Mark Sisson's Blog, page 135

Coconut Tamari Pork Chops

A quick marinade also makes a delicious, lip-smacking sauce for these juicy pan-seared pork chops. Tamari, lime juice, coconut aminos and coconut milk blend into a sweet/salty marinade that’s simply amazing with pork. Simmer the same marinade into a sauce, and you’ll be licking your plate clean.

If you can, use bone-in pork chops every time. They’re so much juicier and less likely to turn into flavorless rubber. Although if anything could give more flavor to a boneless pork chop, this marinade and sauce combination is it.

Servings: 2

Cooking Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

2 one-inch-thick (2.5 cm) bone-in pork chops
¼ cup tamari (60 ml)
¼ cup lime juice (60 ml)
2 tablespoons coconut aminos (30 ml)
½ cup full fat canned coconut milk (plus more to thin out the sauce as it cooks – keep the open can handy) (120 ml)
2 tablespoons PRIMAL KITCHEN® Avocado Oil (30 ml)
Fresh cilantro or mint, for garnish

Instructions

In a bowl, whisk together tamari, lime juice, coconut aminos and coconut milk.

Use a fork to poke holes all over the pork chops. Put the pork chops in a sealable plastic bag and pour half the marinade over the pork chops. Set aside the remaining marinade in a bowl. Marinate the pork chops at least 10 minutes, and up to a few hours.

Heat avocado oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. Take pork chops out of their marinade and add the chops to the hot skillet (without the marinade). Cook 3 minutes, until nicely browned on one side (keep an eye on the pork chops, as the marinade will make them brown quickly).

Flip the chops, and cook 3 minutes more.

Reduce heat to medium-low. Add the reserved marinade that was set aside in a bowl.

Bring to a simmer and cover the skillet.

Simmer very gently for 8 to 10 minutes, until the pork chops are done and the sauce is thick. Lift the lid to flip the chops and check on the sauce every 2 minutes. The sauce will thicken and become syrup-like, and it can easily burn to the pan. Whenever the sauce starts getting too thin and looks like it is sticking to the pan, drizzle in a tablespoon or two of coconut milk and swirl it around the pan. Adding coconut milk also keeps the sauce from getting too salty.

Serve with fresh cilantro or mint.

274 calories
10 grams carbohydrate
23 grams fat
9 grams protein

Want more Primal recipes?

Try the Primal Blueprint Slow Cooker Cookbook for free here.

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Published on July 07, 2018 07:00

The Quest For a Good Life

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

“To inspire people to be their best and love the journey so they get the most out of life and make the world a better place.” – Benj’s WHY: the reason I get out of bed in the morning. Ok, if I’m being honest, that’s my second reason. The first is my home-made quad espresso (black, of course!).

My journey hasn’t been some monumental before-and-after story, but more an EVOLUTION (Grok-style). I grew up out in the “woods” 100 kilometres (60 miles) outside of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I was always a super active kid, playing every sport in school, and then getting home and continuing the sports non-stop with my brother. My parents both got in on the act often, and were always super supportive. When I look back, our family was about half-Grok back then without even knowing it. We didn’t watch TV much (just some Hockey Night in Canada on the weekends), always had home-cooked meals (some food choices have since been adjusted!), and did a ton of stuff outside and in nature. Both of my parents are retired teachers, so we learned how to learn, problem solve, question authority, and investigate.

After high school, I earned a university volleyball scholarship and began my career as an “elite” athlete. I ended up playing 5 years of post-secondary volleyball, and was also fortunate to play 3 years for Team Canada and 1 year professionally in France. At the same time, I completed a Physical Education degree and a Master’s degree in Kinesiology (Coaching). I also figured out how to completely destroy my diet, going from home-cooked meals to almost exclusively processed food, fast-food, and the craziest part: averaging around 3 litres (3/4 of a gallon) of Coke/Slurpees EVERY DAY!!

I look back now in disbelief. I can’t imagine how much better I could have performed on the court, and how much less my knees, shoulder, and everything else would’ve hurt if I wasn’t pounding so much sugar and junk. Half way through my volleyball career, I got into weight lifting and once my playing career was over, I became a college volleyball coach and kinesiology instructor, and continued working out a couple of hours 5-6 days a week. I looked like a pretty fit beast (6’4”, 240 pounds, 12-14% body fat), but I certainly didn’t feel that way.

Gradually, I started reading more about health and making better choices. I reduced my Slurpee intake to 1 per day after my workouts along side my protein shake, and upgraded my diet from complete garbage to the Zone diet (30% fat, 30% protein, 40% carbs every meal). Unfortunately, I think my years of a garbage diet while continuing to pound my body with multiple workouts and practices added up. All my joints constantly hurt, I was often bloated and uncomfortable, and I ended up getting knee surgery. I just chalked it up to things I would have to deal with as a price for being an elite athlete…and here’s where the fun really begins!

I met my wife, Jolene, at the end of 2002 having just turned 30, and we married in August of 2003 (she was 25 at the time), so the rest of this is OUR story! Jolene was keen on working out, adjusting her diet, and so we continued with the Zone and working out chronically. The picture above was taken two months before our wedding.

At about this time I started having symptoms of pretty serious hyperthyroidism and was eventually diagnosed with Grave’s disease and in the spring of 2004 had my thyroid gland destroyed (I’m guessing the doctors would disagree with my description) with 2 doses of radiated iodine leaving me on the opposite end of the spectrum, with severe hypothyroidism. I firmly believe this was an autoimmune response to my decade of crazy carb intake combined with my non-stop sports lifestyle. It has left me having to take thyroid hormones (initially synthetic, but I switched to natural 5 years ago) daily for likely the rest of my life. Luckily, I haven’t had any major issues, I can tell quickly if I need to adjust my dose, and life has basically been good. I only wish I had learned about primal wellness prior to the radiation treatment, because I’m confident I could have reversed my condition and preserved a functioning thyroid gland.

