Yet it’s clear that there are physical limits to our minds. The consensus on short-term memory, for example, is that most people are limited to retaining just seven items at once, or seven chunks of data – a physical limitation, hard wired into our brains. What if we were similarly hard-wired to effectively manage a limited number of personal relationships? It seems plausible. If memory has a corresponding physical capacity, why wouldn’t other functions of the brain?

Dunbar’s Number

Primatologists have often noted that non-human primates live in “grooming cliques,” tight-knit social groups of varying sizes where grooming is the means by which the members socialize and stay tight-knit. The number of members in a non-human primate grooming clique aren’t randomized, but rather dependent on the size of the particular primate’s neocortex region of the brain. Greater volume is associated with a higher companion threshold. Primate species with bigger brains tend to have larger social groups.

A British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar figured the same principle ought to apply to all primates – human and non-human alike. In 1992, using the predictive value of neocortex size, he was able to accurately predict average group size for thirty-six species of monkeys and apes. He then followed suit (abstract) for human primates and came up with a human maximum “mean group size” of 150 and an “intimate circle size” of 12. Hypothesis in hand, he then compared his prediction with observed human group sizes, paying special attention to the anthropological literature and reports from hunter-gatherer societies. The homo sapien brain developed around 250,000 years ago, so looking at hunter-gatherers was his best bet for approximating the social behaviors of Paleolithic ancestors.

For the most part, his predictions held true. The upper limit for human social cohesiveness was groups of about 150, and this tended to occur in situations involving intense environmental or economic pressure – like war (Roman maniples contained around 160 men) or early agriculture (Neolithic farming villages ran about 150 deep, and 150 members marked the point at which Hutterite settlements typically split apart). Any higher, and it’d be too costly and require too much social “grooming” to maintain the group.

The hunter-gatherer existence self-regulates tribal size, really. Too few members make hunting unfeasible (as fit as he was, Grok wasn’t taking down a buffalo by himself, let alone lugging it back to camp), and foraging becomes more effective the more hands you commit to the task. A HG group had to be mobile and lean, able to follow the game when it moved. It had to be socially cohesive; people had to coordinate hunts, forage outings, and divvy up food. A large, ranging, sloppy group would mean more weak links, and in a social framework where every member was integral to the success of the whole, it simply wouldn’t work out. As we see with the Hutterites, a hunter-gatherer tribe that got too big for its britches would simply become two hunter-gatherer tribes rather than languish and fail.

(Overstepping Dunbar’s number might also increase stress. We clearly see that in farm animals. Increasing group size past optimal levels increases damaging behavior indicative of stress: feather pecking in hens and tail biting in pigs. No, we are neither pigs nor chickens, but we’re still sensitive to our environments.)

Okay, so there appears to be a limit to the number of people with whom a single person can maintain stable, rewarding relationships based on the size of the neocortex. This isn’t a time constraint thing here. If Dunbar is right, it’s an actual self-limiting brain mechanism forged 250,000 years ago that persists today. Agriculture no doubt pushed the limits by forcing us into crowded villages, but it’s only recently that our social networks have undergone another, even more drastic shift in size and composition: social media.

Facebook, Twitter, even regular old email are all forcing us into novel areas of social networking. We aren’t living in villages or tribes or bands. We’re running into childhood friends from thirty years ago. We’re getting text messages from twenty different acquaintances on a single day. Are we equipped to handle this sort of thing? Are we negatively impacting the quality of our social interactions? Are we spreading ourselves too thin? (See Dunbar’s take here.) Or does the new media allow us to transcend, or tinker with, previously immutable biological limitations? Maybe. I’m reminded of how working memory (a theoretical concept that’s beginning to replace short-term memory in some circles, working memory describes the temporary storage of information for immediate cognitive tasks like learning, reasoning, and calculating). As with short-term memory, most people are limited to seven or so “chunks” of working memory data. A chunk might be a single digit, a single word, or even a concept, but a few people can use advanced encoding techniques to expand the scope of each chunk. Where one person might be able to repeat seven digits from normal working memory, another might encode each chunk to include sequences of four or five numbers. This allows them to remember seventy numbers instead of seven, and they’re using the same brain stuff as everyone else. The neurological bandwidth hasn’t increased – their brains don’t physically grow larger – but they utilize the available bandwidth with greater efficiency.

Maybe Facebook and other social media offer the chance to make greater use of the available “socializing chunks” in our brain. Like with working memory, the seven chunks of available bandwidth are always going to be there, but it’s what you put inside that matters. Perhaps tools like Facebook allow us to “store” information on friends and family without taking up valuable mental real estate. I don’t think that’s “good” or “bad.” Hell, the reason we developed the written word was to avoid having to remember minutiae.

Maybe we still adhere to Dunbar’s number without really paying attention. I mean, it’s easy to tally Facebook friends into the thousands without actually knowing them. Adding a friend is almost an afterthought; is it really harmful, stressful, or contrary to our evolutionary social framework if we add an old acquaintance to our friend list and then never speak to them?

Problems arise, I think, when the virtual social network displaces the tangible one. Chatting online or through email is different than face-to-face interaction. Everything is calm and measured. There’s little room for incidentals, mistakes, or awkward pauses. You lose the physical contact and the body language cues. Emoticons can never replace emotive expression. As long as we maintain physical contact with friends, family, and loved ones, using online or virtual tools to augment the “real” relationships can only be helpful. Last week, for example, I met up with Brent Pottenger and Aaron Blaisdell, two regular commenters, in person. We established an online relationship, which has transitioned into an “actual” real world social network. PrimalCon is another great example. Without MDA there wouldn’t be a PrimalCon to bring this virtual community together in person. The Primal Blueprint is all about merging evolutionary truths with modern technology; it’s about cherry picking the best stuff from past and present.

Social media allows us to overstep our neurological social sphere boundaries. When it comes to diet, sunlight, sleep, stress, and physical exertion, I think we agree that sticking to ancestral, evolutionary precedent is the best policy, but that doesn’t have to apply to social networks. I guess I’m cautiously optimistic about the use of “social supplements” like Facebook or email. Overstepping our natural bounds is essentially what makes us human, after all. We just have to be smart about it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Hit me up with a comment and thanks for reading!

