Mark's Daily Apple

Spirituality and Health

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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In the quiet deliberation after a serious diagnosis, in the summoning of fortitude to face difficult treatments, in the watershed moment that induces genuine life change, health takes on a deeper association. Throughout the course of daily wellness choices, we look to information, logic and routine. But when we find ourselves in ominous physical territory, we’re often moved to look up from the books and probe beyond their reason. It’s a motivation deeper than fear, more complex than desolation. Whatever our spiritual leanings, illness – like all crisis – leads us to inhabit more profound dimensions of ourselves. We become seekers journeying toward a new or reaffirmed center of meaning and connectedness.

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Posted By: Worker Bee

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News Flash: The Primal Blueprint

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this news flash…

Before I publish today’s regularly scheduled article (stay tuned!) I thought I’d throw up a few new television appearances I’ve done recently to get the word out about The Primal Blueprint.

It all started with the blog as a grassroots effort; readers (you!) telling their friends and family about the site and the PB. Now, in the last three days I’ve done as many radio interviews and have more TV spots lined up. Watch out Good Morning America, The View and Oprah – The Primal Blueprint is coming your way!

Let me know what you think. I’m constantly working on refining the sound bites (such is the way of most media these days) and delivery. Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. Tremendous thanks for your ongoing support and help spreading the message. Grok on!

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Posted By: Mark Sisson

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The Many Uses of Junk Food

A comment on my recent Coca-Cola post mentioned something I’d never previously considered: what if there were legitimate uses for un-Primal “food” items, things like bread, rice, peanut butter, or corn, that didn’t involve putting them in our mouths, chewing, and swallowing? In a previous post on pantry Primalizing, I suggested newcomers donate their off-limits food to those in need. That remains a viable option, but maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to keep a few select items on hand – not to eat, though.

The commenter suggested using cola to clean rust off weights, which I loved for its utter practicality and for being a direct refutation of what soda stands for. Here was a reader co-opting an egregious, offensive, fructosey dietary force to enable a healthy lifestyle, literally using soda to combat soda-induced health problems. Just as the fructose in cola accumulates in the liver and triggers insulin resistance, intense weight training (with shiny, rust-free weights!) improves insulin sensitivity. Pretty perfect, I’d say.

The following ideas and examples may not be so perfectly Primal, but they do represent good ways to extract non-culinary uses out of supposedly culinary items. If you’ve got any of these Neolithic foods laying around, don’t toss them out – yet! You may learn something useful.

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Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Dear Mark: Your Brain on Junk Food

Clearly, we eat not just to fill our stomachs but to satisfy a whole host of biochemical drives. The brain is built to incentivize our efforts not just with the quieting of hunger pangs but the kick-starting of an intricate hormonal “reward” system. When it comes to diet, I’ve always said what nurtures the body nurtures the brain. The proof is in the biochemical picture. And while I wholeheartedly believe that we each choose what we eat and how we treat our bodies, there’s something to the science that shows addictive properties in junk food. I occasionally get emails on this topic. Here’s a timely one from last week.

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Posted By: Mark Sisson

39

Weekend Link Love

Meatonnaise, mayonnaise made from meat fat. Is it possible? Serious Eats attempts to turn mayo-fantasy into reality by creating mayonnaise using beef, duck, and lamb fat. Read the post and you may even catch a glimpse of the fabled mayo-unicorn, baconnaise. (thanks, double_t!)

Kellogg is scared of the swine flu. Or more accurately, they’re scared of consumers lashing out against their odious marketing tactics… (thanks Dan, and here’s a pic of Kellogg at their worst)

I’ll stop lambasting The Biggest Loser when they stop making it so easy… most recently they’ve backed a contraption of spectacular, unnatural movement that looks like the bastard offspring between an elliptical machine and a tricycle. I don’t know what’s worse about this Street Strider commercial, the looks of forced glee on the faces of contestants trying it out, or a fitness model using McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” slogan to describe the one-use-before-collecting-dust-in-garage device.

Keep reading…

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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