Ingredients

• 1 1/2 to 2 pounds flank steak
• 2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 2/3 cup soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons onion powder
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• Special Equipment: 1 box fan, 4 paper air-conditioning filters, and 2 bungee cords

Directions

Peter Jordan examines why kids at Saratoga High are embracing CrossFit. Whatever the reason, fitness is becoming more important for many students.

There are a number of stereotypes associated with Saratoga High School. One is the relative importance placed by the community on academics (very high) as opposed to athletics (not so high). Marching band falls somewhere in the middle, if not in reality, certainly in the mythology.

Our rival school, the other one in a district of just two schools, beat us in the big football game 28 years in a row. But our Academic Performance Index score is 932, and theirs is 873. As a nod to this—or maybe a playful dig—we don’t name our WODs after girls; we name them after institutions of higher learning.

“University of Wisconsin” was a particularly dreadful workout. In retrospect, had we anticipated how tough it would be, we probably would have agreed to scale it back a little to mollify the innocent, trusting, generally willing and agreeable mostly freshman boys and girls that comprise our physical-education classes.

Too late now. The clock had started: 50 wall-ball shots for time, with four burpees every minute on the minute. One of those workouts where there really isn’t a forgiving strategy. You just have to gut it out. Later, when asked to describe their “least favorite WOD,” many would recall this day. Ironically, several would rank this as “most favorite.”

Go figure.

Spice Rub Crock Pot Chicken

1 5-6 lb free range organic chicken – giblets removed, rinsed, and patted dry with paper towels
1 white onion sliced
1 tsp sea salt (optional)
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder

Cover the bottom of the crock pot with the sliced onions. Mix all spices in a small bowl and then rub the spice mixture all over the whole chicken. Place the spiced chicken on top of the onions in the crock pot, cover and cook on low for 5-6 hours (depending on your crock pot). No need for any liquid, the chicken will cook in it’s own juices. Make sure you spoon the onions and a little bit of the juices over the chicken when you serve it. Try serving it with Brussel sprouts, steamed for 5 minutes and then sauteed with a little olive oil, dried dill, garlic powder, and pepper.

Ginger Beef with Mango Salsa

Ginger Beef with Mango Salsa

2 beef inside skirt steaks (2 lbs of steak)

Lettuce leaves

Marinade

¼ cup coconut aminos or wheat free tamari

1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce

1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger

Big pinch of cayenne pepper

Black pepper to taste

Mango Salsa

1 cup green mango, finely diced

1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced

1 avocado, finely diced

1/3 cup cilantro leaves, finely diced

½ teaspoon freshly grated ginger

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lime juice

2 tablespoons olive oil

Whisk all marinade ingredients together.  Cut each steak into three even pieces and toss in the marinade until all steaks are well coated.  Let the steaks  sit in the marinade at room temperature for 20 minutes and then grill for 1-2 minutes on each side.  Remove the steak from the grill and let it rest for 10 minutes or while you prepare the mango salsa.

In a medium sized mixing bowl, gently toss together all the mango salsa ingredients and set aside.   Thinly slice the grilled steak into strips.

To serve, place a few lettuce leaves on each plate, top with a serving of steak strips and finish with a large scoop of the mango salsa.

Serves 5-6.

Below is another post by guest blogger Jason Seib.  Read, enjoy, and follow Jason’s work at his blog, Primitive Stimulus.

Attention Scale Addicts

This one is for those of you with fat loss goals, and I’m not pulling any punches.  I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.  That is certainly not my intention.  At the risk of sounding sexist, the vast majority of “scale addiction” sufferers I have encountered have been women, but there are plenty of men in need of this advice:

Get off the scale!

Measuring gravity’s affect on your body, and then assuming that measurement to be relevant to your physical attractiveness is insanity.  Stop doing that.  Now!

I will concede that the scale can be a motivational tool in the first few weeks of paleo eating and proper exercise, but after that it quickly becomes worthless.  Please allow me to make a few points and try to play to your sense of reason.

• If a woman or man is attractive, would they also be attractive on Jupiter?  They would weigh a lot more there.  Would they somehow be much hotter on the moon due to weighing much less?
• Can you imagine answering the door when a blind date arrives and having them greet you with, “Wow!  You might actually be hot!  Can you step on this scale so I can know for sure?”
• When I was a teenage boy trolling the mall in American Suburbia, we didn’t carry scales to weigh the young girls we drooled over.  We were capable of acting like complete idiots without need of such tools.
• A new female client, 5 feet 5 inches tall, recently told me that she believed her ideal weight to be 115 lbs.  I asked her if she wanted to qualify that vision with anymore information and she said no.  So I clarified for her that what she was saying was essentially that all women who are 5 feet 5 inches tall and weigh 115 lbs have great bodies.  Of course that is utter nonesense.  There are, without question, very many women with those numbers that absolutely do not have great bodies.  It seems even more absurd if you apply the same logic to men.  Would anyone ever assume that all men look great at 5 feet 11 inches and 180 lbs?  Dear God, No!  Think chicken legs and pot belly.
• Most of us have been in love at some point.  Remember the beginning?  Remember when your love interest was so smitten with you that they barely touched the ground when they walked?  Did they know what you weighed?  Nope.
• According to scale addiction logic, there are men all over the world right now who are frustrated with Playboy Magazine to the point of screaming.  Playboy gives all the relevant measurements of their centerfolds, except weight.  “Damn you Playboy!  How can I tell if this woman is beautiful if you won’t tell me what she weighs?!?”

Have I made my point?  The bottom line is that the scale just doesn’t have any really valuable information for you.  Everyone has heard the obligatory “muscle weighs more than fat” ad nauseum, but scale addiction lives on.  Even though, as I pointed out above, weight says virtually nothing about attractiveness, it continues to be the primary focus of most women and many men when it comes to aesthetic goals.

My advice to you if you have aesthetic goals: remember that humans are first and foremost visual creatures.  Take circumferance measurements, or just make note of clothing sizes.  Why circumferance measurements?  Because you cansee them.  Maybe take a “before” picture of yourself and compare it to the body in the mirror from time to time.  If your fitness level improves (more strength, power, speed), and you drop a pant size, is your weight important?  If you really think about it, a rational person would be totally willing to gain a few pounds in exchange for losing an inch in their squishy spots.

You can have a healthier perspective.  Don’t obsess over the stuff that doesn’t really matter.  Be rational when prioritizing your benchmarks and you can stay on track without pulling your hair out in patches.  Just something to think about.

From everydaypaleo.com

A complete Paleo dinner

I have every intention of doing another “Week in The Life” post, and plan to start tracking our food as of today but in the meantime, here is another complete meal post that I hope will be fun and helpful.  Dinner last night was a family project and a nice way to return home after our most recent Paleo Talk seminar in Clackamas Oregon.  I’ll be posting tomorrow about that event.  In the meantime, here’s dinner!

Easy Grilled Steaks

As many steaks as you will need to feed  your family, bring to room temperature, sprinkle each side with sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper and grill over medium high heat. We like our steak rare to medium rare so for thinner cuts of meat it only takes about 5 min. per side on the grill.  Let your meat rest for at least 10-15 minutes before you slice into it so that you do not lose all those precious juices!!

