Mark Sisson's Blog, page 271

What’s Messing with Your Appetite? Three Possibilities.

Although a few weeks ago I explained how “stop eating so much” is bad weight loss advice and how “calories in, calories out” tells us very little about the cause of obesity, the fact remains: for whatever reason (and there are many), people who gain weight have eaten more energy than they’ve expended. Something is causing them to eat more food than they need. Something is making the hungrier than they need to be, desirous of more food than they require for sustenance and weight maintenance. What could it be? There are the basic remedies. Eat more protein to promote satiety. Reduce carbs, increase fat. Get enough sleep and limit stress as best you can. These are proven ways to normalize your appetite, but you already know about them. I also have a few speculatory ideas that you may not have considered, and today I’m going to discuss them.

Before donning your skeptic hats and demanding randomized controlled trials, remember that these are theoretical appetite perturbers. Most of the ideas I propose draw on in vitro studies examining potential mechanisms, observational studies looking for hypotheses, circumstantial evidence, and the occasional controlled trial. These are not intended to be absolute statements of truth. These are conversation starters that get you thinking and experimenting. They may work. They may not work. They are, however, safe to explore on your own.

Grain protein fragments causing leptin resistance.

Leptin fills a great many roles in the body, but it’s probably most well-known for its inhibitory effect on appetite. Using the amount of body fat you’re carrying as a barometer, leptin determines how well-fed you are and adjusts appetite accordingly. In a perfect world, body fat secretes leptin and leptin receptors in the brain receive it. Appetite is regulated, weight is maintained. But what if something blocked that connection between leptin and its receptors? You could have sufficient circulating leptin but without the brain’s ability to perceive it, the appetite suppression would never occur.

The idea that grain proteins might bind to the leptin receptor and induce leptin resistance was first proposed by Staffan Lindeberg in his 2005 paper. In a recent paper, researchers put gluten through in vitro digestion (where they simulate human digestion using pepsin and trypsin), filtered it off using either a spin-filter (no heat) or 100°C (heat), placed the two different gluten digests (great magazine name right there) with leptin and leptin receptors in an environment simulating human serum, and observed the reactions. At a simulated serum level of 10 ng/mL, gluten that had undergone spin-filtration inhibited leptin binding to leptin receptors by 50%. Since breastfeeding mothers on unrestricted diets have shown mean serum gluten levels of 41 ng/mL in the past, this in vitro finding could have ramifications beyond the test tube.

Too many aceullular carbs.

A “cellular carb” is glucose that’s stored inside a fiber-bound organelle. Think tubers, roots, fruits, leaves, and any whole food source of carbohydrate. Even a whole wheat berry, for example, is an example of a cellular carb until you turn it into flour.

An “acellular carb” is dietary glucose that’s been liberated from its cellular cage. Think flours, especially cereal grain flours, and all the foods made using flour, like cookies, cakes, bread, pretzels. Think fruit juice. Think pulverized dried fruit bars and energy bars.

In his 2012 paper, Ian Spreadbury proposes that excessive intakes of these acellular carbohydrates are responsible for our dysregulated appetites and the modern obesity epidemic. When we eat cellular carbs, they remain intact and inaccessible until breached by digestive processes, reducing the concentration of carbohydrate available to the gut bacteria. When we eat acellular carbs, the glucose is immediately released into the digestive chyme, increasing the concentration of carbohydrate available to the gut bacteria far beyond evolutionary precedent. Spreadbury shows how this might perturb appetite:

This concentrated influx of dense carbohydrate into the gut produces an inflammatory microbial population that increases production of bacterial endotoxin and increases intestinal permeability.
Increased intestinal permeability allows bacterial endotoxin into the body.
Once in circulation, bacterial endotoxin induces leptin resistance and (in rats) increases food intake.

We are not rats, nor have controlled human trials been done looking at the effect of chronic acellular carbohydrate intake on leptin resistance, appetite, and bodyweight. But we obtain the vast majority of our carbohydrates from acellular sources, and we’re the fattest we’ve ever been in human history. Meanwhile, for the vast majority of human history we obtained the vast majority of our carbohydrates from cellular sources and remained lean and fit. And studies of modern pre-industrial cultures like the Kitava who consume ample carbohydrates in the cellular form of tubers and fruit show little evidence of obesity, leptin resistance, or dysregulated appetite.

As a little thought experiment, ask yourself two questions. Which carbohydrate foods do the healthy, lean people you know prefer? Which carbohydrate foods do the overweight, unhealthy people you know prefer? Then, take a look at this chart showing the carbohydrate density of modern and ancestral carbohydrate sources. Notice anything?

It’s a plausible hypothesis — don’t you think?

PUFA-induced munchies.

Induction of the munchies can be a pleasant way to increase one’s enjoyability of food, but it’s a double-edged sword: the worst kind of food looks especially delicious when the right cannabinoid receptors are triggered. And due to the presence of endogenous cannabinoids, or endocannabinoids, we can get the munchies without even trying.

In animals (including humans), the endocannabinoid anandamide is an important hunger signal, increases appetite, and intensifies the reward we get from junk food. There’s extensive animal research showing that dietary linoleic acid, the PUFA found abundantly in the seed oils used in everything these days, contributes to a rise in anandamide. For instance, a 2012 paper showed that increasing the linoleic acid content of a mouse’s diet from 1% to 8% of energy (paralleling the rise of linoleic acid in the human diet over the past century) tripled anandamide levels and increased food intake, body weight, and body fat. Dropping the linoleic acid back down to 1% of energy resolved the issue; so did adding fish oil at 1% of energy.

These were mice, yes. Anandamide is active in humans, though, increasing appetite and the reward we get from food. And there’s some evidence that the same treatment in the linoleic acid-fed mice that normalized their anadamide and appetite levels — omega-3 supplementation — works in humans. A group of mildly obese German men were split into two groups. One group got 4 grams of powdered krill every day and the control group received nothing. The krill powder group reduced their serum anandamide levels by 84% after 24 weeks; this improvement was mediated by an improvement in EPA and DHA status. There’s no indication of the baseline diet, but since this indicates that German adults get about 6.5% of energy from PUFAs, it probably contained significant amounts of linoleic acid.

Although I find the evidence for excessive linoleic acid’s stimulatory effect on appetite to be compelling and worth a closer look, it remains to be seen if soybean oil can make you wonder what if, like, the universe is all just a simulation, dude? These ideas are easy enough to explore on your own.

Stop eating cereal grains, especially gluten-containing grains. Be strict for a month. How’s your hunger?
Stop eating processed food, flour-based food (even coconut or almond flour paleo baked goods), and other acellular carbohydrates. Be strict for a month. How’s your hunger?
Reduce linoleic acid intake to 1% of total energy. Be strict for a month. How’s your hunger? (Additional trial: increase long chain omega-3s from marine sources to 1% of energy.)

