Mark's Daily Apple

Primal Blueprint Success Story: Former Marathoner Beating Diabetes

Welcome Stumblers and all newcomers! If you want to lose weight, gain muscle, increase energy levels, reduce stress or just generally look and feel healthier you've come to the right place.

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Learn more about the Primal Lifestyle by visiting the Primal Blueprint 101 page. Thanks for visiting!

Thanks to active forum member and fellow Primal Blueprinter, DiabetesCanKissMyButt. Let it be an inspiration to anyone who is living a similar story.

Follow DiabetesCanKissMyButt as she journals her Primal progress in the forum boards.

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I used to be a long distance runner and a vegetarian. I was the epitome of health, or so I thought. I even hired a nutritionist to help me with eating during marathon training. She had me eating mostly “good carbs” which was whole wheat everything with some vegetables and protein thrown in for good measure. My protein intake at the time was less than 50 grams a day. Fat, you ask? No way. My fat intake was negligible. That coupled with Gu, Gatorade, Cytomax, and carbo loading for energy and recovery was a sure way to go into sugar overload- which is exactly what I did. I had no clue about the dangers of low protein and fat for endurance events. I was following the advice given to me by my educated running peers, my nutritionist, and my doctor.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Apple-Stuffed Roasted Chicken With Sweet Potato Chips

After all the animal fat talk this week, I figured a recipe was in order. But how could I make a dish that revolved around animal fat? Animal fats usually are just cooking aids, rather than stars of the show – it wasn’t like I could just plop a few ounces of rendered lard on a plate and serve that up – so I had to somehow emphasize them. To accomplish this, I used three different animal fats in the making of the dish. Bacon lard coated the oven-roasted chicken, the apples cooked in goose fat, and the sweet potato chips were fried in freshly-rendered beef tallow.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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How to Render Beef Tallow

As I wrote yesterday’s post, I realized that I’d never actually made my own beef tallow from scratch. I’ve collected plenty of bacon grease in my day, and I’ve made schmaltz and used beef drippings from roasts as cooking fats, but never beef tallow. In fact, I almost never hear about it, even in Primal circles. It’s either lard, duck fat, or ghee getting all the attention. Hey, those are all great, delicious fats, and they deserve their prestige, but I like sticking up for the little guy. I like an underdog. In this case, of course, the little guy comes courtesy of a big cloven-hoofed ungulate.

To render beef tallow, you need to get your hands on some raw beef fat.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

18

A Primal Primer: Animal Fats

Animal fats have recently been implicated as the cause of heart disease, obesity and, in a roundabout convoluted stretch of logic, global warming. If you let health officials tell it, they’re pure evil. Reviled, shunned, and lambasted by the general public (thanks to less-then-sterling endorsements by health officials), animal fats have really gotten a bad rap.

It wasn’t always this way.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Setting the Record Straight

We love it that the Primal Blueprint is garnering more public attention. We love it that research supporting the PB is becoming more common, more visible, more talked about. And we love it that people are jumping in the game, reading studies, asking questions, configuring their own Primal practices (and in doing so remaking their health!). The inevitable by-product of all this exposure, however, is an occasional misunderstanding, the every-so-often confusion about the Primal approach and what it actually suggests. These misinterpretations often find their way into our inboxes (We truly do welcome all comments and questions!), or we catch wind of them through the health blogosphere network. The remarks go something like this.

Posted By: Worker Bee

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