To Build Muscle, Lose Fat, and Get Healthy, Go Caveman

To build muscle, lose fat, and get healthy, go caveman.

Our Stone Age ancestors lived in an uncomfortable world, spending their 30-year life spans hunting and gathering without air conditioning or heat.

But some say the cave men ate better than we do.

That's the premise behind the Paleo diet, a health and weight-loss trend that encourages people to eat modern-day versions of Paleolithic food. Read more

Living Prehistorically in the Modern Age

Andrea Shea explains how to live prehistorically in the modern age. She apparently doesn't know that Neanderthals and modern humans were a different species, but not everyone watches the History Channel, I guess. Otherwise, it's a good introduction to the Paleolithic lifestyle

The word “Paleolithic” might evoke images from the 1980s film “Quest for Fire” — or, more recently, the scruffy cavemen in those Geico commercials. But Nate Rosenberg says going back in time to eat like a Neanderthal doesn’t make him one.

“It’s obviously not a reenactment of Paleolithic life,” Rosenberg says.

The 27-year-old foraged through his contemporary kitchen in the cute Somerville apartment he shares with his Paleo partner Michal Naisteter.

“We eat modern foods,” he says. “In the Paleolithic era they did not have ground beef or, you know, dried oregano from Whole Foods and stuff life that, which we benefit from. But we try keep in mind our evolutionary history.”

Added Naisteter: “I eat fish, I eat eggs, I eat vegetables and I eat berries and nuts.”

Naisteter and Rosenberg are part of an international fitness and nutrition movement known as “ancestral health.” Read more

A Low-Tech Solution to the Health Care Crisis

Mark Sisson is a former world-class triathlete who decided to improve his health by substituting sprinting and strength training for long distance endurance training. In this article, he discusses a low-tech solution to the health care crisis.

As I watch the health care bill debate debacle tumble down the rat-hole of Congress, I have to shake my head at how absurd this has all become. The final version – in almost any iteration now – will surely bankrupt us in time. If you thought the bank bailout was excessive, wait until you see this final tab. And the bill will likely wind up such a twisted compromise that few of the major stakeholders (Reps, Dems, Docs, Insurers and patients) will be pleased. In fact, I’m guessing very few people will be truly positively impacted by it (except, ironically, those who have no coverage and could care less about taking care of themselves). Many of the rest of us will be hugely affected by it for years to come. Taxes and premiums will rise for the healthy among us who can pay (and even for many of those who can’t). The saddest part of all is that in a free-market economy, a bill like this ought to be entirely unnecessary, but for the fact that it is built upon that huge house of cards that consists of the faulty assumptions we as a nation seem to have made about personal responsibility and accountability. Having said all that, this post is not about ragging on ObamaCare. There are others far more qualified than I to do so. This is about the message that the universe is offering up to all of us as a result of this fiasco. That message is clear and concise: "When it comes to health, you’re on your own."

As one of my readers at Mark’s Daily Apple put it the other day, the problem isn’t lack of health insurance, it’s lack of health. If our collective diseases of civilization continue to mount as they appear to be doing, if the majority of us are headed toward near-certain serious degenerative disease as we are led to believe, then absolutely no insurance program or government aid will be able to pay for it. Read more

Become a Caveman for Better Health

The paleolithic diet is a e "hot" trends in natural health. From their workouts to their parenting styles,learn why some modern men (and women) are fanatical in their devotion to Stone Age life

We’re used to seeing the potato as a focal point of conflict and discord, the clichéd casualty of the carbohydrate wars. But hoopla over green beans, that healthiest of vegetables? There are lots of reasons why Loren Cordain wouldn’t touch a green bean. If you ask him, he might talk about how legumes can render a healthy gut “leaky.” Or he might rant about their “anti-nutrient” properties. But it would come down to this: green beans weren’t around tens of thousands of years ago, when our prehistoric ancestors ushered in the Paleolithic era with the first tools made of stone. And so we shouldn’t eat them today.

“It’s not rocket science,” Cordain insists. His book, The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat, now a bible to a small but growing subculture, is built around a simple premise: humans evolved over millions of years. Modern agriculture has been around for just 10,000, a blip on the evolutionary timeline. Because of this, humans are healthiest when eating as they did before agriculture came along—in other words, like cavemen. Read more