Veggie Stir Fry

1 yellow onion, sliced

1 red bell pepper, sliced

4 zucchini squash, diced

1 cup fresh basil, diced

1/4 cup jullian cut sun dried tomatoes packed in olive oil

2 tablespoons coconut oil

Sea salt and pepper to taste

A splash or two of balsamic vinegar

Heat the coconut oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the onions and peppers and saute until the onions just start to carmelize.  Add the remaining ingredients and saute together for about 4-5 minutes or just until the zucchini become tender but not mush.

Grilled Artichokes

3-4 large artichokes (or as few or as many as you need to feed your family)

I first cooked the artichokes in the pressure cooker.  Cut off most of the stem, leaving about 1-2 inches.  Place in the pressure cooker with 2 cups of water, lock the lid, bring to pressure and cook for 10-12 minutes.  You can also boil artichokes by placing them in a large soup pot, add enough water to cover the artichokes, bring to a boil and let them boil for 30-45 minutes, depending on the size of your artichokes.  You will know they are done when a leaf easily pulls away from the artichoke.  Once the artichokes are tender, cut them in half, scoop out the feathery insides but make sure to leave the heart of the artichoke intact, lightly brush the cut side of the artichoke with melted butter or olive oil, and grill cut side down for about 5 minutes or until they are nicely browned.  Serve with the following recipe of  Garlic Lemon Butter

Garlic Lemon Butter

6 tablespoon grass fed butter

1 tablespoon crushed garlic

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

Sea salt (optional) and black pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan, whisk in the crushed garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Bring to a simmer for 1-2 minutes.  Use as a dip for the artichokes and the steak. You can sub olive oil for the butter if you wish.

We also made sweet potatoes for the kids in the pressure cooker.  Peal and cut into even sized pieces (about 2 inches thick).  Place in the pressure cooker with 1 cup of water. Bring up to pressure and cook for 7 minutes.

This meal served 5 with only some of the veggie stir fry and sweet potatoes left over.

IF YOU CAN’T CONVINCE THEM, CONFUSE THEM.

—Harry Truman

The current media debate about the benefits (or lack of harm) of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in our diet misses the obvious. The average American increased their consumption of HFCS (mostly from sugar sweetened drinks and processed food) from zero to over 60 pounds per person per year. During that time period, obesity rates have more than tripled and diabetes incidence has increased more than seven fold. Not perhaps the only cause, but a fact that cannot be ignored.

Doubt and confusion are the currency of deception, and they sow the seeds of complacency. These are used skillfully through massive print and television advertising campaigns by the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to dispel the “myth” that HFCS is harmful and assert through the opinion of “medical and nutrition experts” that it is no different than cane sugar. It is a “natural” product that is a healthy part of our diet when used in moderation.

Except for one problem. When used in moderation it is a major cause of heart disease,obesity, cancer, dementia, liver failure, tooth decay and more.

Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17 percent of our economy?

The Lengths the Corn Industry Will Go To

The goal of the corn industry is to call into question any claim of harm from consuming high fructose corn syrup, and to confuse and deflect by calling their product natural “corn sugar”. That’s like calling tobacco in cigarettes natural herbal medicine. Watch the slick ad where a caring father walks hand in hand with his four-year-old daughter through a big question mark carved in an idyllic cornfield.

In the ad, the father tells us:

“Like any parent I have questions about the food my daughter eats – like high fructose corn syrup. So I started looking for answers from medical and nutrition experts, and what I discovered whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar your body can’t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar. Knowing that makes me feel better about what she eats and that’s one less thing to worry about.”

Physicians are also targeted directly. I received a 12-page color glossy monograph from the Corn Refiners Association reviewing the “science” that HFCS was safe and no different than cane sugar. I assume the other 700,000 physicians in America received the same propaganda at who knows what cost.

In addition to this, I received a special “personal” letter from the Corn Refiner’s Association outlining every mention of the problems with HCFS in our diet – whether in print, blogs, books, radio or television. They warned me of the errors of my ways and put me on “notice”. For what I am not sure. To think they are tracking this (and me) that closely gives me an Orwellian chill.

New websites like www.sweetsurprise.com and www.cornsugar.com help “set us straight” about HFCS with quotes from professors of nutrition and medicine and thought leaders from Harvard and other stellar institutions.

Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17 percent of our economy?

But are these twisted sweet lies or a sweet surprise, as the Corn Refiners Association websites claim?

What the Science Says about HFCS

Let’s examine the science and insert some common sense into the conversation. These facts may indeed come as a sweet surprise. The ads suggest getting your nutrition advice from your doctor (who, unfortunately, probably knows less about nutrition than most grandmothers). Having studied this for over a decade, and having read, interviewed or personally talked with most of the “medical and nutrition experts” used to bolster the claim that “corn sugar” and cane sugar are essentially the same, quite a different picture emerges and the role of HCFS in promoting obesity, disease and death across the globe becomes clear.

Last week over lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames, one of the foremost nutritional scientists in the world and Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a nutritional biochemist, a student of Linus Pauling and I reviewed the existing science, and Dr. Ames shared shocking new evidence from his research center on how HFCS can trigger body-wide inflammation and obesity.

Here are 5 reasons you should stay way from any product containing high fructose corn syrup and why it may kill you.

1. Sugar in any form causes obesity and disease when consumed in pharmacologic doses.

Cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup are indeed both harmful when consumed in pharmacologic doses of 140 pounds per person per year. When one 20 ounce HFCS sweetened soda, sports drink or tea has 17 teaspoons of sugar (and the average teenager often consumes two drinks a day) we are conducting a largely uncontrolled experiment on the human species. Our hunter gather ancestors consumed the equivalent of 20 teaspoons per year, not per day. In this sense, I would agree with the corn industry that sugar is sugar. Quantity matters. But there are some important differences.

2. HFCS and cane sugar are NOT biochemically identical or processed the same way by the body.

High fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far from “natural” or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and Carghill would not allow the investigative journalist, Michael Pollan to observe it for his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The sugars are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS.

Some basic biochemistry will help you understand this. Regular cane sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together – glucose and fructose in equal amounts. The enzymes in your digestive tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the body.

HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Fructose is sweeter than glucose. And HCFS is cheaper than sugar because of the government farm bill corn subsidies. Products with HFCS are sweeter and cheaper than products made with cane sugar. This allowed for the average soda size to balloon from 8 ounces to 20 ounces with little financial costs to manufacturers but great human costs of increased obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.

Now back to biochemistry. Since there is there is no chemical bond between them, no digestion is required so they are more rapidly absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose goes right to the liver and triggers lipogenesis (the production of fats like triglycerides and cholesterol) this is why it is the major cause of liver damage in this country and causes a condition called “fatty liver” which affects 70 million people. The rapidly absorbed glucose triggers big spikes in insulin – our body’s major fat storage hormone. Both these features of HFCS lead to increased metabolic disturbances that drive increases in appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and more.

But there was one more thing I learned during lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames. Research done by his group at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute found that free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP (our body’s energy source). This depletes the energy fuel source or ATP in our gut required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining. Little “tight junctions” cement each intestinal cell together preventing food and bacteria from “leaking” across the intestinal membrane and triggering an immune reaction and body wide inflammation.