Life continued for Jolene and I, and we became more and more fascinated with holistic wellness. I began reading and researching on all aspects of leading a healthy life and implementing what I learned into the Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness class I was teaching at college. I also became really curious about how people learn, how the brain operates, and how to create optimal learning environments, which I began experimenting with in my classes and with the women’s volleyball ball team I was coaching. After over 30 years of what I call incidental learning, it finally occurred to me that I had WAY more to learn and it became my passion to find out and implement all I could about each component of wellness. Jolene was busy running her own business as a massage therapist and helping others with their wellness. It’s been amazing that Jolene has been on board the whole way. And I had and have so much to learn from her as well. She has great awareness, kindness, empathy, and authenticity.

Fast-forward to the spring of 2011, I read my first ancestral health book, The New Evolution Diet, by Arthur De Vany, and it was a total game changer. After spending the past 7-plus years reading and researching, the book just put everything together. Jolene and I went all in immediately on a primal/paleo lifestyle and the results were instant. Although we looked to be in pretty “good shape” before hand, in a matter of weeks we both leaned out significantly. The picture above was taken just a few months after ditching grains, sugar and processed food (ages 38 & 33).

But the best changes had nothing to do with how we looked. I was able to get up and down stairs without my knees aching, I no longer had any gastrointestinal discomfort, I slept way better and needed less of it, I was more alert and in a better mood. And these changes happened in a matter of days. All these things were amazing, and I knew there was still so much more to learn. I just continued researching all aspects of wellness, and we applied what I learned, tweaking and adjusting our lifestyle. And then a couple of years later I finally came across Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint…BOOM! Everything we were working on, all covered in 10 Laws that lead to a good life! What could possibly make more sense than to understand that wellness is in our DNA and we have tremendous influence over how our genes are expressed?

Perhaps the coolest thing about this all is that it’s been a family affair. The same half-Grok family at the beginning of this story is now a full Grok-family! My Mom and Dad still live out in the woods, and are enjoying a full-on primal lifestyle in their retirement. My brother, his wife and their 6-year old daughter live in the mountains and honor the Grok way both at the kitchen table and with their daily hikes, mountain bike rides, rock climbs, or whatever else they choose to do.

As time goes by, Jolene and I continue to make adjustments that simplify and enhance our wellness. We now work out less than ever before, and do it intuitively. This usually means about two 20-30 minute intense strength sessions per week, a couple of 5 kilometre jogs keeping the heart rate in the aerobic zone, the occasional sprint workout, and plenty of walks with the dogs. Our meal plans are simple too. We eat delicious food W.H.E.N. (when hunger ensues naturally). This almost always means our first meal is in the early afternoon. Jolene feels at her best when she eats few carbs (less than 50g/day) and I hover in the 50-100g/day range to be at my best. And those are educated guesses because we never stress about it. We don’t measure or track anything, just eat things we know are good for us and don’t eat crap. We have found a primal lifestyle to be fairly easy and simple, and the benefits can’t be overstated! The above pictures are from April of 2018 at ages 45 and 40.

The latest chapter in our story is just beginning! When I first heard about the Primal Blueprint Health Coach program (now Primal Health Coach Institute), I signed up immediately and became certified at the end of 2016. It was such a great summary of everything I’ve learned over the past 15 years and now I’m hoping to inspire others with my passion for wellness and human excellence. This is what that looks like to me.

I’d love for everyone to enhance their wellness and I’m looking forward to starting my Primal Health Coaching career so I can help people with their journey. I’ve recently enrolled in a Primal Health Coaching Institute Masterclass in Miami and I’m so excited to get this off the ground! Thanks for taking the time to read my story, hopefully it inspires you to either start or keep going on a path of health and happiness!

Benj Heinrichs

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

June, 2018

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Published on July 06, 2018 09:00

A “Don’t Miss” FREE Documentary: The Real Skinny On Fat

On July 17th, you’ll be able to watch (at no cost to you) an extensive interview documentary that I’d highly recommend—that is, if you’re interested in learning about keto for weight loss, performance, and disease treatment; about fasting, autophagy, and (healthy) fat intake for chronic disease prevention and treatment; and about targeted, manageable fitness for anyone who’s interested in improving their health. I was happy to participate in the documentary and now share it with you as an affiliate supporter of its essential message for health.

It’s called The Real Skinny On Fat, and you’ll hear from me as well as Dr. Cate Shanahan, Dr. Jason Fung, Kathy Smith, Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, Dr. Frank Lipman, Nina Teicholz, as well as a dozen experts and physicians (from cardiologists to neurologists)—talk about the massively skewed medical perspective that has become one of the root contributors to modern illness, including diabetes and cancer.

Learn how to “flip the switch” on your own cellular regeneration. Learn how to amplify your body’s natural detoxification defenses. Learn about medical breakthroughs in cancer and Alzheimer’s. Learn about alternative methods of fasting that provide the core physiological benefits—without feeling deprived. And much, much more, I promise you.

On July 17th, this documentary is entirely free for anyone to watch. So, be sure to sign up—and pass along to friends and family members.

Watch this short but powerful video right now and get the whole story.

And let me know what you think.

It’s Success Story Friday of course, so be sure to check back. Thanks for stopping in, everybody.

