I am reading a book called the The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. Some of you may already know him. His blog, MarksDailyApple.com has a growing, enthusiastic following, including me.
Mark Sisson is an ex-triathlete and marathon runner; basically an Olympic caliber elite athlete. But now at age 53 he shuns this type of exercise and has good reason to believe such endurance type exercise is actually bad for your health (more on this later).
Well, I’ve been reading through his blog and the first couple of pages of his book, and I am hooked. The guy does a great job identifying, challenging, and pointing out the huge shortcomings of the “conventional wisdom” of health. His blog has incredible testimonials from people who reversed chronic illnesses and pain just by following his “Primal Blueprint” principles. Yes, I mean people who were able to do away with blood pressure medications, allergy medications, diet pills, and insulin injections. I even saw a before and after picture of a guy who followed the Primal Blueprint where the transformation was so powerful he looked like a different person! It’s not that he just dropped a lot of pounds of fat, he looked like an athlete; toned muscles, flat abs, the works. His posture was much better, his skin tone less pallid, and his expression suggested he was feeling a lot better than he did before he changed his lifestyle.
Basically, the Primal Blueprint, as the name suggests, uses evolutionary biology as its foundation. In a nutshell, the Primal Blueprint maintains that we should “mimic” the dietary habits and movement patterns of early man (who lived around 10,000 years ago) because our genetic coding for health has not changed much over this time. In essence, it involves eating food in its natural state (meat, vegetables, fruit); not sticking to any set pattern of meal times; and for exercise, long walks with intense bursts of activity (running away from predators, as early man did on occasion), with unstructured weight lifting that mimics movements of early man (carrying a weight on one’s shoulders and walking a half mile, for instance).
Of course there are finer details. I will post the core Primal Blueprint positions on popular health topics in the weeks to come. If you want to check out the book in the meantime, click the Amazon.com link below:
