when they seemed completely down and out.

Strategy #3 – Optimizing Positive Self-Talk and Visualization Skills

We talk to ourselves all the time. What you say to yourself can have a profound effect on your actions and feelings. Even if we don’t say things directly to ourselves, our thoughts can unconsciously manifest in our body. You must learn to optimize your inner positive dialogue to your advantage, especially when you do a devastating workout like Mark’s challenge that requires you to carry ½ your body weight for 10 minutes. I just did this workout and by the first minute my mind was filled with negative thoughts to quit. By the fifth minute, my mind was pleading with me to stop and by the ninth minute, my mind was screaming negative profanities to drop the weight! Suppressing my mind’s negative chatter was 90 percent of this battle.

Positive self-talk is a subtle change that can put whole different meaning to your thought process. Remember, this training is all about how your thoughts influence your behavior so you want to have as much positive and aggressive action statements roaming around in your head. The good news is that most people repeat the same negative statements over and over like “I can’t do this” or “This is too hard.” Look for certain negative verbs in you thought patterns like “can’t”, “don’t” or “won’t” and replace with positive verbs like “must”, “can” or “will.”

Strategy #4 – The Power of Mantras

Mantras are strong one sentence phases that motivate you to be aggressive and relentless. They should be short and full of action words as you will repeat them often during the workouts. They are meant to inspire you in times of need. If a mantra doesn’t motivate you to keep on going, they are not effective. They should cause your body to take on a life of its own.

Mantras are a great way to teach you the relationship of how the mind can lead the body. Repeating them over and over can be very hypnotic as they will lead you into action. This is why you want to create as many different types of mantras as possible, especially the ones that really push your buttons. With every workout, there is that pivotal moment when the workout is becoming overbearing and you are close to quitting. When this happens, you need a mantra that will create some rage in yourself to force you into action. By seeing red, you’ll be able to re-energize yourself and finish the workout with some authority.

One of my potent mantras that I have is “I refuse to give up on myself anymore.” When I repeat this mantra, I always am able to jump-start my energy no matter how exhausted I’m at during a workou. This mantra causes my mind to be fuming with past memories of me when I was at my most mentally weakest. In an instant, these words are all I need for my body to regenerate itself and push through. This mantra has so much personal meaning to me, I can’t count the numerous times it saved me from letting a classic primal WOW like “I’m Gonna Be (500 reps)” from burying me.

Remember the challenge of the workouts in this program don’t start until the point when you want to quit. Only when you have reached the throes of your suffering and can’t take any more of your muscles burning or psychological stress, does the real toughness training begin. Many times the demands of primal training were close to shattering my combative caveman spirit, but my mantras that incite me, always came through. Grok on!

Learn more about Jack Yee’s take on mental toughness training from MentalToughnessGuy.com.

Grab a Copy of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo and Claim Your FREE Gifts While the Limited-Time Offer Lasts!

Dear Mark: Your Primal Cravings Questions Answered

2013-05-20T03:51:10Z

Primal Cravings Questions Answered" />The response to the early release of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo has been incredible. I understand that thousands of you have now received your copies and bonuses in the mail, and from the Facebook comments and emails I’ve received, you’ve made it loud and clear that you’re loving these innovative new Primal recipes. Thank you so much for your feedback.

Some of you have emailed with questions about the book, so I thought I’d use today’s Dear Mark to answer your inquiries. Below you’ll find the Table of Contents, the Index, the Nutrition Index and some words from the authors of this book, Brandon and Megan Keatley, to hopefully give you a better picture of what this book includes and is all about.

Let’s go!

I am very interested in the book, but is there a way to find out what types of ingredients they use? I am almost sugar free (no honey, dates etc, almost no fruit) and nightshade free also. I’d like to find out how many of the recipes I can have without complicated conversions.

Thank you!

Allyson

As far as added sugar in recipes, some type of fruit or sweetener is used in all of the “Sweets”. We’re proud to have many recipes that use only 100% fruit jam or fruit concentrate to sweeten. Others are typically sweetened with coconut sugar. That said, we estimate there to to be at least 85 remaining recipes that have no added sugar of any kind. These are various recipes from the “Rise-n-shine”, “Meats and Mains”, “Salads and Sides”, and “Snacks” sections. Of those, some will contain nightshades (tomatoes and peppers would be most common). Please see the index below where recipes are listed under said ingredient if they feature in it prominently.

I took a look at the new recipe book and I noted that one of the preview recipes called for heavy cream. Do you know how much of a percentage of the recipes call for milk, cream or cheese? I’ve noticed in the past that a lot of recipes don’t turn out right if you substitute (I’ve had a problem with dairy my entire life).

Kara

We do cook with butter in recipes. As noted in the book for substitutions, however, in savory recipes where the butter is used to sautè, any of your favorite primal fats can be substituted. For butter used in baked goods we recommend non-hydrogenated palm shortening be substituted 1 to 1. The flavor and texture should be very similar with this substitution. There are only a handful of recipes including cheese or heavy cream and in all but one case (Cheese Crackers) the dairy is simply a topping that can be easily removed from the recipe. This is why we feel that ALL recipes are “Dairy Optional” except the Cheese Crackers.

Hi Mark,

I’m interested in your new recipes BUT, are all the flour recipes using nut flours? I ask because I can’t use nuts and can only use coconut flour.