High doses of free fructose have been proven to literally punch holes in the intestinal lining allowing nasty byproducts of toxic gut bacteria and partially digested food proteins to enter your blood stream and trigger the inflammation that we know is at the root of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and accelerated aging. Naturally occurring fructose in fruit is part of a complex of nutrients and fiber that doesn’t exhibit the same biological effects as the free high fructose doses found in “corn sugar”.

The takeaway: Cane sugar and the industrially produced, euphemistically named “corn sugar” are not biochemically or physiologically the same.

3. HFCS contains contaminants including mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA

An FDA researcher asked corn producers to ship a barrel of high fructose corn syrup in order to test for contaminants. Her repeated requests were refused until she claimed she represented a newly created soft drink company. She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that was used as part of the study that showed that HFCS often contains toxic levels of mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its manufacturing.(i) Poisoned sugar is certainly not “natural”.

When HFCS is run through a chemical analyzer or a chromatograph, strange chemical peaks show up that are not glucose or fructose. What are they? Who knows? This certainly calls into question the purity of this processed form of super sugar. The exact nature, effects and toxicity of these funny compounds have not been fully explained, but shouldn’t we be protected from the presence of untested chemical compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food product comprises up to 15-20 percent of the average American’s daily calorie intake?

4. Independent medical and nutrition experts DO NOT support the use of HCFS in our diet, despite the assertions of the corn industry.

The corn industry’s happy looking websites www.cornsugar.com andwww.sweetsurprise.com bolster their position that cane sugar and corn sugar are the same by quoting experts, or should we say mis-quoting …

Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has published widely on the dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks and their contribution to the obesity epidemic. In a review of HFCS in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,(ii) he explains the mechanism by which the free fructose may contribute to obesity. He states that:

“The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis [production of fat in the liver]. In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight [to control appetite], this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain. Furthermore, calorically sweetened beverages may enhance caloric overconsumption.”

He states that HFCS is absorbed more rapidly than regular sugar, and that it doesn’t stimulate insulin or leptin production. This prevents you from triggering the body’s signals for being full and may lead to overconsumption of total calories.

He concludes by saying that:

“… the increase in consumption of HFCS has a temporal relation to the epidemic of obesity, and the overconsumption of HFCS in calorically sweetened beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity.”

The corn industry takes his comments out of context to support their position. “All sugar you eat is the same.”

True pharmacologic doses of any kind of sugar are harmful, but the biochemistry of different kinds of sugar and their respective effects on absorption, appetite and metabolism are different, and Dr. Popkin knows that.

David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, and a personal friend has published extensively on the dangers and the obesogenic properties of sugar-sweetened beverages. He was quoted as saying that“high fructose corn syrup is one of the most misunderstood products in the food industry.” When I asked him why he supported the corn industry, he told me he didn’t and that his comments were taken totally out of context.

Misrepresenting science is one thing, misrepresenting scientists who have been at the forefront of the fight against obesity and high fructose sugar sweetened beverages is quite another.

5. HCFS is almost always a marker of poor-quality, nutrient-poor disease creating industrial food products or “food-like substances”.

The last reason to avoid products that contain HFCS is that they are a marker for poor-quality, nutritionally depleted, processed industrial food full of empty calories and artificial ingredients. If you find “high fructose corn syrup” on the label you can be sure it is not a whole, real, fresh food full of fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants. Stay away if you want to stay healthy. We still must reduce our overall consumption of sugar, but with this one simple dietary change you can radically reduce your health risks and improve your health.

While debate may rage about the biochemistry and physiology of cane sugar vs. corn sugar, this is in fact beside the point (despite the finer points of my scientific analysis above). The conversation has been diverted to a simple assertion that cane sugar and corn sugar are not different.

The real issues are only two.

1. We are consuming HFCS and sugar in pharmacologic quantities never before experienced in human history — 140 pounds a year vs. 20 teaspoons a year 10,000 years ago.
2. High fructose corn syrup is always found in very poor quality foods that are nutritionally vacuous and filled with all sorts of other disease promoting compounds, fats, salt, chemicals and even mercury.

These critical ideas should be the heart of the national conversation, not the meaningless confusing ads and statements by the corn industry in the media and online that attempt to assure the public that the biochemistry of real sugar and industrially produced sugar from corn are the same.

Know I’d like to hear from you …

Do you think there is an association between the introduction of HFCS in our diet and the obesity epidemic?

What reason do you think the Corn Refiners Association has for running such ads and publishing websites like those listed in this article?

What do you think of the science presented here and the general effects of HFCS on the American diet?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Article taken from medicalcodingandbilling.org

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, there is one thing nearly all modern Americans have in common: we sit all the time. Though our great shift towards computer-based work has done great things for productivity, it has, unfortunately, done terrible things for our health. From increased risk of heart disease and obesity in the long term, to sharply hampered cholesterol maintenance in the short term, the negative health effects of sitting are starting to weigh heavily against the benefits. Even the medical field – the greatest advocates and reducing sitting time – is plagued by this new health issue. Though doctors and nurses get plenty of walking time, it usually falls to the secretaries, billers, and coders to do all the sitting. And, as we can see, something has to change.

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Meatballs

3 lbs ground beef
1 cup finely diced red onion
1 cup apple finely diced
1 egg
2 tablespoons curry powder
½ tablespoon sea salt
Fresh ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400. In a large bowl, place all of the meatball ingredients and mix well.   using your hands.  Form into meatballs just a little bit bigger than a golf ball and place into a large glass baking dish.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Makes 24 meatballs.  While the meatballs are cooking prepare the sauce!

Curry Sauce

2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 teaspoon crushed garlic
1 tablespoon raw organic honey (optional)
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 tablespoons tomato paste
½ cup chicken broth

In a large skillet saute the garlic in the coconut oil over medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Add the honey, curry powder, and tomato paste and whisk together.  Add the chicken broth and continue to whisk until the sauce is smooth.  Bring to a simmer.  After the meatballs come out of the oven, add them to the sauce in the skillet and coat well.  Cover and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes.  Serves 6-7.

Eight Foods You Should Almost Never, Ever Eat

Most soybean, corn, cotton and canola crops in the U.S. are genetically altered. Some experts argue that these crops could pose serious health and environmental risks, but the scientific picture is currently incomplete — deliberately so.

Agricultural corporations such as Monsanto and Syngenta have restricted independent research on the crops. They have refused to provide independent scientists with seeds, or else have set restrictive conditions that severely limit research.  This is legal because under U.S. law, genetically engineered crops are patentable.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

“Agricultural companies defend their stonewalling by saying that unrestricted research could make them vulnerable to lawsuits if an experiment somehow leads to harm, or that it could give competitors unfair insight into their products. But it’s likely that the companies fear something else as well: An experiment could reveal that a genetically engineered product is hazardous or doesn’t perform as promised.”

Even if you don’t want to eat genetically engineered foods, you most likely already are doing so.  Corn and soy are two of the most common food ingredients, especially in processed foods, and over 90 percent of both these crops in the US are now from GM seeds.

Organic food companies and consumer groups are stepping up their efforts to get the government to exercise more oversight of engineered foods. Critics of current policy argue that the genetically modified (GM) seeds are often contaminating the nearby non-GM crops.

ABC News reports:

“The U.S. government has insisted there’s not enough difference between the genetically modified seeds its agencies have approved and natural seeds to cause concern. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, more so than his predecessors in previous administrations, has acknowledged the debate over the issue and a growing chorus of consumers concerned about what they are eating.”

