Why Eating Animals Makes Everything Easier - By Mark Sisson

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-eating-animals-makes-everything-easier/

Last time, I broke down the faulty Carb Paradigm we live in.

In case you need one, here’s a quick refresher:

Overweight people with faulty carbohydrate metabolisms are told (by doctors, by government officials, by dietitians) to eat more carbohydrates and less fat.

They do it (carb consumption as a percentage of total caloric intake has increased in line with the obesity epidemic, moreso than either fat or protein). They eat carbs and reduce fat intake.

Because their insulin-resistant bodies can’t handle carbs well, they produce lots of insulin to get over the hump. Only problem? Those carbs aren’t sequestered into insulin-sensitive muscle glycogen stores as energy, because the muscle is insulin-resistant. Meanwhile, the excessive insulin prevents the burning of fat, and any extra fat and carbs from the meal are instead sequestered into fat cells. People get fatter.

Since the food isn’t being used and is instead being stored away for later use, the body thinks it’s starving and gets hungrier as a result. People eat more carbs.

The cycle continues uninterrupted.

But no more. It stops here. I think it’s time we shift toward a new paradigm. It’s actually a rather old, classic paradigm that’s been forgotten – but it’s still as valid as ever.

It’s time for the Fat Paradigm. It’s time to start burning fat as fuel. It’s time to move away from sugar burning.

You see, fat is the perfect fuel for us. It’s efficient. It burns clean. And it’s the type of fuel our bodies like to burn. Otherwise, why else would we store it on our bodies for lean times?

That’s what people miss about body fat. It’s not just “there” because we messed up and our body has nowhere to put it. Body fat, or adipose tissue, is stored energy. Sure, the obese have way too much body fat, but the fact is that our bodies evolved the ability to put fat into fat cells because it is effective fuel.

The problem is that many of us are broken. Sedentary living, modern food toxins, too much stress, not enough sleep, and a distinct lack of play for play’s sake (more on this later, if you’re confused about why I’d rank “play” with all the other stuff) have fundamentally changed the way we process fuel. Many of us can’t even access the stored fat, instead running on sugar (and poorly at that). All that stored energy – body fat – is going to waste.

So, if you’re overweight or obese, chances are you’re broken. And – at least for the time being until you’re healed – excess carbohydrates are making the problem worse.

But you can be fixed. You don’t need doctors or medication or expensive treatments. You just need to start accessing your body fat and burning fat for fuel.

By converting to an animal fat-based metabolism, you are returning to the ancestral human fuel source. And the best way to switch to fat burning is to start eating more animals and whatever fat comes with them.

Animal fat, especially from ruminants like beef, lamb, and bison, comes with roughly equal proportions of saturated and monounsaturated fats, with a little bit of omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats. Interestingly, your own animal fat – the fat deposited on your body and the fat that your body is designed to burn for energy in lean times – comes with very similar ratios. It’s almost as if animal fat is good for us!

Which brings me to my main point of today’s article: eating animals simply makes everything easier.

With animals, you get healthy animal fat. You get protein, important for building muscles and keeping you full. You get all the micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals that the animal ate, in a form that your body can absorb. It’s the perfect package of nutrition for a fat burner.

Now, I don’t hate carbohydrate. They can be useful and even beneficial in certain cases. Eat carbs when you need fuel for endurance activities. Don’t eat carbs just because; eat them because you need the energy. Because you’re actually active and they won’t go to waste.

Otherwise?

Fat is your friend.

Fat will fuel your everyday activities, your walking, your shopping, your working and reading. Fat can even provide the bulk of the energy required by your brain. Your brain still needs glucose, mind you, but becoming metabolically healthy will allow you to access both glucose and fat for energy.

Bottom line: if you’re overweight, you’re not utilizing the energy stored on your body. Switching over to the Fat Paradigm and a fat-based diet will unlock that stored body fat and allow you to use what you’ve already got (plus carbohydrates, when and if you eat them). But if you remain entrenched in the Carb Paradigm, your body never gets the message to start accessing body fat for energy.

If you need to lose weight, start by cutting back on carbs and eating more animals (and their fat). That’s all it takes to enter the Fat Paradigm and start burning fat, and it’s as easy (and delicious) as it sounds.

How Agriculture Ruined Your Health (and What to Do About It) - By Mark Sisson

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-agriculture-ruined-your-health-and-what-to-do-about-it/

You are overweight. I’m sorry to be blunt, but it’s probably true: most adults living in Western countries are overweight. A large portion is obese.

Half of you are taking at least one prescription medication. Half of seniors are taking at least three. You may not be on anything, but you know someone who is.

Does that sound normal? I mean, are perpetual chronic illness and obesity the normal state of existence for us? Is our wiring so inherently faulty that we can’t keep ourselves alive without pills and doctors?

No. Absolutely not. It wasn’t always like this, you know.

The first big turn happened with the Agricultural Revolution. Right around 10,000 years ago, when former hunter-gatherers began growing grain seeds in neat, organized rows, something happened. Population exploded, because we now had a steady source of calories. Villages and cities sprang up, because we no longer had to follow our food. We could simply grow it where we lived.