Thanks,

Ellen

We are so excited to have almost completely eliminated nut flours and nut butters from our cooking in this book. We are trying to minimize using huge amounts of almond flour for treats because of their phytate and omega-6 PUFA content…and because it’s so expensive! And we know many others are too. We use a new tapioca and coconut flour mixture in our breads, crusts, biscuits, muffins, and sweets. The only recipes that contain nuts are used as nut pieces or in our peanut butter flavored macadamia nut butter (that contains no peanuts)…and two recipes call for almond butter. All in all we’d estimate less than 10 recipes that contain nuts out of the 125+.

Dear Mark,

Could you publish a Table of Contents for the Primal Cravings book? I’d like to see what kind of recipes are included in it. Thank you!

Jim

You got it!

Are there macronutrient figures for the recipes?

Marcus

Yep. As you’ll see below, the listed recipes get broken down into calories, fat, carbs, protein and fiber.

This is a great idea. Is there a sample recipe we could see before actually buying the book?

Nikko

Yes. A few, actually. There’s the Gyro Taco Salad & Tzatziki Guacamole and the Hazelnut Coffee Pancakes recipes published here on Mark’s Daily Apple. And if you scroll to the bottom of the book excerpt on this page you’ll find one additional sample recipe: Strawberry Shortcake Waffles.

Will this book be available in eBook/Kindle format?

Samantha

Yes, you can pre-order the Kindle version of Primal Cravings on Amazon.com. It will be released on June 4.

Many thanks to everyone that has already purchased a copy of Primal Cravings. Let me know what you think of the cookbook now that you have a copy in your hands and have, perhaps, had a chance to give some of the recipes a test drive. Grok on!

Grab a Copy of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo and Claim Your FREE Gifts While the Limited-Time Offer Lasts!

Weekend Link Love

2013-05-17T03:31:40Z

Research of the Week

When given a diet based on farmed salmon, lab mice got fatty liver and developed insulin resistance if the salmon was raised on soybean oil.

Eating Splenda (sucralose) has a negative impact on a person’s glucose tolerance in response to subsequent sugar ingestion.

Interesting Blog Posts

Should vegans and paleos stop bickering and join forces?

Media, Schmedia

Dr. Hamilton Stapell, the professor responsible for putting together the 2013 Ancestral Health Survey, discusses the future of paleo in a recent Paleo Magazine podcast.

Well-known (former) vegan Alex Jamieson recently started eating meat again after 12 years without, and she’s only had a few death threats. Watch this video of her explaining her decision.

Everything Else

When you examine their brains and circadian rhythms, people suffering from depression look like they’re living in a different time zone.

There’s no real benefit – and some apparent actual harm – in sharply cutting one’s salt intake, according to “them.” I fully expect this tentative position of “theirs” to be reversed in a year’s time. Until (and after) then, I’ll keep salting my food to taste.

Looks like Skechers is gonna pay up to $40 million for false claims regarding its ridiculous Shape-up shoes.

Last week, I spoke to Tech Cocktail about a number of topics, including entrepreneurism, Primal living, and alcohol.

Recipe Corner

If you could eat a North African sunrise, this is what it might taste like: shakshukah.
If you make paleo horchata, don’t get sneaky and try to substitute cauliflower rice. Coconut works far better.

Time Capsule

One year ago (May 19 – May 25)

What Does It Mean to Have “Balance” in Your Life? – The ability to walk across narrow surfaces without falling, of course. Oh, wait, the other kind of balance.
Top 8 Most Common Reactions to Your Grain-Free Diet (and How to Respond) – What to do when people think you’re crazy, suicidal, or both when you tell them you don’t eat grains.

Comment of the Week

Moms cleaning pacifiers: Mom spit is the best thing in the universe, the universal solvent. It cleans your cheek, provides lifetime immunity. What can’t it do? Happy Mothers Day to our mothers and all our ancestors!

- Amen to that.

Grab a Copy of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo and Claim Your FREE Gifts While the Limited-Time Offer Lasts!

Gyro Taco Salad & Tzatziki Guacamole

2013-05-17T04:48:13Z

This is a recipe from the brand new Primal Blueprint Publishing book Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo. Order your copy today and claim a bunch of free gifts while the limited-time offer lasts. See all the details here.

A theme we like to play with a lot is taking flavors you know and love and adding a twist…we want our food to be familiar yet interesting. Gyro Taco Salad is a good example of just that. We took the components of a traditional taco salad, but flavored it like a traditional gyro. Gyro spiced ground lamb (or any ground meat) over lettuce (plus any of your favorite veggies) and topped off with a fresh mint and cucumber guacamole AKA Tzatziki Guacamole. Wouldn’t that just be a real Mediterranean fiesta?

Servings: 6

For the Gyro Taco Salad

2 pounds ground lamb
1 large yellow onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1⁄2 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt to taste
3 heads romaine lettuce

1. In a large sauté pan, brown the lamb. Once the lamb looks about halfway cooked through, add the onion and garlic. Continue to cook until onion is softened. Add the oregano, thyme, coriander, chicken stock, lemon juice, and salt. Cook about 5 minutes more, until the stock has reduced a bit.

2. Chop the romaine lettuce and serve with gyro meat and a spoonful of tzatziki guacamole.

For the Tzatziki Guacamole

2 ripe Haas avocados
1 English cucumber
1 tablespoon fresh mint 1 tablespoon fresh dill
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt to taste

1. With a cheese grater, shred the cucumber with a box grater over a tea towel.

2. Twist the tea towel up and squeeze it over the kitchen sink to remove excess water from cucumber.

3. Blend avocados, squeezed cucumber, mint, dill, lemon, and salt in a food processor until smooth.

Grab a Copy of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo and Claim Your FREE Gifts While the Limited-Time Offer Lasts!