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Published on July 06, 2018 07:39

10 Primal Skin Care Ideas

Morning, everyone. Hope you all enjoyed a happy and safe holiday. I’m turning over the reins to one of our Worker Bees today as I spend some time on a book project (more to come on that). I know many of you have asked about natural skin care ideas in the comment board, and we’ve got some great suggestions today. I hope you’ll welcome our Worker Bee to the fold (she just joined us recently) and offer up your own ideas below. (And for those who may have missed it, I shared several of my own favorites last spring.) Have a good end to the week.

Spend any amount of time perusing the shelves at your local supermarket or beauty supply store and you may notice that all the skin care products have something in common: a long ingredient list. I’m afraid to say most commercially-packaged bottles, jars, and tubes contain potentially harmful ingredients in the form of preservatives, stabilizers, artificial colors, and/or added fragrances, which could have negative long-term health effects when absorbed through the skin.

Thankfully, there are plenty of all-natural skin care options out there that not only provide better results, but usually cost a fraction of what you’d pay for the store-bought version. Here are 10 skin care solutions backed up by research (and self-experiment).

1. Scrub With Sea Salt

Sea salt is one of the best all-natural exfoliators, and chances are it’s already hiding in your kitchen cabinet. While most of the time we can let nature take its course, now and then we might exfoliate as a means to remove layers of dead skin cells when our skin is itchy and flaky or to encourage skin cell turnover for a fresher appearance. Sea salt is also full of nutrients found in sea water—and in our bodies—including calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Combine sea salt with raw honey or coconut oil and gently rub it into your skin. Just be sure to check the texture of the salt before you use it on your face: the salt should be smooth, with no rough edges. You want it to gently remove that layer of dead skin cells, not rub your skin raw.

2. Heal Skin With Raw Honey

Raw honey is widely recognized for its antimicrobial properties, and has long been used as a natural treatment for wounds and burns. This sweet, golden nectar contains a variety of proteins, amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, and minerals, which all work in tandem to speed the healing process. After cleaning skin, apply a layer of honey directly onto scars, cuts, and burns. Make sure to choose raw, unprocessed honey, as the commercial honey you’ll find in most grocery stores is highly processed and lacking in nutrients.

3. Moisturize With Avocado Oil

Pure avocado oil is a great stand-in for commercial creams and lotions, which are usually loaded with questionable ingredients you can barely pronounce. There’s no secret as to what you’re getting in a bottle of avocado oil: pure, fatty goodness. It’s packed with good-for-your-skin nutrients, like carotenoids, healthy fat, and vitamins A, D and E. Together, these nutrients can boost collagen production, fade age spots, calm inflammation, and treat sunburns. Pour a few drops in your hand and work it into clean, dry skin. (By the way, it’s part of Mark’s personal daily routine.)

4. Clean Skin With Apple Cider Vinegar

Apple cider vinegar is a potent anti-fungal solution that’s especially helpful for acne prevention. To make it, producers ferment cider so the sugars turn into alcohol, and ferment it again so the alcohol turns into acetic acid. It’s this acetic acid—as well as the lactic acid, citric acid, and succinic acid—that makes apple cider vinegar such an effective cleanser. Some studies have even shown that these acids can prevent acne-causing bacteria from growing. Soak a cotton ball in apple cider vinegar and use it as a facial toner morning and night.

5. Treat Acne With Tea Tree Oil

In a recent pilot study published in the Australasian Journal of Dermatology, researchers found that a treatment of tea tree oil gel was more effective at improving mild to moderate acne than a face wash. You can a find pre-made tea tree oil cleanser or make your own by adding a few drops of pure tea tree essential oil to honey. In general, tea tree oil is well-tolerated, but it may cause peeling and dryness for some people.

6. Soothe Redness With Aloe Vera

For soothing sunburns, fighting inflammation, and tempering itchiness, look no further than the aloe vera. This tropical plant contains a host of good-for-you ingredients including vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and enzymes. What’s more, aloe has been shown to have anti-microbial effects, making it the ideal all-natural therapy for healing skin. Look for aloe gel with at least 97.5 percent aloe (or keep your own collection of aloe plants in your home or garden).

7. Moisturize With Shea Butter

It’s no secret: Shea butter smooths dry skin like no other. This fatty substance—packed with stearic, palmitic, linoleic, and oleic acids, as well as vitamins E and A—has already been incorporated into commercial creams and lotions. Like most things, however, shea butter is best when used in its purest, rawest form, so seek out unrefined shea butter. It can be used as is or mixed with essential oils. Just keep in mind that those with tree nut allergies should avoid shea butter. An added bonus: a study in the American Journal of Life Sciences suggests that shea butter can also boost collagen production.

8. Remove Makeup With Jojoba Oil

Swap out commercial makeup removers—which usually contain harsh chemicals—with a healthier option: jojoba oil. You can even use jojoba oil to wipe away eye makeup. It’s not only safe to use on sensitive skin, including the eye area, but it’s moisturizing. Apply jojoba oil to a cloth or cotton ball and use it to gently clean off makeup and bacteria.

9. Shave With Coconut Oil

Commercial shaving lotions and creams often fall short on their promise to protect the skin from irritation and razor burn. A very link layer of coconut oil can deliver on both fronts—plus, it smells amazing! Thanks to its low molecular weight and ability to bond to proteins, coconut oil can sink deeper into the skin than other oils. Scoop a small amount into the palm of your hand to warm it up and apply directly onto the area to be shaved. I’d recommend washing your hands with soap and water before picking up the razor, however, since coconut oil will leave your hands slippery.

10. Protect Skin With Lemon Essential Oil

Lemon oil, like other citrus oils, has powerful antioxidant properties (and a fresh, energizing scent). One natural compound in lemon essential oil in particular has been shown to be capable of protecting skin against the aging effects of free radical damage. Lemon essential oil can even fade scars and age spots. Safely dilute for everyday use by mixing a few drops of lemon essential oil with a simple “base” like jojoba or avocado oil and massage into your skin.