Is this you?

Today I’d like to focus on something that is incredibly close to my heart: the importance of the source of your meats.  I was a vegetarian for about 10 years, and my reason for not eating meat was my bleeding heart for animals’ welfare.  I’m about to go PETA on you for a minute, so beware.

When I decided not to eat meat, it was because I didn’t want to have anything to do with a cut of steak that came from a cow that wasn’t quite dead while it was being butchered.  Or a chicken whose beak was melted down to a nub so it couldn’t anxiously peck the eyes out of its featherless cage-mate.  Or a pig that was fed its own feces while standing forever in a pen that just barely housed its obese body.

But after about 10 years of not eating meat, I needed the dense protein that only animal flesh can provide.  I was sick, and I needed to eat what I am “programmed” to eat.  Once I started doing that, I started healing.

However, it wasn’t like I just started eating any old meat I could find.  I began researching all the different brands of meats to find out how their animals were treated before and while they were slaughtered.  I wanted to eat animals that were given a proper environment to thrive in with clean food and pure water to nourish them.  And it turns out that the better they’re treated, the better they are for us to eat.

When a cow or (enter animal here) lives its whole life eating GMO corn and not moving around, its body takes note.  If you were to eat corn and not move around, your body would take note, too (as about two-thirds of the American population can attest to).  You get fat and so do the animals. The fatty acid content is a lot different in an animal who’s been corn fed and under-exercised than one who’s been grazing on grass and moving around its whole life.   It’s like the difference between a sedentary obese guy and a, well, hunter gatherer who walks, reaches, runs, jumps, and manipulates his environment to get what he wants.  Your whole body changes when you do these things (as some of you can attest to), and so does the fatty acid and protein content of your body.  You get more muscle and less fat.

The kinds of fatty acids you’ll find in a grass-fed cow are much different than a factory farmed animal, too.  There is more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and omega 3 fatty acids in grass fed animals because the grass itself contains more of those beneficial fatty acids (1).  CLA has some anticancer effects and may help you firm up that belly fat(6).  And as you probably know, omega 3 fatty acids are the kind of fats you find in abundance in fish, and they are anti-inflammatory.  I’m not just talking about the kind of inflammation you have when you’re in pain, either, like with a sprained ankle or arthritis.  Inflammation is behind everything from diabetes to cancer to migraine headaches, not to mention heart disease.  You want to fight inflammation anyway possible, and eating pasture-raised beef & eggs is one way to do it.

How Much Omega 3 Is Really In Beef?
For instance, there are 38.5 mg of omega 3′s in 3.5 oz of grain fed beef, while there are 93.2 mg in grass fed.  That’s almost 3x the amount of inflammation-fighting fatty acids in grass fed beef.

On the other hand, that same 3.5 oz of conventional, grain fed beef contains 285 mg of omega 6 fatty acids, which are the  pro-inflammatory counterpart to omega 3′s (read: not good for you).  That’s compared to 171 mg in grass fed beef (1).
Now compared with 3.5 oz of wild caught Alaskan salmon at 2.2 GRAMS of omega 3′s , there’s not that much in beef (3).  To put this all into perspective further, if you were to take a good fish oil supplement to try to get your omega 3s that way, a dose is usually about 1-2 gm.  (I think the real lesson here is that we all need to be eating more fish…)

But most people in this country aren’t eating salmon: you’re eating burger meat and chicken (4), so we need to get our omega 3′s where we can get them.  If grass fed beef is going to have almost 3 times the amount of omega 3′s and almost half the amount of omega 6′s, that’s what I’m going to eat.

And In Eggs?
A conventional large egg houses about 33 mg of omega 3′s. One study showed that a pasture raised egg contains about twice that amount (5).

Organic Isn’t Necessarily Grass Fed
Even if you think you’re doing yourself a favor by buying organic beef, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the fatty acid content of this animal is much different than a factory farmed one.  Organic only means that the animal had a little more room to move around, that it was not fed anything that had been sprayed with pesticides, and that it wasn’t given antibiotics at any point in its life.

So, yes, it’s fantastic that organic animals aren’t given antibiotics in their water supply like conventional animals, and that their food isn’t laced with toxic pesticides that will end up in its muscles, which we will eat.  BUT it also means that that cow could have been standing in a fairly dirty pen for most of its life, being fed organic corn and other grain silage, which is inherently hard for it to digest.

You Are What You Eat
You are what you eat.  It’s trite, but it’s true.  Do you want to eat the Zenned out cow in a field of grass, happily munching on what IT was designed to eat, or a freaked out cow who is sick from being knee deep in other cows’ manure and eating food that makes its stomachs hurt? Do you want to eat an egg from a chicken who was so obese that she couldn’t even walk or one that was running around in a pasture with her girlfriends eating bugs out of manure piles all day?

Do you want to be eating animal products that promote illness or ones that help prevent it?  You choose.

Resources:
1. Nutritional Differences between Grass and Grain Fed Beef: Health Implication, Cordain, L.
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20219103
3. http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl
4. http://growinggeorgia.com/animalag/1397-per-capita-meat-poultry-and-fish-consumption
5. http://www.motherearthnews.com/eggs.aspx
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid

Salisbury Steak

Steaks

• 2 pounds of ground beef
• 1 cup spinach, finely diced
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon crushed garlic
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• ½ teaspoon rubbed sage
• ¼ teaspoon ground marjoram
• ¼ teaspoon finely ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons grass fed butter, ghee, or coconut oil

Gravy

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 red onion thinly sliced
• ½ red bell pepper thinly sliced
• 2 cups sliced crimini mushrooms
• 1 cup beef broth
• ¼ cup coconut milk
• Black pepper to taste

In a large mixing bowl place all the ingredients for the steaks and using your hands mix well.  In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium high heat.  While the butter is melting, form the hamburger mixture into thin oval patties (makes 7-8).  Place the patties into the hot melted butter, make sure it sizzles, you want the pan to be nice and hot!  Cook for 2 minutes on each side, the meat should be nice and browned on both sides.  You’ll have to cook these in batches so add more butter or coconut oil if necessary. Once all the steaks are done, place in the oven to keep warm and now it’s time for the gravy!

In the same pan that you just cooked your steaks in, melt the butter over medium heat. Saute the onions, bell pepper, and mushrooms in the butter until tender, about 7-8 minutes.  Add the beef broth and deglaze the pan (scrap all the bits off the bottom of the pan that might still be there from cooking the steaks).  Bring to a boil and add the coconut milk and pepper.  Mix well, bring back to a boil.  At this point you’ll want to turn the heat down until the gravy is just simmering.  Now you’ll want to reduce down the gravy by stirring frequently for about 10 minutes until the sauce starts to thicken.

Serve the steaks with the gravy ladled over the top and garnished with diced flat leaf Italian Parsley.

Serves 5

One of the first things that a newbie asks me after they watch me workout is: “How long have you been Crossfitting?”  I think what they are wondering is how long will it take them to be proficient across the broad spectrum of movements within Crossfit. I always oblige and tell them how long I have been at it, 2 years. The question that a newbie should be asking is how many hours have you dedicated to Crossfit. That answer is completely unknown and it is way more than the few hours a week spent at the gym.