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Dear Mark,

I’ve been following the PB for a year and a half now and am proud to consider myself a diehard. I’m stronger, fitter, leaner, and for the first time in years feel energized throughout the day. My problem is this: I have a brother who’s an MD and seems to take my bucking of conventional wisdom personally. Whether it’s dogging my diet or my workout, he’s never got a shortage of offhand comments every time we get together with the family. I stopped arguing with him a few months ago because it just seemed useless and I frankly don’t want to make tensions worse for my family. Care to show up at one of these dinners to take on my brother’s resentments? Barring that, do you have any advice for getting him off my back? Thanks and Grok on!

In early 19^th century Vienna, one of the world’s largest and most well-known clinics in the world was among the worst institutions plagued by a widespread and puzzling “childbed fever” epidemic. The aggressive disease at one point killed 1 in 6 delivering mothers in his clinic. Pregnant women came in perfectly healthy but following childbirth were dead within a few days or less. For decades, the pandemic panicked women and eluded hospital staff, who responded to the continuing scourge by increasing ventilation and treating patients with practices like blood letting, leaching and mercury tonics (the discovery of germs not having been made yet).

Finally, an obstetrician and assistant administrator of the hospital, Ignac Semmelweis, made a startling connection. The proverbial light bulb went off when a colleague at the clinic died with the same fever symptoms after cutting himself while performing an autopsy. Semmelweis theorized that the professor’s cut was invaded by harmful “particles” from the corpse and eventually died from their effects. He then made the connection that medical students participated in autopsies the same days they helped deliver babies in the clinic. From there, he examined the rates of the adjoining midwife clinic, where the staff didn’t conduct postmortem examinations. The mortality rate in the midwife clinic was only a third of the mortality rate in the medical student wing. Upon investigating his theory with the implementation of new sanitation requirements, the mortality rate in the medical student clinic fell to that of the other clinic in only a month’s time. Clearly, hand washing and sanitization with a chlorine solution was the key to preventing the spread of disease. The discovery instilled a sense of relief but also the shocking revelation that doctors themselves had unwittingly caused so many patients’ deaths.

However, what happened afterward was the most surprising. A head administrator, Johann Klein, took Semmelweis’s discovery personally and renounced his findings. Klein believed Semmelweis’s argument was an attack on him, since he had instituted medical students’ participation in autopsies and had changed vaginal examination guidelines for obstetric patients. Semmelweis, a man whose efforts and scientific scrutiny had in essence discovered germ theory in its rudimentary parts and saved thousands of women’s lives, was discredited and pushed out of the clinic. His career continued for a time in Pest, Hungary, but never fully rebounded.

Semmelweis, for his part, had done relatively little to publicize his discovery. Although he and his students sent letters to well known obstetricians throughout much of Europe, he didn’t publish his findings until years later and only then attached to scathing personal criticisms of particular physicians and administrators. Victim to developing psychosis in his later years, Semmelweis was eventually institutionalized through his wife’s efforts and died from physical trauma after being beaten to death in the asylum.

It’s a dramatic story, to be sure, but an instructive one I think. This man had statistical evidence, scientifically sound support on his side, but the politics of the situation stalled progress. The threat of questioning authority and compromising professional reputations was finally too much to swallow. Semmelweis’s findings not only diminished the stature of the hospital administration, it brought down to earth the position – and astuteness – of physicians themselves. History has frequently revealed a sacrificial pattern when one person’s discovery takes on accepted wisdom. In short, it’s a game of kill the messenger.

In this reader’s case, I imagine it’s a similar phenomenon. Clearly, his brother has invested countless hours, thousands of dollars and invaluable credibility in his conventional medical education. He’s personally invested in the standard mindset of the medical establishment. Whether it’s a conscious realization or not, his professional integrity and authority are being questioned by his brother’s example – by his success, by his willingness to discern and embrace a health philosophy that diverges from conventional teaching.

My advice to Evan and all of us who meet with this kind of resistance is this: have patience and don’t take the bait. We don’t have to take the tension as personally as the other person does. Understand that our success upends their thinking, their lifelong efforts and maybe their sense of professional or personal expertise.

That said, let’s not make the same mistake as Semmelweis did in being overly modest in publicizing our genuine health discovery. There’s a difference in arguing to protect one’s own turf or pride and illuminating and sharing practices that can mean better health and well-being for people we know and love. Let your success and vitality speak for themselves, but by all means share your secret.

How do all of you share the love, so to speak? Tell your stories and offer your advice for Evan and others in the same boat. As always, thanks for the great questions and comments and keep ‘em coming!

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You may have read my post on P90X and Crossfit earlier this week. For a little more perspective, read Sterling Advice’s article: Can a person be Primal while following P90X?

If I ran network television, I’d fill up all the prime time slots with TED speeches. You’ll find a couple gems this week in Jamie Oliver’s food speech and Daniel Kahneman’s discussion of two versions of happiness.

What does a Primal kitchen look like? Mike Meire at Apartment Therapy bends the norm to create the Farm Project Kitchen.

Weight Watchers and McDonald’s are teaming up; what a perfect match! Now you can eat McNuggets and watch your weight… go up.

What do G.I. Joe, Mr. T, and the New Kids on the Block have in common? They’re all coated with high fructose corn syrup! Now That’s Nifty rounds up almost a hundred retro breakfast cereals – the stuff that kids have been raised on for years. Here’s part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Recipe Corner

• Yes, you can absolutely use coconut in your enchiladas, according to Son of Grok.
• Girl Gone Primal makes chicken liver pate. Warning: Bacon is involved.
• Food Renegade teaches you how to make beef broth. Start by melting cow bones.

Time Capsule

Two years ago (February 28 – March 6, 2008)

• Dear Mark: Vegetarian Protein Possibilities – If you just won’t eat meat, here are a few ways to get protein (note, fish is on the list, I’m not sure what kind of vegetarian you are, but I implore you to be the fish eating kind)
• Getting Canned: Is Canned Soup Really – You can probably guess I’m not a fan of Campbell’s chicken with stars. Besides talking canned goods, this post offers up a few tasty soup recipes including Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi’s Crab Bisque, which is quite Primal!

Comment of the Week

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Crock Pot recipes shouldn’t be too complicated or they defeat the whole purpose of using a Crock Pot. They should, however, contain a variety of ingredients so you can get all the flavor and nutrients you need out of a one-pot meal. The recipe for Crock Pot Pork-Stuffed Peppers that Katerina Shchyelkunova submitted to the Primal Blueprint Cookbook Challenge easily meets this unofficial Crock Pot criteria. Most importantly, her recipe satisfies a craving for unfussy but extremely satisfying comfort food.