Those sound like pretty good things, at first. More food and shelter sounds good, right?

Well, something else happened, too. Those early farmers were shorter than the hunter-gatherers they replaced. They didn’t live as long, and they had smaller brains. They got a lot more infectious diseases and more cavities. In short, they were not as healthy as the hunter-gatherers. Same genes, same homo sapiens, different environment, worse health.

But wait – whole grains are supposed to be healthy. Every government institution recommends making whole grains a big part of our diet. How could grain agriculture have caused all those health problems in our ancestors?

The thing about grains is that they don’t care about you. Think about it: a grain of wheat is a baby plant. A wheat egg, if you will. In order for that wheat to pass on its genes, its grain must make it into the ground, sprout, and grow up to repeat the process. Just as a hen keeps its egg warm and well-protected until it hatches, the grain needs ways to stay protected through this process and to keep other animals from eating it.

Unfortunately for the grain, it has no legs, teeth, wings, or claws. It can’t fight. It can’t run from predators. It looks downright defenseless, just sitting there on a puny stalk of wheat.

The grain is anything but defenseless, though. It has an array of chemical defenses, including various lectins, gluten, and phytic acid, that disrupt your digestion, cause inflammation, and prevent you from absorbing vital nutrients and minerals.

All grains contain some or all of these anti-nutrients, to varying degrees, so when our ancestors began making regular meals of them, their health suffered accordingly.

Okay – so we’ve got the fossil records to prove that grain agriculture brought illness and poorer health to human populations, but we don’t know if those early farmers were obese. They probably weren’t. Even if you look at photos of Americans from the 1930s through the 60s, just about everyone is thin. How’s that?

Let’s keep going.

That brings me to the second shift: the late 1970s. Up until then, the obesity rate in America had stayed fairly constant at around 12% of the adult population. Not great, but not too bad for an affluent society with easy access to food.

Starting in the early 80s, things changed. Obesity rates began a steady, constant climb until today, where almost 30% of the adult population is obese and 70% is overweight and/or obese. 1 in 3 American adults is obese. More than 2 in 3 are overweight. Does this seem right?

What the heck changed?

The low-fat diet craze kicked off. People were told that fat and cholesterol were killing them (based on terrible science, which I’ll get into in a future lesson) and making them fat.

So, to avoid all that fat, they started eating more grains, carbs, and other processed low-fat foods.

The other thing about grains (and carbs in general) is that they raise your body’s insulin levels. Insulin is required to shuttle nutrients, like carbs and protein, into various cells of the body. You eat carbs and insulin deals with them. But if you eat too many carbs – like, say, a person who was just told never to eat fat and to eat all the low-fat, high-sugar processed grain products they wanted might do – without exercising at an insane level, your body pumps too much insulin and you get insulin resistant.

When you’re insulin resistant, any amount of carbohydrate will not be tolerated. It will turn to body fat, and the more body fat you have, the more insulin resistant you get. The more insulin resistant you are, the less nutrients are being shuttled into your cells, meaning you stay hungry even though you’re eating, so you eat even more carbs that you can’t tolerate. It’s a vicious cycle, you see, and it’s led to the mess we’re in.

To make things even worse, many of the carbs we’re now eating come in the form of sugar, or its cheaper, more widespread alternative, high-fructose corn syrup. Both forms of sugar are high in fructose, which the liver turns into liverglycogen, a type of carb-based energy, until its glycogen stores are full. Those glycogen stores fill up fast, and since most people aren’t using any glycogen (kinda hard to do that when you have to work an office job and sit in traffic all day), that fructose turns to liver fat.

Together, a diet high in sugar and refined grains, and low in fat, has begotten the obese, diseased populace we see today. That’s the bad news. The good news is that solving the problem – at least on an individual level – is easy.

All you have to do is follow Primal Blueprint Law #9: “Avoid poisonous things.” Those food toxins that grains use to defend themselves? Those are poisonous things that you should stop eating.

So ditch the grains. Here’s how. Give up the bread. Reduce your overall carb intake. (See the Primal Blueprint Carbohydrate Curve.) Even if you aren’t overweight, I guarantee you’ll feel better without that poison in your life.

CrossFit Fundamental Movements DVD

Taking my first of four fundamentals class tonight. Review coming later!

Lifelong Health Starts Here - From Mark's Daily Apple

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/lifelong-health-starts-here/

I’m going to ask a question, and I want your gut response. Answer fast.

What do you feed a lion?

Meat.

Meat is the obviously correct answer. You would feed the lion raw meat. I think even the most ardent vegan would admit that lions are supposed to eat meat.

But why are they “supposed” to eat meat? How do we determine what a living thing is supposed to eat?
Obviously, lions are predators. They hunt and eat prey animals in the wild. But that’s not the whole story.

Lions hunt and eat animals, and they and their feline ancestors have been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions, even. That’s the key.

