As part of our ongoing Primal Blueprint Fitness Video Contest readers Anders, Annika and Rob submitted their interpretation of a Primal Blueprint Sprint Routine (the latest contest theme). They’re in the running for a cash and Primal prize package and have a one in four shot of winning.

If you liked this video be sure to check out other videos Anders has submitted: Bringing Home the Bacon and Primaldelphia.

If you’d like to be featured on Mark’s Daily Apple for a chance to win Primal gear read the Primal Blueprint contest details and submit your video (fitness or recipe), real life Primal story or Primal recipe today!

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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.

At the end of the day, the windows are clean in both instances. But which method made the most sense? Which method featured a whole lot of redundant BS, and which method allowed for plenty of free time?

“Diggin’ a hole to install a ladder to wash the basement windows” is a phrase I love to use to describe the inanity and redundancy of contemporary conceptions of fitness. Sometimes our methodologies are inherently ridiculous, like with the Treadmobile, a mobile treadmill, or the StreetStrider, a mobile elliptical with endorsements from The Biggest Loser (need I say more?). Anyone can recognize the absurdity of taking a stationary fitness machine that is itself an attempt to recreate a real world movement – like the treadmill tries to mimic running – and turning it into a functioning way to get around the environment. As if having a pair of thick, clunky rubber soles between you and the ground weren’t bad enough, now people are actually using treadmills to stay as removed from nature as humanly possible. And the elliptical is already a ridiculous looking contraption (easy on the joints, sure, but it might replace or even divorce you from real, natural movement patterns like swimming that are equally easy on the joints), but if you do like to use it, just please keep it in the gym. No need to go flailing all over the road.

But on a more serious note, far too many people dig the proverbial hole for themselves when they try to improve their fitness levels by following CW’s lead. Take the Chronic Cardio crowd, for example. Most people still buy the line that running sixty minutes every day is the key to health, fitness, longevity, and happiness. They run those sixty minutes – hating perhaps fifty-five of them – every night to lose weight and get fit and to burn the all-important calories. Sure, some calories get burnt, but so do all their glycogen stores, stores that require restocking with tons of carbs, the more refined and delicious the better. They’ve just come home from a grueling seven mile run and they feel like maybe they deserve a little break, a little treat for all that hard work – so they order a large pizza and wolf the entire thing down, followed by a bowl of ice cream. They wake up feeling bloated (but man are those glycogen stores ready to go!) and horrible, which leads to mild self-flagellation and the decision to “hit the treadmill extra hard tonight” to make up for all the carbs. The same thing happens all over again. The wheels are in motion. This vicious, endless, Sisyphean cycle of Chronic Cardio and carb refueling leads to weight gain and broken spirits (“why can’t I lose the weight?!”) – and the broken, overweight, totally confused about what works and what doesn’t nation we see today.

That’s not to say the Primal fitness community doesn’t have its hole diggers. Some of us – and I’m guilty of this from time to time – make the mistake of thinking more is always better. More pain, more sprints, more weight, more sweat, perhaps even more vomit – are encouraging signs that good work is being done. Now, I’m a huge proponent of compound strength building movements, sprints, hikes, and anything that engages the entire body and works it hard to the core. These exercises are meant to tax and test our strength and our stamina, but there is a point of diminishing returns. There are occasions where – even if you’re doing Primal approved exercises – you run the risk of compromising your health and fitness. The body needs rest at times, and it possesses a pretty effective subconscious feedback system to let you know when it needs that rest. If you’ve lost count of how many hill sprints you’ve done, and each “sprint” has devolved into a plodding uphill jog, it’s time to stop. You’re not doing yourself any good; you’re only hurting your body and increasing your recovery/downtime. If that ain’t diggin’ a hole for yourself, I don’t know what is.

Conventional notions about what constitutes an effective fitness regimen always make me shake my head and throw up my hands. I see people doing ridiculous, ineffective routines with every fiber of their being with nothing to show for it except some lingering injury or a lighter wallet. I can’t help but feel a bit superior, maybe even a tad patronizing, when unbending dedication to a failed, counterproductive fitness methodology persists. But that quickly disappears when I remember that it used to be me. I used to be the most ardent supporter of Conventional Wisdom around. Even when my ultra running and endurance training was physically wearing me down and forcing me into terrible dietary habits, I told myself this was normal. I assumed, despite mountains of evidence (both personal, anecdotal, and clinical) to the contrary, that I was ensuring a long, active life for myself. I think a lot of people are in that situation, so I empathize.

