Mark's Daily Apple

Weekend Link Love

Nikki Young, author of The Paleo Cookbook (I’ve got a copy, and I use it frequently), was interviewed over at Fitness Spotlight this week. Read what she has to say. Then check out her pumpkin and chicken curry recipe at the bottom of the post.

Here’s a quick bodyweight exercise from Conditioning Research: The oblique side raise.

The New York Times talks probiotics. How helpful are they, really?

You may remember Grok Star Sterling and his incredible transformation. He’s got his own blog now, aptly named Sterling Advice. Check it out!

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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10 Ways to Quench a Primal Thirst

I’ll admit it. For the most part, beverages don’t get a lot of attention around here. I tend to take a pretty dismissive stance on them, perhaps as a reaction to the ridiculous mainstream obsession with water intake (64 ounces per day? C’mon!). Also, besides the occasional hankering for a cold beer, I don’t really crave beverages. Coffee in the mornings, water when thirsty, and the occasional glass of wine with dinner is my typical lineup. Most of the fluids my body needs comes from the food I eat so I tend to view beverages as largely inessential. They’re nice and refreshing, but rarely needed.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Weekend Link Love

Another major sign conventional wisdom is starting to crack: This week The Huffington Post ran a piece on why cholesterol may not be the cause of heart disease. A swing and a hit!

Perennially spot-on with life advice, Zen Habits wants you to do less. Find out why.

Are humans meat eaters or vegetarians? You may already know the answer, but I’d still suggest reading Dr. Eades posts on the subject. Here’s part 1 and part 2.

Move over lap band, there’s a new surgical procedure competing for the gold medal of dumb… The Chugay Tongue Patch uses breakthrough advancements in pain and idiocy to stop people from eating food for 30 days. Via That’s Fit.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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You Don’t Know Squat

A while back, I gave a bit of Link Love to Nature’s Platform (thanks, NeoPaleo), a contraption that fits over regular toilets and allows users to squat instead of sit. I included it mainly for the laughs, a bit of tongue-in-cheek (no, not that cheek – the other one!) ribald humor that was somewhat relevant to the Primal lifestyle (because let’s face it, Grok was definitely a squatter), but then I got to thinking: maybe there really is something to squatting. At the very least, I owed it to our bowels to look a bit deeper into the subject, to try to get to the bottom of it, as it were.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Sprint for Your Life: A Primal Workout

For the modern Grok, sprinting is generally an elective endeavor. His animals come pre-slaughtered, his honey comes bee-free, and the once-constant threats of predator or rival clan usually fail to materialize nowadays. He doesn’t “have” to run. If he runs fast, it’s probably because he chooses to do so – for sport, for fitness, or perhaps to catch a bus. But especially in matters of developing one’s physical potential (and, I suppose, when pursuing public transportation), speed still matters. Your sprints should be actual sprints, if you want to get the most out of them; you should be running at or around your maximum speed. But can we really squeeze out every single ounce of power without the threat of instant death or starvation licking at our heels? Is the modern sprint truly a sprint without the mortal urgency? Heck, even Usain Bolt seemed to let up on the intensity in his record-breaking 100m run, and he had a few billion eyes on him, not to mention the weight of a nation’s expectations bearing down on him. Can a mere mortal expect to give it his or her all?

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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