Not too complicated, completely safe (no doctor required), and likely to have an effect. Why not give it a shot?

Let me know how it goes for you. Thanks for reading, everyone.

Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for instant access to all past, present and future episodes here.

Dear Mark: Ornish on Paleo, CrossFit Workout Recovery, Nightshades, and Dry Heels

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, we’ve got a four-parter. First, Dean Ornish rears his head once again, this time making the claim that even paleo eaters with stellar lipid numbers invariably have clogged arteries. Should we listen? Next, what’s a good strategy for improving recovery from CrossFit workouts? More carbs, more protein, pre workout, post workout — what’s the deal here? Third, are nightshades responsible for hidden inflammation in everyone who eats them? Or is it just the folks who get joint pain and other confirmed symptoms who have to worry? And finally, I give a few tips for a frequent barefooter suffering from dry, cracked heels.

Let’s go:

Hi Mark,

The current issue of Prevention has an article where a doctor says the Paleo patients he sees present with severely clogged arteries even when lipids are good. This is alarming and I wanted to hear your thoughts. Also – my husband and I had amazing success by following your plan, but now carbs are creeping back into my husband’s diet. He has high LDL and 45% of his particles are small/dense. Can you tell me something to tell him to get him back on track. I feel like we’re playing a dangerous game if we continue to eat Primal, but don’t cut our carbs. He has minor plaque already in the LAD. I want to be able to tell him…”Mark said you better {{fill in the blank}}… Thank you so much for everything you do.

Cindy

That doctor is none other than our old frizzy-haired friend, Dr. Dean Ornish. Though an MD, Ornish doesn’t actually see patients, unless you count the celebrities he counsels, like Bill Clinton (who’s since renounced the veganism Ornish recommended and taken up a low-carb Paleo-esque diet). Instead, he writes columns and works the advisory boards of companies like McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Mars.

Don’t get me wrong. Dean Ornish means well, I think. He even put together an effective lifestyle management program for smokers with heart disease. Given his biases, though, he’s simply not equipped to comment on the Primal lifestyle. What’s funny is that we’re not that far apart from each other. Check out what he employed for the smokers in his heart health program:

Low-fat, plant-based, effectively vegan diet. There was a bit of fish oil in there.
Regular meditation.
Regular group psychosocial therapy.
Daily exercise.
Cessation of smoking.
Weight loss.

And yes, it worked. Smokers with heart disease who quit smoking, stopped eating a standard American diet, started meditating, hung out with people in similar situations to talk through their problems with a professional therapist in attendance, exercised regularly, and lost a lot of weight reduced their risk of cardiac events and even improved the amount of atherosclerosis in their arteries. The control group of smokers with heart disease, who did none of that stuff, saw no reduction in risk or atherosclerosis. You can’t take that away from Ornish, or try to ignore it.

However, it doesn’t mean his diet is “better” than anyone else’s. It means that all those interventions, including the diet, combine to improve heart health. It may be all of them or just one doing the trick. We can’t know. He’s assuming the diet’s the most important factor; I’m just not convinced it outweighs the other lifestyle inputs.

That said, a high-carb, high-fat diet is really tough to pull off without incurring health problems, like hyperlipidemia or overweight. High-carb, high-to-moderate fat is just about the worst kind of macronutrient ratio for heart health; it’s no accident that the standard American diet is high-(refined) carb, high-to-moderate (refined) fat. It’s notorious for elevating LDL particles, especially the small, dense ones. Professional athletes, high-performance CrossFitters, people training hard nearly every day of the week can get away with pairing large amounts of fat and carbs together, but most people cannot. If your husband wants to eat more Primal-friendly carbs like roots, tubers, and fruits, he should reduce his fat intake (or adjust his activity up) accordingly. Increasing the carbs is fine and can work with a Primal eating plan, just not if you keep the fat high.

Dear Mr. Sisson,

I was wondering what some good options would be before and after my CrossFit workout that might help me to recover. I take a 100% whey isolate shake right after my WOD but with little to no carbs, and eat a balanced meal about an hour after. Should I be having carbs in the shake? Thank you.

Hunter

For most people, a mixed meal anywhere from an hour to several hours after a workout is sufficient. The post-workout period of heightened insulin sensitivity lasts for several hours, so you’ll still be taking advantage of the rapid glycogen replenishment.

A CrossFit WOD is a different beast than most typical workouts. It’s very demanding, utilizing the glycolytic pathway and burning lots of muscle glycogen. To recover, you need to replenish the glycogen and you might want to do it a little more rapidly. If you’re concerned primarily with workout recovery/performance (and it seems like you are), not fat loss, go for a small mixed meal 30-60 minutes beforehand. About 20 grams of carbs, 20 grams of protein, and whatever fat comes along for the ride. A few possibilities:

Three eggs and an apple.
1/4 pound beef liver with a small sweet potato.
Small burger patty with a bowl of cherries.
20 g whey isolate, water and/or coconut milk, and a frozen banana blended together.

These are all light meals that won’t sit heavy in your belly during a workout, but they provide enough carbs, protein, and fat to help you perform. They’ll also indirectly help your recovery by reducing the amount of endogenous carbohydrate you draw upon during the workout.

Don’t forget the coffee or strong tea, if you drink it; caffeine can really improve workout performance. One study even found that a pre-workout caffeine-rich amino acid supplement improved performance, recovery, and training adaptations throughout a three week high intensity interval training program.

Post workout? In theory, your balanced meal an hour after should be enough, but if you’re writing in asking for help with recovery, it’s probably not doing the trick. Keep the meal but add some carbs with your shake. Try that whey and banana shake. Then, go for the meal an hour later.

For those of you interested primarily in promoting muscle protein synthesis (a necessary step toward hypertrophy), protein alone is enough. Whey protein in particular works because it’s rich in leucine, an amino acid that stimulates enough insulin to promote muscle protein synthesis. Post workout carbs aren’t necessary for building muscle.

This article says tomatoes are nightshades and aggravate inflammation. This article says tomatoes suppress inflammation. Which is it?

Mark

Hello, Mark. I love your name.

The whole nightshade thing is really overblown. I wrote about it almost seven years ago, and my position hasn’t really changed. If tomatoes (or other nightshades) make your joints hurt, don’t eat them. If you can eat tomatoes (or other nightshades) without feeling any negative effects, eat them. Some people have bad, crippling reactions to nightshades, which include tomatoes, potatoes (but not sweet potatoes or yams), peppers, eggplant, and paprika. Most do not.

The vast majority of research shows that tomatoes, tomato products (juice, sauce, paste), and tomato extracts exert effects the thrust of which can be described as anti-inflammatory. As for the downsides?