Going Primal Was Like the Magic Pill I Have Been Looking For

2013-05-15T00:40:39Z

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

I grew up as an overweight child and teenager. It wasn’t that I ate particularly badly, it was that I absolutely hated sport. Growing up in the 80s, I really thought that exercise was synonymous with ball sports. As I was essentially scared of the ball, I didn’t want to kick, throw or catch it, and so I didn’t want to exercise. I had no idea that doing a martial arts or boxing class (which didn’t involve balls), participating in Zumba or even going for a simple walk could be exercise and could be fun.

So I was basically inactive and fed the standard Australian diet of lots of healthy whole grains. As I was overweight my parents did all that they could to keep anything “fattening” away from me, and fed me as many “diet” and “fat free” products that they could find. I was eating a diet that consisted mainly of artificial sweeteners, no fat yogurt, diet coke and all bran.

That was when the stomach pains began. I developed such bad IBS that I would spend most evenings curled up on my bed with excruciating stomach cramps. My doctor gave me anti-spasmodic medication which I took on a daily basis. This was when I realised the limits of Western medicine – rather than try to work out why I was experiencing such bad cramps and bloating – I was given a pill to temporarily relieve the symptoms. I insisted on going to a number of specialists, who did the usual blood tests, didn’t find anything wrong with me, and told me that my IBS was caused by stress. I remember feeling utterly frustrated – the main stress I had in my life at that time was my stomach pains!

At about 16 I lost a lot of weight and became very calorie conscious. I was always a high achiever, and since I was taught that whole grains were so healthy, I decided that all that I would eat would be whole grains. I barely ate any protein, and absolutely no fat, and at this point started to develop reactive hypoglycaemia which has plagued me ever since.

During my early 20s I managed to keep very slim through huge amounts of cardio exercise, and on the outside looked like the picture of health. I ate healthily according to conventional wisdom. I discovered the joys of exercise without ball sports – I became an avid runner and a very enthusiastic boxer. I could talk for hours about the joys of an intense double spin class. I genuinely loved the exercise, however on the inside I felt like a sick person and was always exhausted. All of this cardio meant that I had intense cravings for carbs, and even though I would limit these to low-GI carbs like a bowl of muesli and toast, within half an hour of eating such a meal my blood sugar would be crashing and I would be shaking and slurring my words. I could go no more than an hour without eating. I could not leave the house without a bag full of muesli bars and sandwiches. I started working as a lawyer in a corporate law firm, and would dread the thought of morning meetings after an exercise session – I would need to excuse myself half way through the meeting to go to the bathroom and quickly scoff a sandwich to bring my blood sugars back up so that I could concentrate. My boyfriend at the time (now husband) knew that he had to keep me around food at all times, because if my blood sugar dropped, I went from being a sweet-natured person to a monster in seconds, ready to bite his head off. I could not stay awake past 9pm at night, and was permanently exhausted from my blood sugar swings. Even though I was slim (about 50kg at 162cm) I could only wear loose “maternity-style” tops and dresses to cover my stomach inflamed from IBS which always looked 6 months pregnant.

When I was about 23 my IBS symptoms got even worse and at that point I listened to the advice of a naturopath who told me to give up all artificial sweeteners and coffee. That did reduce my symptoms so I could stop taking anti-spasmodic medication, however I still experienced stomach pains, bloating and discomfort on a daily basis.

When I was 29 I went off the pill to try to fall pregnant, and discovered that somewhere along the line I had developed PCOS (most likely from my insulin problems and hypoglycaemia). The acne from my teenage years came back with a vengeance and my periods were irregular. It turned out to be due to genetic issues, and after a few twists and turns fell pregnant with twins. I couldn’t have been happier – it really felt like a miracle. Everything was going well until I reached about 21 weeks when I started to go into premature labour. I was having continuous contractions and immediately put on bed rest in hospital. The stress of bed rest was like nothing that I had ever experienced before – for 14 weeks I was told to lie perfectly still or else I could lose my babies. I took the doctors’ advice very seriously and did everything I possibly could to keep my babies inside of me for as long as possible.

While I was lying in bed (with lots of thinking/observing time), I started to notice that when I ate gluten or processed foods, my contractions would be much, much worse. I started to experiment with avoiding gluten, and came up with the hypothesis that gluten was causing my IBS, which was in turn was irritating my uterus and causing it to contract. When I ran this past my doctor he gave me a strange look, however despite his scepticism I cut out all gluten which I am quite sure helped keep my babies safe.

By some miracle I managed to stay pregnant until 35 weeks, and then gave birth by caesarean to perfect boy-girl twins of 2.3kg and 2kg. They stayed in hospital for a month when they were born, however they were healthy and I was over the moon. I used this month to start to move around again, rebuild some of my wasted muscles and prepare for my twins to come home. During my pregnancy I only gained about 10kg, most likely due to muscle wastage and the fact that I was so nervous to eat anything that could cause contractions that I stuck to plain rice, plain chicken, beef and fish, eggs, steamed veges, avocados, bananas and berries. I guess at that point I was eating mostly primal without even knowing it. Unfortunately the public hospital system food left much to be desired in terms of food quality – powdered eggs for breakfast and congealed chicken for lunch. My husband was amazing by bringing me home cooked scrambled eggs and sweet potato most mornings.