The green peppers will hold their shape while cooking and become individual little serving dishes filled with a mild but flavorful blend of ground pork and vegetables. Grated cauliflower seamlessly blends in and the carrots add a burst of color and a little bit of sweetness. Katerina uses dried tarragon in her recipe, but we tried fresh and loved the subtle anise flavor it added.

If you don’t have these exact ingredients in your kitchen, don’t sweat it. The Crock Pot is very forgiving – yet another one of its attributes that we love. Katerina sometimes uses ground beef or a combination of different ground meats. We can also imagine using diced tomatoes instead of paste and a bold combination of spices for those with a more adventurous palate. Left as is, however, this recipe will greet you at the end of the day with its comforting aroma, and a provide a meal that the whole family will love.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds ground pork (or a combination of pork and beef)
• 4 large green peppers
• 1 large onion
• 2 carrots
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 head of cauliflower
• 6 ounce can of tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon dry oregano
• 1 tablespoon dry or fresh tarragon
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Cut the tops of the peppers and clean the seeds out.

Arrange peppers in the Crock-Pot standing up and make sure they fit securely.

Grate onion, carrots, garlic and cauliflower in the food processor. You can also just chop them into small pieces with a knife if you don’t have a food processor.

In a big bowl, combine ground pork, shredded vegetables, seasonings and tomato paste.

Add salt and pepper to taste. Stuff the peppers with the mixture and arrange leftover meat between the peppers. Add half a cup of water, cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours.

If you don’t have a slow-cooker, the dish can be cooked in the oven, covered, for 1-2 hours.

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It’s often said that any movement is better than no movement, that simply getting up and being active is better than sitting on the couch and stewing with guilt and self-reproach. For the most part, I agree with this assessment. It’s imperative that everyone be active, even if it’s just taking nightly walks or using the treadmill at the gym. But “just any old movement” isn’t ideal. Ideally, we should be performing movements that support, enable, and enhance quality of life. Our exercises should make us stronger, faster, and more capable of accomplishing just about any physical feat the world throws at us. They should be enjoyable (pleasure-giving), brief (without sacrificing effectiveness), sustainable (lifelong), immediately accessible (to young, old, and untrained), and infinitely scalable (from beginners to elites). A fitness program, then, should meet these benchmarks.

Do P90x and CrossFit qualify as good fitness programs?

Absolutely, yes; they’re better than 95% of the other stuff out there. They both include high-intensity interval training, full body resistance work, endurance development, and mobility. They’re very clearly laid out for trainees who need structure to make progress. Buy the DVDs and you get the full P90X package; log onto CrossFit every day and you get access to the daily workouts free of charge. Tony Horton (of P90X) is one of my best friends, and I’m the guy who showed him the beauty of interval workouts. I also designed the P90X recovery drink, which, I’m told, is more addictive than crack (too sweet for me). The PB eating plan works perfectly with CrossFit, which is probably why we have so many supporters from that camp. All in all, there is definite kinship between the PB and the other two programs. There are many mutually shared interests, directions, and focuses. There’s a lot of crossover. Both programs get people up and moving – and amidst our culture of sedentarism and sloth, I can’t get upset with that.

P90X promises a beach-ready body: defined upper body, ripped abdominals, reduced body fat. For many people, it delivers on each. If you’re interested in building muscular endurance (not necessarily raw strength), or if you’re a former athlete with a good amount of muscle underneath a couple years’ worth of flab, P90X might be right for you. If you want an ass-kicking workout that leaves you panting and heaving and sore all over the next day, P90X will provide it. You’ll certainly be able to do more push-ups and pull-ups by the end of it.

CrossFit promises to forge hybrid gymnasts, powerlifters, and runners – all around athletes who can perform Olympic lifts, complex gymnastic moves, then get up and run a 10k (and make a respectable finish). CrossFit generally doesn’t produce elite, specified athletes, but it produces guys and girls who are stronger, faster, and more powerful than almost everyone else. Some people think that’s a criticism of CrossFit, while I think it’s one of its strengths.

As I noted above, I get a ton of reader emails about both CrossFit and P90X; in the Primal world, they’re probably the two most popular programs out there. Some people are pleased with their results. They get stronger, fitter, healthier, and better-looking by following them. But others aren’t so happy. These other readers talk about being burnt out, overworked, overtrained, or even injured. As much as I admire both programs and their creators, I think both could be improved upon.

Now, is it the program, or is it the user? Who do we blame?

As usual, there’s a little from column A, a little from column B. Assigning the totality of blame to either CrossFit/P90X or the trainee is silly. Acknowledging both the limitations of the programs and of the users is the far better option. CrossFit isn’t a perfect fit for every possible trainee, nor is P90X guaranteed to work for absolutely everyone who tries it – and that’s totally fine. But it also means that neither CrossFit nor P90X are ideal paths to fitness. In my book, remember, a fitness program should be lifelong and accessible to everyone. (Note that accessible doesn’t mean one size fits all.)

It’s commonplace for online discussions of fitness to descend into screaming matches laced with profanity and hyperbole, buttressed by rigid ideological stances that refuse to budge. This won’t be that.

You’ve heard why I like CrossFit and P90X – and I do like them, believe me – but this is where we diverge:

Sustainability

A program you can’t keep doing is hardly a program worth doing. Fitness should be a lifelong endeavor. It’s not just for the young bucks with limber limbs and supple, indestructible ligaments. It’s for the oldsters, the washed up athletes, the wide-eyed beginners, the moms, the dads. As it’s actually practiced, I think P90X is probably too much to do as a lifelong program. It isn’t even advertised as such, to Tony’s credit; it’s billed as a crash program designed to get you lean in 90 days (which it does well). To anyone currently doing P90X – do you expect to be repeating the cycles into your twilight years? Over an hour a day, six days a week? I just don’t think I’d have the stomach for that for very long.

Overtraining

I harp on the overtraining issue all the time. Next to inadequate or nonexistent training, overtraining is the biggest issue plaguing most trainees. If you don’t give your body enough downtime to recuperate, you’ll find it very difficult to get stronger/faster/quicker/more powerful. You may see some improvement over doing nothing at all, but you could just as easily undo any progress. Both CrossFit and P90X prescribe near daily high intensity training. Certain individuals relish the workload and even thrive on it. Some people can bounce back from a day’s workout and be ready to demolish their body all over again the next day. I think the 3 on, 1 off CrossFit schedule and the 6-days-a-week P90X schedule have their place in a training regimen, but they can easily lead to overtraining – especially if you go 100%. Intensity is important in training, but I worry that six days a week of over an hour of daily high intensity training will venture into diminishing returns territory for many trainees.