The bulk of the solanine (a kind of pesticide manufactured by the plant than can inhibit the body’s breakdown of acetylcholine and trigger overactive nerves) in tomatoes is found in the leaves, not the fruit. (There is some solanine in potatoes, but it really only amounts to trouble if you eat green sprouting potatoes. Just avoid the green potatoes and you should be fine. Peeling also helps, as most solanine resides in or near the skin.)

There’s also speculation that highly potent vitamin D metabolites present in nightshades can lead to soft tissue calcification; this would explain the joint pain. As far as tomatoes go, however, the vitamin D metabolites are found in the leaves, not the fruit.

Some would suggest that the lycopene, an antioxidant compound found in tomatoes, is anti-inflammatory enough to overcome the toxicity of the tomato’s solanine. They’d be wrong. A review of clinical trials found that the lycopene and the “other tomato stuff” exert synergistic anti-inflammatory effects greater than just the lycopene. Besides, even if they were right and lycopene is the only anti-inflammatory aspect of the tomato, the net “load” of consuming a tomato is anti-inflammatory.

There really isn’t much, if any, published research on nightshade sensitivity. Don’t get me wrong, though. It definitely exists. But I think it’s rare enough — and self evident when it happens due to subjectively obvious symptoms like joint pain — that the average person who likes tomato sauce and hot peppers can happily enjoy them without worrying about hidden inflammation.

That said, anyone with arthritis (or joint pain in general), an autoimmune disease, or something with potentially numerous causes like fibromyalgia should consider a nightshade free diet trial. Just go without them for a month and see if you notice any improvements. Tomatoes are delicious, sure, but it’s worth a shot.

Dear Mark,

I am a huge follower of the barefoot movement and often do my walks shoeless (not even FiveFingers) as I have heard about the huge benefits of grounding. However after a couple of walks my heels start cracking. Though I’m not one to worry about the aesthetic nature of feet it does eventually lead to a very annoying pain.

I don’t believe that Grok often had to struggle with such problems and I would firstly like to know your opinion on it and if you have a solution to it.

Thanks, Mark, keep up the inspiring work.

Bradley

Some degree of dry, cracking heels is normal. The feet aren’t particularly moist, and regularly going barefoot can produce calluses which may be prone to cracking. There are a few things to try if you’re not doing them already, though.

Eat fat. Our bodies make sebum, the endogenous moisturizer, from fat. Make sure you’re eating long chain omega-3s, from foods like salmon, sardines, and shellfish.
Eat egg yolks and liver. You may be slightly deficient in biotin, a nutrient involved in skin moisturizing; both foods are rich in biotin. Also, limit raw egg whites, which can deplete your biotin stores.
Pay attention to any other nutrients that contribute to skin health, strength, and resilience. Are you eating enough vitamin C (almost every fruit and vegetable), gelatin (bone broth, oxtail, shanks, feet), zinc (red meat, oysters, pumpkin seeds)?
Apply extra virgin olive oil to your heels after bathing. Really rub it in. Give yourself a foot massage, basically. Alternate oils like coconut could work as well. I even heard of someone who swore by raw grass fed butter for their cracked heels. Who knows? If it doesn’t work, you can just eat it.
Beeswax is supposed to help cracked heels. Look for a lotion or balm that contains beeswax. This one looks decent and gets good reviews.

Barefoot Ken Bob, a pioneer of barefooting, has an entire post devoted to solving the cracked heel issue (so at least you’re not alone in this). It may help you.

That’s it for today, everyone. Thanks for reading and be sure to help out in the comment section!

Weekend Link Love – Edition 334

Research of the Week

Plastic exposure is linked to earlier menopause.

Obese women vigorously exercise for an hour a year. Obese men, 3.6 hours. Cause, effect, or both? Either way, it’s a sad state of affairs.

Kids who are free to explore the neighborhood and play without adult supervision are healthier than children raised under the yolk of the helicopter parent.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 53: Adam and Vanessa Lambert — Bee the Wellness Fitness App and Community: Host Brad Kearns sits down with Adam and Vanessa Lambert to discuss the unveiling of their new fitness challenge app, their unique approach to wellness, how to deal with the individual demands of the wide variety of clientele that is humanity, and much much more.

Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.

Why You Should Reconsider the “Workout” Mentality
How Quickly Can You Lose Weight?
Zen and the Art of Calisthenics
Finish Line: The 2015 Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge

Interesting Blog Posts

Since Apple isn’t allowing f.lux into the appstore anytime soon, here’s how to make your iPhone screen dimmer at night.

Are nuts responsible for the inverse association between PUFAs and heart disease?

Looking for an interesting blog with beautiful pics? Follow the Browns, two brothers who farm and eat only what they can grow, hunt, or forage.

Media, Schmedia

Ahem.

Tim Noakes responds to his critics.

Everything Else

Though the Super Bowl has passed, I’d still recommend checking out the newest edition of Pigskin Paleo, a book of delicious paleo-friendly game day sports bar-esque recipes.

This is my kind of tofu.

If you’re gonna run, trail running is the way to do it. Just ask Vibram-clad, Kiwi born Ruby Muir.

The best way to cook a frozen steak (without thawing it first).

How much “lost pleasure,” in dollars, have you suffered since going Primal?

Froot Loops are supersized bites with deliciously intense natural fruit flavors and, new research reveals, physiologically relevant glyphosate residues.

Incredible archery.

“We’re all fat again.”

Farmer’s market goers aren’t able to distinguish between cold-pressed juice and Tang.

Recipe Corner

Butternut squash breakfast sausage. Sorry, vegetarians: it’s still got meat in it.
This avocado, kale, and hearts of palm dip is pretty much a meal on its own.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Feb 9 – Feb 15)

Do You Really Need to Eat Vegetables to Be Healthy? – Short answer: probably.
How to Ensure Your Final Years Are Good Ones –Simple steps you can take right this instant to improve your quality of life later on.

Image of the Week

Calories in, calories out, right?

Coconut Shrimp Cakes & Pineapple Salsa

This is a recipe from Primal Blueprint Publishing’s popular cookbook Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo . The 125 recipes in Primal Cravings are all are low-sugar, grain-free, gluten-free, and industrial oil-free. What’s more, unlike typical substitute recipes in many other paleo cookbooks, these new and original grain-free baking methods have almost exclusively eliminated the need for the typical expensive agents like almond flour and other nut flours and nut butters.

This week we’re bringing you another tropically infused recipe to warm your winter weather blues!

If crab cakes and coconut shrimp had a love child, I’d imagine it would be something like this. The Keatley’s have put a clever spin on the two classics and taken it a step further by pairing it with a lively Pineapple Salsa.