As soon as the twins were born I was so happy not to have to worry if what I ate would affect my babies that I went straight back to eating gluten and other processed foods. The lack of sleep, trying to breastfeed 2 babies and eating carbs and gluten meant that I started to feel awful once again. When the babies were about 6 months I started to search for answers on the internet, knowing in the back of my mind that gluten may be an issue for me (as well as many other preservatives and sweeteners), but not knowing where to start to address my issues. This was when I stumbled on MDA, and like many others have said before me, I spent every waking moment (that I was not tending to babies) reading everything I could on the site. It felt like everything fell into place, and finally I had found a voice to not only define my problems, but to give me realistic solutions to those problems. I had always felt like I was the only one who experienced embarrassing stomach issues and blood sugar swings, and now finally I discovered that there was a whole community of people who were experiencing exactly the same thing.

Literally within a few days of giving up gluten and other processed foods, my IBS symptoms disappeared. It was like being given a magic pill. My acne cleared up and I began to sleep more deeply. Whereas before I was grumpy with tiredness all evening, I could start to function in the evenings and become more social. I could easily jump out of bed to go to a crying baby in the middle of the night, and suddenly had no trouble getting up in the mornings even with very little sleep. I did succumb to the low carb flu and it took quite some time to adjust to the low carbs without experiencing hypoglycaemia (probably at least a month). After this I could finally go to a work meeting without the panicked thought that my blood sugar would drop and I would not be able to string a sentence together.

There were also issues that were resolved by eating primal that I did not even realise were issues – for example, I used to get very sweaty feet and had to use foot deodorant if I wore stockings. After going primal my feet stopped sweating and I haven’t bought a can of deodorant since. Things that used to stress me out no longer stress me. I am able to focus better at work and am more productive and even tempered. My husband, who is primal by default (i.e. he doesn’t want to eat primal but there is nothing in the house that is non-primal) has effortlessly lost 6kg, even though he eats non-primal at work and when he is out on the weekends.

I jumped on board with the primal way of exercising. Even though I was very reluctant to give up my beloved spin classes, I soon realised that while spinning gave me a momentary endorphin high, I was left with the inevitable blood sugar crashes and intense carb cravings. I now lift weights 2-3 times per week and sprints once per week, with walks whenever I can fit them in. (I must admit that I have found walking the hardest thing to fit into my schedule, as it is the most time consuming. While I can sneak in a cheeky 20 minute sprint session while my kids are playing, to keep 2 restless toddlers in the pram while I walk for an hour is near impossible).

I can’t say that being primal has been some magic bullet in terms of weight loss, although I didn’t have much weight to lose. I certainly shed fat and put on lean muscle after the pregnancy, and my weight is now held stable at about 52kg, which is slightly over my pre-pregnancy weight. It has also taken me about 18 months of healing with good food and supplements to get my hypoglycaemia under control. I can now control my blood sugar and cravings by eating very low carb throughout the day, and can even handle some carbs last thing at night. If I have carbs in the morning I know that the rest of the day will be ruined as I try to play catch-up with my falling blood sugars.

I would have to say that the biggest gift that being primal has given me is time and energy to spend with my twins and husband. I no longer have to spend hours on a treadmill or cross trainer, and can rather focus on playing with them. At the same time the biggest challenge that I have faced is trying to feed my twins primal food, and all of the resistance that I face from family and those around me. My father, who is a doctor, jokes that he is going to call child services on me for feeding my children coconut oil and clogging their arteries. However, now that I have been primal for nearly 2 years and am so happy for it, they can see that there is some merit in the efforts that I go to in order to feed my children well.

I don’t have any dramatic before and after pictures, however here is a photograph when I had just given birth to my twins (above), and here are some photos a year later after being primal for 6 months.

Grab a Copy of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo and Claim Your FREE Gifts While the Limited-Time Offer Lasts!

Why It’s Important to Cook Your Own Meals

2013-05-16T07:46:28Z

When was the last time you made a great meal? From-scratch prep, serious gratification result. This morning? Last week? Last month? Although I imagine Primal folks cook much more often than most non-Primal types, we all get caught up in the busyness of life. Eating – even healthy eating – often gets boiled down to convenience and strategy. I get it. Few of us have the luxury of basking in culinary ventures at every meal (myself included), but I do find real cooking to be an underappreciated indulgence – and there’s the rub.

Why, as a larger culture, have we chosen to forgo so many of these gifts – taking extra time to shop for better food, creating meals together, lingering at the table? For example, we can look at statistics that say the average American spends only 27 minutes on food preparation each day and wonder – are we really that busy? What are we rushing off to? Then we see average T.V. viewing is 151 hours a month! (How is this even possible?) Clearly, our priorities are royally screwed up.

Of all the things we can do for our health, many (if not most) are just outright enjoyable, pleasurable even. Connecting with our food can be exactly that – from absorbing the joys of gardening to relishing the sensory delights of great recipes to reclaiming the social hour for dinner. As for cooking itself, learning to cook is just one of those essential human skills. It was an evolutionary linchpin. Our hominid brains as well as our bodies benefited from the chance to access new food sources that were only available to our ancestors through cooking. And it wasn’t just about heat. As we learned to adapt food sources in other ways such as soaking, curing, fermenting and smoking we had more options for calories and nutrition. Yet, it was more than that.

According to anthropological interpretation of surviving evidence, the ritual of food preparation for our hunter-gatherer kin started tens of thousands of years ago in meat sharing practices. (Evidence of large scale feasts date back at least 12,000 years, proving Grok and his buds really knew how to throw a good dinner party.) The point is, even in those “short and brutish” days, it wasn’t all kill the beast, chop it up, and eat it. Food preparation, merging into ceremony, took on a social and cultural life of its own beyond consumption.

In every human society since, there’s been rich and varied tradition associated with food preparation. Religions of nearly every brand have food related rituals regarding how meals are to be prepared, shared, or timed. We see it still in the age-old practices that keep food Kosher or in the preparation of feasts for our most treasured holidays, in the tradition of serving a meal following a wedding or burial. Some cultures, like the Greeks, even have specific foods customary for the burial event.