The key to progressing in Crossfit is the exact same as anything else. You have to work at it, work at it some more and then keep working. When I first started 2 years ago I could not do one single pull-up. My workout yesterday was 30 muscle-ups for time. It was a pitiful time but that isn’t the point. I am sorry to break this next part to you but that kind of transformation doesn’t happen without doing extra workouts and doing your homework. I have spent hours and hours away from the gym working on my form. I watched every video and read everything written about Crossfit. You know you are working hard enough when people start saying you are obsessed or belong to a cult. That is when you are on the right track.

Crossfit is awesome and everyone I know has seen unbelievable results from it. However, if you want to have above average proficiency get to work. If your goal is to do one pull-up then you need to work your ass off on pull-ups. Work on it every day. If your air squat sucks you better be doing them every single day. Whatever your goal is work on it every day and don’t be afraid to work on it at home. You can learn a ton on your own.

By Adam Campbell, Women’s Health

Thu, Mar 03, 2011

Just because you’re not vying for 20-inch biceps or thunderously strong thighs like the muscle heads in the gym doesn’t mean you should shun the weight room. Lifting weights gives you an edge over belly fat, stress, heart disease, and cancer—and it’s also the single most effective way to look hot in a bikini. Yet somehow women are still hesitant: Only about a fifth of females strength train two or more times a week.

Here are 12 reasons you shouldn’t live another day without hitting the weights:

1. You’ll lose 40 percent more fat.

If you think cardio is the key to blasting belly fat, keep reading: When Penn State researchers put dieters into three groups—no exercise, aerobic exercise only, or aerobic exercise and weight training—they all lost around 21 pounds, but the lifters shed six more pounds of fat than those who didn’t pump iron. Why? The lifters’ loss was almost pure fat; the others lost fat and muscle.

Other research on dieters who don’t lift shows that, on average, 75 percent of their weight loss is from fat, while 25 percent is from muscle. Muscle loss may drop your scale weight, but it doesn’t improve your reflection in the mirror and it makes you more likely to gain back the flab you lost. However, if you weight train as you diet, you’ll protect your hard-earned muscle and burn more fat.

2. Your clothes will fit better.

Research shows that between the ages of 30 and 50, you’ll likely lose 10 percent of your body’s total muscle. Worse yet, it’s likely to be replaced by fat over time, says a study. And that increases your waist size, because one pound of fat takes up 18 percent more space than one pound of muscle.

3. You’ll burn more calories.

Lifting increases the number of calories you burn while your butt is parked on the couch. That’s because after each strength workout, your muscles need energy to repair their fibers. In fact, researchers found that when people did a total-body workout with just three big-muscle moves, their metabolisms were raised for 39 hours afterward. They also burned a greater percentage of calories from fat compared with those who didn’t lift.

Lifting gives you a better burn during exercise too: Doing a circuit of eight moves (which takes about eight minutes) can expend 159 to 231 calories. That’s about what you’d burn if you ran at a 10-mile-per-hour pace for the same duration.

4. Your diet will improve.

Exercise helps your brain stick to a diet plan. University of Pittsburgh researchers studied 169 overweight adults and found that those who didn’t follow a three-hours-a-week training regimen ate more than their allotted 1,500 calories a day. The reverse was also true— sneaking snacks sabotaged their workouts. The study authors say both diet and exercise likely remind you to stay on track, aiding your weight-loss goals.

5. You’ll handle stress better.

Break a sweat in the weight room and you’ll stay cool under pressure. Scientists determined that the fittest people exhibited lower levels of stress hormones than those who were the least fit. Another study found that after a stressful situation, the blood pressure levels of people with the most muscle returned to normal faster than the levels of those with the least muscle.

6. You’ll be happier.

Yoga isn’t the only Zen-inducing kind of exercise. Researchers found that people who performed three weight workouts a week for six months significantly improved their scores on measures of anger and overall mood.

7. You’ll build stronger bones.

As you age, bone mass goes to pot, which increases your likelihood of one day suffering a debilitating fracture. The good news: A study found that 16 weeks of resistance training increased hip bone density and elevated blood levels of osteocalcin—a marker of bone growth—by 19 percent.

8. You’ll get into shape faster.

The term cardio shouldn’t describe only aerobic exercise: A study found that circuit training with weights raises your heart rate 15 beats per minute higher than if you ran at 60 to 70 percent of your max heart rate. This approach strengthens muscles and provides cardiovascular benefits similar to those of aerobic exercise— so you save time without sacrificing results.

9. Your heart will be healthier.

Researchers at the University of Michigan found that people who did three total-body weight workouts a week for two months decreased their diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by an average of eight points. That’s enough to reduce the risk of a stroke by 40 percent and the chance of a heart attack by 15 percent.

10. You’ll be way more productive.

Lifting could result in a raise (or at least a pat on the back from your boss). Researchers found that workers were 15 percent more productive on days they exercised compared with days they didn’t. So on days you work out, you can (theoretically) finish in eight hours what would normally take nine hours and 12 minutes. Or you’d still work for nine hours but get more done, leaving you feeling less stressed and happier with your job—another perk reported on days workers exercised.

11. You’ll live longer.

University of South Carolina researchers determined that total-body strength is linked to lower risks of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Similarly, other scientists found that being strong during middle age is associated with “exceptional survival,” defined as living to the age of 85 without developing a major disease.

12. You’ll be even smarter.

Muscles strengthen your body and mind: Brazilian researchers found that six months of resistance training enhanced lifters’ cognitive function. In fact, the sweat sessions resulted in better short- and long-term memory, improved verbal reasoning, and a longer attention span.

By Kevin Neeld

Published March 18, 2011

Askmen.com

Think you’ll get a six-pack with crunches? You might want to check out these fitness misconceptions before hitting the gym.

Whether it’s coming from the media, athletes, celebrities, or friends, there are countless exercise myths that are widely accepted as fact. Here are 10 commonly held exercise misconceptions, as well as the real truths to improving your health and performance.

1. Static stretching decreases risk of injury
If people warm-up at all, they usually static stretch. Static stretching immediately before exercise can cause performance decrements; it can also increase your risk of injury. Stretching can also cause a short-term decrease in musculotendinous stiffness. If joints are relying on this stiffness for force production or stability, this decrease can lead to undesired joint movements and eventually cause injury. This is especially true in runners who do the standard calves and hamstrings stretches outside, and go immediately into their run.

There is research demonstrating that runners who static stretch immediately before they run actually suffer more injuries than those who don’t. Dynamic warm-ups with joint mobility and muscle activation exercises will improve your range of motion while promoting muscular control. This gives you the best chance to move efficiently and avoid injury.

2. Getting in shape is good for fat loss
Most people equate losing weight with getting in shape. By definition, getting in shape means that any given workload (for example, a three-mile run at 7 mph) will be easier to perform and less costly in terms of energy. Using jogging as an example, this means you’ll need to run longer or harder to get the same metabolic disturbance (what causes weight/fat loss). This can lead to excessively long training sessions that take a significant toll on your body. One way to minimize this adaptation is to alter your methods of conditioning, like with biking, running, slide-boarding (if possible), and resistance training circuits. This prevents your body from becoming too efficient at any one modality and therefore increases the metabolic disturbance from each.