Perfectly sweet and savory, this recipe is sure to please Primal and non-Primal fans alike. And at around 25 minutes from prep to finish, you’ll have an impressive appetizer or light dinner that’s full of flavor but doesn’t have you spending a lot of time in the kitchen.

Coconut Shrimp Cakes

Servings: 6

Time in the Kitchen: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup unsweetened coconut, shredded
1 egg
1 pound cod filets
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
Salt to taste
Coconut oil
Pineapple Salsa (below)

Directions:

Place shredded coconut in a bowl. Blend egg, cod, shrimp, and salt in a food processor until relatively smooth. Use your hand or a scoop to form the seafood mixture into balls about 2 inches in diameter. Pat them into disc shapes, and coat them in shredded coconut.

In a large skillet, melt coconut oil over medium heat. Fry the cakes until golden brown, about 3 to 4 minutes per side.

Pineapple Salsa

Servings: 6

Time in the Kitchen: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

1⁄2 pineapple, cut into small chunks
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Juice of 1 lime
Salt to taste

Directions:

Purée all ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Alternatively, you can make the salsa a bit more chucky and roughly chop everything with a knife. Pair with Coconut Shrimp Cakes and enjoy!

Not Sure What to Eat? Get the Primal Blueprint Meal Plan for Shopping Lists and Recipes Delivered Directly to Your Inbox Each Week

Hope Has Been Restored: My 21-Day Challenge Results

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!

My story is not so much one of success as it is one of hope. I do not have any drastic weight loss to report, I still cannot do a pull-up, and I still have difficulty sleeping through the night. However, after slowly attempting to go Primal in November, and fully committing to it through the 21-Day Challenge, I have already experienced positive results.

In my mid-30s, I began suffering from several random health problems, which slowly appeared over the course of two years while I was working at an extremely stressful job. I have a touch of Avoidant Personality Disorder, so daily life is very stressful for me as it is. Anyway, I went from exercising regularly, working normal hours, and having fun to not exercising at all, eating unhealthy foods, and sitting 11 hours a day.

Over time, I developed low Vitamin D, swollen legs and feet, clogged/stuffy ears, a sinus infection, a skin rash, reflux, eye inflammation, hives, and fuzziness in my mouth when eating. Although I always had horrible menstrual cramps, they became even worse. Additionally, I gained belly fat. I was depressed, I was irritable, I could not sleep, and I was extremely unhappy.

Eventually, I found another job, I began working normal hours again, and I started to have fun again, however none of these symptoms went away. I still had no energy and I was not able to exercise as I had in the past. Most of the doctors I saw during this time gave me medications to take for the symptoms. They told me that since I was not overweight and I exercised, that I would be fine.

When I turned 40, a new doctor requested I get a healthy mammogram on record. So, I went and got the mammogram, only it was not healthy. I was diagnosed with Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), also known as breast cancer. As it was discovered so early, Stage Zero, I only needed radiation, not chemotherapy. I had a lumpectomy to remove the cancer cells, I went through radiation, and now I am taking Tamoxifen because my tumor was estrogen receptor positive.

Upon getting the diagnosis, I felt as if I had done something wrong. I also felt that there must have been something I did not do, but could have, to prevent it. The doctors looked at me and said, “No, it’s not you. It just happens.” This was not enough for me, however. I had to have answers. I began searching the internet for causes and prevention, hormone receptors, endocrine disruptors, toxins in our foods, toxins in the environment, xenoestrogens, phytoestrogens, and alternatives for diet and exercise.

I am not sure when I began to read Mark’s Daily Apple on a regular basis. It seemed that I would search the internet for something, and a post from MDA was always among the first few links. Eventually, I just went to MDA first instead of Google. I found a great wealth of information on nearly every topic I looked up. I tried to incorporate some of the elements of the Primal lifestyle, but I never had any reactions to food or allergies, so I looked at Primal eating as a guideline and did not strictly adhere to it.

Then one day MDA had an announcement about Neely Quinn’s online conference: For Women Only: The Weight Loss Solution. I did not sign up. It was not for me. “Sure, I need to lose 10 pounds, but she isn’t going to tell me anything I don’t already know,” I thought.

The morning of the first day of that web conference, however, I woke up with vertigo/labyrinthitis. I could not stand up, I could not balance, and if I did not stay laying down flat on my back, I would throw up. I spent the day at home, but I had to finish a project for work so, I got out the computer (I have a trackball mouse and a split keyboard so I could actually work lying down). When I finished the project, I went to MDA and saw a reminder about the For Women Only: The Weight Loss Solution web conference. Well, I had nothing to do all day, but lay flat, so I signed up for the conference and I listened.

After listening to all the speakers on the web conference over the next few weeks, and searching MDA for more detailed information about all of these new topics, I felt like there was hope for the first time in almost a year. There was an explanation for all my symptoms and even my estrogen issues! I was surprised that all of my symptoms seemed to be connected to stress, diet, and exercise. There were even discussions connecting my vertigo to gluten. Finally, things started to make sense. It was as if a switch had been flipped. I had discovered that there was a way for me to take control of my health, there were answers, I could do something, and Mark’s Daily Apple was telling me what to do. Immediately I decided to follow MDA’s primal way of eating more strictly. First, I cut out the grains. Then I realized that dairy was making my mouth fuzzy, so I stopped that too. Next was a drastic cut back in sugar. Finally, I stopped exercising so much.

The results I have experienced, even in so little time, have been positive. I sleep better, my legs and feet are not swollen, I have energy after long walks, my skin is clearer, I no longer have hives, or reflux, and I have not had a cold or sinus infection this winter (I have been getting them every winter for at least the past five years). The most shocking result I have experienced though is that I have had NO menstrual cramps at all (and no, it is not the Tamoxifen – that makes them worse). I used to spend the day in bed with the hot water bottle and a jar of ibuprofen every time I got my period. Now, I only have temporary discomfort that lets me know it is there. I never would have believed that diet had such an impact on hormones until I experienced this change myself.

Things have only continued to get better since I decided to participate in the 21-Day Challenge. As I mentioned above, I have extreme social phobia. You will not find me on Facebook or Twitter, I am not on LinkedIn or Pinterest, and I do not Instagram. However, I committed to the challenge, and in the past week, I posted my thoughts on the Vimify challenge app, I commented on MDA, and I forced myself to leave the house and do something (semi-social) for the PLAY activity.

I still have a ways to go, but I have a goal now. My next step is to save up some money (still paying medical bills), find a primal doctor, learn to balance my hormones naturally, and see if I can stop taking the Tamoxifen. This is an amazing transformation for me, as a year ago, I felt as if my life was over. I am so thankful to Mark for providing all this information, for making it free, and for encouraging my participation. Thank you Mark.