Here are ten ideas to try. What would you add? Share your recommendations in the comments below, and thanks for reading.

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Published on July 05, 2018 09:18

Does “Sleep Hacking” Work?

You can “hack” a lot of your health, diet, and lifestyle. You can cook the entire week’s meals ahead of time, buy high-quality prepackaged foods and ready-to-cook meals, cover your nutritional bases with smart supplementation. You can condense your training time by choosing the right exercises and upping the intensity to a sufficient level. You can fast-track your stamina in a fraction of the time with sprints and intervals.

But you can’t hack sleep. There are no shortcuts to sleep. You can’t escape the need for 7-8 hours (perhaps 4-5 if you’re genetically gifted). The human body needs those hours. The human brain needs those hours to pick up trash and clean up around the cranium. And it needs to arrive at them naturally.

Yet, we try to hack it just the same, with terrible results.

Sleeping pills? They’ll knock you out, but throw off your sleep architecture while inducing a ton of nasty side effects.

What about polyphasic sleep—taking a bunch of micronaps throughout the day in lieu of a single block of sleep? Maybe during crunch time you could use it for a short period of time to meet some serious deadlines and command a greater proportion of the day without falling to pieces, but it’s not a sustainable long-term strategy.

Caffeine and prescription stimulants can certainly reduce the performance deficits caused by inadequate sleep, but for how long? And they don’t replace all the important processes—neurological housecleaning, memory retention, tissue repair, muscle growth, workout recovery, to name a few—that occur during adequate sleep.

Sleep hacking doesn’t work without the actual sleep. You can’t hack the amount of sleep you need.

You can, however, hack the timing, quality, and positive effects of your sleep.

General Sleep Strategies
Stop Wasting Time

Why do most people fail to get to bed on time? There’s too much to do, see, read, and watch. Something just happened in the world, and you need to find out about it right away. It can’t wait ’til tomorrow, because tomorrow will bring its own set of happenings. Eliminating the fluff, the useless extracurriculars that impede you in getting to bed. In other words, getting out of your own way is the biggest sleep “hack” you can make.

If that means getting all your work done before dark and turning off your phone at night, so be it. Let this be a strong kick in the pants to motivate you toward more efficiency and less wasted time during the day.

Work Brain and Body

Physical exertion—workouts, hiking, long walks, gardening, playing sports, sex—during the day improves sleep. So does cognitive exertion.

You’ll sleep better after a big day full of hard work and small wins. You won’t have that voice in the back of your mind scolding you for failing to achieve anything, even if that “anything” is a long hike, a few chapters in a hard book, working hard on a complex problem in your job, or cleaning the kitchen. Testing the capacities of the entire organism makes the organism rest easy. Just think how kids come after a couple hours of learning some new physical skill—mental and physical exertion—and totally crash.

Quiet the Mental Chatter

People are finding it harder and harder to be alone with their thoughts. Why would they, when their pockets and purses contain the single most effective attention-grabber of all time? It’s easy to escape. But in bed, when it’s just you and the inky blackness slowly enveloping you, there’s nothing but thought. The worrying, the ruminating, the regretting, the wondering, the mental pacing will keep you up.

Learn how to manage the chatter with meditation (or an alternate method).

Eat Enough Food

One of the most common, yet rarely identified, causes of poor sleep is chronic calorie restriction. That puts us into a stressful state dripping with cortisol, the enemy of good sleep. Make sure you’re eating enough.

Those are a few general ideas. Now, what are some specific ways to optimize your morning, noon, and night to improve sleep?

Specialized Tips For Sleep Optimization
Use a Dawn Simulator Alarm Clock

The next best thing to the sun, these are alarms with lamps that slowly and gradually brighten as your wake time approaches. It’s not the same as having the majestic sunrise beam into your room and very soul, but these contraptions have been shown to improve sleep quality. Another advantage: waking up won’t be so jarring.

When You Wake Up, Get Up

You may think you’re effectively chipping away at sleep debt with those little bits and pieces of “snooze,” but you’re really just fragmenting your sleep (PDF), which leads to “sleepiness-related daytime impairment,” compulsory afternoon caffeine infusions, and less productivity. If you hit snooze today, you’ll probably end up sleeping badly enough to have to hit it again tomorrow.

Expose Yourself To Bright Light For At Least Half an Hour In the Morning

Ideally, this is the sun. Even a cloudy day is far brighter than anything you’ll see indoors. If you can’t make it outside due to weather, try this lamp. Our bodies, brains, and biological clocks expect bright light during the day, and meeting those expectations has been shown to improve sleep (as well as alertness and productivity during the day), even if the light is artificial. Try to get more light during the day, as much as you can.

Before “The Day” Starts, Get Some Physical Activity

Go for a short walk (great way to get some light, too!) with the dog, do a light stretching or movement routine for five minutes, have sex, dance to your morning playlist as you get ready for work, roughhouse with your kids, swing a light kettlebell for a few minutes, read your email on the treadmill, ride your bike around the block, whatever. You don’t even have to work up a sweat or anything if you don’t want to. Just move a little. There’s some evidence (albeit uneven) that morning activity can improve sleep later on that night.

Have Your Caffeine (If You Do Caffeine)

Caffeine has a half life of up to six hours, so having that Americano after lunch could disrupt your sleep tonight.

