When you ask most people what it takes to be fit, you get some pretty wild answers. Hours on the treadmill or pounding pavement every day. Hours in the weight room. Obsessing over how to turn every moment of the day into an opportunity for some kind of workout move.
I never liked what I heard, and after many decades of overtraining, I decided it was time to come up with a sane alternative—Primal Blueprint Fitness as I’ve called it over the years. It boils down to three logical steps all rooted in ancestral patterns people lived for hundreds of thousands of years:
Primal Blueprint Law #3: Move Frequently
Primal Blueprint Law #4: Lift Heavy Things
Primal Blueprint Law #5: Sprint Once in a While
All told, it’s a handful of hours a week, most of it moving frequently. In addition to those 4-5 hours a week of walking or other light movement, throw in an hour’s worth of strength training and 15 minutes of sprint time. There you go. Do that, and you’ll be in darn good shape.
Read MoreFor today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering a question about taking ketones for overtraining from a reader.
Hi Mark,
I just saw this article the other day and I’m wondering what you think of it. Should high-carb athletes (or regular carb athletes) be taking ketone supplements? Is there any reason why they shouldn’t? It’d be awesome to get the “best of both worlds,” but is it safe?
Thanks,
Bill
Read MoreOn occasion, a reliable and tasty basic cookie recipe that’s remade to be keto-friendly can be useful when you need to bake something for the kids’ class but don’t want to pump the already energetic kids full of refined sugar, when you’re having guests over that might expect or appreciate dessert, or when you want a nostalgic rainy- or snowy-day activity that perfumes the kitchen with melted butter and toasted sugar. Let the kids help by imprinting the dough with their favorite cookie cutters, icing with melted coconut butter, and decorating the cookies with dark chocolate chips or trimmed pieces of fresh or dried fruit. If you aren’t able to use the sweeteners suggested in this recipe, you can swap in coconut or cane sugar (the carbs will change if you do so, of course).
Read MoreResearch of the Week
Under severe calorie restriction, exercise reduces muscle loss by inhibiting autophagy.
Alcohol abstinence is a good idea for people with atrial fibrillation.
Common pyrethroid pesticides, including anti-tick chemicals, linked to heart disease.
The fungus linked to dandruff is also linked to pancreatic cancer.
Mindfulness doesn’t seem to increase mental health when you control for personality.
Read MoreA little while back, Mark posted an article about 14 scenarios in which intermittent fasting (IF) might be just the ticket. We got some requests for a follow-up about times when IF might not be advised.
Mark has already written about cautions for women and athletes specifically. I’ll link those at the bottom. More generally, it’s important that anyone considering IF make sure that they are in a good place physically and mentally to handle the additional stress of IF.
Read MoreA big problem with New Year’s resolutions is not something intrinsic to the practice of resolving to make positive changes in the coming year—these can be beneficial forces in a person’s life—but with the way we word our resolutions. Word choice determines everything. Words mean things. The words we use determine everything that follows. With just slight modifications to the wording and by being more specific, these resolutions can become more powerful, more effective, and more true to our nature and our actual desires.
How would I rewrite eight common New Year’s resolutions?
Read More
Ⓒ 2023 Mark's Daily Apple