Are you engaging in redundant, inane workouts that go nowhere? Are you working out on a regular basis and failing to see any results?

You may be diggin’ a hole to install a ladder to wash the basement windows, when you could forget the shovel, lose the ladder, grab your wash bucket and handle business.

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Don’t miss this rare opportunity to meet Mark in person during his Northern California media tour. Mark’s extensively researched masterwork cuts through the confusion, hype and flawed Conventional Wisdom about eating and exercising with a simple, evolution-proven program based on ten simple, practical Primal Blueprint behavior laws. As soon as you “go Primal” you will enjoy immediate results in the form of improved energy, athletic performance and immune function. Long-term, you will be able to effortlessly reach and maintain your ideal weight without the struggling and suffering that is so common with the mainstream approach.

This single evening could change your life—and quite possibly save your life! Mark will have copies of the Primal Blueprint available to personally autograph for everyone in attendance, and engage in extensive Q&A about losing weight effortlessly, overhauling your diet, and getting much more out of your training program in far fewer hours than you might think!

Sunday, December 6th
7:00pm – 8:45pm
Catalyst Athletics
1257 Tasman Dr, Suite A, Sunnyvale, CA 94089

This free event is expected to fill!

Please RSVP to guarantee your seat: greg@cathletics.com or 408-400-0067

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For our part, as parents, we see both sides. We worry for our kids’ health. We hope for their social acceptance even as we encourage them not to depend on it. We want them to take good care of their bodies, enjoy the physical energy and potential of youth. We want them to be and feel their best. Meanwhile, we want them to know they’re amazing, beautiful and beloved just the way they are. We know what we want to do, how we want them to feel, but then there’s the sticky reality of it. What’s the right message exactly? How do we figure the perfect balance in communicating and cultivating all our good intentions for our kids’ health?

A New York Times article, “Parenting and Food: Eat Your Peas. Or Don’t. Whatever.”, picks up this dicey parenting issue. It’s a discussion of the blurry lines between how to foster healthy habits without inhibiting a healthy self-concept. As any parent (or person who has any recollection of the awkward adolescent years) knows, taking on this issue can involve navigating an emotional mine field. One wrong move, and you face an explosion of tempers, guilt, and other psychological shrapnel. The long-term stakes, we learn, are high. Research has shown that fathers’ communication about and even “attention to” their daughters’ weight can raise their “risk of eating disorders.” Children of parents who promoted dieting “were significantly more likely to remain overweight than those whose parents didn’t.”

Frank Bruni, the author of both the Times article and recent memoir Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, illustrates the precarious landscape with stories of hesitant parents attempting their best acrobatic acts. He gives us stories of parents who’ve diligently striven for “balanced meals and restrained portions.” On the other hand, Bruni gives us another angle of parental concern, a resistance to what some parents see as a tendency toward broader deprivation – a missing the forest through the trees if you will. As one mother put it, she wants to instill healthy habits but not deny her daughter the basic “psychological pleasures that come from sitting at a table and enjoying a meal.”

Bruni’s article ends by rounding up several points of expert consensus. Most are basic and commonsensical. First, of course, he says parents should model healthy eating and exercise habits. It’s the old “Do what I do, not what I say” principle. Other effectual strategies include stocking the house with healthy options and planning dinners with homemade fare. Finally, he says with a personal note, it’s important to find a substitute “activity” that can provide a “similar emotional gratification” children may have previously associated with food.

I found Bruni’s article engaging, relevant and thought-provoking. It got the Worker Bees and I talking. We had a slew of questions but few clear answers. (Isn’t that always the case in parenting though?) What do kids need and want to hear? How do parents inspire the best balance between emotional self-acceptance and physical self-investment? How much should we as parents demonstrate and divulge of our own struggles exactly?

I thought I’d take up the conversation here with you all. I’ll throw out a few thoughts, and I hope you’ll add yours to the discussion.

Clean up the family diet and environment.

A physiological point first… Parents want to help their kids make good food choices and get plenty of physical activity. However, there’s another often missed piece to the puzzle. The increasing presence of toxins in our everyday environment and food supply can contribute to a myriad of health problems, including weight issues. Toxins, particularly in children, can disrupt basic hormonal balance. This disturbance can throw off the metabolic processes responsible for energy conversion and, particularly in tandem with a poor diet, boost fat storage. It’s a good excuse for explaining why a “good diet” entails more than a menu: it means fostering an educated and thoughtful mindset toward eating and health.

Be honest (first with yourself) about your relationship with food and/or your physical self-image.