Even today, there are few things so resoundingly primal as preparing food to create meals (for large or small scale). There are the smells, the blood and the flames. There are the messy hands, drunken senses (literal or figurative depending on how much of the cooking wine you tested), the heightened, tactile creativity. Is cooking essential to the Primal Blueprint? I’d say you have a hard time getting around it without a Primally trained personal chef (there’s a thought). Cooking, on some level, is necessary for the PB and is beneficial to a profound degree.

Eating in is in almost every case healthier (and much more economical). Most of us would be hard pressed to find a Primal restaurant near us (they do exist), and even in better restaurants with local and organic suppliers, there are the still the question marks lingering on the menu. What kind of oil do they use for cooking? What kind of cookware? While I enjoy going out and have no intention of forgoing that pleasure, there’s a certain peace in knowing every facet of my dinner. Compared to the larger landscape of conventional “dine out” choices, you’re astronomically better off eating in.

The better cooks we are, the richer and more varied our diets can be. The principle worked for our ancestors’ collective health, and it applies to us individually today. Like our ancestors, the right techniques open up new food possibilities for us – like cheaper and otherwise tougher cuts of meat. Additionally, many foods may be wholly uninspiring on their own but become fast favorites when paired with the right sauce or some novel herbs. As we expand our repertoire, we lessen the chance that we’ll get bored with our choices.

A few key cooking techniques and kitchen skills can go a long way in making our Primal dishes healthier and more satisfying. You get a lot of mileage, for example, in terms of both flavor and nutrition when you can make your own batches of bone broth and use them creatively with meat dishes, sautèed vegetables, or basic sauces. Braising opens up a whole new world with certain meats. Roasting can make certain vegetables glorious that you wouldn’t touch steamed. Playing with fats and incorporating them into – well, everything – can give your food levels of flavor that will confound your dinner guests and satisfy you to no culinary end. The end result of all these endeavors just might be you, Primal chef, developing a nuanced palate and kitchen wizardry you couldn’t ever imagine wanting – let alone having. What do you know – you got skills. And a damned good dinner at that.

Thanks for reading, everyone. What do you think? Could you be Primal and not cook your own meals? Did you come to Primal living with a penchant for cooking, or did you learn along the way? Have you discovered an appreciation for time spent in the kitchen? Have a good end to the week.

Grab a Copy of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo and Claim Your FREE Gifts While the Limited-Time Offer Lasts!

7 Characteristics Associated with Long Life (and How to Cultivate Them)

2013-05-15T18:47:27Z

As much as we focus on food and fitness as the “physical” arbiters of health and longevity, there appears to be much more to it. In fact, most research fails to find any grand commonalities in the diet and fitness patterns of the longest lived. From Okinawans with their sweet potatoes to Japanese centenarians with their dairy to the Ashkenazi with their higher rates of smoking, drinking, and lower rates of formal exercise to the 107 year old with her butter, no exercise, and mistrust of medicine to the supercentenarians with their liver, bacon, wine, chocolate, and eggs to the other supercentenarians with their caloric restriction. Sure, they’re generally not eating Twinkies and Panda Express, but the secret to longevity – at least as it’s practiced by living centenarians – does not lie in one specific diet.

So what is it? One main determinant appears to be whether you have certain alleles. You can’t change that (not yet anyway), but there are some things you can control. What you can affect – and what appears to have a big effect on, or at least a strong association with longevity – are personality traits and characteristics. How you see the world. How you engage life. How you interact with others. Now, to be sure, many personality traits are somewhat out of your conscious control, whether genetically determined or set in motion by events long-past, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to cultivate or emulate them.

What are some of these characteristics?

Socially Connected

Perhaps one of the prime directives of the human is to be social. To have friends and loved ones upon whom you can lean when required or desired. I’m not necessarily talking about being the guy with a thousand Facebook friends who’s out every night living it up, or even the lady who always runs into someone she knows when out and about. Socially connected simply means having meaningful relationships with other people. It could be ten, twenty, or five. The point is that it helps to have actual, real friends and loved ones, and we’re probably evolutionarily driven to want and make them because they provide a benefit to survival.

Why might social connections support longevity? The research is ongoing, but I can think of a few reasons. First, people with meaningful relationships can call on them for help in times of need and hardship. Need some rent money or to pay for an important surgical procedure? You can probably count on friends and family to help. Recovering from said surgical procedure and need someone to help you get groceries and cook? Call a friend or family member. Need a ride? Call someone you know. If you don’t know anyone you can count on, your options will be limited.

Second, social isolation and loneliness are often associated with negative health patterns, like obesity, inactivity, and smoking. Plus, the socially isolated and lonely are more likely to have hypertension, elevated inflammatory markers, and increased blood clotting. In one study, people who had close friends in the same room with them had less of a blood pressure and heart rate increase in response to stress. Another study found that in people exposed to a cold virus, those with more social connections were less likely to actually get sick than those with fewer social connections.

It’s good to have friends. All else being equal, the person who’s happy with their relationships is probably going to live longer than the person who’s unhappy with or bereft of social connections.

Cultivation:

Use social networks like Facebook and Meetup to arrange real life activities and augment your social lives. Make plans with friends and follow up on them. Join a Meetup group that sounds interesting and attend the events. It’s easy to let social media replace our social interactions, but it’s not a preordained inevitability.
Don’t be that person who regrets not calling/contacting their friends more. Some people truly have no friends or family, but that’s rare. More often than not, people just aren’t willing to make the effort, maybe because they don’t see the need, maybe because they’re lazy, maybe because they’re anxious, or maybe because they’re waiting for the other person to contact them. Be proactive in fostering and maintaining the relationships you already have.