3. Long-distance cardio is good for fat loss
Just about every piece of cardio equipment currently manufactured comes with a nice display of target heart rate zones for “fat burning.” The idea behind these zones is that working at the specified target heart rates will allow you to burn the largest proportion of your energy from fat. Sounds tempting. What few people realize is that you actually burn the highest proportion of fat while at rest (around 70 percent of your energy comes from fat).

There is a growing body of research now supporting the use of high-intensity interval training for fat loss. This form of “cardio” takes well less than half the time (typically 12 to 20 minutes) of traditional long distance cardio and leads to better results. The only people that should ever do long-distance cardio are endurance athletes, people who have a complete disregard for the value of their time and people who aren’t in good enough health to pursue high-intensity intervals (in which case, lower-intensity intervals would still be better).

4. Pasta is the ultimate pre-workout meal
For endurance athletes, there may be some benefit to the idea of carb loading. With that recognition, carb loading has been misinterpreted as requiring the need for large amounts of carbohyrates in the meal eaten before exercise. Pasta is the most frequent culprit. Most men have fully depleted their body’s carbohydrate stores through the foods they eat throughout the rest of the day. Overeating pasta does little in the way of providing energy and likely leads to fat storage. Carbohydrates can also cause people to feel tired. A better meal option would be a balance of lean protein (like turkey, ham, fish, chicken, and lean beef), whole-grain products (such as quinoa) and vegetables. This provides a wider range of nutrients and gives your body the fuel it needs to perform optimally.

5. A quick jog and a few stretches is a sufficient warm-up
Not overlooking the fact that many people don’t warm up at all, the quick jog to “break a sweat” and a few stretches is the default warm-up of those that do. There are a few benefits of this type of warm-up. By going for a quick jog, you’ll increase your circulatory rate and your body temperature, which can help improve the elasticity of your muscles. But this type of warm-up does little to stimulate the nervous system (or increase the excitability of the working muscles) and doesn’t take the working joints through a full range of motion.

Static stretching immediately before exercise has been shown to decrease performance measures like power, speed, and balance. While the deleterious effects of static stretching are datable and frequently misinterpreted, this type of warm-up can still be improved upon. A dynamic warm-up consisting of joint mobility and muscle-activation exercises will take your joints through a full range of motion, increase the neural drive to the working muscles, increase the extensibility of commonly locked-up muscles, increase your circulatory rate, and increase your internal body temperature. This type of warm-up is ideal both in terms of performance and injury prevention.

6. More is better
In an effort to get stronger, faster or to improve athleticism, most people default to adding more volume. This is often at the expense (or neglect) of added recovery. In order for your body to adapt, it needs sufficient recovery time. While brief planned periods of volume increases can be beneficial in increasing your capacity, continually adding volume will eventually have deleterious effects on your performance. Many men have heard that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. This may be true in some cases, but it’s important to remember that quality practice leads to quality muscle memory and that fatigue masks fitness. In other words, you need to give yourself time to recover from skill-based practices, or you’ll be teaching your body to remember garbage movement strategies. Stress is necessary to stimulate improvement; recovery is necessary to realize adaptation.

7. Strength isn’t important for distance running
It’s true that every distance runner doesn’t need to be and, well, shouldn’t be built like a powerlifter. With that said, every distance runner should be doing some form of resistance training. This doesn’t mean the low-weight, high-rep crap that seems to frequent endurance training; this means strength training designed to actually get you strong (like sets of 6-8 reps). Distance running events are about covering a set distance as fast as possible, meaning speed is the key. Speed is improved by putting more force into the ground in each stride. More force means more strength.

Think of it this way: If you need to put an average of five units of force into the ground each stride to attain your time goals, and you’re maximal capacity is 10 units of force, you’re working at 50 percent of your maximum capacity. If you improve your capacity through quality strength training to 15 units of force, then running at five units per stride is only 33% of your capacity. More likely, you’d increase your speed to maintain your given work intensity (in this case 50%). Strength is far from the only component of being a successful distance runner, but it’s one of the most overlooked.

8. Basketball shoes protect against injury
High-top basketball shoes were invented in an attempt to minimize the risk of rolling an ankle as a result of landing on someone’s foot. These shoes, which increasingly have ankle support that mirrors ski boots, effectively limit side-to-side ankle motion. This will minimize the risk of ankle sprains but causes excessive range of motion at the knee. The knee has some rotational ability, primarily flexes and extends. Unfortunately, basketball shoes also limit the ankle’s range of motion in dorsiflexion (shin coming toward toes) and rotation. When these ankle movements are restricted, compensatory motion occurs at the knee. Over time, this leads to a number of knee problems. Couple this with the fact that restricted ankle motion causes a decrease in sensory and reflexive ability of lower-leg musculature and consequent impairment of balance, and basketball shoes can be viewed as both injury inflicting and performance inhibiting.

9. Squatting is bad for your knees
The idea that squatting is bad for your knees has a few sources. Data on patellofemoral contact (kneecap against the joint) forces during these movements can show forces in excess of nine times an individual’s body weight as the knee flexes through 90 degrees. This is coupled with doctors concluding that squatting is bad from your knees after seeing men come to them in pain from squatting. From the doctor’s viewpoint, this is a logical conclusion. If you hear people say they hurt their knees from squatting again and again, squatting must be bad for your knees.
The gap in this logic is that most people without a history of knee pain squat without ever experiencing it. Regarding the patellofemoral contact force data, a number that seems strikingly high doesn’t necessarily imply that the body is not built to sustain these forces. Most men that have squatting-related knee pain have poor technique. In an attempt to keep their torso vertical, they drive their knees excessively forward. In a good squat, the angle of the shin matches the angle of the torso. This ensures loading of the posterior hip musculature (glutes and hamstrings) and minimizes the anterior shearing forces across your knee. In people with a history of knee pain, it’s best to try to maintain a vertical shin angle throughout the motion.

10. Crunches are the best way to get a six-pack
Everyone, from the average civilian to elite level athletes, has been fooled by the same misconception. Doing crunches and sit-ups are not the best way to get a six-pack. Having a visible six-pack is almost entirely a function of body fat and minimally a function of abdominal development. We all know the rail-thin guys that have a shredded midsection. Contrast the overwhelming majority of powerlifters who have insanely strong core muscles but don’t sport a six-pack. Intuitively, we all know this, but when we start to feel saggy in the midsection, we go straight for the ab exercises. Contrary to popular belief, training a muscle group will not burn fat locally. This means that doing ab exercises won’t burn fat from your midsection. Save yourself the wasted time and probable back pain — the best way to get a six-pack involves making better dietary choices and doing high-intensity interval training.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/03/17/10-fitness-myths/#ixzz1GxgSPuLS

Alasdair Wilkins

Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, and now we know just where the disease it at its worst: in a cluster of 644 counties in 15 largely southeastern states, making up America’s “Diabetes Belt.”

Regional trends are often defined in terms of “belts.” There’s the sun belt, the corn belt, the bible belt, the rust belt, and dozens of others. Back in the 1960s, medical researchers identified several states with high stroke mortality as the “stroke belt”, and now scientists have determined what parts of the country suffers from the worst rates of diabetes. Lead investigator Lawrence E. Barker explains:

“Identifying a diabetes belt by counties allows community leaders to identify regions most in need of efforts to prevent type 2 diabetes and to manage existing cases of the disease. Although many risk factors for type 2 diabetes can’t be changed, others can. Community design that promotes physical activity, along with improved access to healthy food, can encourage the healthy lifestyle changes that reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.”