Injury avoidance

I hate injuries. I hate downtime. I work out in order to fuel the fun stuff – the Ultimate Frisbee, the hikes, the paddleboarding. As such, if my fitness efforts result in an injury that prevents me from playing, those fitness efforts are counterproductive. I love CrossFit, but people do get injured. Either they don’t have their forms locked in, or they’re going too hard for too long, but injuries do occur. CrossFitters will plainly admit that there is an inherent danger to going all out, day in and day out, and that’s actually part of the appeal. But at my age, I’m not interested in pushing my limits. Judging from plenty of reader emails, there are other people that feel the same way. If you’re a relative newbie and decide to do CrossFit, don’t just launch into the complex Olympic lifts, especially at high reps. I’ve seen overeager beginners do this, and they often mess themselves up.

The Need for Glycogen Replacement

Because my business background is in supplement design, I was brought on the P90X team (7+ years ago) to create a recovery drink that fit their demographic and the recovery requirements to allow someone to go hard nearly every day for 90 days. Simply put, if you’re doing P90X as prescribed, your body is going to need to replenish depleted glycogen. I am no longer associated with the company that markets P90X (although my likeness is shown on all the in-home products talking about replenishing glycogen) and, of course, my own ideas about how much we ought to be working out are different from P90X. If you work according to the PB, you don’t need to replenish glycogen with post-workout feedings of sugar. And you shouldn’t.

So, what makes my upcoming Primal Blueprint Fitness program better?

I suppose the honest answer is that we’ll have to wait and see. I announced my plans to launch Primal Blueprint Fitness later this year just this Wednesday. It won’t be until the program is in the hands of users and they’ve had a chance to incorporate it into their lifestyle that we’ll be able to make a fair assessment. That said, PBF is being designed to be a comprehensive, full-body fitness program that focuses on brevity without skimping on intensity. Primal Blueprint Fitness is CrossFit for the rest of us; it’s P90X without the massive time commitment. It’s about getting the best results with the least amount of input. See, I’m interested in helping as many people as I can, so I’ve designed it with everyone in mind. I’m sick of watching people hobble around with canes or old injuries. I want to see seniors bounding up stairs. I want to see people get six packs without actively trying to. More than anything, I want people to get stronger, fitter, and healthier. The athletes can scale things up and increase weights or reps, while the less advanced can just use bodyweight, but everyone will be doing the same movements that our bodies are designed to perform. Best of all, you’ll be able to follow this program for life, under any circumstance fortune throws at you. You get injured? There are workarounds. Growing older? You can simply scale things down. Out of town and away from equipment? Use your bodyweight. Beginners can instantly jump in. You get plenty of rest, coupled with plenty of intensity, for the best results with no overtraining. You get plenty of instruction on the more complex movements, to avoid injury. And, of course, it’s designed specifically with the PB eating plan in mind.

While you await the release of PBF follow the Primal Blueprint Fitness principles, use the specific workouts listed here on MDA as a guide, and if you’re looking to make your P90X and CrossFit workouts more Primal break things up with more rest, more play, and more low-level aerobic activity.

I greatly admire CrossFit and P90X, and they’ve produced some excellent athletes. If you’re a CrossFitter or P90Xer and it’s working for you, keep at it! I just think that a lot of people could benefit from a slightly different approach – a fitness program geared toward sustainability, functionality, and overall health. Fitness based on Primal movements, on the precise activities that comprised Grok’s day-to-day existence, distilled down to maximize effectiveness and minimize time commitment. Stay tuned!

Let me know what you think. What are your experiences with P90X and CrossFit? Are you ready to give Primal Blueprint Fitness a try? Thanks for reading and Grok on!

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Yes, light, or the lack thereof, plays an enormous role in the regulation of our cycles, especially our sleep cycle. For millions of years, light was an objective, exogenous measure by which organisms established behavioral patterns, hormonal fluctuations, and sleep cycles. Depending on the seasons, the position of the global axes, and the weather, you could pretty much count on light, bright days and deep, dark nights. Nocturnal hunters and scavengers took the lack of light to mean “eatin’ time,” while other animals (including humans) sought shelter and slumber when night fell. Daylight meant activity and safety (since we could, you know, see everything). Fire, then, wasn’t just about cooking and providing warmth; it also allowed humans a small sliver of daylight’s safety and security at night.

Before I go on, I need to make something clear. My regular readers will have already grasped this concept, but I think it’s a good idea to reiterate it. Though it’s tempting to place us humans on another plane of existence, apart from the mindless flora and fauna that share this world, we are animals. Sure, we’re smarter and more complex than the others, but we’re still subject to these exogenous zeitgebers worming their influential fingers into our subconscious and fiddling with our circadian rhythms. Our tendency to get sleepy when night falls isn’t a cultural relic; we didn’t consciously decide to start sleeping at night because it was too dangerous to be out in the dark. The culture of standard bedtimes arose organically, if you can even call it culture. Does the chirping of birds in the morning reflect cultural tendencies? Is “the early bird gets the worm” a standard axiom in avian academia? No – the early bird’s evolutionary niche decrees that it wake up bright and early in order to get food. It’s basic natural selection, and humans are the same way. We don’t decide to get up early. We get up early because of a complex pattern of environmental cues telling us to get up. Throughout our evolutionary development, handling business during the daytime was simply how we survived. We can’t escape nature.

But boy do we try.

The zeitgeber (can’t get enough of that word) with the biggest impact on our sleep cycle is light. Period. And it’s not just natural light that affects our sleep cycle, but also unnatural, manmade lights. That’s kinda how we operate, actually, as instinctual beings who often misinterpret “unnatural” because, well, our physiology isn’t exactly intelligent. It’s not sentient. It’s purely reactive. Blue light from a 10:00 AM sky, blue light from your computer screen at midnight – it makes no difference to our circadian rhythms. It’s all the same to our bodies, because for millions of years blue light meant daylight, not a late night blog comment section or reruns of The Daily Show. And it’s the blue light specifically that appears to monitor our sleep patterns the most.