Perhaps having lived a similar experience, we can identify on some level with our kids. If we were overweight once upon a time, we can understand what it’s like to struggle with weight as a child/teenager. Yet, once in a while we have to step back and ask ourselves if our level of concern has more to do with our child or our own past? In short, are we helping or projecting – or some combination of the two? Maybe we’re still struggling with weight or other body image issues. Regardless of how we approach our health and what priorities we focus on, our children are undeniable witnesses to our lives. They see our daily endeavors, and they undeniably pick up on our self-talk. What messages are we sending (consciously and unconsciously)?

If your child is old enough, have a heart-to-heart about experiences with health, body image and weight. Divulge honestly – but selectively. You can show your kids you identify without burdening them. Most importantly, talk about where you get your sense of perspective. What guides you, motivates you and grounds you day to day? What have you learned that you wish you knew earlier in your life? What do you hope they enjoy about living a healthy life and taking care of themselves?

Talk about what health really means.

It’s pretty easy for kids to grow up not really having a clear understanding of health. Hey, most adults don’t get it either. If I’m not sick, I must be healthy, right? Health as a concept can be a random swirl of disconnected images for kids: food pyramids, sweaty gyms, sports icons, a salad bar. How do they put it together? What does it mean to be healthy? To feel healthy?

In the vast array of images and messages out there, kids have to be pretty thrown by the paradoxical shape of it all. On the one hand, there’s infinite fun to be had in downing every variety of fast food, sodas, energy drinks, chips and other snack abominations (just look at the youth-centered commercials). On the other, there are tabloid articles about celebrity crash diets and stories of their three hour a day workout routines. Our culture encourages either disregarding or punishing the body – making a joke of physical health or exercising/depriving ourselves into the ground. The result? As a culture we don’t have the most comfortable relationships with our bodies. It’s little surprise that many of our kids absorb this mindset.

Parents, unfortunately, have a lot of ground to fill in. Find a chance to talk about what health means to you personally. How did you come to learn about healthy eating? Why do you make the choices you do? What gets you motivated to stay active, to keep your stress under control? When do you feel the best physically? Ask them what makes them feel healthy, strong and rejuvenated? Is there a way you can help support those experiences (e.g. emotional support or family activities)? Let it be an open and continuing conversation. Let it be a catalyst for healthy changes and experimentation. Let it be a challenge to your family to play more, cook more, do more, get out more.

Talk about what living really means.

This website is all about health, yes. Nonetheless, I put health squarely into a large picture of happiness and vitality. Too often the messages kids get come off as instructive but less than relevant and inspiring. In the midst of navigating the social scene, figuring out an identity, and finding their way through school and other responsibilities, dry details can quickly fall on deaf ears. Consider a different angle. We hear a lot of success stories from people who have overcome serious health issues, dropped weight that they’d wanted to lose for years (or decades), and/or turned around their lifestyle to gain a whole new sense of energy in their lives. A common thread in so many of their accounts is a sense of self-investment. Whether a serious medical scare that made them realize how precious (and endangered) their lives were or the culmination of a deep soul-searching, something sparked a novel sense of ownership. Their health mattered more because they’d chosen to see it and value it in a new way.

Maybe talking to kids about real health ultimately means talking about life. Owning your health necessitates – on some level – knowing and respecting yourself. It’s a self-commitment after all. The more self-confidence and self-respect we have, the more likely we are to invest in ourselves.

For kids who struggle with weight and body image, too often the goal is outside themselves, remote and elusive. How can the goal finally be authentically personal? What does it mean to dig down and learn to tune out the noise in life – the social clamor, the media messages? What’s there to listen to once you reach the other side of the commotion? How, finally, do they see themselves there? What does their vision of a healthy and happy life look like from that vantage point? Kids, like the rest of us, shape their health a step at a time. Maybe a parent’s best role is to help them start down their own path.

And now…let me know what you think. What should kids hear growing up? How can a parent walk the line to empower their kids’ overall health and well-being? How do we avoid the traps that either alienate or enable? I look forward to reading your thoughts. Thanks for reading.