Conscientious

According to health researchers Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin, conscientiousness is a big (perhaps the biggest) influence on longevity. Using data from a study that began in 1921 and followed a group of 1500 boys and girls into old age and beyond, the two found that the kids who were “prudent, persistent, planful” went on to live the longest lives, while the “cheerful and optimistic” children lived shorter lives. The former group tended to take fewer risks, be more responsible about their health, and cultivate a better social network. They also had more satisfying and successful professional lives. Overall, the persistent, industrious, organized, and disciplined “facets of conscientiousness” were most strongly associated with longevity.

This connection is well-researched. Conscientious people tend to be healthier and take better care of themselves. Childhood conscientiousness is linked to better health later on in life. Most of the connection between conscientiousness and longevity can be explained by obvious factors, like the fact that thoughtful people are more likely to care about their diet and other health-related behaviors and therefore make better health-related decisions, but not all of it. Conscientiousness, for example, also seems to go hand-in-hand with cognitive function and it may even be protective against Alzheimer’s and other diseases of cognitive degeneration. Those who are conscientious may also deal with stress better than those who are not, probably by virtue of being better prepared for it.

There’s got to be a balance, though, I’d imagine. What if conscientiousness veers into obsession? What if dedication to self-discipline devolves into self-flagellation? What if hard work becomes workaholicism and breaks up your marriage?

Cultivation:

Practice, practice, practice. Make schedules and budgets. Plan out your day, and hew to the plan. If you aren’t naturally disciplined and organized, you can still become conscientious – it’s just gonna be a bit harder.
Don’t just self-analyze. Ask others close to you about their perception of your conscientiousness, and adjust accordingly. After all, the original 1921 study analyzed the kids’ personalities by asking their parents, not the kids themselves.

Don’t Worry Too Much

Longer lived people (and waterfowl) are able to let things slide off their backs. They tend to be easy going and don’t get hung up on silly stuff as much. Consider the interplay with conscientiousness, however. Just as too much conscientiousness might manifest as obsessiveness and lead to poorer health and longevity, being too carefree might lead to poor decision-making and flagrant abuse of one’s health. A balance is likely best, where you don’t sweat the small stuff enough to heap unnecessary stress upon your back but take the important aspects of life seriously.

Cultivation:

Don’t cry over spilled milk (unless it’s raw and comes from grass-fed Jersey cows, of course). Better yet, get down on the floor and lap it all up.
Forgive people. If there’s something you’ve been mulling over, some perceived slight, some past transgression, consider forgiving that person and moving on.
When you’re worked up about something, stop and ask yourself what exactly is bothering you so much. Get specific when you answer. You might just find there’s nothing there.
Make a list of all the things you tend to worry about. Then, objectively analyze the relative “seriousness” of each item. Discard the items that aren’t very serious. Make specific plans to take care of the serious items that merit your attention. Once this is completed, you’ll have discarded the frivolous stressors and made plans to tackle the serious ones. The point is you’ll have less to worry about now.
Look into Stoicism. Here’s a decent representation of what it’s all about. You can’t control everything, and you have to be okay with that.
Explore stress-reducing herbs and teas.
Meditate.

Optimistic

Seemingly contrary to the other findings about optimistic kids dying earlier, some research suggests that optimism is a good predictor of longevity. Optimists are more resistant to stress, generally lead longer and healthier lives than pessimists, and, well, optimism seems to be encoded into our genome. According to neuroscientist Tali Sharot, “optimism was selected by evolution precisely because, on balance, positive expectations enhance the odds of survival.”

I wrote about this last year. Optimists, quite simply, are fighters. They’re fighters because they can see a point to it all, a light glimmering at the end of the tunnel, and so they continue on. They don’t give up, because why would you if things are going to work out? To an optimist, things only fail because you gave up on them. If you’re faced with a cancer diagnosis – say, lung cancer – and you’re an optimist, you’re more likely to survive longer.

Cultivation:

Look at the bright side of a “bad” situation. That’s it. Just look at it. Perceive it. Observe it. Acknowledge it. When you do that in an objective way, you can’t help but feel a little better about the situation.
Throw yourself out there anyway. Things aren’t that bad. Trust me. When you actually go out and face it and it goes okay, you’ve just learned that things aren’t always as bad as you assume.
Get those small wins that lead to big success (and optimism).

Easy to Laugh

There’s considerable research that ease of laughter is a strong predictor of longevity. He who laughs most, laughs last, in other words. Laughter isn’t just enjoyable. It’s also really good for you. It reduces stress and improves natural killer cell (a part of your immune system responsible for fighting cancer and other diseases) activity. It lowers cortisol. While growth hormone is best known for its fat-burning effects, it can also have a negative impact in rheumatoid arthritis; laughter reduces the RA-associated growth hormone increase. Overall, laughter simply has “positive, quantifiable effects on certain aspects of health.”

Cultivation:

Watch funny media. Whether you like Laurel and Hardy or Tim and Eric, find something that you determine generates a high level of mirthful activity in your brain and expose yourself to it, repeatedly.
Watch standup. I recommend Louis CK.
Just laugh. This sounds obvious, but you don’t even have to find something funny in order to laugh. In the immortal words of George Costanza, “What is the point of opening your mouth and going ‘Ha-ha!’?” It’s that easy. Force yourself to laugh and the real feelings will likely follow. Do this once a day, minimum.
Try laughter yoga. It’s exactly what it sounds like.