Eat Animal Protein For Breakfast

Meat (and not just turkey) is a good source of the amino acid tryptophan, and high-tryptophan breakfasts have been shown to improve sleep quality, especially paired with morning light exposure. Eating breakfast in general “activates” your circadian rhythm, making it more likely that you’ll get to bed on time. People who skip breakfast tend to stay up later and get worse sleep, although intermittent fasting can also improve sleep.

Try Meditation

Several studies have shown that meditation practice can improve sleep, including cyclic meditation (a kind of yoga-meditation fusion) and mindfulness meditation. There’s even evidence that meditation can decrease the amount of sleep you need to function.

Go For a Barefoot Stroll

Though earthing is controversial, its proponents may be overstating its benefits, and the studies connecting it to better sleep may not be the best-designed, who doesn’t feel better and more relaxed after letting the leaves of grass trace their way between your toes, feeling the cool damp earth underneath, or tromping an uneven unsteady path through soft white sand? It certainly doesn’t hurt.

Reduce or Eliminate Electronics Usage After Dark

Electronics—phones, TVs, laptops, tables—emit significant amounts of blue light, whose wavelength has the strongest inhibitory effect on melatonin production. Melatonin is the neurotransmitter that kickstarts the sleep process. It lowers body temperature, reduces alertness, gets you feeling sleepy, and makes the bed sound all the more inviting. When we glance at our phones, watch TV at 10 PM, or even curl up with our Kindle, we are getting a strong dose of blue light, inhibiting the production of melatonin, and pushing bedtime that much farther back.

If you have/want to use electronics, wear a pair of blue blocking goggles. Things will look funny (including you) due to the color change, but you’ll be saved from most of the melatonin-blocking blue light. Less expensive but dorky looking option. More expensive but better looking option.

Favor Warm, Dim Lights

Many of the newest artificial lights produce a ton of blue light. Keep things soft and warm—more toward the orange and red side of things. Here’s a good one.

Read Fiction In Bed

If you’re on an eBook reader, dim the screen as much as you can tolerate and wear your blue-blocking safety goggles. If you’re reading a paper book, use a soft, warm, preferably red reading light. Or a candle.

I find fiction perfect for bed. If I want to fall asleep quickly, I’ll pick up something dense that requires close reading. Blood Meridian, Shakespeare, stuff like that. If I want to actually read for more than five minutes, I’ll pick up something snappier. Philip K. Dick short stories, Elmore Leonard novels, Paul Theroux stuff.

Keep Your Goggles Handy

There’s nothing worse than stumbling bleary-eyed into the bathroom at 3 A.M., turning on the bright light, and never falling asleep again.

So, what if you’re not gonna sleep anytime soon? Or you’re facing a poor night’s sleep? There are some good sleep hacks for that.

And Tactics For the Sleep Deprived…
Do a Quick, Hard Interval or Sprint Workout At Night

Sleep loss famously causes insulin resistance the next day (that’s why chronic bad sleep is linked to diabetes). A hard interval training session the night before a bout of bad sleep, however, ameliorates that insulin resistance.

Drink Coffee

Stimulants are a good next-day bandaid. They don’t fix the problem—and can even make it worse if you continue using it as a crutch to justify protracted bouts of poor sleep—but they improve your performance and restore a bit of normalcy.

Avoid All-Nighters, But If You Have to Pull One, Embrace It

If it is crunch time and you have to get something done, and sleep isn’t an option, go all in. Don’t fight it. Don’t lament the injustice of your situation (chances are, you created it). Just do it, get the work done, and get good sleep after. A single night of sleep deprivation is remarkably anti-depressant. That suggests a hormetic effect (a stressor that makes you stronger). I’m talking one night every month or two where you have absolutely no choice. That does not refer to a night spent watching Seinfeld reruns, or pulling all-nighters every week.

Finally, to close, let’s put it all together in a hypothetical day…

You wake up at the same time you woke up the previous few months. Because your circadian rhythm is rock-solid, you don’t need an alarm. You make coffee (or tea) and breakfast—steak and eggs, maybe some melon—and go outside without any shoes on. You stand in the damp grass, making sure to get a real connection between your bare feet and the natural ground, and do some light movement to get the blood flowing. You have a hard workout coming up later, or else you might go a bit harder. You eat your food and drink your coffee (or just drink coffee if you’re skipping breakfast) while enjoying the light. If the weather’s bad, you eat indoors with your 10,000 lux full spectrum light pointed at you.

After the requisite half hour of light exposure, you start your day. A short commute gets you to work, where you immediately launch into the day’s tasks. You’d rather not procrastinate and have to deal with your tasks later or, even worse, toss and turn in bed poring over all the things you neglected and must address. No, it’s much better to just get moving.

Before lunch, you squeeze in a workout. Barbell lunges, Romanian deadlifts, pullups, and weighted pushups, followed by a few sprinting rounds on the rower. This workout leaves you feeling quite ragged, so you make sure to eat a serving of fruit and upgrade to a Really Big Ass Salad with an extra burger patty on top to replenish glycogen, hit your protein requirements, and provide enough calories. You don’t want to head into bedtime with a large caloric deficit and muscles screaming for protein; that would be terrible for sleep quality.

After lunch, you continue working, feeling very productive. The workout has energized you mentally. It’s quite warm and sunny out, so you take your laptop outside and continue killing it with a little extra sun. You feel an additional burst of energy. Thinking back to the study where artificial blue lights were found to increase daytime alertness and work output in office employees, you reckon natural afternoon sunlight has a similar effect. You’re able to wrap up a project you thought would take at least until next week.