Katie

Why You Should Reconsider the “Workout” Mentality

The workout. It’s funny how we talk about it. We “check in” at gyms to register our efforts with Facebook friends. We dramatically label everyday exertions as “quite the workout.” It even becomes a game of equivalents. We’ll lug ten bags of groceries to the house or mow the lawn and publicly declare, “I think that counted for my workout today!” The term is even applied to sex, which we’re told is a “major calorie burner.” (Do we seriously need to quantify or justify this?) The problem, as I see it here, is we approach activity with a quota mentality. As handy as pedometers and other fitness gadgets can be, they encourage this mindset. We judge (and track) our activity in terms of allocation rather than immersion – “this” amount of hours, sweat, pounds, steps, calories, etc. To be honest, we view it in terms of points to earn rather than enjoyment to be had or actualization to be fostered in a day. How much do the semantics impact our outcomes – let alone motivation? Much more than we’d imagine, I’d say.

Let’s back up here for a minute and admit something. The fact is, for nearly all of human history no one ever really “worked out.” Grok himself would’ve been utterly confounded by 90% of what we do (let alone wear) at the gym. He probably would assume you’d gorged on fermented fruit if you asked whether he’d done his cardio or resistance training.

As humans through the ages, we certainly played. We even competed – at everyday antics or in communal games of course. We’re wired for physical and creative play throughout our full lifetime. As hominids, we also naturally relish a good competition – whether it’s racing Big Wheels down the street or fighting adversaries (or older siblings). As kids, we trained ourselves to run up the backyard hill faster. Later, we revel in the challenge of bettering our 5K time. This is the good stuff – the stuff Grok would get and jump in on.

However, there’s a distinct difference between the likes of play and personal accomplishment (or even training toward that) compared with the standard, obligatory “workout.” I belong to a gym and almost always have, but even I acknowledge there’s something strange about crunching dozens if not hundreds of people together in a building on various machines and tracks. It conjures the lab rat comparison if we’re completely honest. But let’s not blame it on gyms. For every person having the time of their lives laughing (and sweating) their way through Zumba with friends, there’s a miserable individual grumbling his/her way through a regularly scheduled outdoor run. The point here isn’t the activity or even the place but the attitude and role we assign to it in the course of our days.

If you go to other countries today – even many European nations, the concept of “workout” doesn’t translate for the most part. A Slate article a few years ago offered a look at exercise around the world – what people did for activity and in what ways (if any) different subsections of their populations pursued anything akin to American style workouts. To this day, I love this observation offered in one of the descriptions: “The main reason French people practice sports is not to maintain their health (though that comes a very close second), nor their looks. Nope, according to a 2003 study, French people practice sports because they enjoy them.” What a novel concept…

In most places around the world, people still bike to local markets. They walk to work and/or perform significant physical labor for pay or to maintain the home. (This applies to more people than we might think in this country, too.) They walk to get water perhaps. Are these people looking to quantify their lifestyle in terms of workout “points”? I don’t think so.

Clearly, it’s important to move, and devoting an hour or so a day to intensive gym time or a solid run confers handy benefits, no? However, what if we thought less about “fitting in” our day’s movement and started identifying our lives with it?

Identifying with movement… Imagine for a minute what that would be like. It would mean seeing movement not as the exception to be scheduled (or measured in equivalents throughout the day) but a default lifestyle to simply align with.

It would mean viewing movement not as logistical chore but as a means of physical actualization. How have you actualized your physical self today? It would mean shifting our thinking and living to revolve around our natural need and instinct for movement. Have you lived a natural life today?

So what does this mean for us? If we surrender the workout mentality, what does it (or should it) actually end up changing in reality? When we can get over the hump and choose to lead an active, primal life, I think many if not most of us do better if we don’t try to parse it out. Our activity is more than our fitness tracker’s graph at the end of a day. It’s the pleasure we took, the life we lived, the thrill we felt, the accomplishment we achieved, the connection we made with the environment (or person/people) we were active with.

When we surrender the workout mentality and create a primal mindset around it, I think activity becomes a value. That shift then invites us to mold the rest of life around that value.

How would our choices differ if we made physical activity a value rather than a measure? What would home life look like if movement (including lifting heavy things) was a value? Would we swing our kids more? Roughhouse more? Have sex more often? Leave the house more? How would our home environments – and yards – be different? What would our work of choice or work environment or schedule look like? Would our commutes change? How would our social life or social circles change if activity was an infused value rather than a schedule conflict?

I’m curious what you think. Where do you see the “workout mentality” operating in your own life or in the lives of others you see? What do you feel could change with an emphasis on value over measure? Thanks for reading today. Have a great week, everyone.

How Quickly Can You Lose Weight?

Take your average guy or gal that decides they’re committed to finally losing that extra weight that’s crept on over the years. They’re going to eat healthy (primally, of course), start working out, and stop all the nonsense they know to be unhealthy. This might be you.

A few days go by, then a week. The scale is budging, but barely. “This is going to take forever! How long is this going to take?” We all want instant results, right? Well, what is realistic? What is safe? What is effective? And what can you expect when you attempt to lose excess body fat and reach your ideal body composition?

Everyone knows that slow, gradual weight loss produces the best long-term results and fast weight loss is unsafe and unhealthy. People you know have probably clucked “Oh, you’re losing weight fast now with that low-carb fad diet, but just wait a few weeks and it’ll all come rushing back!” And when you go somewhere like the CDC’s weight loss page, they pat your head for “want[ing] to lose it very quickly” and reassure you that “people who lose weight gradually and steadily are more successful at keeping it off.” It’s become an article of faith that slow and steady weight loss wins the race.

But is it actually true?

I searched the literature for support of this widely-accepted weight loss truth. If folks like the Center for Disease Control were saying it, there had to be some evidence for it. Right?

I came up empty. What little evidence I could find seemed to support the opposite contention: that rapid initial weight loss is associated with better long term weight maintenance than slower weight loss. Just look:

A 2000 review concluded that “greater initial weight loss” improves long term weight loss maintenance, even when that weight is lost using extreme diets.
A 2001 review concluded that the use of very low calorie diets to spur rapid short term weight loss can be highly effective for long term weight maintenance, provided subjects follow up with a “weight-maintenance program” including physical activity, nutritional education, and behavioral therapy.
A 2004 review of the effect of “lack of realism” in weight loss goals on long term weight maintenance found that “higher dream weight loss goals” were linked to greater weight loss at 18 months.
There was the paper from 2010 showing that among middle-aged obese women, those who lost weight the fastest were the most likely to keep it off after 18 months.
There was also a more recent paper where people who lost weight quickly were no more likely than people who lost it slowly to regain the weight in the long term. Members of the fast weight loss group were more likely to hit their short term weight loss goals (12.5% reduction in body weight) and stick with the program. Even though both groups had regained about 70% of the lost weight after three years, the net weight loss in the fast weight loss group was greater.