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First, I’d like to review the differences between asceticism and eating in accordance with evolutionary biology. As it’s generally practiced across multiple disciplines and belief systems, asceticism refers to the complete and utter refutation of “worldly pleasures” to achieve spiritual and physical enrichment. Cleansing the mind along with the body. Regarding the pursuit of pleasure as somehow unnatural or impure, as if giving in to our animal urges is something to be ashamed of. It promotes permanent abstention from material desires with the hope that they will permanently atrophy and dissipate, like some little-used muscle or organ withers and dies. If the fate of the appendix is any indication of this idea’s validity, though, I wouldn’t hold your breath. Pleasure is here to stay. In fact, I’d argue that our relentless pursuit of pleasure is actually completely natural, deep-seated, and immutable. The basic human condition is desire. Without that pursuit of pleasure, we may not have made it this far. Without that constant, nagging desire to feel good, to taste good things and enjoy the warmth and intimacy of a sexual companion, to sit bundled up in front of a roaring fire licking marrow from sticky fingers, we lose the desire to survive – because what use is living if you’re not going to enjoy it on some basic level? Why get up in the morning without something to look forward to? It may be that thriving is actually necessary for surviving after all.

What do we crave, once we’ve transcended the artifice of refined sugar and whole grain addiction? Once we’ve spent a few weeks eating clean, Primal foods and cleansed our palate, most of us don’t even want the Twinkies or the Wonder Bread or the pizza anymore; we want the fat, the grease, and the gristle. We want fresh veggies sautéed in butter and salads drenched in olive oil and vinegar. We crave chicken with the skin, and we might just eat an entire pack of bacon to finish off an IF (if you put it in front of us). Some of us want nothing but the animal, while others sample the entire pantheon of flora and fauna. Above all, though, we all suddenly want nothing but real, whole foods once we get off the Neolithic faux-food. And when we get it, it tastes good.

Damn good.

Doesn’t that make you wonder? Might that not-so-subtle positive interplay between taste bud and food stuff be by design? I mean, sex feels good because it promotes procreation. The sun feels good to convince us to stay outside long enough to make vitamin D, an essential prohormone for life. Conversely, direct flame applied to our skin hurts like hell because it’s damaging our body and threatening our health, and we get sunburns to let us know we’ve gotten a bit too much sunlight. Wouldn’t it follow that the things that taste good actually are good for us, that the things we could conceivably come across and eat raw in nature are in fact suitable for consumption? I’d say so, yes.

I can already hear the fingers typing furiously.

“What about candy? Candy tastes good, so doesn’t that mean it’s good for us?”

For one, consumption of refined sugar and excess fructose beyond evolutionarily-realistic amounts is proven to be harmful. Tooth decay, insulin resistance, small and dense LDL formation – all that and more can be directly attributed to sugar intake. We all know that. But we also know that candies are clusters of pure sugar, half glucose and half fructose (a bit more fructose than glucose if made with HFCS), that appeared only recently on the menu. Crystallized sugar appeared on the scene around 5,000 years ago in Ancient Egypt, but until Columbus realized sugar cane flourished in the Americas and established a profitable slave-based industry, refined sugar in all forms was cost-prohibitive for anyone that wasn’t rich. Now? Now it’s cheap. It’s actually cost effective for companies to stick sugar and especially HFCS in anything and everything. Breads, salad dressings, condiments, sauces – pretty much everything on shelves and in packages contains a form of sugar. Some estimates peg our yearly intake of the stuff at over a hundred pounds each. Each, per year! That’s terrifying (especially when you realize that it’s an average, and that there are a significant number of people that minimize sugar intake, like us – somewhere, someone is eating two hundred pounds a year!), and it far exceeds what we could have mustered in Grok’s day.

A better question would be, “What about the sweet flavor? Why are we drawn to the sweet flavor if it signifies danger?”

That’s just it; in and of itself, it doesn’t necessarily mean bad things to come. In days of yore, sweet things were difficult to come by. Honey meant receiving bee stings and climbing tall trees, and, while there’s no way of knowing exactly how sweet or bitter seasonal fruit in the Paleolithic was or was not, we do know that today’s fruits are selectively bred for increased sugar content. Yesterday’s fruits were sweet (they had to be to enable seed dispersion), and sweet meant nutrients, but that sweetness was naturally selected for, rather than forced and sped up by man’s hands. Simple logic indicates that a fruit actively bred for sweetness will trend sweeter than the fruit left alone. The data certainly suggests as much.

Then there’s the fact that fruit used to be seasonal. Northern European Grok wasn’t shivering by fjords waiting for the latest shipment of Amazonian bananas (fun fact: here’s what a wild banana actually looks like – a far cry from the perfect peel-able fruit that we’re able to produce) by dug-out canoe. If he was lucky, he might nab a bushel or two of berries and apples in season and then gorge on them. But an apple a day? No, that wasn’t possible for Grok year round. Tropical or temperate Grok probably had more access to fruit, but they still weren’t as sweet. And wherever he was, Grok was not drinking Jamba juice or chugging a liter of orange juice in a single sitting. If he lucked out on a sweet fruit, he was eating the entire thing.

