Most people come to the Primal Blueprint because they want to lose weight. Ask any purveyor of a specific diet and they’ll say much the same thing. The majority of people are interested in dropping body fat, looking good naked, and fitting into their clothes. The interest in overall health, fitness, and lifestyle tends to develop organically out of that. Come for the weight loss, stay for the blue-blocking goggles.
There’s a tendency to view weight loss as superficial compared to the other stuff. That’s a mistake. Weight loss isn’t just about belt notches and positive experiences with mirrors. It confers measurable and, most importantly, tangible benefits to health, happiness, and daily functionality almost immediately. Fat loss, it turns out, isn’t a flighty pursuit. It solves a lot of serious problems and makes some really cool things happen.
Like what?
Read MoreA big reason most people never stick to a serious exercise routine is that the benefits most people are interested in take a while to appear. Fat loss, muscle gain, boosts to strength, speed, and stamina—these physical manifestations of training adherence can take weeks and even months to show. That’s plenty of time for folks to give up, convinced exercise is just not for them.
I get it. I do. But that’s not a valid excuse for not exercising. You know it’s important, you know what the benefits are, and I’m not going to sugarcoat things: training is not optional.
Read MoreI’ve written about what to eat. I’ve written about what not to eat. I’ve even discussed the benefits of occasionally eating things you “shouldn’t eat.” I’ve written about skipping breakfast, eating a big lunch, and skipping entire days of meals altogether. I’ve discussed sleeping low (carb) and punctuating a low-carb diet with occasional high-carb refeeds. But I haven’t written very much about when to eat.
I won’t tell you when to eat. There are many paths. You must find the one that takes you to your goal. But there are some physiological “truths” that impact how we process food depending on what’s happening in our lives which seem to apply to all humans. I’ll discuss several ways to think about meal timing, and then you can decide which concepts make sense for you and your life.
Read MoreThere are many meaningful reasons people go Primal: they want to improve their fitness, increase their longevity, feel younger, reverse lifestyle conditions, heal hormonal imbalances, enhance fertility, get off prescription medications, and lose fat. With regard to losing fat, some want to lose a good deal of it—to significantly alter their body composition. This goal, while it has the power to shift one’s entire health trajectory (not to mention life experience) may also be the most likely to come with unforeseen, even undesired results. I’m talking particularly about those who undergo dramatic transformations—the kind that can leave them feeling incredible, enjoying vitality, and (in particular) looking substantially different.
Read MoreThe entire premise of the Primal Blueprint is enabling you to be the architect of your health and happiness. If we can identify the environmental triggers and selective pressures under which the human genome developed, we’ll have a great roadmap for engineering our optimal lifestyle. And for the most part, it works. Not everyone will get the exact body they desire. You won’t all lose every extra pound. I can’t guarantee a six pack or a complete eradication of baby weight. But all in all, eating and living this way seems to produce good results. You can, it seems, affect your health, body composition, and fitness.
But genes still matter. And there’s a large trove of evidence showing that a person’s genetics are really good at predicting their risk of obesity.
Read MoreFor today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answer two questions from readers. First, does Bikram yoga qualify as sprinting or high intensity training? It’s certainly intense, and it’ll make you sweat bullets and work hard to the point of nausea, but does it actually accomplish the same training effects as sprinting or intervals? Find out down below. Next, you often hear that body fat is the main repository for environmental toxins. This is true, but does that mean the body “holds on” to body fat to prevent systemic dispersal of the toxins it contains? Can stored toxins make losing body fat harder that it already is?
Let’s go:
Read MoreAll fats are not created equal. We know this because we’re constantly correcting people who get it wrong. There are good fats and bad fats and really really bad fats and fats that are conditionally good or bad. Butter isn’t corn oil isn’t fish oil isn’t monounsaturated fat isn’t palmitoleic fat isn’t linoleic acid. Sometimes trans fat isn’t even trans fat. The same thing applies to the fat on your body. Depending on its location and composition, healthfulness isn’t distributed equally among adipose tissue. Some types of body fat are worse than others.
Fat is an endocrine organ. Like any other organ, it secretes hormones and other bioactive compounds that affect our physiology and determine our health.
Read MoreThought experiment time. Say you train hard, hard enough to deplete a signifiant amount of glycogen. Your muscles are empty, sensitive to the effects of insulin, and screaming for a couple potatoes to refill glycogen. What do you do?
In most circles, the answer is to eat those potatoes and refill those glycogen stores. And why not? The post-workout period is a special window of opportunity for eating a bunch of carbs and having them go to the right places with minimal insulin required. They won’t contribute to fat storage. They’ll go straight to your muscles. Restocking glycogen sets your muscles up to repeat the hard work and keep up with your training. It makes sense.
What if you didn’t eat the potatoes after a hard workout? What if you abstained from carbs entirely after a glycogen-depleting workout? What if you just went to bed without any (carbs in your) supper? What if you were an elite athlete and skipped the carbs?
Read MoreFor one of the 21-Day Challenge contests last week, you guys asked dozens of questions. Today, I’m answering a bunch of them in rapid fire style including how to get kids to eat more meat and veggies, how to get adults to eat greens, whether keto can coexist with high-carb, if it’s better to eat seasonally and many, many more. Don’t expect long, drawn-out answers. I’m answering quickly and succinctly. If you have any further questions after hearing the answers, toss ’em in the comment section. There will always be more Dear Marks down the line.
Let’s get to it:
Read MoreA couple weeks ago, I linked to an article discussing the “obesity paradox”—the idea that across many different studies and populations, people with slightly overweight and even obese BMIs often have the lowest mortality risk. The author is Harriet Brown, a supporter of the “Health At Every Size” movement, comes down hard on the side of overweight/obesity as safe and even beneficial. At first glance, she makes a strong case. She appears to cite compelling research. She talks to obesity researchers who’ve found protective links between higher BMIs and better health and been lambasted by their colleagues. And if the general consensus is right, and carrying extra weight is so unhealthy, why are obesity and overweight consistently associated with a lower risk of death?
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