Marks Daily Apple
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Mark's Daily Apple

18 May

Gyro Taco Salad & Tzatziki Guacamole

ScreenShot2013 05 15at103511AMThis is a recipe from the brand new Primal Blueprint Publishing book Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo. Order your copy today and claim a bunch of free gifts while the limited-time offer lasts. See all the details here.

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

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17 May

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

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

real life stories stories 1 2I grew up as an overweight child and teenager. It wasn’t that I ate particularly badly, it was that I absolutely hated sport. Growing up in the 80s, I really thought that exercise was synonymous with ball sports. As I was essentially scared of the ball, I didn’t want to kick, throw or catch it, and so I didn’t want to exercise. I had no idea that doing a martial arts or boxing class (which didn’t involve balls), participating in Zumba or even going for a simple walk could be exercise and could be fun.

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

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16 May

Why It’s Important to Cook Your Own Meals

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

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15 May

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

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

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14 May

The Missing Link: Movement as a Skill

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

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

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

The equation looks something like this:

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