Happy

In 2011, a study of older men and women found that those who were happiest throughout the day lived the longest. Interestingly, this association was independent of baseline health status or other variables, suggesting that momentary happiness “may be causally related to survival, or may be a marker of underlying biological, behavioral, or temperamental factors.” Even those with chronic diseases saw longevity benefits from being happy.

I think this comes down to something very simple: happy people have “something to live for.” They have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah, yeah, a meaningful career, grandkids, a loving spouse, a faithful dog – these are all good reasons to keep living. But when it comes down to it, if you can wake up confident in the fact that your day is going to be an enjoyable, happy one, you will live better and live longer.

Cultivation:

Live life. Unless we’re talking chemically-induced happiness, happiness doesn’t just spring up out of nothing. You are happy because good things are happening in real, actual life. Maybe you just got a puppy or a girlfriend. Maybe you got a great new job. Maybe you’re reading a good book. Maybe you went on a hike and the flowers were blooming. The point is happiness is a reaction to happy events. You’re not really going to be able to “think yourself” happy.
Do things that you know you’re going to enjoy and appreciate even if they require momentary unhappiness. You know how you’re always happy when you get up early enough to do some gardening (or hike, or work out, or clean the kitchen, or make a good breakfast) before it gets too hot (or late), but getting out of bed to actually do it is a short struggle that you usually lose? Just do it anyway. It’s not that bad. Play the long game.

Extroverted

Extraversion is a significant predictor of longevity, happiness, resistance to stress, and even mood regulation in the face of unpleasant situations. I tend to suspect that introverts might not live as long not because of something inherent to introverts, but because modern society is geared toward and favors extraversion. An introvert probably experiences more stress in response to social fundamentals, like job interviews, small talk, presentations, and anything else where extraversion helps. You can be introverted and completely comfortable with that fact and be totally fine, or at least minimize the downsides. But if you’re an introvert who’s unhappy, who’s envious of extroverts, you may suffer.

Also, extraversion is more “costly.” A study of older adults found that in order to maintain their psychological well-being, extraverts needed large social networks.

Cultivation:

Act the part. Even though social interaction may be more difficult for introverts, “acting like” an extrovert can increase well-being just the same, even in introverts.
Start a conversation at least once a day. Go up and talk to people.
Introversion does not imply social isolation. You may not be the life of the party, but you can still have quality relationships – perhaps just with fewer people.

That’s about it for today, folks. I hope this was a helpful post and that you can begin cultivating some of these traits in your own lives. Be sure to let me know what you think – any good anecdotes about the personalities of long-lived people you’ve known?

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The Missing Link: Movement as a Skill

2013-05-14T23:48:45Z

This is a guest post from Kelly Starrett. Kelly is an expert on performance-based orthopedic sports medicine, and the founder and operator of CrossFit San Francisco. He also blogs at mobilitywod.com, presented at this year’s PrimalCon Oxnard to rave reviews, and has a great new book out, Becoming a Supple Leopard. He’s been busy! Now, enter Kelly…

Humans have the amazing ability to resolve their own pain and heal themselves…infinitely. Although this might be difficult to believe, especially if you are suffering from chronic pain, with the proper lifestyle choices, you have the brilliant capacity to correct motor control errors and alleviate pain at any age, forever.

However, a proper lifestyle doesn’t simply mean managing your nutrition, sleep, stress, hydration, and exercise. To become an impeccable healing machine, you also need to understand how to move safely and effectively in all situations.

The equation looks something like this:

Right Lifestyle + Correct Movement = Impeccable Healing Machine

It’s simple. The way you move and the positions you acquire throughout the day have a direct impact on your overall health. It turns out that sitting with a rounded back, standing with your lumbar spine overextended, walking with your feet turned out, or squatting incorrectly can, overtime, wreak havoc on your overall quality of life. Imagine exercising or trying to get a full night of sleep when your low back is glowing with pain. It’s not going to happen. As long as you are in pain your sleep is compromised.

Here’s the problem: People usually wait until they’re injured, overweight, or sick to address their issues. Just as you shouldn’t have to wait for a diabetes diagnosis to know you should stop eating a heaping pile of cake at every meal, you shouldn’t have to wait to blow out your knee or herniate a disk in your back to know that you should stop moving as if you were constructed from steel. Again, it’s not rocket science. If you don’t like being sick, you adopt a healthy lifestyle to prevent the onset of disease. Learning from this logic, if you don’t like living in pain, which I’m sure you don’t, you learn how to move correctly.

You can eat gluten-free, get eight to nine hours of sleep in a pitch black room, exercise daily, and drink a ton of water, but if you’re not moving with good form, it’s a problem – especially if you’re playing sports and lifting heavy weight. Look, if you’re going to live to be a hundred and twenty years old (it’s possible), you have to start treating position and movements as a skill.

In my book, Becoming a Supple Leopard, I provide a master blueprint for all human movements. But for the purpose of this blog, let’s isolate and discuss one of the most important transferable human movements, which also happens to be one of the Four Essential Primal Movements – the squat.

Squat Technique

The squat is more than just a strength-based exercise done at the gym. It’s how humans lower their center of gravity. Think about it. Every time you sit down on the couch, get up out of a chair, or remove yourself from the toilet, you’re performing a close iteration of a back squat. On any given day you most likely perform hundreds of squats. Now, imagine what happens if you have bad squatting technique: Your body lets you know that you’re doing something wrong by firing the pain signal. You might not feel the consequences immediately, but eventually it will catch up. And when it does, you’ll wish you had paid more attention to the quality of your movement.

