primal tools for the modern human
Newsletter
November 2012
In This Issue
Fruit
Ideal Workout Plan
Why Diets Fail
Structure
Nutrition Fact
Quick Links
The aim of this website over the past year has been pretty simple; what should we do, or better yet, practice on a daily basis, in order to live a healthy life and acquire a lean body. This includes most importantly, what foods we should eat, which ones to avoid, and what are the best ways to remain active (exercise) in order to acquire, regenerate, and maintain a healthy and lean body.

Three simple habits come together:

Eat Right ~ Exercise Efficiently ~ Dispel Myth


These three are expanded to 13 Priorities to keep in mind and practice on a daily basis which I believe combine to take overall health to a new level.

Information: Facts, Myths, & Reality

There are obviously many opinions and experts reporting on health in magazines, books, and on websites, but for whatever reason, 90% of the information out there is not only antiquated, but inaccurate. The majority of Humans are heavier, sicker, and pharmaceutically dependent, so this 90% of antiquated information is obviously not working. Despite our best efforts in Advancing Medicine we have Declining Human Health because, I believe, we focus on treating What instead of Why...symptoms instead of causes.

That Caveman Thing
I can't tell you how many people I have come across who have had success with a Paleo or Primal lifestyle. Not only shedding pounds, but feeling better, conditions disappearing, cravings gone, the list goes on. My full description of Paleo is HERE ,but in a nutshell, it's just simplifying eating and exercise. Pretty straightforward and common sense: Eat what we have eaten for 99% of our existence and avoid commercial crop goods.
Exercise efficiently through varied movement and resistance training and avoid machines. That's it! No calorie counting, crazy diet dishes, guilt, weigh-ins, or starvation, just simple, close to the source (unprocessed) food. It works because it's simple, eliminates systemic inflammation, and results are quick to happen and are long lasting. Living lean is a good thing!

The Problem With Human Health:
Conventional Wisdom

No matter what the topic, sport, or science, there is a huge hurdle for anyone with something new to say, that goes against the common grain, that challenges the prevailing or conventional wisdom of the day. There is a lot of money to be lost if people eat simple foods instead of packaged-refined ones and stay out of a pharmacy. Sickness and frozen pizza are big business.

Gary Taubes
says: "We have to confront the strong possibility that much of what we've come to believe is wrong."

Telling people much of what we have been told in regard to health and diet is wrong goes on the side of unorthodox, yet without this challenge to the status quo, as with anything in the course of human development, progression would have halted long ago. Of course telling people that fries and coke are bad for them is pretty easy, but convincing them bread, beans, and even dairy aren't that great either is quite another story. People's beliefs on diet and exercise have been rooted in the medical establishment since the dawn of medicine. 'Doctor knows best!' ,right? Maybe it's the prestige of a lengthy education, the big words they use, the salary, or even the Porsche they drive, that convinces people that 'they must know what they're talking about', but the current state of human health and obesity, line-ups at the pharmacy, should surely cause people to stop and say: 'Hey, what's being recommended sure ain't working!'

Cholesterol...for example
Medical researchers have had a reliable and easy method of testing cholesterol since 1934 yet have been fixated on it being the cause of heart disease despite the considerable evidence to the contrary. Even as more reliable, accurate, important, and detailed methods to assess the real causes of circulatory and metabolic disorders have appeared over the past 75 years, 'a critical mass of clinicians, politicians, and health reporters has decided that dietary fat and high cholesterol are the cause of heart disease, and that low-fat, high- carbohydrate diets are the solution.' This is just but one medically flawed belief-approach-treatment that continues to be perpetuated all while ignoring the science and factual causes of heart disease.

Wheat and Grains...another example
The notion that easily digestible and refined carbohydrates (flour & sugar) and their Insulin inducing effects are the root cause of most of the diseases of Western Civilization "presents a side that is not often voiced publicly", says Taubes. The U.S. dept of Agriculture, Surgeon General, National Academy of Sciences, and the Dept. of Health in the U.K. "have all presented evidence in support of the fat-cholesterol hypothesis and mostly eliminate the evidence in contradiction."
The problem as I see it is we face is threefold:
1. People are reluctant to permanently change their eating habits.
2. The food being mass produced and marketed is highly addictive.
3. Authorities on health refuse to accept the fact that dairy, grains, and legumes are just not healthy for humans.