You leave work feeling content with your day. You got everything you needed to get done and had a great workout. Nothing else is “required” of you. The rest of the night is yours to do with as you wish. The commute home is pleasant, despite taking longer than usual. You spend the extra 20 minutes on the road practicing mindfulness meditation, and it really seems to help you deal with the otherwise rude drivers. Hopefully, this “traffic meditation” has similarly beneficial effects on sleep quality as normal meditation.

As soon as the sun begins to dip below the horizon, you turn on the warm, dim lights or light some candles. This signals to your circadian clock that nighttime’s approaching and it’s almost time to start pumping out the melatonin.

Dinner is fairly light. You don’t want to overdo it right before bed. You do eat a bit of the sweet potatoes your partner prepared, since they look good and you take this to mean your body could use a few extra carbs. Carbs at night tend to improve sleep rather than hurt it, as long as you actually have a reason to eat them (your hard workout).

Your partner wants to watch an episode of “Chef’s Table” on Netflix. This has become a nightly routine of sorts, a signal to your body that it’s almost bedtime. To reduce the negative effects of blue light on melatonin production while being able to watch one of your favorite shows, you both throw on some orange safety goggles to block most of the blue light coming off the TV. You sip on some bone broth and your partner takes some collagen. Each provide the glycine you need to improve sleep quality. You each yawn several times, a good indication that the goggles are doing the trick.

Just before bed, you realize you’re a little thirsty, but the cold water’s in the fridge. You slip the goggles back on before opening the fridge. A flood of blue light escapes, searching for exposed retinas to invade. It finds none, and your circadian clock goes on thinking it’s still nighttime. Phew.

Your phone buzzes. Apple News has sent you an alert; “something” happened. Someone said something outrageous. Someone is offended. You’re tempted, but in the end you turn your phone to airplane mode and continue with your bedtime routine. it’s not worth it. It’s not important.

Something still feels “off.” You eat a small spoon of raw local wildflower honey to make sure you have enough liver glycogen to get you through the night without a wakeup; after all, that workout was pretty damn intense.

Now it’s time for bed. You grab your Kindle and your partner grabs a book. You keep the goggles on to deal with the blue light emitted by the reader; your partner flips on a red reading light beside the bed, as red has no effect on melatonin.

You don’t quite remember falling asleep. All you know is suddenly the room is filled with morning sunlight, you’re wide awake, and the world is ready to be conquered.

That’s it for today, folks. These may not have been the sleep hacks you wanted, but they’re the sleep hacks that actually work. Take care and be sure to leave any questions, comments, or your own personal sleep hacks down below!

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Published on July 04, 2018 08:00

10 Tips for Sticking with Primal

Primal is simple, but it’s not exactly easy. At every turn, detractors and temptations appear. We have health authorities telling us we’re killing ourselves. Worried friends and family sharing news articles decrying the consumption of fat and meat and promoting wholly plant-based diets. Food companies employ food chemists to engineer delicious processed junk that hijacks our brains’ reward systems, making food that’s addictive on a biochemical level. It’s going to take a mix of concrete, tangible tactics and psychological tricks to stick with Primal.

Plan Your Meals Each Week

The modern world excels at rewarding poor planning. Its whole appeal revolves around convenience. It’s always tugging at us, leaving hints, suggesting easy ways to go astray. When you’re just starting on this Primal journey and things aren’t quite second nature…(like finishing your first 21-Day Challenge).

No time to make dinner? Grab a happy meal!

In the grocery line with your meat and produce? Hey, check out this 40 ounce sack of fried potato slices; bet you could finish half of it on the drive home!

Every week, plan your meals. Go shopping, get what you need, and have things ready to go. Keep a clean kitchen, so you can launch into cooking without fretting over dirty pots and dishes.

Look At Your “Before” Photos

You got into this Primal stuff for a reason. If you’ve seen benefits, lost body fat, improved body composition, gotten noticeably stronger and fitter, go back and look at those old photos. Look at yourself and remember. Immerse yourself in what it felt like before you went Primal.

Realize that it will all come flooding back if you go back to your old ways.

Think Of the Worst That Could Happen

A lot of things can go wrong in life. Many things will go wrong. But we don’t have to hasten the disintegration of absolutely everything. All the recommendations I make in the Primal Blueprint and on this blog are designed to reduce your chances of being reduced to that terrible situation. Read those words, feel them, and imagine yourself in that situation. Not great, is it? So, how about you stick with the program?

Imagine everything that could go wrong health-wise. Imagine you’re 20 years older than you are now. You’re on a slew of medications. Your monthly checkup with your cardiologist is the closest thing you have to a friend. You have a weight set, but it sits unused amidst the ruins of the great spider kingdoms that have come and gone over the years. Your bones are porous, your arteries are clogged, your blood sugar runs high, your heart rate stays elevated. Your muscles are marbled, your mind is foggy. Remember that each choice—including the one before you right now—has the power to determine your future scenario.

Realize That Perfect Is Not the Goal

Many people have the idea that going Primal is a life sentence of ascetic purity. That’s a big misconception. Actually, these are just guidelines. Recommendations. Modes of eating, living, and being that, from my reading of the scientific literature and experience coaching people, help a lot of people get healthier, fitter, leaner, and happier. But it all exists on a spectrum. It isn’t “all or nothing.”

Eating some rice won’t derail the whole train.

Skipping a week of training won’t dissolve your gains.

Even eating a french fry cooked in the most rancid of seed oils won’t imbue your adipose tissue with permanently imbalanced omega-3/omega-6 ratios (not that I’d recommend it, but still).

Unless you’re celiac or truly gluten-sensitive, ingesting a bite of gluten probably won’t perforate your gut lining and open you up to a month’s worth of bacterial endotoxins and allergens.

A date won’t set you back to square one on the keto journey.

Some heeled dress shoes are perfectly fine for a wedding or the office. They won’t ruin your feet or posture.