The researchers determined four key factors that distinguished the “diabetes belt” from the rest of the country:

1. Population of the diabetes belt counties contained substantially more non-Hispanic African Americans compared to the rest of the country (23.8% for the diabetes belt, 8.6% for the rest of the country).
2. Prevalence of obesity (32.9% vs. 26.1%) was greater in the diabetes belt than in the rest of the U.S.
3. Sedentary lifestyle (30.6% vs. 24.8%) was greater in the diabetes belt than in the rest of the U.S.
4. Proportion of people with a college degree was smaller (24.1% vs. 34.3%).

So where is this belt located? The 644 counties are centered mostly in the southeastern United States, and they’re found in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the entire state of Mississippi. Dr. Barker says that this knowledge will hopefully spur residents of the belt to be more conscious of their heightened risk and take greater steps to avoid the condition:

People who live in the diabetes belt will reduce their chance of developing type 2 diabetes if they are more active physically and, for those who are overweight or obese, if they lose weight. Taking these steps will eventually lower the prevalence of diabetes within the diabetes belt.”

Indeed, that’s probably good advice for everyone, in the belt or not.

Via American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Fun-Burgers!

2 lbs grass fed ground beef
Sea salt, black pepper, and garlic powder to taste
5 eggs, fried
10 bacon strips
4 sweet potatoes, grated
1 pound of broccoli florets

Coconut flour drop biscuits

Lettuce mix, sliced dill pickles and tomato slices

Mix the ground beef and spices together and form into hamburger patties and set aside. Fry the bacon, remove from the pan and set aside.  Shred the sweet potatoes in a food processor or with a cheese grater.  Fry the grated sweet potatoes in some of the bacon grease.  While the sweet potatoes are cooking, pan fry your burgers, about 4 minutes per side.  Remove the burgers from the pan, set aside and fry the eggs in some grass fed butter or coconut oil.  Of course you should have several children helping with all stages of the process and somehow in the middle of the above madness, mix up and bake some of the coconut flour drop biscuits and throw the broccoli on a cookie sheet, drizzle with coconut oil and bake at 400 with the biscuits for about the same amount of time.

Dr. Loren Cordain and a few MD colleagues have recently published a paper (PDF) called “Organic Fitness: Physical Activity Consistent with Our Hunter-Gatherer Heritage.” It makes for a great companion piece to Primal Blueprint Fitness, and it encapsulates quite nicely the breadth of research into the physical activities of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Read the whole thing. There’s probably nothing really new to you guys already well-versed in this stuff, but it’s good having it all in one space, and it’s good having it from more sources (not just me). If someone ever asks you why you go barefoot, avoid weight machines, squat below parallel (don’t you know it’s bad for your knees!?!), go on hikes for fun without sunscreen, and hate treadmills, you can send along a nice, neat package including the PBF eBook and the Cordain paper. This isn’t a “nyah, nyah, proven right again!” type thing (well, kinda). This is a “buttressing the incoming unavoidable inexorable impossible-to-ignore flood of evidence in favor of listening to evolution in matters of health and fitness” type thing. The times they are a changin’, eh?

Anyway, let’s get to the meaty bits of the paper – to what they call the “fundamental elements of ‘organic exercise,’ which may serve as a template from which to design a fitness strategy for adults living in today’s modern industrialized culture.” I’ve bolded and italicized their words (from a section of which the title of this article is derived) and followed up with my commentary:

1. A large amount background daily, light-to-moderate activity such as walking was required. Although the distances covered would have varied widely according to hunting and foraging routines, cultures, weather, seasons, ages, etc., most estimates indicate that the average daily distances covered were in the range of 6 to 16 km.

Or in other words, Move Frequently at a Slow Pace. Note that “6 to 16 km” per day is a fairly big range, and it’s the ideal – if you’re trying to perfectly emulate hunter-gatherer activity. This is neither necessarily optimum nor possible for most people. Now, If I could, I’d go on a two-hour leisurely paced hike through nature every single day, but I can’t, and so I don’t. I also don’t fret about it. If you get three to five hours (or more) of slow moving walking or hiking each week, you’re doing things right.

2. Hard days were typically followed by an easier day, but every day a variety of physical activities had to be accomplished just to provide for the basic human needs. The hunter-gatherers’ daily energy expenditures for physical activity typically were at least 800 to 1200 kcal or about 3 to 5 times that of modern sedentary individuals.

Vary your workouts and get plenty of rest, but stay active every day. Be a generalist, unless profession or dearly held extracurricular activities require specialization. That is, if you’re a high-level athlete or just an extremely passionate one, focus on your sport. Exercise should breed pleasure, after all. Hunter-gatherers were generalists by necessity; they had to be all-around physically capable, so it’s probably an optimal path – health-wise – for us, their descendants, but not if it negatively affects your enjoyment of life.

3. Individuals walked or ran on natural surfaces, such as grass and dirt, and often on uneven ground; our ancient ancestors almost never walked or ran on solid flat rock. The combination of softer natural walking/running surfaces and less biomechanically restrictive shoes is a more evolutionarily congruent strategy to reduce impact loading of the joints.

I’m in agreement with this – ditch the shoes altogether or opt for alternatives that promote natural locomotion – but  “natural surfaces” are probably less important for healthy moving in the grand scheme of things. What’s important is how we land and use our joints and muscles to absorb the impact. If you’re walking or running in species appropriate footwear that promote a healthy footfall, you will be more likely to handle the impact of that footfall whether you’re on concrete, a hardwood floor, or a dirt path. I will say that walking or running on uneven ground strewn both with large obstacles that you have to avoid or climb over (rocks, sticks, branches) and with small objects that you perceive underfoot and must subconsciously react to (pebbles, gravel, sharp stickers) is ideal, but if you live in a big city without regular access to the outdoors, what are you gonna do? Nothing? Pick the appropriate footwear (or lack thereof) and you’ll be most of the way there.

4. Life in the wild often called for intermittent bursts of moderate-to-high level intensity exercise with intervening periods of rest and recovery. High-intensity interval training sessions should be performed once or twice per week.

As I often say, make your long, easy workouts longer and easier, and make your short, intense workouts even shorter and more intense. Intensity is key for the best results in fitness, but you’ve gotta rest. Apply a stressful stimulus, allow your body to respond and adapt to that stimulus. It’s extremely simple and intuitive, yet so many get it so wrong. Add sprinting to your weekly routine if you haven’t already. The PBF protocol calls for one dedicated sprint day each week, with WOWs rounding out the weekly HIIT.

5. Cross-training is important and should include exercises focusing on strength (resistive), endurance (aerobic), and flexibility (stretching). Rotation among multiple different forms of exercise develops resilience and multifaceted fitness and reduces the likelihood of overuse injury, boredom, and emotional burnout.

Again, the generalist approach. Competency across a broad range of movement patterns,activity types, and energy pathways. Joints should move freely and smoothly, lean massshould be visible and capable, and you shouldn’t get winded ascending a flight of stairs or going for a walk. These things – joint mobility and flexibility, basic physical strength, and adequate aerobic endurance – are valuable and useful to all people, everywhere, regardless of interest in formal exercise or sport.