Like insulin and inflammation, blue light is integral to our health – in the correct amounts. When we’re exposed to levels of anything in excess (or too little) of what we would have experienced for the bulk of our evolutionary history, problems arise. Blue light regulates our secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone. Exposed to blue light, we limit the production of melatonin, and we stay alert and awake; in the absence of blue light, melatonin production ramps up, and we get sleepy. This system worked quite well for a long time. Reddish light from fire (our formerly primary source of nighttime illumination) has little to no effect on melatonin production, so sleep wasn’t disrupted when we relied on fire. These days, though, we’re subject to a steady barrage of blue light. During the day, blue light (natural or unnatural) isn’t much of a problem because we’re supposed to be awake, but at night, when we’re “supposed” to be getting ready to sleep, we tend to sit in front of blue light-emanating appliances, and our sleep suffers for it.

(An interesting note on how we respond to blue light. For years, scientists assumed circadian rhythm was set by sight (of light) alone. Person sees sky/LCD screen and the same visual system that allows colored vision determines the hormonal, behavioral, or other physical reactions to the light. It makes sense, but that’s not how it works. It turns out that there exists a second, more dominant system responsible for setting circadian rhythm based on light input. If a person’s sleep cycle depended purely on traditional color vision, we’d expect the blind to universally suffer from disrupted sleep. They do not, however, and this is explained by optical cells that express a photopigment called melanopsin. Unlike the standard rod and cone opsins, melanopsin doesn’t help us see. Instead, it reacts most strongly to blue light, and scientists think it’s the primary regulator of the biological clock and production of melatonin. In otherwise blind patients with intact melanopsin systems, blue light has a strong effect on their sleep cycles.)

Blue light has its place, of course. A British study found that blue light-enhanced white lights in the workplace improved alertness, performance, and even nighttime sleep quality in employees. That’s during the day, though, when blue light exposure is normal and expected. Nighttime exposure to blue light disrupts our sleep hormones. Television, computer screens, even digital clocks with blue numbers – they’re all common sources of late night blue light that can affect our production of melatonin.

Is blue light the only issue? It certainly appears to be the primary driver of circadian rhythm, but it’s not the only one. In a recent study, researchers found that while monochromatic blue light suppressed melatonin production via melanopsin stimulation, polychromatic white light (which includes blue light) stimulated melanopsin equally while suppressing melatonin to an even greater degree. Clearly, it’s not just blue light’s effect on melanopsin affecting our sleep cycles.

Still, blue light is the low-hanging fruit, and there are some simple steps you can take to mitigate its late-night effect on your sleep.

• Keep electronics usage to a minimum or completely eliminate blue light (alarms, TVs, laptops) after dark.
• Go to sleep earlier.
• Use candlelight (read how a fellow MDA reader gave this a try for 30-days).
• Keep your room as dark as possible and your sleeping quarters pitch black.
• Install F.lux (totally free) on your computer to cut down on blue light emissions.
• If you want to try a somewhat extreme experiment you could even wear orange safety glasses at night.

(Thanks to this thread on PaleoHacks for the last two tips.) Also, don’t forget to expose yourself to blue light during the day so that your cycle normalizes – it goes both ways, you know.

Does anyone have experience cutting out blue light exposure to great effect? Let the world know in the comments.

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1. Dear Mark: Time Change
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3. Sleep More to Forget Less

While this is more than enough self-congratulation for one post, I do want to emphasize the collective power of the Mark’s Daily Apple community and how important it is for our movement to continue to generate mass exposure and appeal. We currently share space on the pop charts with programs that I feel are disastrously in conflict with what our genes require to be healthy. It’s time to displace the overly stressful, high-carb, high-intensity, high-stress diet and exercise programs with lifestyle practices that are healthy and sustainable – not just for the hard-core folks, but everyone balancing the responsibilities of hectic daily life. In pursuit of my modest goal of taking over the diet, exercise, weight loss and health industries, my team and I have several ambitious endeavors in the works for 2010. These are the things you’ve been asking for, and now they’re on the verge of being released. As always, I sincerely appreciate your comments and suggestions to help me deliver the best possible support, educational material, services and products to you. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

PrimalCon

You likely have heard about PrimalCon, the 3-day Primal health and fitness retreat on April 23-25 at a seaside resort in Southern California. The Primal Blueprint team and I are eagerly looking forward to a fantastic retreat weekend, our first-ever live gathering of Primal enthusiasts. We understand that budget and logistics make coming to Oxnard difficult to swing, and we want to do the best we can to welcome all interested participants. Along those lines, we are offering a registration discount to full-time students. In fairness to all, we will assert strict qualifying standards and handle requests on an individual basis. Please email to inquire. For lodging, those on a budget can consider the spectacular McGrath State Beach campground (805-654-4744), only 3.7 miles up the coast from the Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach resort/conference headquarters. Also, we also encourage you to post on the PrimalCon forum if you are interested in sharing a suite at the Mandalay Beach and/or transportation from the airport with someone else. These options, coupled with advance purchase flights available now from airlines like Southwest (amazing Internet-only specials) can get the cost of your once-in-a-lifetime weekend experience down into a very affordable range.

One final note on PrimalCon: All rooms at Mandalay Beach – including the least expensive rooms (only $149/night) – are limited, so book now to secure your preferred room.

Primal Leap

We are nearing completion of a comprehensive 30-day, step-by-step program to help you reduce excess body fat quickly, safely and effortlessly. Almost as soon as the Primal Blueprint was published, it became clear that there was a strong demand for a companion program that could leverage the principles of the Primal Blueprint into a focused weight loss effort. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the comment, “Hey Mark, great book. I’m ready to go Primal. So….what do I do?” The Primal Leap offers a complete package of support materials, the centerpiece being a detailed Primal Leap Guidebook/Journal that contains action items and extensive journal exercises each week in the areas of diet, exercise and lifestyle. If you want to be told exactly what to do to achieve weight loss and to kick start your Primal life this package is for you.

The Primal Leap Package is more than just a Guidebook. It will also include:

Primal Blueprint DVD

An extensive presentation of all ten laws and other topics from the book in a lively video format. It’s me on-location in the kitchen, at the grocery store, on the beach and in the studio offering up practical tips and teaching the Primal Blueprint lifestyle behaviors.

The Primal Blueprint Audio Book

I narrate a carefully abridged version of the print book, so you can listen on-the-go.

The Primal Blueprint Cookbook

A 250+ page hardcover book filled with ~150 dairy-free, gluten-free, low-carb, Primal recipes presented in full color photos. I know that this long-awaited addition to Primal Blueprint publications has been at the top of many of your wish lists. It’s nearing completion and I can confidently say that it will be worth the wait.

You’ll have an opportunity to get a free, digital preview of the book, including 5 of the most mouth-watering Primal recipes, on March 17 (and March 17 only), so check back.