We may be drawn to the sweet flavor, but that’s because it was such a rare, quick source of cheap energy for our ancestors (and possibly a bit of a holdover from our extremely distant days as arboreal frugivores about 4 million years ago). Besides, what better time to fatten up than with a dose of sugar right before winter? The fact remains that, historically, the fruit we rarely ate was less abundant, and it contained less sugar than modern fruits. Our attraction to sweet flavors is not a free pass to subsist on bananas and figs. It’s merely a cue for Grok to snap up all the fruit and honey he can carry, because this might be the last time he sees any for a long, long time.

Meat, however, was abundant. Man had yet to encroach upon and severely disrupt local ecologies, and game was not relegated to a preserve or a national forest. Our brains grew big and hogged our metabolic output thanks to meat, which represented a new, denser source of energy for Grok. Neanderthals were our closest ancestors, and they were completely carnivorous, while many Homo sapien cultures were essentially pure meat eaters. Meat was the foundation for man’s emergence as conscious, cunning, brilliant, adaptable, preeminent predator. We depended on meat, which explains why we have such a visceral reaction to it.

The dog salivates at the whiff of a meaty bone, the cat seeks out the sunny patch so it can synthesize Vitamin D in its fur, and the plant strains toward the nourishing sunlight. Organisms are pleasure seekers, and we are no different. We’ve just the ability (or curse) to rationalize and analyze our behavior, sometimes to our detriment. When we start using some arbitrary moral system to condemn and regulate our very natures, we deny our humanity. That is a very, very bad thing. I dunno about you, but I like being human. I like my big brain, and my compassion, and my conscience, and my consciousness. I can appreciate the fact that I drool a little when I smell a steak seared in butter even as I sit down to read the paper with my meal. We represent the union between animal urge and reason. The former keeps us alive and well, while the latter makes us human. The Primal Blueprint simply recognizes those urges, rationalizes them with an examination of the clinical and anthropological evidence, and offers a stable (yet malleable) foundation for people to follow. We satisfy our cravings, blood and grease dripping from our chins, content that this time (like most, actually) our basest urges are the purest and most righteous.

Jack LaLanne got it half right when he said, “If man made it, don’t eat it,” but I think he dropped the ball with “If it tastes good, spit it out.” I say embrace worldly pleasures that nourish our bodies and minds. Pastured meat, relations with a loved one, a bowl of wild berries, a day of play with some pals, a healthy serving of sunshine – these are true worldly pleasures that we derive from the natural world and to which we are drawn by our natural, animalistic urges. These are urges that promote healthful, vibrant living and true happiness, and I think the ascetic does himself a disservice in denying them. We are animals – thinking, feeling, loving, free animals – and we shouldn’t ignore or bury that fact for inconsequential ideologies or self-imposed limitations.

As William Blake wrote, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Grok took that road, and perhaps we should, too.

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Dear Mark,

Each summer and throughout the year, I spend weeks at a time leading hiking, backpacking and camping trips in the backcountry. While this seems like it’s definitely a primal activity, traditional backpacking fare consists of oatmeal, tortillas, granola, peanut butter, pasta, rice, and beans. These foods are light, compact, durable, will fill you up, do not need to be refrigerated, and are easily packable. At the end of each week, though, I always feel worn out – depleted, almost – and I realize now that it is probably because of what I eat. Do you have any primal menu suggestions for those of us who actually live, at times, in a primal environment? (Hunting and gathering are unfortunately not viable options.) Thanks!

I know what you mean about being stuck in the wilderness with nothing but a big bag of carbs. I did a wildness trip a while back with a group that packed exactly that. Just a few days left me feeling miserable beyond belief.

As suggested, true backpacking imposes more limitations than base camping. Nonetheless, there’s still no reason to feel stuck in the traditional carb corner for the sake of packable convenience or physical need. If you pace yourself well and are already acclimated to the Primal diet, you’ll be perfectly able to rely heavily on fats, so there’s no need to carb up. (You can always bring along a couple sources of emergency fuel like a sports gel in case you “bonk.”) Rest assured that it’s entirely possible to eat Primally on long treks.

Lightweight and calorie dense is the name of the game for Primal packing. Obviously, dehydrated food can be a staple, and it’s a great way to work in plenty of veggies and fruits on the trail. I’d suggest dehydrating your own for price and variety sake, but many stores, especially good co-ops or camping outlets, will likely carry these as well. Think dried berries and apples, and veggie chips made from eggplant, sweet potato, zucchini, and parsnips. Throw in a couple pouches of sun-dried tomatoes and a little baggie of freeze-dried herbs/spices for good measure. If you prefer, you can always vacuum-seal some fresh veggies for days when you’re sick of the dehydrated stuff, but of course it will add the extra weight.