Across most of the available literature, slow and steady did not win the race. The hare usually beat the tortoise. This actually makes sense. Why is the ancestral health community so strong? Why does this site attract so many readers? In part, because of the ease, simplicity, and early efficacy of this way of eating. Right off the bat (or in just 21 days), you lose weight, feel better, and regain lost energy. Why wouldn’t you keep doing it? You’re more likely to stick with a diet if you’re wildly successful right away.

Okay, okay. But is rapid weight loss safe?

It depends on who you are.

If you’re obese, rapid weight loss is safe, since as much as 87% of the total weight you lose will be body fat. And just as dietary fat is an excellent fuel source that burns cleanly, the animal fat hanging off your body is good to burn. That’s why rapid weight loss in the obese is consistently associated with improved health markers. Insulin sensitivity increases and belly fat decreases. Blood lipids normalize. Testosterone increases and sexual function is restored. Oxidative stress biomarkers are reduced. All sorts of wonderful things happen when you’re overweight or obese and start losing weight.

If you’re lean, rapid weight loss looks a little different. The leaner you are, the more muscle mass you’ll lose during weight loss and the more negative effects you’ll accrue. An extreme example of this is the bodybuilder preparing for competition. He’s reducing calories. He’s exercising. He’s doing everything he can to drop weight as quickly as possible. And in dropping from 14.8% body fat to 4.5%, he loses strength, his testosterone plummets, and his mood worsens — the opposite of what happens to the obese when they drop weight fast.

Another population for whom rapid weight loss might be contraindicated is the elderly. If you’re elderly, rapid weight loss is usually associated with illness and accelerated muscle loss, and it’s a frequent complication of Alzheimer’s disease. Slower weight loss using a diet rich in protein (to stave off muscle loss) and regular physical activity is a better option for older people.

It also depends on how you do it. Let’s look at some of the methods used to cause rapid weight loss.

Dehydration-based weight loss.

Athletes who need to make weight to qualify for competition, like MMA fighters or bodybuilders, often do so by quickly dropping water weight. They’ll go jogging in full black sweatsuits. They’ll sit in saunas. They’ll remove all salt from their diet (since sodium helps us retain water). They’ll go super low-carb (since stored glycogen brings water along for the ride). They’ll take hot baths and stop drinking water altogether on the day of the weigh-in. That’s how a fighter who normally walks around at 195 pounds can qualify for the 170 pound division — by dehydrating himself.

Verdict: Not safe. Dehydration impairs physical performance, cognitive function, and connective tissue elasticity. Plus, it’s literally just water weight that will come screaming back once you start eating carbs, salt, and drinking water again.

Very low-calorie dieting.

This might be the most common method people employ to achieve fast weight loss: eat barely anything. And there are studies supporting the efficacy of very low-calorie dieting (VLCD), but when your average person with weight to lose hears that and just stops eating (usually supplemented with lots of cardio), it’s disastrous. Clinical VLCDs have very specific guidelines. Before patients are selected, they undergo a physical and go over their medical history. Once on the diet, they receive counseling, supplements, premade food (often liquid), and regular checkups to identify nutrient deficiencies and side effects. They’re meant for the obese, not someone who wants to lose a few stubborn inches off their belly.

Verdict: Safe, but you’d better know what you’re doing. Professional supervision is probably a good idea if you intend on making this work long-term.

Protein-sparing modified fasts.

Protein-sparing modified fasts (PSMFs) are a type of very low-calorie diet, but calories aren’t the express focus; getting enough protein and then stopping is the focus. You eat as much protein, preferably from animal sources, as you require to curb loss of lean mass and maximize fat loss, then add heaps of low-carb vegetables. PSMFs are high-protein, low-carb, and low-fat diets. A PSMF might look this:

Minimum 1.5 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass (if sedentary; closer to 2 g/kg if strength training) from lean meats and protein powders like whey isolate.
Unlimited fibrous vegetables (spinach, lettuce, kale, chard, broccoli, asparagus, etc; anything without an appreciable number of digestible carbs).
Three to four grams of fish oil.
Multivitamin/mineral supplement.
Cook with little to no added fat. Eat no fruit, sugar, or starches.

In the fitness/weight loss community, people will typically maintain this for 1-2 weeks, then do a refeed and hop back on it, or resume a more normal diet. Clinical use of the PSMF in severely obese people usually lasts longer than one or two weeks and is quite effective:

In obese patients, a PSMF allowed 47 +/- 29 pounds of weight loss. By the end of the maintenance period, most of the weight was still missing, so it was pretty successful (particularly in those who had the most to lose).
A 2 week 400 calorie PSMF was safe and effective in obese patients, especially compared to a 400 calorie liquid protein diet.

Every study I could find on PSMFs found they worked and were safe, with some caveats:

In obese teens, a 3-month long PSMF supplemented with potassium, calcium, and magnesium resulted in weight loss and maintenance of normal serum concentrations of the supplemented minerals. But when researchers looked at red blood cell levels of the minerals — which offers a more accurate glimpse of mineral status than serum level — they found that RBC magnesium had plummeted. It’s likely that other micronutrient-related biomarkers could also suffer.

Verdict: Safe and effective, provided you don’t remain on the diet for too long. Extended PSMFs are more likely to cause harm and nutrient deficiencies (that may not show up in standard serum tests) than shorter PSMF bursts. Obese people in clinical settings with professional support can probably safely benefit from longer PSMFs, but the average Primal reader just trying to lean out a bit or get over a plateau should stick to 1-2 weeks.

Low-carb, high-fat diets.

In the population most in need of safe, effective weight loss — the millions of insulin-resistant obese and overweight individuals who do not participate in clinical weight loss trials helmed by doctors and technicians and supported by supplements and formulated diets — a basic low-carb, high-fat diet is the simplest and most effective method. Comparisons between ad libitum (where you eat until sated) low-carb diets and calorie-restricted (where you weigh and measure) diets find that the former result in faster weight loss.

Low-carb, high-fat approaches also sidestep another potential downside to rapid fat loss in general: the risk of gallstone formation. Research shows that adding some fat in the diet to promote gallbladder emptying takes care of the gallstone problem. One study found that 4 of 6 subjects on a 520 calorie liquid low-fat diet developed gallstones, while none of the 7 subjects on a 900 calorie liquid diet with 30 grams of fat developed them, even though both diets resulted in the same amount of weight loss.

One potential downside of rapid weight loss are elevations in liver enzymes. The rise is usually transient, resolving shortly after cessation of the diet, and it seems to happen more often in women than men. But the macronutrient ratio is perhaps the biggest determinant. When these very low-calorie diets are high in carbohydrates, liver enzymes are higher. When the diet is carb-restricted, the liver enzymes are lower.