The Primal Blueprint Poster

A large 24×30 inch poster that beautifully illustrates the core Primal Blueprint fitness, diet and lifestyle behavior with the 10 Laws, the Primal Blueprint Fitness Pyramid, Food Pyramid and Carbohydrate Curve.

Hang it in your garage, your rec room or anywhere else to keep you inspired and on track.

(Click both thumbnails to zoom in)

All this and other support material will be part of the Primal Leap package. We believe that the Primal Leap will give you the highly specific, practical guidance you need to drop between four and eight pounds of body fat in 30 days, without any struggling, suffering, or rebound effect risks that are inherent in the traditional weight loss approach, and will put you on the right track for optimum health for life. Furthermore, we will offer a one-on-one email/telephone support package if you have personal needs beyond the scope of the program kit. The Primal Leap kit will be priced at around 100 bucks, making it a very affordable option to take your Primal efforts to the next level!

Primal Blueprint Fitness

With our fitness philosophy well-defined in the form of the three Primal Blueprint exercise laws (Move Frequently at a Slow Pace, Lift Heavy Things and Sprint Once in a While) detailed in the book, we are developing a comprehensive workout system that we believe will fill an important niche for fitness enthusiasts looking for simple, time-efficient workouts that scale to all levels of ability. While there are many fantastic fitness options available today (e.g. – regular readers are familiar with my support of the Crossfit movement, and I am personally a devoted gym-goer – although more for social reasons than equipment requirements), we believe that the Primal Blueprint Fitness (PBF) movement will be very well received by a broad audience. The program will focus on the smooth integration of workouts from each of the three Primal Blueprint exercise laws into a stress-balanced weekly routine that is fun, non-intimidating, logistically simple, easy to learn even for beginners and challenging enough to satisfy even the supremely fit. We are currently putting the finishing touches on a free Primal Blueprint Fitness eBook which we will make available for download at MDA. We are also working with a team of hand-picked consultants to carefully define the parameters, core movements and adaptations, and schedule structure, and are planning a release of a comprehensive DVD workout series to accompany PBF. The DVD presentations will be organized for specialized fitness interests, equipment specifications, and of course ability levels.

Primal Supplements

We are nearing the release of a top-secret nutritional supplement kit that will appeal to even the most hard-core Primal enthusiasts. Code name: Soil, Sun & Oil, this unique product directly addresses the deficiencies and health risks that come from living in today’s world, even when you make a valiant effort to live Primally. Hint: decipher the code name and you might come up with Probiotics, Vitamin D, Omega-3s – three critical nutrients that align directly with the Primal Blueprint laws and are difficult to obtain at optimal levels in today’s world.

My hopes are that all these things combined provide you with the tools and support you need to go Primal. Let me know what you think and Grok on!

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Outright avoidance is the most prudent policy, of course.

If you take the necessary steps to prevent overtraining before it happens, you’re good to go. I’ve learned that, when in doubt,  less is often more.

Don’t try to be an elite hybrid marathoner/powerlifter/metcon superhero.

Most performance-oriented people will have to choose between running mega miles each week and hitting heavy compound lifts. You can’t do Stronglifts, drink a gallon of milk, and go run a half marathon. I mean, you physically can and I want you to be fit enough to do so, but training that way would be so entirely counterproductive as to be absurd. Your running would suffer, your lifts would be weak and unimpressive, and you’d probably injure yourself. You’d be way overstimulated, cortisol would flow like desiccated gluten through a leaky gut, and you wouldn’t know whether to burn fat or burn sugar. Lift heavy and run the occasional long distance event? That’s fine. It’s what being Primally fit is all about. But it’s the regular training of both that will confuse your body and mess you up in the long run.

Don’t train specifically to run marathons, for that matter.

I know I’ve got a fair amount of endurance athletes reading this, and I don’t want to rub them the wrong way, but this is simply my honest opinion. Unless you are among the elite few, running marathons and engaging in high intensity endurance training on a regular basis – Chronic Cardio – is the quickest way to overtrain. It’s what led to my perpetual state of fatigue, inflammation, and system stress back in my endurance days. I’ve made overtures in the past to PBers who refuse to give up endurance work, and last week a good friend gave his take on endurance training the Primal way, but, as a general rule, don’t train for marathons, triathlons, or any other extreme endurance event if you’re worried about overtraining. Yes, I encourage you to be fit enough to be able to run one, but you can achieve a level of proficiency simply by training PB-style. (In fact, I tell people, if you absolutely decide you need to train for and run a marathon, I’ll let you run two. The first is to finish. The second is to better your time from the first one. If, after that, you haven’t broken three hours, it’s clear you are not a marathoner. Find another, “funner” pursuit.)

Eat enough food.

Food is fuel. A good meal can be a pleasurable, even transcendent experience, but in the end, it’s simply how we provide the body with the energy it needs to function and the organic building blocks it needs to repair itself. When you’re training, whether with weights or sprints or HIIT, that fuel becomes absolutely vital. You may need even more of it. Thankfully, the body has a natural tendency to feel ravenous hunger after heavy training. It’s a pretty good system – lift heavy things, get hungry, eat, refuel/refill/replenish, repeat – but we can foul things up by forgetting to eat or by actively avoiding food (in a misguided attempt to jumpstart weight loss). Sometimes, overtraining is actually just under eating.

Eat only Primal foods.

It’s not just the amount of food you take in that matters. The quality of food matters just as much. You don’t fuel a jet engine with lighter fluid. This stuff is important. Now, I know we’ve all known elite athletes who subsist on Slurpees and fast food, but that doesn’t negate the importance of proper nutrition for the rest of us. If you don’t have the winds of genetic good fortune at your back (as most people definitely do not), fine tuning your caloric quality is a sure fire way to avoid overtraining. Eat plenty of protein and fat to fuel your efforts and repair your body, along with (only) as many added carbs as you need to replenish glycogen. In addition to providing proper fueling, eating only animals, plants, fruits, and nuts, while avoiding grains, sugars, legumes, and industrial vegetable oils will reduce or negate systemic inflammation; eating an inflammatory diet increases the inflammatory load on a system already “burdened” with intense training. Bad idea all around.

Avoid chronic inflammation.

It may be that overtraining is just another form of inflammation. We already know that small servings of stress and inflammation are normal (exercise provides the right amount of stress and inflammation required for muscle repair, recovery, and ultimately progression), and that a health body is adequately equipped to deal with exercise induced stress and inflammation. Problems arise when chronic inflammation disrupts the body’s regular stress response. As Matt Metzgar points out, chronic inflammation can block the body’s anabolic hormones. Without sufficient anabolic hormones, the body cannot recover from exercise, which is the main thing we are trying to do here (recover, that is). In a state of chronic inflammation, then, almost any attempt to exercise results in classic overtraining symptoms.