Dried meats, like jerky and pemmican, are obviously convenient choices and can help you get enough calories. In addition, you can consider including some chicken and wild salmon in foil pouches, a couple sardine cans, and the like. Freeze dried meat and powdered eggs are pretty easy to get a hold of. You can cook yourself a decent omelet with some dried egg, bell peppers, jerky and chives. Or add some meat to a dried soup mix for dinner.

For easy snacks and quick fueling, there’s always a good Primal trail mix (nuts, seeds and fruits), homemade fruit leather, as well as nut butter and Primal energy bars (both of which offer a good wallop of healthy fat). Although I don’t suggest living on it all week, a good protein/supplement powder can be a packable option, and it can help add calories if you feel you’re coming up short on a given day.

As for prepared meals, I’d say there are a few decent options out there, but I’d try to eat real food whenever you can. Not only are these meals expensive, but the prepared stuff generally reads like other processed foods do – chemicals, preservatives, and other odd laboratory concoctions. If you want to throw in a few packaged meals for convenience or variety, look for the natural or organic options, which leave out the fake stuff. (Just be prepared to add your own spices.) Of course, most are carb-heavy, but you can find some good omelet choices and occasionally a good low carb stew or chili. (Any brand suggestions out there, everyone?) Of course, you can always concoct your own fully Primal version ahead of time by putting together the dehydrated spices, meats, veggies, natural bouillon and other ingredients in individual baggies.

Finally, although you mention hunting and gathering aren’t options for your situation, both are great ways to supplement your diet with fresh food while you’re out on the trail. Gathering (seeds, mushrooms, berries, greens, etc.) is arguably the more straightforward of the two, but you need to know what you’re looking for. Obviously, you don’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere having just eaten a toxic plant. Take a good guidebook along with you. Even if you don’t plan to forage in the bushes, it might not be a bad idea for some side entertainment (or the unforeseeable emergency). As for hunting, if you have the skill and equipment, it makes all the Primal sense in the world to kill small game. Be mindful, however, of the legal issues surrounding hunting where you’re at – private/public land use and state regulations (hunting licenses, game seasons, tag/bag limits, etc.). And one last option: fishing. Although government regulations again come into play, fishing is generally less restrictive than hunting. Given the modest equipment needs (which can be handmade on site if need be), fishing can be a more impromptu choice if supplies run low or if you’re craving the sizzle of fresh fish in the pan for dinner. Enjoy your time in the wilderness!

Other campers out there? Have more ideas for Brian? Add your suggestions and anecdotes. Thanks to everyone for the great questions and comments, and keep ‘em coming!

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According to Better’s Better, there are health benefits from drinking six cups of coffee a day. Six cups. Six. Cups.

The nutrifoodical quagmire belches out another odious stench with “healthy ice cream.” (thanks, Meghan!)

Can you spot the metaphor in this Rocky IV montage? (thanks, Dan!)

I’m not a big fan of shoes, but this Timberland advertisement is just brilliant.

Recipe Corner

• GQ prints a brussel sprout recipe? Maybe the world really is changing.
• Make some fried chicken fingers, courtesy of Girl Gone Primal. Just don’t put them in a KFC Bowl.
• Charm City Kettlebells has the pork roast. Put some pig in your belly.

Time Capsule

One Year Ago (November 8-14, 2007)

• 10 Steps to “Primalize” Your Pantry – Turning your life around starts with turning your kitchen around.
• Dear Mark: “Rest Days” – Do I ever take rest day? Find out here.

Two Years Ago (November 8 – 14, 2007)

• Why Don’t We Eat Horse? It’s Nutritious. – What’s the difference between horsemeat and pig meat? Why do we eat one but not the other? Does horse farming exist? Find out.
• Candy Coated What? – Now retired Fuming Fuji is upset about Kid Kupz. In the grand race of human stupidity, the people who think of these products are right on the tails of the people who buy them.

And finally, Food Inc. is out on DVD. Rent it, Netflix it, Redbox it, just get it into your house and watch it.