It’s not about Primal perfection. It’s about making the guidelines work for you to push your health and happiness forward.

Don’t Forget the 80/20 Rule

This dovetails nicely with the previous tip. The 80/20 rule is a built-in “get out of jail free” card. It’s not an actual, literal card, although that’s certainly an idea if an entrepreneur wants to get in on that. It’s the formal acknowledgement that if you do the right (healthy, Primal, keto, etc.) thing 80% of the time, you’ll be doing better than 95% of the population and garnering the majority of the benefits we can expect from living healthy.

What’s 80/20 look like?

It doesn’t mean eating fast food every fifth meal. It doesn’t mean eating 1/5 of a birthday cake. It means giving yourself some slack. It means realizing that you work hard, you eat well most of the time, and it’s okay if you slip up and have a beer or a few bites of pizza at the end of a long week.

The 80/20 rule helps prevent you from heaping additional guilt and stress and despair over a single bad choice onto the first order effects of the choice. It cements the reality that you’re going to be okay.

Join a Gym

If you think you hate the gym, you probably haven’t been in awhile. No longer must you do the globo=gym thing, where staff members frown at you for deadlifting and everyone’s preening for the mirrors. You can try CrossFit. You could try parkour. You could try BJJ or Pilates or kickboxing. You could find a great personal training gym, interview the owners and trainers, and find someone who melds well with your personality and goals. You can try FitWall. There are thousands of movement options out there. The point is throwing down the money and investing in yourself.

When you put down money, you put skin in the game. Rather than lose your sunk cost, you’ll be more likely to follow through and stick with it.

Buy New Cooking Equipment

Are you trying to cook incredible meals in damaged teflon skillets? Sear steaks on lightweight aluminum pans? Julienne vegetables with a blunt chef’s knife that hasn’t been sharpened since the 80s? Get yourself some quality equipment. You don’t need to drop $500 or anything close to that.

Grab a cast iron pan for searing steaks. Some heavy stainless steel pots and pans. A dutch oven for braising, if you do that sort of thing. Consider an Instant Pot. A decent chef’s knife. Maybe a small, simple food processor if chopping vegetables is keeping you from enjoying Big-Ass salads. It doesn’t take much, and it will make cooking that much more pleasurable (and effective).

Pick One Thing and Start There

Getting your entire lifestyle back on track is daunting. What, you expect a person to overhaul how they eat, move, consume electronics at night, interact with the sun, supplement, and sleep right away? Some people can do that no problem, but many people find it an intimidating prospect.

Just pick one thing, do it well, and see the dominos start to fall in other areas. Purge your pantry. Ditch grains and seed oils. Start walking every day. Get back into barbell training. Go to sleep at the same time every night. Doing all those things would be great—and not as hard as you think—but even just one will make a big difference.

Get a Friend Involved

Getting a friend to join you in sticking with the Primal way of life is a simple and effective way to keep you engaged. The hardest part is breaking through the resistance and mustering the willpower to enlist the friend. Then, once you’ve both agreed to do the thing, you have to do it. Neither of you wants to let the other person down. As social animals, we value the input and opinions of others. Especially when those others are close to us.

You could do family, like you mom, your brother, or your spouse, but in my experience those relationships can get testy real fast. Friendships are more durable, in a way. It’s usually easier to get strict and abrasive when required with your friend than it is with your husband or wife.

Go Hardcore

Some people can’t go all-in at once. They sputter and fail, and would be better served just picking one thing at a time (as I mentioned above). But some people thrive when they overhaul their entire lives. That’s how I am—I didn’t just change how I ate when I developed the Primal Blueprint. I changed how I ate, slept, exercised, and lived in general.

Maybe you’re going too cautiously. Maybe you need to go all in.

Work With a Primal Health Coach

Primal Health Coaches are well trained to help you hit your goals, work through tough sticking points, solve problems, and motivate you. This is quite literally their job. They combine motivational power with a strong knowledge base, so whether you have a motivation problem or a knowledge problem, they can help.

Hiring a Primal Health Coach also gives you that skin in the game effect—with a literal voice on the other end. For some people, that level of accountability is the linchpin.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to get yourself back on track. This is the list of ways I find most effective at getting others, and even myself, back on track after an extended hiatus, or sticking with it when doubt begins creeping in.

What are your favorite ways to stick with Primal?

Thanks for reading, all. Take care.

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Published on July 03, 2018 08:51

Dear Mark: Bedtime Routine, One Marker, DOMS, Primal Fantasy Lives, Basic Exercise, and Outside Eating Situations

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering several questions from readers about my own personal routines and interests as well as a Primal take on beginning fitness. First, what’s my sleep hygiene routine? Do I even have one, and how has it changed over the years? Second, how do I make sure I’m staying on track in life? What’s the “one marker to rule them all”? Third, are there any good supplements or interventions for DOMS—delayed onset muscle soreness—due to training? Fourth, what are two places I’d love to live, and live Primally? Fifth, how should a totally inexperienced person who’s just lost a bunch of weight through eating alone get started with exercise? And sixth, how do I handle myself in eating situations where I have no direct control over the quality of ingredients (oils, etc) used?

Let’s go:

Question for you – what does your nighttime sleep hygiene “routine” look like? I am experimenting with the best ways to wind down and prepare my body and mind to fall asleep, and am curious to learn more about your regimen or any tips you have.

Thanks!

Be sure to check out the upcoming post on sleep I’ve got in the works. It will help answer your questions.

