Of course having been diagnosed in ’14 with Hashimoto’s Disease of the thyroid, I’m all over this organ in my blood work, and the journey we are on really started with that diagnosis and reversing the disease with diet. In other words, I pay a lot of attention to this panel. The thyroid is on […]
It’s been clear to me for a few years now that blood sugar regulation is important to my health, and that my blood sugar is very sensitive to the amount of carbohydrate in my diet. The Plunge ran 2019 Jan 21 to Apr 20 and I measured my food intake religiously with Cronometer from February […]
The health “space” is vast, and Mark Sisson did a good job of outlining a large majority of its scope with his Primal Blueprint 10 Laws. A person could literally spend a lifetime of study inside any of the 10 elements, and some have. I talked about some of these in my post “Paleo f(x) 2017 #pfx17 Recap – 4 Recommendations for Radically Improving Health.”
In this post I will be going down a rabbit hole inside only one, that being Law Nr 1: Eat Plants and Animals, the first of two laws regarding nutrition. It seems simple and easy enough, but if it were it’s unlikely that 72% of adults in the United States would be overweight or obese. CDC FastStats Overweight and Obese.
According to the 13th Annual Food and Health Survey commissioned by International Food Information Council Foundation, the most prevalent motivation to adopt a new “eating pattern” is weight loss. Surprise, surprise.
It’s hard to argue with any of these motivators it seems to me. And the desired benefits largely line up with those motivators, with cardiovascular health and weight loss being the top two. But so what?
The inaugural program offering of “Primal Plunge – 90 Days of Total Immersion” will start on 2019 January 21st. By then most folks will already have abandoned their 2019 New Year’s resolutions! According to research by Strava in the UK, the second Friday in January, January 11th this year, is “Quitter’s Day.” I’m guessing it’s little different in the US. Based in part on The Primal Blueprint 21-Day Total Body Transformation, the Primal Plunge can help you to turn the corner on health and wellness, making not just change, but true transformation, permanent. Are you ready!?
Read moreThere has always been “genetic drift,” and for millions of years nature selected for those hominid adaptations that best ensured the survivial of the species, ultimately giving rise to homo sapiens. In the paleo community its been said that since the advent of agriculture and the civilizations it made possible, 10,000 or so years ago, we have ceased to evolve. Of course our genome is still changing, but as the argument goes, in the civilized world favorable adaptions are not selected for; there is no “need” for the adaptation to ensure survival of the species. Similarly, unfavorable adaptations are not deselected; as was achieved in paleolithic times by the inability of the person carrying the unfavorable adaption to reach reproductive age or to actually reproduce the unfavorable adaptation in his or her offspring. As it turns out though, it’s not quite that simple.
Read moreThere’s that old saying, words to the effect that “you are what you think about all day long.” It might be better said, you become what you think about all day long.
As most of the long-time readers will know, Geri and I have been very serious about our health since I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease of the thyroid in mid-2014. I’ve been moving along the ancestral health path for almost 5 years now, and it has been an amazing journey. Some bread crumbs have been left along the way, here and here. Even before 2014 I was in search of the trail-head for about five years, and in that search one of the first books I came across was The Primal Blueprint. More recently you might have noticed that I’m a student at the Primal Health Coach Institute; both the book and the course are the creations of Mark Sisson and his team.
It’s no coincidence that “Health” is one of the three elements of “The Purpose.” Like most “vision” or “mission” statements, ours was aspirational, which is to say we weren’t necessarily being all, or indeed any of those things when “The Purpose” was drafted in June of 2015. You become what you think about. All. Day. Long. Read more
This experiment is an “n=1,” which is to say that it was an experiment on me, and in this case by me. For the design I went with the recommendations of Chris Kresser, made in a 3-part series of posts:
I’m going to tell you that what you put in your mouth is of paramount importance. You can make remarkable, and swift, improvements to your health and fitness. Even at what you might now consider to be “later stages of life.” You are in control. You can do it. In fact, you alone can do it. No one can do it for you, and you cannot “do it” for anyone else. With that having been said, strap on, we’re going for a ride. Read more