January 28, 2009

3 Rounds for time
   25 Box Jumps
   50 Walking Lunges
   25 Push-ups

The Primal Diet

I believe in being up front with biases. We all have them but only some of us admit to them. I recommend what is called the Primal Diet, I eat this way and think you should too.
 
 
Any diet that encourages eating cheese and bacon is probably both correct and morally pure. Mark Sisson is the best source for what he calls the “Primal Blueprint“. The Blueprint is as concise an explanation as you will find of this eating/living strategy and it’s done in a humorous way to boot. You will find many similarities between The Paleo Diet and the Primal Blueprint but the most noticeable differences in my mind are:
 
Lean meat: Primal encourages you to eat any kind of meat you like as long as the animal has been raised properly. As an example, eat whatever cut of beef you like if it was raised eating grass not raised on grain and corn feed mixed with all sorts of other stuff you don’t even want to know about. If the animals you consume eat garbage (or worse) what do you think you are really eating?
 
Dairy: Go ahead and pour yourself a glass of milk, have some cheese and spread that butter. In fact, Primal encourages you to drink the good stuff, not the watered down, non-fat cloudy water. If you can find unpasteurized (raw), grass fed, hormone free sources of dairy (cow, goat, sheep, yak, whatever…) so much the better.
 
 
Paleo and Primal agree that grains (even whole grains), beans and refined sugars are best left out of your nutrition plan. Yes, that means no pasta, bread, potatoes, rice or soy. (Yeah! No tofu!!!) While they find a place for fermented or sprouted grains and beans, it’s not something you will build your nutrition plan on.
 
 
 
From Mark’s Daily Apple comes the Definitive Guide on The Primal Blueprint:

The essence of the Primal Blueprint is this:
Most of life is really much simpler than modern medicine and science would like to have you believe. You can have a tremendous impact on how your genes express themselves, simply by providing your cells the right environments. All you need is a basic understanding of how your body works and a simple philosophical roadmap you can use to find answers to just about any questions of health and fitness – whether it involves personal choices or lifestyle adjustments or whether medical intervention might be appropriate. With this simple strategy, you will forever be able to examine or evaluate any food choice, any form of exercise or any other behavior in the context of how it impacts your genes! Even if you decide to opt for a “bad choice”, at least you’ll know why it’s bad…
 

and…

The Definitive Guide to the Primal Eating Plan
Not only is it nearly impossible to accurately gauge your exact meal-to-meal calorie and macronutrient requirements, doing so will drive you crazy. In fact, to accurately figure your true structural and functional fuel needs (and hence to achieve your goals) it’s far more effective to look at a much larger span of time, like a few weeks, and aim for an “average” consumption. Then you can review that average daily intake over weeks or months and adjust accordingly. Below, I’ll give you a way to figure a “jumping off” point to start with, but remember, our genes are accustomed to the way our ancestors ate: intermittently, sporadically, sometimes in large quantities, and sometimes not at all for days. Their bodies figured out a way to maintain homeostasis and preserve lean tissue and good health through all this and so can we. Our genes want us to be lean and fit. It’s actually quite easy as long as we eat from the long list of Primal Blueprint healthy foods and try to avoid that other list of grain-laden, sugary, processed and otherwise unhealthy foods.

I really like that last line. If you are going to eat something that isn’t healthy at least know why what it does to you system. An occasional dessert is not going to instantly make you sick and weak. Over exposing yourself to sugar and other refined products will adversely affect your body.
 
I find so much freedom and adventure in the Primal mindset. That’s what attracted me to Primal and Mark Sisson. Look for his book coming out this spring.