But I’ll talk a bit about my personal routine. My ultimate goal is to wind down from the work day—clearing my head of current and future concerns and stressors so that I can focus on the here and now, spend time with family, and turn off for the night. That’s not to say I’m not thinking about work or business at all. I’m just not doing so actively. In fact, it’s when I’ve cleared my head of the day-to-day stuff that new ideas hit me. I’ll jot ’em down if they seem to have legs and move on.

Up until a few years ago, my “wind down” routine involved a couple glasses of wine with dinner. It did the trick, sure, but there were side effects. I started waking up around 3-4 AM every morning. And my gut health really took a hit, with my old IBS symptoms returning. Those weren’t acceptable to me.

I limit the wine at night more carefully now. I’ve also switched to dry farmed natural wine from Dry Farm Wines—lower alcohol content, zero added preservatives, minimal sugar, more ancient fermentation methods—and I don’t have the same negative effects. But even then, I don’t use wine to relax before bed.

I’ll turn electronics off; the blue light they emit kills melatonin and makes your circadian rhythm think it’s daytime. If I’m on top of my game, I’ll light a bunch of candles around the house and forego artificial lights altogether. If I have to attend to some business or write an email or anything, I’ll wear blue light-blocking goggles and make sure f.lux is activated on the computer and the phone is on night mode, both of which reduce blue light.

I’ll spend quality time with my wife, be present in the moment, talk quietly about our day, laugh about something or other. I won’t be scouring social media trying to find something out in the world to feel angry or powerless over.

If it’s been a particularly trying day (or week), I’ll take some Adaptogenic Calm to take the edge off the cortisol.

My routine is mostly about avoiding or eliminating the supranormal stimuli that occupy our brains, suppress our natural melatonin, and make getting to sleep at a reasonable time impossible. It’s very basic and very effective.

If you could only choose one way of measuring/tracking your performance (in life generally, across the board) for the rest of your life, what would you select eg how you feel when you wake up, or your ability to play ultimate frisbee intensely for 60 minutes, or how your posture looks in the mirror etc?

LDL cholesterol.

Just kidding.

I’d ask myself “Do I feel excited about my day, my week, my month, and my year?” If the answer is “yes” to all, I’m in a good place and everything else is working to support that.

I would be interested to learn about the best ways to combat muscle soreness following tough workouts. Sometimes I feel like my progress is slowed because I’m too sore to workout again. Any special recommendations?

The main thing is to just weather the storm. Soreness is unavoidable, especially if you’re really pushing yourself.

Massage can help. If you don’t have access to someone who’ll massage you, self treatment with a foam roller or lacrosse ball can be effective.

Compression garments may help with muscle stiffness.

Taurine helps. Eat beef hearts or take supplements.

L-citrulline helps. Eat watermelon or take supplements.

I’d love to hear about your ultimate primal food destinations. Where you’d love to go for certain wild delicacies, bluff oysters in NZ etc… & your top three areas in the world to live primally.

Fun idea. I’ll do two fantasy scenarios. Maybe more later when I can think of them.

Hawaii, Big Island or Kauai (can’t pick): Swimming/paddling every day, spearfishing, keeping centipede-fed chickens and goats and grass-fed cows for eggs and milk and meat, grinding my own coconut butter, hiking through jungles and valleys, across lava beds. In the mornings, Carrie does yoga and I do pullups and KB swings. There’s nothing quite like the tropics. I think maybe a long lost ancestor of mine washed ashore in some South Pacific island, ingratiated himself among the locals, then married and sired several children, one of whom caught a merchant ship back to northern Europe.

Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey, southern Italy): We walk down the slope through gnarled olive tree grove to our small boat, sail out onto cobalt sea, drink unpronounceable local wine, nibble hard sheep cheese, and grill the pair of fish (and unexpected octopus!) I just caught on charcoal grill. Afterwards go for a swim, diving down to wrecks of Bronze Age warships; coming up to lay on the deck just in time for midday UVB-rich sun.

What are suggested ways for overweight and/or “out-of-shape” people to start an exercise regimen (after they have dialed in their diet)?

Start walking every day. Half hour minimum, hour ideal. Take your walks in as interesting a location as you can find. Nature trails are better than treadmills. Dense city streets are better than empty suburban sidewalks. Do that for three weeks.

Lift something heavy twice a week. Your own bodyweight may suffice. Weights are great, too. The Primal Blueprint Fitness program is very simple and very effective, especially if you’ve never done any exercise before. Start there.

That’s it.

Hi Mark,

I would like to know how you handle eating in social situations, restaurants, personal residences, weddings, etc.

Do you ask a lot of questions (like what kind of oil was used) or totally avoid anything suspect as politely as you can, or just not worry about it?

I vet all my friends for cooking oil preference, so there’s no danger there. Anyone who uses an oil containing over 20% omega-6 PUFA get the boot from the Sisson circle.

(Kidding.)

If I’m at a restaurant, I don’t make much of a fuss. If it’s a breakfast joint, I’ll request that they cook everything (scrambles, omelets, etc) in butter because every breakfast joint has butter on hand. I’ll ask what kind of oil’s “in the dressing” because that info is readily available.

If it’s Indian, I’ll request that they cook with “real ghee” or “desi ghee” (as opposed to “ghee” made from vegetable oil). I did have a Thai place I loved where they kept a jar of coconut oil around for our orders. It may seem like an awkward request, but most places just want to please their customers.

I have no qualms about traveling with and busting out my own Primal Kitchen® products, though.

That’s it for today, folks. Thanks for reading and have a great rest of the week. I’d love to hear any of your responses to these questions, too.

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Published on July 02, 2018 08:06

Dear Mark: Bedtime Routine, One Marker, DOMS, Primal Fantasy Lives, Basic Exercise, and Outside Eating Situtations