Avoid too much stress (but not all of it).

As I said earlier, stress is good to a point. For one, it enables the repair process. Exercise is a form of stress on the body; our muscles exert themselves, which is a type of stress, and the body responds by repairing the “damaged” muscle. If all goes well (that is, if it wasn’t too much stress and you allowed enough recovery time), the repaired muscle will be stronger than before. Stress can also heighten our senses and even increase our physical performance in the short term. A bit of simulated, perceived danger pre-workout (visualize facing down a big wild cat before a sprint, or lifting the backside of a Volkswagen off your friend before deadlifting) can actually kick start a small stress response that increases physical strength, reaction time, and focus. It’s interesting, vital stuff, stress, but chronic levels are unmanageable and actually reduce our physical performance and ability to recover from training.

Get plenty of sleep.

Sleep is precious, but we generally don’t get enough of it. Anabolic hormones important for muscle repair and recovery, especially growth hormone, are released during sleep – poor sleep curtails that, cuts it short. Lack of sleep increases cortisol production, an excess of which increases body fat and eats lean mass. Immunity suffers, and when you don’t sleep, systemic inflammation increases. Sound familiar? These are all hallmarks of the overtrained individual.

I’m beginning to think of overtraining as a set of symptoms – as a general descriptor of chronic overexertion, rather than a clinical affliction with a defined cure. And these symptoms are all interconnected and essentially inseparable from each other. They either pop up in pairs, or in an incestuous orgy of systemic inflammation, poor sleep, bad diet, chronic stress, and excess exercise. But they always show up together. It’s one big chicken-or-the-egg conundrum, which makes it difficult to figure out. What’s causing what? Does it really matter? I think we know what to do – inflammation seems to be key (as it often is in general health), and avoiding the things that cause chronic inflammation generally seems to take care of many of the symptoms of overtraining. So does avoiding overtraining mean avoiding all the risk factors of inflammation, too? I think so. You can’t really separate them. Letting even a single one slip can snowball and reduce the effectiveness of your training.

It’s a challenge. I’ll admit it. Most people who embrace the idea of exercise want to believe that more is better. It’s tough to simply read the aforementioned list of things to avoid and check them off, especially when performance goals have been set. Plus, we’ve all got work to attend, financial issues to hash out, sleep to get, food to prepare, and workouts to follow, all while keeping stress and inflammation low to avoid overtraining – and we only have 24 hours a day to do it. Is overtraining inevitable?

You certainly can’t avoid it forever. I’m not even sure you’d really want to, if only for the reality check. Reality checks are useful; it’s how we learn. They let you know what to watch out for in the future. You can’t know where the edge is unless you go over it once in a while.

So what should you do once you’re exhibiting the signs of overtraining?

Take a week off.

You’re not going to waste away. You’re not going to gain ten pounds of belly fat. You’re not going to forget how to squat or how to run. It’s just a week. Purge all guilt from your system (seriously, it’s okay) and understand that continuing to train through a classic case of overtraining will only set you back even further. Your body is trying to tell you something, and I’d advise that you listen up. Enjoy your week, eat good Primal foods, take a lot of walks, or even a hike, and focus on learning from your mistakes and retooling for the next seven days. I sometimes take a few days off conveniently when I travel as a “prophylactic” measure to avoid overtraining.

Learn from your mistakes.

The best way to respond to an episode of overtraining is to understand exactly what you did to prompt it. That way, you can avoid them in the future. This seems like common sense, and most people who overtrain make an attempt to understand what went wrong. Where we fall short is in our dedication to our particular brand of training, a commitment than can border on religious fervor (if you think nutrition discussions can get heated, just check the comments section on any controversial fitness blog). If you’re overtrained, something about your regimen isn’t working out. You know it, your body knows it, your muscles know it – all that stands in the way is your ego. Brusquely rebuff that cocky bastard and look deep and hard at your schedule, because something is wrong. Were you going too heavy, too fast? Are you forgetting to warm up? Maybe think about dropping the sprints down to once a week instead of twice? Do you think you should de-load the weight and work back up? Maybe a 3 on, 1 off schedule is a bit too much for you to handle? Perhaps a half-marathon is a more realistic training goal for you? The same goes for nutrition, or any of the other risk factors for overtraining; take a long, objective look at your diet, your sleep, and your stress, identify any potential loose ends (Dairy? Late nights? Sprouted grains?), then tie them off.

Reset. Redesign. Retool.

When you do come back, back off a bit. Change things up. Don’t resume your previous training volume – you know, the volume that got you in this mess in the first place? Instead, tinker. Play with different training schemes. If you were supersetting on your strength training days, try rest-pause singles. If you were going high-rep, low-weight, try low-rep, high weight. Incorporate weekly sprints instead of nightly jogs. I wouldn’t necessarily lower intensity, because intensity is rarely as much an issue as volume. As I always say, make your short, intense workouts even shorter and more intense, and your long, easy workouts even longer and easier. You might have to lower the weights used. Or add another rest day to your HIIT schedule. Whatever you do, do not go back to doing everything the same. An alcoholic doesn’t take a few months off and go right back to the bottle (well, he might, but he wouldn’t be dealing with the real problem).

Overtraining is a bitter reality for most people who train with any sort of intensity or drive. If you’re pushing yourself, you stand to reap immense rewards (that’s why we do it, eh?), but you can fall just as hard. Luckily, eating a Primal diet and following the Primal prescription of low stress, low inflammation, adequate sleep, and proper amounts of exercise will both cushion the impact of your fall and trampoline you back into action.

Notice any glaring omissions in the avoidance tip section? Is there more to recovery than rest, learning, and ego-busting? Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed anything.

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Hey Mark,

I’ve been a PBer for a couple years now and feel better than I ever have. I’m at this point interested in digging deeper into new areas of the PB. I’m intrigued by the mental-physical connection some of your posts and book refer to. Other than the relaxation and stress influence, what kind of sway does the mind-body thing really hold? How do you suggest harnessing it? Thanks and Grok on!