6. Regular sessions of weight training and other strength-building exercises are essential for optimizing health and fitness. These need to be performed at least 2 or 3 times per week, for at least 20 to 30 minutes per session.

Strength training is the foundation. It helps you build and maintain a powerful, stable base of operations (your body) from which to conduct daily business. I would add that these weight training sessions must be composed of compound, full-body movements, rather than isolation exercises, because, well, compound multijoint movements are simply how we move around in the world. If you’re an advanced trainee with a strong foundation built by years of compound exercises, go ahead and hit the curls and tricep kickbacks if you like, but if you’re trying to establish or enhance your actual strength, stick with compound movements. Bodyweight is sufficient for just about everyone, but barbells, kettlebells, and other weighted implements are awesome tools, too. The PBF protocol calls for 2 LHT (Lift Heavy Things) days each week.

7. In general, hunter-gatherers were lean, and probably almost never obese, which reduced trauma to their joints.

Yep. (Have you ever seen Grok?) Furthermore, the obese are usually inactive, and activity – especially weight-bearing activity – increases the strength and thickness of connective tissue. So it’s a double whammy. Obesity increases wear and tear on joints that are already weakened by inactivity.

8. Virtually all of the exercise was done outdoors in the natural world. Outdoor activities help maintain ultraviolet-stimulated vitamin D synthesis, improve mood, and facilitate adherence to a regular exercise program.

This is a huge aspect of fitness (and health) that goes relatively unheeded. While you can still get an extremely effective workout in a cloistered gym, outdoor workouts provide added benefits. This isn’t rocket science. I think most people understand this intuitively. Which would you prefer: a 45 minute treadmill run in a gray room with artificial light, or a game of Ultimate Frisbee in a park on a sunny day? Or how about the choice between yoga in a studio and yoga on a cliff overlooking the ocean? Time spent in nature is undeniably good for our psychological and physiological well-being. I still hit up the gym for certain routines and for the camaraderie, but more and more I put an emphasis on getting back to nature – to get my daily dose of rays and to recharge in a more natural environment.

9. Much of the physical activity was done in context of a social setting (small bands of individuals who were hunting or foraging were working together on various chores). There is substantial evidence that some of the psychological benefits of formal exercise training programs are derived from the social bonding and other unique aspects of the group exercise sessions. The benefits of group exercise can be conferred by structured programs and/or informal exercise sessions involving at least 2 individuals.

Look at the popularity, success, and effectiveness of something like CrossFit. People are willing and able to subject their bodies to immense amounts of pain and suffering in the presence of others undergoing a similar experience. We are social animals who derive great satisfaction from being with likeminded individuals. Empathy is a powerful thing, and it’s there for a reason. We’re able to transfer the suffering, to spread it out across the group and make the pain a bit more bearable. You don’t have to take a spin class or go for a Zumba session or even do CrossFit, necessarily, to get the benefits of mixing social bonding with fitness. Simply adding a single workout partner will make things easier and help you stick to the regimen. Or, you could play sports, either in pickup game form or by joining a formal league.

10. Genetic evidence suggests that humans and dogs have been coevolving together for as long as 135 000 years. The mutual advantages conferred by this co-evolutionary process have been theorized to be related to cooperative hunting between domesticated wolves and our ancient hominin ancestors. Thus, both the dog and the human genomes may be specifically adapted to outdoor exercise involving cooperation between these 2 species. Indeed, studies indicate that dog ownership can facilitate adherence to an exercise program, improve fitness, and reduce excess weight among individuals.

I get my best workouts (most enjoyable, certainly) with my yellow lab, Buddha. He exudes confidence and serenity almost to the point of enlightenment, and I’m convinced that my appreciation of my dog isn’t just learned. These furry guys have been living, sleeping, working, hunting, and bonding with us humans for tens of thousands of years. It’s entirely feasible that genetic advantages to having a dog (for both parties involved) have arisen and persist today. I’ve actually written about what we can learn from and how to exercise with dogs. Read it and then get outdoors for some fractal fun.

11. Dancing was often performed as a part of rituals and celebrations, and is an ideal form of exercise that improves fitness and reduces stress.

As long as we’ve been drumming our hands, fingers, and sticks against objects to form rudimentary rhythmic patterns (tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years), we’ve been moving our bodies along with them. In other words, dance is unabashedly, absolutely Primal. I put dance in the play category, in that it’s that type of exercise that you do for the heck of it, because it’s fun (or you’re trying to procure a mate) and don’t realize you’re actually getting an amazing mental and physical workout. So dance, and don’t worry about looking ridiculous. You’re just acknowledging the presence of aural rhythms in the air with your body. It’s unnatural not to do so.

12. Sexual activity has always been an important aspect of human physical and social interaction. A frequency of sexual activity of  1 or 2 times per week correlates with multiple health benefits.

Some would say that this is the most Primal activity of them all. I won’t go too deeply into this one, not for prudishness, but because I’m planning a dedicated post on the topic in the near future. Stay tuned for that one. It will, sadly and by necessity, be relatively SFW.

13. Ample time for rest, relaxation, and sleep was generally available to ensure complete recovery after strenuous exertion.

Fitting that this is the last one, because it’s what everyone always forgets about (if they ever knew it at all) or ignores. Exercise is utterly pointless and even counterproductive without proper rest, relaxation, and sleep. You need to eat well and eat enough, let your muscles rest and regrow, and have enough downtime to reap the benefits of exercise. I mean, you’re doing this to increase the quality of life, right? You want to be strong and able to run fast and far so that life is easier and you don’t have to worry about your body, right? Get your rest and sleep, then. It’s the only way forward.

Thoughts? Concerns? Did Cordain and company miss anything? Have I? What else can we learn from the physical activities of our ancestors?

Ingredients:

Halibut Macadamia

• 1.5 lbs fresh Halibut filets
• 1 Cup Toasted & Chopped Macadamia Nuts
• 2 Tablespoons Fresh Parsley
• ¼ Teaspoon Fresh Ground Black Pepper
• ¼ Teaspoon Sea Salt (optional)
• Grated Orange Zest (from about ½ of an orange)
• 1 Teaspoon Olive Oil
• 1 Tablespoon unsweetened Almond or Coconut Milk
• 2 Egg Whites
• Orange slices, for garnish

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Toast Macadamia nuts for approximately 10 minutes on an ungreased baking sheet. Watch them to make sure they don’t burn. When done, allow the nuts to cool completely before chopping them (food processors work great for this!)
3. Lightly grease a baking dish with Olive Oil.
4. In a medium, shallow bowl, beat egg whites with the almond or coconut milk (I used coconut milk).
5. Blend the cooled, toasted macadamia nuts in a food processor and then add the parsley, sea salt, pepper, and orange zest.
6. One at a time, place halibut filets in egg mixture, and coat on both sides, then press the halibut in the nut mixture, and cover all over.
7. Once the halibut filets are coated in the egg & nut mixture, place them in the baking pan.
8. Bake for 15+ minutes or longer until temp reaches 130-135. Test a piece with a fork to make sure the texture of the fish is flaky and pulls apart.
9. Serve with your favorite veggies, and garnish with the orange slices!