Verdict: Safe and effective.

If there’s a neat and tidy answer (and there never is in a topic as complex as human physiology), it’s this: rapid weight loss is safe as long as you’re losing (mostly) fat and not lean muscle mass. If you’re dropping weight quickly (or slowly!) but you feel good, your physical performance is improving or staying the same, and you’re losing inches from the waist, your weight loss is probably mostly fat. If you’re dropping weight quickly but troublesome side effects occur, your weight loss may be drawing on more lean mass than you’d like, and you should probably slow down. Weight loss should feel good.

There’s another commonality among all the “crash” diets that end up leading to long term maintenance: they combine rapid weight loss and education. It shouldn’t just change what you put in your mouth, but how you think about what you put in your mouth. Without learning about food and how it affects you and how to eat long term in the real world, the weight’s just going to come roaring back.

With the Primal Blueprint, I’ve tried to pair education with results for a sustainable way of eating and living. There are other ways to get there, as I’ve mentioned above, but this one seems to work well for nearly everyone I know that’s tried it.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I’m curious about your thoughts on rapid weight loss.

Zen and the Art of Calisthenics

This is a guest post from Al Kavadlo of AlKavadlo.com.

When it comes to exercise, there are a lot of options. With such an abundance of fitness programs and modalities, it can get overwhelming trying to discern which method is best for you. While there are a lot of people out there who will offer you advice on your fitness journey, ultimately it is up to you to make your own decisions. That’s right—only you have the power to change your body and improve your life. Others can help illuminate the path, but the responsibility rests on the individual. Through sharing some of my experiences, however, maybe I can get you asking some questions you hadn’t considered until now.

Throughout my life, I’ve experimented with dozens of different exercise modalities. I’ve used barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, sandbags, and just about every other heavy object I could think of to try lifting.

I’ve done parkour, martial arts, marathons and yoga. I even tried a triathlon.

I believe my various experiences have helped me become a more well-rounded physical specimen, but after all of those things, I always come back to the simplest, most direct way of training I’ve ever known—calisthenics (aka bodyweight training).

I love calisthenics training because it requires nothing more than your body, your mind and your warrior spirit. You don’t need to buy anything, go anywhere or put on any special clothing. Anybody can start right now. As Maya Angelou once said, “Ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it.” (Or was that Ronnie Coleman?)

There’s a lot to love about calisthenics, but my favorite thing is how it keeps you in the present. When you’re working on developing a new skill, you need to give all of your attention to the task at hand. When you are completely focused on your training, the division between body and mind breaks down and everything else seems to fall away. This is what I’m referring to when I talk about Zen mind.

Training with nothing but your own body is about as primal as it gets. It also teaches you to become aware of the subtle nuances of movement. Using machines instead of your bodyweight neglects this key aspect of fitness. When you strip away the extraneous equipment, it directs your focus back to your own body. Don’t get me started on people who read magazines or watch television during their “workout.”

I am continually amazed at how out of touch the average person is with their body. For example, when I ask a new personal training client to try moving their shoulder blades without moving their arms, they usually cannot find the coordination to make it happen. However, these types of subtle movements can be the difference between learning to do a pull-up correctly and injuring yourself.

The term “proprioception” refers to the sensory ability to feel different parts of your body moving through space in relation to each other. This is such a crucial aspect of fitness which is often overlooked. Only once somebody truly learns to feel how their body moves, can they make significant gains in functional strength. You need to pay attention to the nuances of movement if you want to be fit.

There is a Zen parable about a student who asks his teacher for the best way to study the path toward enlightenment, to which the teacher replies, “If you try to study the path, you will be far away from it. You must live the path to enlightenment.”

It’s easy to get caught up in analyzing things in an attempt to find the “best” way to approach your workouts or any other part of your life. We all want to be efficient with our time and make good decisions, and that makes sense, but there is no substitute for actually doing the thing. You learn so much as you go!

It’s also helpful to understand that strength is as much neurological as it is physical. Whenever you try to get your body to do something that it isn’t used to doing, it has to build a new neurological pathway to make it happen. Even when you ask your body to perform a familiar movement pattern, it will have a hard time if the leverage has been made less favorable than what you’ve become accustomed to. This is why there are lots of people who can yank a lot of weight on a lat pull-down machine but struggle to do a few controlled pull-ups. If your brain has never had to send that specific message to your muscle before, it must work very hard in order to arrive there. The message often comes in fuzzy.

Imagine using a machete to chop your way through the thick vines of a jungle. This is how hard your brain must work to get your body to do something for the first time. Now imagine you’ve lived in that jungle for ten years and walked the same few routes over and over, gradually clearing away the brush little by little. Eventually the path would be easy to walk and you’d arrive on the other side much more quickly, and with much less effort.

The same thing happens in your brain with consistent training. Over time, the pathway becomes clearer and the message arrives faster. The body adapts to whatever stimuli it is consistently exposed to. A body that is regularly called upon to apply force against resistance will get better at doing so.

Weights have their appeal (and I used them for a long time) but in the end I eventually lost interest and decided to devote myself solely to calisthenics. If you want to excel at any single discipline, at a certain point you will have to set other things aside. Moves like elbow levers and one arm pull-ups don’t happen without dedication and patience!

Bodyweight training is also relatively safe compared to other methods. Obviously, the odds of dropping a weight on yourself are non-existent if you aren’t using any! And as for those fancy looking machines in commercial health clubs—they are all hype. Their sole purpose for existing is to get people to spend money on gym memberships. They don’t work as well as bodyweight exercises, but they sure do look high-tech! Sadly, that’s enough to trick the average person into shelling out lots of money for a gym membership they’ll probably never even use anyway.

This doesn’t mean you can’t sculpt nice looking muscles using machines, it’s just a ridiculous way to go about it. Selectorized fitness equipment movement patterns are not natural, and will have less carryover into real life activities. Plus you’re much less likely to understand the movement of the human body if you’re never really moving! If everything you do for your workout involves sliding a fixed piece of machinery along a predetermined path, you’re just going through the motions. You’re not truly creating movement.

While modern exercise equipment has only existed for a few decades, human beings have achieved fantastic physiques for thousands of years. If you want to build a better body, the only piece of equipment you’ll ever need is something you already have—YOU!

Check out Al’s new ebook, Zen Mind, Strong Body, available now on Dragon Door Publications

Finish Line: The 2015 Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge

Well, it’s over. The 2015 Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge officially ended yesterday, and thousands of you successfully crossed the finish line. Needless to say, you guys impressed me. You always impress and astound me during these annual challenges, and this year was no different.