Thanks to Ben for the question this week. As he mentions, most of us are aware that our thoughts have the power to set off a chain of positive (or negative) physiological responses. But the picture is much more nuanced than meditation=good, chronic stress=bad. The field of embodied cognition is probing the connection right down to the evolutionary roots, measuring not just how one can influence the other but how the mental and physical realms largely operate as a unified, integrated recipient/responder to the outer world. Our bodies not only physically sense and move in response to external stimuli; they steer our emotional and intellectual reactions, and they subtly mirror – embody – even abstract social, cultural and intellectual concepts. Hmmm…I see some health and wellness implications coming, but first a quick rundown of the research.

• Subjects in a Yale University study (PDF) were more likely to rate the target person as interpersonally warm if they held a hot drink in their hand and, conversely, more likely to rate the person as cold if they held an iced drink.
• A University of Wisconsin study showed that subjects took longer to process negative statements when frowning muscles were deactivated by Botox injections.
• A University of California, Santa Barbara study showed participants an instructional video about exercising and followed up on their efforts in the week following the video. Although all subjects were told to imagine performing the exercises during viewing, those that were instructed to walk in place while watching exercised nearly 27% longer than those who were sedentary during the video. In a follow-up scenario, women participants who were allowed to hold dental floss during flossing instruction reported flossing more times in a week than those women participants who didn’t hold dental floss during the instruction.
• Subjects in a University of Illinois study were more successful at solving a given physics related problem when researchers instructed them to swing their arms for a short time.
• Other research showed that students judged a book as heavier when told it was key to their studies. In subsequent scenarios, participants further confirmed the weight-importance association, in one situation by assessing foreign currency as more valuable if they held heavier clipboards while recording their responses.
• A study recently published in Psychological Science demonstrated that participants shifted their bodies to reflect spatial metaphorical concepts by consistently leaning forward when talking about the future and reclining when recalling the past.

This is just a sampling of the research of course. Nonetheless, it’s enough I think to illustrate the breadth and depth of the power physical cues have on our thinking. (And, again, vice versa – the power of even unconscious thought over physiology.) Kinesthetic engagement has sway over everything from emotion to learning, memory to intention. In terms of intention, the research shows that passive instruction for fitness (or much else) isn’t as effective as incorporating physical experience. In other words, to bolster people’s intention to get their bodies moving, you have to – well – get them moving to begin with. It’s important to use the connection of physical action with motivation and intention to our benefit. Next time you log onto MDA, pick up some kettlebells or do some lunges as you read.

In this regard, maybe embodied cognition speaks to a larger lifestyle issue as well. There’s an inclination in our culture toward passive observation. Our entertainment pastimes, our communication modes as well as work setups for those of us with desk jobs leave us stuck in the “virtual” or one-dimensional experience. Like the researchers warnings about Botoxed-bounded expression, perhaps relating to the world so often through constrained means shuts off whole realms of experience and feeling. Real wellness, I believe, obliges the actualization of our physical selves. When we compartmentalize the corporeal or diminish the role of our bodies in our perception and experience, we neglect whole dimensions of fulfillment. As embodied cognition teaches us, we deny something fundamental in our nature when we diminish the inextricable connection between our physical and intellectual/emotional lives.

Grok lived an earthy and sensual existence. He was seamlessly of the world in ways that elude us now. As the research shows us, however, the hardwiring is still there. Give the moment – whether it be a workout, a walk, a dinner with the family – not just your full attention but your full physical engagement. Apply all the senses. Be wholly physically present. Imagine what that would mean in the day to day. What would that look like? Feel like? What would you gather or gain exercising – and living – that way?

Send me your thoughts. As always, thanks for the great questions and comments, and keep ‘em coming!

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Are personal trainers useless? The Lean Saloon thinks so. Sort of.

Life Isn’t Over discusses Chip & Dan Heath’s book, Switch, with an explanation of emotional and rational decision making. Good stuff.

You may have seen John Durant on The Colbert Report. But did you see the Vegan/Paleo throwdown backstage?

Fidelity started up a great forum post this week on non-olive oil based salad dressings. Hit it up for some tasty ideas, or contribute your own recipe!

Grok never checked the expiration date. Should you? Slate confronts the near-pointlessness of the “use by” date on many products.

I don’t use an alarm clock, but I have to grin when I see something like the Wake ‘n Bacon. (thanks, Steve!)

Don’t want to go Primal? No worries, just get one of these. Totally works.

Recipe Corner

• The Offal Cook raises its nose and exposes its lamb neck braised in Pinot Noir.
• Not a neck person? Perhaps you’d be more interested in some mustard smeared beef tongue, courtesy of the The Wilderness Childe.
• Who says lasagna isn’t healthy? Cosmopolitan Primal Girl makes a grilled veggie lasagna that will give grandma a run for her money.

Time Capsule

One year ago (February 21 – 27)

• How to Develop Good Habits – Just as important as breaking bad habits, this post offers five simple, practical habit forming techniques.
• Endorphin Mainline – This is a step-by-step bodyweight workout that will push your body to exhaustion.

Comment of the Week

I’m not an “endurance athelete” but I am a hawaiian pig hunter. Pig Hunting with dogs in the dense, mountainous rain forests in Hawaii is a very rigorous, endurance-based activity. We often can start the hunt before the sun rises, and get out of the mountains long after it’s set…oftentimes covering up to 14 miles of mountainous terrain. If we catch a good size hog, it also involves taking turns with your partners carrying the hog out on your back. I think it’s safe to say, Carrying 150 lbs. of dead hog on your back up the steep side of a thick-brush mountain certainly requires endurance.

I’ve been hunting for over 16 years…and over time, I’ve noticed a significant difference in my endurance from before and after going primal with my diet.

When I was younger, I would often fill my pack up with all sorts of foods, so that I could constantly eat while exerting all the energy when we are out on an all-day hunt. My friends and I would also “carb-load” before hunting. We’d eat a lot of pasta and rice based dishes the night before.

Within the past three years, after going Primal, things are much different now. Instead of “carb-loading,” I protein-and-fat load. I’ll cook up twice the amount of bacon and eggs, sausages and mushrooms – all fried in grassfed butter – and eat until I’m positively stuffed before heading out on the hunt.

I now no longer have to carry any food in my pack. Eating like that gives me the energy and endurance to walk all day long, and I don’t even begin to feel hungry until evening time. I also find I no longer feel so exhausted the day after a rigorous hunting expedition.

Meanwhile, my hunting partners are all still carb loading and continually eating while we trek through the mountains. They don’t understand how I can hunt all day without eating, and how I easily keep up with them.

I know it has everything to do with my diet.

by Dave from Hawaii on Can You Be an Endurance Athlete and Primal?

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