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A grab-and-go breakfast is exactly what Amy Schoenherr had in mind when she submitted her recipe for Omelet Muffins to the Primal Cookbook Challenge. This easy and clever variation of a regular old omelet can be made in batches of a half-dozen or more and eaten throughout the week. Amy’s muffins, made almost entirely from eggs, are little powerhouses of protein, fat, nutrients and flavor. Mixing in a little water and mayonnaise keeps the eggs fluffy and moist while they bake. Other than that, what you mix in for added flavor is up to you. Anything you love adding to an omelet – diced vegetables, meat, and some cheese if you’re so inclined – you can add to this recipe to create your own personal omelet muffin.

Keep in mind that while omelet muffins are pretty darn perfect for breakfast on the go, they’d also be great for a weekend brunch. Double the recipe and make a dozen. Then, make time to sit down with family or friends and enjoy the type of long, leisurely breakfast that’s so hard to come during the week.

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup cooked meat, cut or crumbled into small pieces
• 1/2 cup diced vegetables
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp ground pepper
• 1/8 cup mayonnaise
• 1/8 cup water
• Optional Ingredient Idea: Make a Mexican Omelet Muffin by adding 1/4 cup shredded cheese, onions, and lightly drained salsa to the eggs.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease 6 muffin tins with butter or coconut oil or for easier removal line with paper baking cups. The baking cups also help the muffins hold their shape.

In a bowl, beat the eggs. Add meat, vegetables, salt, ground pepper, and any other ingredients and stir to combine.

Spoon or scoop into the muffin cups.

Bake for 18-20 minutes until a knife inserted into the center of an muffin/omelet comes out almost clean. The omelets will continue to cook for a minute or two after removed from the oven. Remove the omelets from the muffin cups and serve, or cool completely and store for another day.

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As part of our ongoing Primal Blueprint Fitness Video Contest reader Tom Greenwald submitted his interpretation of Primal Blueprint bodyweight exercises. (The new theme is Creative Sprint Routines.) He is in the running for a cash and Primal prize package and has a one in four shot of winning.

If you’d like to be featured on Mark’s Daily Apple for a chance to win Primal gear read the Primal Blueprint contest details and submit your video (fitness or recipe), real life Primal story or Primal recipe today!

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And then there’s the other mantra: live fast, die young. This one hits us harder; it’s more romantic, and it triggers that innate, perhaps even Primal, urge to experience what life offers. We are sensory beings who literally exist to take in, process, and transmit information – and there’ s a hell of a lot of information out there! When Neil Young sang, “better to burn out than fade away,” I listened, and when Jack Kerouac mythologized those who “burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the sky,” I vowed to burn, too. But it’s really easy to mess that one up, and I’m not just talking about burning out with drugs or drink. People adhering to this idea might see someone reaching old age as evidence that they never really lived at all. I disagree.

So we’re hit with these two vastly different ideas of thriving – either live as long and as bland a life as possible, or pack as much experience as humanly possible into your short, burning time on earth (the shorter, the better). Now, you’re probably thinking “Sisson’s gonna say that you can have both, that those two messages actually complement each other, that you can live a long, full, exciting, gratifying life as long as you follow a healthy, natural lifestyle grounded in our evolutionary history… like the Primal Blueprint!” And you’d be right. I would say that, but not before I explain why Conventional Wisdom (of all kinds, and there’s a ton of it) makes us think we have to choose between longevity and living. Between surviving and thriving.

To the average, well intentioned, reasonably informed individual, it probably feels like one must choose between a chaotic, full, crazy life and a boring, measured, extended existence. Skydiving, or jogging a 10k every day. Fast food and liquor, or dry toast and water. The old relic of the late 60s muttering to himself on a street corner somewhere, or the forgotten, neglected centenarian grandmother dwindling down her final days in a rest home. Looking at these choices, I can’t blame people for getting it all terribly, completely wrong.

There are merits to both approaches to life. As I mentioned earlier, the desire to experience adventure and excitement is truly Primal; taking risks and exploring new locales (whether spatial, mental, or emotional) made us what we are. If he hadn’t taken risks and explored his world, Grok might have gone the way of the panda – timid, cowering, and unable to cope with and thrive in his environment. If he hadn’t expanded his mind and made the connection between guttural inflections, abstract thoughts, and the tangible world, we may never have developed language and culture. So the compulsion to burn, burn, burn and explore new horizons is very real, and very natural. It shouldn’t be ignored, because it makes us human.

Longevity, too, it can be argued, is an ultimate goal of all life. On the macro level, species exist – when you really distill the essence of life – to procreate, to extend the longevity of the species. A long-living species is a “successful” one. Individually, organisms work toward the same goal: to survive, to thrive, to live well and live long enough to procreate. And that desire to live doesn’t just disappear once a baby or two pops out. The desire to continue living persists, because it’s hardwired into us from the beginning. You don’t suddenly stop fearing death just because you’ve procreated; there’s no shutoff switch, and we’re not simple robots.