Although I’ve mentioned it before, most people probably don’t know this: I do the Challenge right along with you every year, using your collective energy as motivation. My personal Challenges have little to do with the Primal basics of eating, exercising, and sleeping — most of which I’ve got down pat — so I use these times as an opportunity to tackle new areas of Primal living. I always manage to learn something new about myself and this way of life. So, thanks for that, everyone.

While it’s still fresh in our minds, let’s go over the past three weeks and revisit the highlights (I’d revisit the low points, too, but there weren’t any!).

The Contests

This year’s Challenge was absolutely filthy with contests. Whether it was a Saturday recipe for sun-dried stuffed chicken breast, a bacon bonanza involving over six pounds of pure, unadulterated bacon (I think I need a cold shower), a post urging you to self-reflect on your journey thus far, a contest where the prize for offering your honest thoughts was a contraption allowing you to squat to poop over any toilet in the world, or one where you got to do your best Jeff Foxworthy impression, almost every post contained a contest giving readers the chance to win awesome prizes.

Your Creations

Every Challenge reminds me of the fact that I’ve got some really creative, really talented readers out there. For the Primal Workout videos, you braved rival hipster tribes to go foraging on bicycle through the concrete jungle of NYC, turned father-son bonding into an effective training stimulus, showed us the value of spending time on the floor, and became tactical cavemen in addition to much more. just to describe a few.

The cooking videos were mouth-watering, of course. We got a winning legit chili from Mama T that I’m going to have to try, a great way to make liver palatable for people who usually avoid it, and I have a special place in my heart (and stomach) for liquid bone, which is very close to how I make bone broth. The most interesting recipe came from Zach, who made jerky out of a kombucha SCOBY. Go check the rest out, too. They’re all great.

The Articles

The 21-Day Challenges are by design a bit lighter on MDA articles, but I try to make up for that with quality. The tricky part is writing stuff that applies to folks currently knee-deep in the Challenge while standing the test of time. If you can go back and read a Challenge content post months or even years later and still get something from it, I’m happy. And between Alessandra Wall’s two guest posts about the importance of setting goals and how to turn thinking into doing, my posts on how to make your food taste better using the natural spice of hunger and the top 11 ways to assess your own true fitness level, and the several dozen reader questions I answered, I’m happy. Oh, and you learned how to use a simple mantra to change your approach to health, food, life, and everything in between that doesn’t stop working just cause the 21 days are up. You’ll have plenty of reason to go back and revisit this month’s content.

The App

For the first time ever, we partnered with Vimify to bring you a Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge app. One of the favorite parts of my day was hopping on the App just to watch all the progress updates, comments, and interactions unfold along the feed. In (near) real time, I was able to see how each individual person was approaching — and overcoming — the various challenges. I hope you enjoyed it, too.

Luckily, it doesn’t end there. My good friends, longtime PrimalCon presenters, and superstar Olympic lifting/lifestyle coaches Adam and Vanessa Lambert have developed a brand new challenge with Vimify, a sort of continuing education for Primal people who want to keep the train rolling and maintain their momentum.

The Bee The Wellness “Unveil Your Wellness” Challenge was created specifically for folks transitioning off the 2015 Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge, those who missed the boat and want in on the fun, and anyone who’s at all interested in solidifying and furthering their Primal lifestyle. Adam and Vanessa are really talented and extremely warm (a potent but rare combo) coaches who I trust deeply, and they designed this system to make their personal coaching experience accessible to our community. If you’ve hit a bodyweight or performance plateau or need a kickstart or want to kick sugar cravings and you’re ready to give 100%, I wholeheartedly recommend their system as your next step.

You don’t have to go it alone. As with the 21-Day Challenge, you’ll join a community of like-minded Primal participants who support, encourage, inspire, and compete with you throughout the challenge. Plus, you’ll have access to the expertise, guidance, and wisdom of Adam and Vanessa for the duration of the challenge. You will dig deeper into Primal living with new workouts, continuing education, and a program designed to meet you at your current level and help you build from there for the rest of your life. If you are serious about getting leaner, fitter, and healthier, join their challenge!

Good work these past few weeks, everyone. Seriously — I’m proud and I’m excited to see where you go next.

That’s it for today.

Weekend Link Love – Edition 333

Hey, everyone. The 10th Annual People’s Podcast Awards are underway, and they’re taking votes now. I’d really appreciate it if you hopped on over and gave us a vote in a category or three. Thanks!

Research of the Week

Oral dosing of a supplement containing the probiotic L. rhamnosus and some peanut protein led to complete resolution of allergy in 80% of subjects with peanut allergy.

Just 20 minutes a day of strength training is associated with significantly greater long term protection against abdominal obesity than aerobic exercise.

Celiac disease has tripled among British tykes in the last 20 years.

Early Americans were taking out large prey with (and building) atlatls at least 18000 years ago.

At a given BMI, Chinese adults are at greater risk for obesity-related health problems than white Americans. A white American BMI of 30 (obese) is roughly equivalent to a Chinese BMI of 26.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 52: Interview With NY Times Bestselling Author Ashley Merryman, Part 2: Brad continues the conversation from last week with Ashley Merryman about her new ideas on parenting and competition.

Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.

The Definitive Guide to Fermented Foods

Interesting Blog Posts

If you’ve ever wondered about the subtle difference between training and testing your mettle, look no further than this explanation from Chris Adams, firefighter and PrimalCon alum extraordinaire.

Why working from home increases productivity and job satisfaction.

Media, Schmedia

A Parisian chef is pairing food-flavored hookah (tobacco-free) smoke with his entrees.

The true cause of addiction might be a lack of connection with the people and world around us. Also, a magical place called Rat Park once existed.

Everything Else

The readers of Paleo Magazine chose Primal Fuel as the best product in the supplements category for 2014!

PaleoFX is coming to Austin this April, and I’ll be there. You guys should get your tickets and come, too.

Two brothers snuck into Tibet to learn the yak dairy trade. Now, they want to start the only yak cheese-making operation in the United States, in Paso Robles, CA. This is their Kickstarter campaign. I think it sounds pretty cool.

Moonlight in a light bulb.

We’re apparently unboiling eggs now.

Of course Japanese commuters are planting vegetable gardens on top of train stations.

Recipe Corner

Cold out? Happen to have a bunch of edible roots sitting around? Make sweet potato carrot apple ginger soup.
You can get anyone to eat their broccoli when you mash it with coconut milk and sea salt.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Feb 2 – Feb 8)

Is Gently Cooked Food Better For You? – Maybe we shouldn’t be searing everything in sight.
What to Look For When Choosing a High-Quality Dark Chocolate – Advice from an expert in the dark delicious stuff.

Comment of the Week

“Salt intake is not associated with overall mortality or risk of heart disease and heart failure.”

But it is positively correlated with deliciousness

– And I believe the correlation is causal.