Here’s the deal. Squatting with bad form has transferable consequences. For example, if your knees cave inward, your ankles collapse, or you overextend at your lumbar spine while performing your hundred-plus squats per day, chances are good that you will exhibit these very same faults during loaded, dynamic movements, such as jumping and landing. It’s no wonder so many people suffer from low back pain or blow out their knee before age thirty.

You should look at the squat as a diagnostic tool for identifying movement faults and limitations in mobility. If you can’t squat butt to ankles without defaulting into a poor position (rounding your back, knees tracking inward, etc.), it’s an indication that you either a) don’t understand how to perform the movement correctly, or b) you are missing range of motion in one or more areas of your body (i.e., dorsiflexion, hip internal rotation, tight hamstrings). Luckily, both issues have solutions. Bad form can be fixed by learning the proper movement in stages, and a restricted range of motion can be fixed through regularly practicing specific mobility exercises (all of which are found in Becoming a Supple Leopard).

The bottom line is you need to learn how to squat correctly and then practice the proper mechanics every time you lower your center of mass, whether you’re back squatting in the gym, picking something up off the ground, or sitting down and getting up off a chair. It’s the same technique.

Step 1: Get organized

The key to executing a perfect squat is to start in a good position. This means bracing your spine in a neutral position and creating torque (stability) by screwing your feet into the ground.

To begin, establish your squat stance with your feet just outside your shoulders with your feet straight – somewhere between 5 and 12 degrees – and your weight centered over the center of your feet or just in front of your ankles. Note, the straighter your foot position, the more torque you can create. And the more torque you can create, the easier it is to maintain stability (good position) as you descend into the squat.

Next, squeeze your glutes as hard as you can, align your ribcage over your pelvis, and then lock in the position by engaging your abs. Keeping your belly tight, screw your feet into the ground as if you were trying to spread the floor. To be more specific, screw your right foot into the ground in a clockwise direction and screw your left foot into the ground in a counterclockwise direction.

Finally, align your ears over your shoulders and look forward to maintain a neutral head position. As you do this, set your shoulders in a stable position and tighten your upper back by lifting your arms to chest level, pulling your shoulders back, and externally rotating your hands slightly.

Step 2: Load your hips and hamstrings

Keeping your back flat, reach your hamstrings back, drive your knees out laterally, and start lowering into the bottom position. Note: I say, hamstrings back because the drive your hips back cue can cause people to overextend at their lumbar spine. In addition, focus on keeping your shins as vertical as possible. This allows you to channel your weight and power into your hips and hamstrings, which are the muscles designed to handle the load. If your knees translate forward, you’ll lose power from your posterior chain and increase the shear (twisting) forces to the soft tissues within in the joint (patellar tendon, ACL, etc.)

Step 3: Pull yourself into the bottom of the squat

Most people have no trouble bracing their spine in a neutral position and hinging from the hips. Lowering into the bottom of the squat, on the other hand, is where things start to fall apart. This is where the invisible becomes visible. If you’re missing range of motion or you don’t have the motor control to perform the movement, this step in the sequence will illuminate your weaknesses.

As you lower into the bottom position, continue to screw your feet into the ground and drive your knees out – keeping your back flat, belly tight, and shins vertical. To maximize tension in your hips and hamstrings, think about pulling yourself into the bottom position instead of dropping into the bottom position. The goal is to drop your hip crease below your knee crease.

It’s important to note that if you can’t descend into the bottom of the squat with proper form, you should reduce the depth of the squat. The last thing you want to do is ingrain wonky movement patterns for the sake of performing the full range movement. It’s a simple rule: Don’t sacrifice form for range.

With that being said, every healthy human being should be able to perform a butt-to-ankle squat. After all, the bottom of the squat is really just Grok’s Paleolithic chair.

Step 4: Drive out of the bottom position

Rise out of the bottom position the same way you lowered into the squat: with your trunk braced, your back flat, your knees out, and your shoulders and upper back tight.

Step 5: Reestablish the top position

As you stand up, reestablish the top position by squeezing your butt. Remember this sequence and practice it every time you squat.

Mobility Rx

Learning how to squat with good form is always the first step. But what if you can’t keep your shins vertical or your back flat as you descend into the bottom position? What if you can’t keep your feet straight and your knees out as you hinge from the hips? Well, assuming it’s not a motor control issue – meaning you understand how to perform the technique correctly – there’s a good chance that you’re missing range of motion in one or more of your joints and tissues.

Pinpointing the problem area can be difficult. Your body is a system of systems. It takes some experimenting and some diligent mobility-time to get to the bottom of your business. The key is to spend time mobilizing in the positions that are giving you the most trouble. For example, if you’re unable to open up your hips in the top position because your hip flexors are tight, perform the Couch Mob. If you’re struggling in the bottom of the squat, mobilize in a position that looks like the bottom of the squat. Simple.

Couch Mobilization

Single Flexion with External Rotation Bias

If you’re missing range of motion or you’re in pain, you can do something about it. Remember, you are an impeccable healing machine. Adopt the right lifestyle and get to work on fixing your crummy positions and movements.

To help illustrate how position and mobilization techniques can improve your squat, here are some relevant MWOD (Mobility Workout of the Day) videos:

Squat Quick Test: Is It Your Ankles or Hips?

Tight Ankles, Bad Squatting

Episode 363: Pre-Squat Hip Opener Mob-Rx

Daily Prog: 1/3 Squat Cycle

Daily Prog: 2/2 Squat Cycle

Daily Prog: 3/3 Squat Cycle

To learn more about Kelly Starrett’s Movement and Mobility system, check out his new book, Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance and visit mobilitywod.com