In Grok’s day, there had to be a balance between the two compulsions. Grok had to take risks, but to a point. Was a month’s supply of mammoth meat worth a potentially crushed skull, or do you wake up at dawn every day to catch rabbits, forage, and possibly come home empty handed and exhausted? Do you follow the herds of game escaping the encroaching frost and risk unfamiliar territory or hostile tribes, or do you hunker down and wait it out and risk starvation? It was a tricky balance, no doubt, but a naturally well-regulated one that evened out in the end. Those who lived long lives probably also thrived; those who made stupid mistakes died. Natural selection, basically.

Today, though, things are skewed. Our idea of living life to the fullest is not the same as Grok’s. We wolf down fast food, binge drink, drive drunk, spend money we don’t have, get arrested, and skip the gym. We take risks, but they are manufactured risks with little actual payoff (and little actual risk, to be honest). Life’s too short, we say, to worry about health or credit or the future (besides, pharmaceuticals, the next government bailout, or that miracle cure around the corner will take care of us). As such, our idea of longevity is ruined. To live long, we say (and are told), you must live a neo-Puritan life. No sex, no intoxicants, no fatty foods, no fun, no risk-taking. Oh, sure, experts tell us regular sex and moderate wine intake is fine, and we can eat olive oil, but implicit in their advice is a bizarre distrust of pleasure. Moderation for moderation’s sake, without any real founding.

And so, you get nations of long-lived, diseased, pain-wracked, pill-popping survivors sputtering along, limping from couch to fridge and back, zooming around on electronic scooters down the chip and diet soda aisles in the grocer, staring blankly at the phone waiting for their grandchildren to finally call or, alternately, the pain meds to kick in, haggling with the store clerk about whether the double coupon deal applies to the multi-grain Cheerios that are supposed to lower their cholesterol as ordained by the almighty doctor. But the life expectancy is rising, so it’s all good! They’ve passed the big Eight-Oh – who cares if they haven’t cracked a smile in years?

Simply living until eighty, or a hundred, isn’t enough, not for me. Don’t get me wrong; living past a hundred would be awesome, provided I remain capable and cognizant. I want to savor my golden years. I want to paddle board with wrinkly arms. I want to run beach sprints without breaking something. I want to lift my future grandchildren overhead, one in each arm – when they’re ten! I don’t want to go meekly into old age. Truth be told, I kinda want to be like this dude.

Fred Beckey, in his late 80s, is still climbing mountains. He was born in 1923 and with a party climbed Mount Despair in 1939, making first ascent. In 1963, he had 23 first ascents, assuring him legendary status in the climbing community. This guy’s “been on the downward slope of his career” for several decades, and he still climbs with the best. Now, who knows how long he’ll last. Maybe he won’t make a hundred, but if he did, I wouldn’t be surprised. And if he doesn’t? I’d bet he’ll die happy and content.

I’m not that old, yet, but I’m fast approaching my 60s. I’m supposed to be on the “downward slope,” too, but I feel better than I’ve ever felt. Finishing the Iron Man on Kona was cool. I probably wouldn’t do it today, but I can still turn heads on the beach, put up some decent weight, do twenty pull-ups at a moment’s notice, and keep up with kids half my age. I’m healthy, vibrant, fit, able, and – most importantly – content with my life. As my body has reached a comfortable homeostasis by eating, exercising, and living in accordance with good gene expression and the Ten Primal Laws, so has my mental state achieved peace. I’m thriving, in every sense of the word, just as I’m surviving.

And you know what? If I hadn’t spent half my life beating my body up, day in and day out, with refined grains and chronic cardio, I might be even better off. If I’d learned the virtues of intensity over duration, I might be even healthier and even more content. I know a lot of you readers – most of you, probably – are far younger than me. You’ve got a potentially long life ahead of you. You could eat crap and just fool around on the Nautilus machines on occasion and ignore this blog as just philosophical prattle and rely on modern medicine to sustain you instead, and you’d live, possibly just as long as I or any Primal adherent might live. But you wouldn’t enjoy it. You wouldn’t be strong, or fit, or able to spring into action at a moment’s notice. Natural selection may not be able to get you anymore, but you’ll be missing out on a full life. Trust me.

So, youngsters, oldsters, and everyone in between: focus on thriving, rather than merely surviving. I know it seems like a tall order these days, but you really don’t have to choose between the two. They can coexist, quite happily, and even be one and the same.

Live well, die content.

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