The hunting, killing, and raw meat-eating informed the evolution of the lion over many millions of years. The lion’s genetic makeup was shaped by meat-eating. Its teeth and claws are made for killing, its digestive tract is meant to process protein and fat. You might even say the lion’s genes expect the ancestral lion diet of raw meat and function best on such a diet. Conversely, a diet that diverges dramatically from the ancestral lion diet will probably be harmful, with the harm incurred proportional to the degree of divergence. A vegetarian diet will make your lion sick, weak, and probably overweight; a vegan diet will probably kill your lion.

No one would argue against feeding lions raw meat, and anyone who understands natural selection (and as a subscriber to this newsletter I’m sure you do) would agree that lions function best on a raw meat diet because they evolved on one.

This works with other animals, too. Cows eat grass, not meat. Cats, those little house lions, eat meat, not grain and vegetable.

And humans? Humans eat chicken nuggets, soda, and white bread. Wait. (Record scratch.) That’s not right.

Humans are animals, too. We may be relative newcomers to this planet, but we’ve been around for a good 200,000 years, and our ancestors have been around for millions of years. And for a good 190,000 years of that, we were hunter-gatherers, living off the land, big game hunters who feasted on plant and animal alike.
Then we developed agriculture, and for the next 9,900 years, grains ruled the human diet.

100 years ago, food production industrialized, giving us vegetable oil, manmade trans fats, cheap white flour, and inexpensive refined sugar.

Now, we may not know exactly what our Paleolithic ancestors ate, day in and day out. We don’t have menus or food logs. But we do know what they did not eat.

Our ancestors did not eat grains, legumes, refined sugar, or processed vegetable oils.

The thing about people is that we are smart enough to exploit everything offered by the natural world. We don’t just stick to one source of food, like lions and their meat or cows and their grass. We branch out. We pick edible vegetation, we hunt large and small animals, we fish, we dig up edible roots, and we pluck berries from bushes. The wide variety available makes it difficult to pin down the specific evolutionary diet for humans… but that doesn’t prevent us from knowing what wasn’t available.

Here’s what we know:
Grains, beans, and legumes were not readily available until we developed agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago. Fossil records suggest that human health took a hit with the advent of agriculture, as much as you can tell from bones. Agriculturalists were shorter than and had more cavities, smaller brains, and weaker bones than hunter-gatherers. Life expectancy also dropped.

High-fructose corn syrup and vegetable oils were only made available in the last 100 years, with HFCS coming just 30 odd years ago. Today, people are fatter, more diabetic, and get more cancer and heart disease than people living 100 years ago, even if you account for differences in lifespan. Most, if not all of those illnesses are directly attributed to our poor modern lifestyles and diets.

If you accept that the biology of animals, like lions, functions best on ancestral, evolutionary diets, wouldn’t the same likely be true for humans?

That maybe we should take a closer, slightly skeptical look at the foods that have only been available to humans for the last 10,000, 1,000, and 100 years? That maybe the meat, fish, fowl, nuts, seeds,  fruits, roots and tubers that were available to hunter-gatherers for millions of years are actually good for us?
That’s what I call “Grok logic“. Grok, my fun name for the archetypal hunter-gatherer ancestor, is us.
We are Grok. Well, our bodies want to be, anyway. Our genes certainly think we’re still hunting and gathering because they’ve hardly changed in the last 10,000 years. Our genes expect certain things, certain foods, activity levels, and amounts of sleep. They function best when exposed to the same or similar conditions as under which they evolved.

And here’s the thing about genes. Genes can be turned on and off. They can be expressed. Just because you “have” a gene for, say, breast cancer or type 2 diabetes, it doesn’t mean you are destined to get breast cancer or type 2 diabetes. It simply means that if triggered by something in your environment, that gene will switch on (or off) and you will have a higher (or lower) chance of getting the disease.
This is called gene expression.

The things we eat, the amount of sleep we get, our stress levels, how we exercise, whether or not we get sunlight exposure – all of these environmental factors can trigger gene expression – for good or bad. And while just about everything we do can trigger gene expression, the list of things we really need to pay attention is quite short. In fact, it can be summarized in 10 simple laws. (Read more about the 10 Primal Blueprint Laws here.)

This is why I like Grok logic as a starting point when thinking about human health. It comes down to a pretty simple observation. When humans began diverting from their ancestral hunter-gatherer lifestyle, health suffered. When industrially processed food began crowding out natural, whole food, health suffered even more.

Today, people obtain most of their calories from refined grains, sugar, and vegetable oils. They endure chronic stress, lead sedentary lives, work jobs they hate, and live indoors. Today, people have more diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity than ever before.

Correlation? Certainly.

Coincidence? I doubt it.

Causation? I think it’s worth investigating.

In future lessons, we’re going to do that investigating. We’re going to look at many of the ways in which our modern lifestyles divert from our evolutionary past and how our health suffers for it. Everything from the food we eat, the shoes we wear, the sunscreen we slather, the chairs we sit in, and the exercise we do (or don’t do) is fair game.

I think you’re going to learn a lot about how to recapture the health of you and yours by following your Primal Blueprint and nurturing positive gene expression, and I think you’re going to love what you learn.

"My Gym is Different"

Crossfit. My next adventure. First class is Dec 3. Can't WAIT!!!