Free The Animal

Well here’s another post that’s merely to point you to someone else’s good work, but I just can’t pass it up. One of the great recent additions to the paleo blogosphere is Dr. Kurt Harris, also a reader and commenter here.
Here he really does his homework and puts a number of studies together — backed [...]

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One thing I should always mention about my results like I posted yesterday is that in addition to the real food and intermittent fasting, my workouts consist of only two 30-minute sessions per week, both of which I always do hungry, i.e., at least 12 hours since last food intake, and sometimes as much as 24-30 hours (I’m still in fat-loss mode). And regardless of how long it was that I hadn’t eaten, I don’t eat immediately after the workout either, for at least two hours. If that seems totally crazy to you, does that sense come from actual experience, first-hand knowledge, or are you doing what so many do, which is to just run with the crowd? As I’ve come to learn being around the gym, trainers, and cardioholics: the fitness industry is dominated by a herd mentality. It’s very faddish, and if you watch closely you’ll begin to notice all sorts of contradictory diet, exercise, nutritional and supplement advice. But stop to consider this: do mammals typically hunt in a fed or a hungry (fasted) state? If the latter, doesn’t it seem logical, and also, doesn’t it make sense that evolved physiology would be highly adapted to such…

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Now that I’m a regular at the gym, coming up on a year, I am quite comfortable concluding that the “cardio craze” is complete bunk. It’s of virtually no value whatsoever, and the downsides far outweigh any advantages. I’d love it if my gym — which is a 5-minute walk, so I’m not about to switch — would dump all but a few of the cardio machines that take up enormous space, and use the space for crossfit training. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, Art’s essay on Evolutionary Fitness (PDF) clued me in and made me aware, so it was in my field of view and I’ve observed. The adaptive and variable energy demands of our ancestral existence are gone. We live a low energy flux and metabolically unvaried existence in bodies designed for another lifeway. We are hunter/gatherers in pin-stripe suits, living a sedentary life and it is killing us in ways our ancestors never experienced. Virtually all the degenerative diseases–atherosclerosis, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, declining muscle mass–of modern civilization are unheard of among hunter-gatherers and were not part of our ancestral experience. Most modern fitness prescriptions are static and agricultural. These programs model the…

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As I’ve been saying, my own experience bears this out, and in different ways. Competitive runner and personal trainer finds out the hard way. Take a look.

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