Change and improvement in human health must begin with knowledge and it moves forward by sharing the information. That's your job.
Overcoming conventional thought and challenging currently held beliefs may not be easy, but as with all things throughout history it takes time and the truth always prevails.

Eat Well, Exercise Often, and
                                           Ignore Conventional Wisdom


-Leavitt November 2012

3 Great Paleo Snacks
...All containing 
1. Protein 
2. Fat 
3. Good Carbohydrates

 Check 'em out HERE
FRUIT

Colorful, tasty, sweet, and full of vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytochemicals, and other nutrients, fruit brings a ton to the table. Believe me, I eat some every day.  There are berries, tree fruit, and even disguised guys like avocados, coconuts, olives, these last three even containing great sources of fat. In fact, corn and tomatoes are technically even fruit.   

 

Of consideration though, and the point of this piece, is fruit's sugar content. Sure fruit is healthy, but keeping carbohydrate consumption under 150 grams/day is ideal in the Paleo context, less if you are trying to lose weight. The body does prefer fat for fuel and has no dietary carbohydrate requirements. Vegetables and fruit are good sources of carbohydrates, yet the majority of people use grains and starches, or even worse, drink their carbohydrates in soda and fake juices. As discussed in my previous article on  Sugar, fruit contains fructose, which must be shipped to the liver before entering the bloodstream as glucose. Also, fruits vary in their amount of fructose/glucose amounts, so check out this  Table of Fruits & Sugars as prepared by Loren Cordain. So, fruit is not bad, but it can and does add to the daily sugar tally. Too much sugar and the resulting blood glucose, from whatever the source, too often, bad things can happen.   

 

Daily Sugar Intake     

Not to send out a panic of 'Bill hates fruit!', but you have to be careful about the amount and sources you are getting your sugar from. We're talking total sugar here folks, not just the white stuff. If you are eating bread, cereal, pasta, potatoes, or rice, (all easily digestible refined carbohydrates), and then top it off with a little fruit, then your sugar intake is surely through the roof. Ideally, your Carb intake should come from vegetables first, supplemented with a little fruit.   


The Hidden Agenda

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE 

Ideal Workout Plan

 Eating Right and  Exercising Efficiently are two Priorities in achieving an optimal body. Plotting out an effective exercise plan of action involves variation and progressive challenge in activity type and effort. Performing the same exercises at the same effort yields minimal results. To perform to its maximum capabilities, lose weight, or get stronger and lean without injury, the body needs constant and renewed challenge.   

Exercise should include ALL of the following on a 7 or 10 day rotation. 
Why Diets Fail

 

Diets are founded on one thing: caloric restriction to lose weight. There are three main problems with this approach: 
1. Restriction implies punishment, which is negative and that only lasts so long.
2. It's not about weight loss, it's about body composition: losing the fat and getting lean. The scale is meaningless. 
3. 99% of diets still incorporate refined easily digestible carbohydrates, (rice, whole grains, beans, pasta), which still generate cravings, disrupt digestion, offer marginal nutrition, and increase insulin production. 
4. Diet books, articles, and magazines are written by people who have not studied Biochemistry*. 

What Does Work
  READ

 

 
The Structure Protein website is now up and running. Detailed information about the product, recipes, and online ordering are all there.

Nutrition Fact

Secret Sugar 
Just because it's not the white stuff in a bowl doesn't mean it doesn't have the same effect once inside the body. Insulin, and the problems overproduction of it brings. Agave nectar, honey, and cane sugar are obvious cousins, but these 'hidden' guys are just as notorious and have to used in moderation: 

barley malt, beet sugar, brown sugar, buttered syrup, cane-juice crystals, cane sugar, caramel, carob syrup, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, date sugar, dextran, dextrose, diatase, diastatic malt, ethyl maltol, fructose, fruit juice, fruit juice concentrate,  glucose, glucose solids, golden sugar, golden syrup, grape sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, lactose, malt syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, mannitol, molasses, raw sugar, refiner's syrup, sorbitol, sorghum syrup, sucrose, sugar, turbinado sugar, yellow sugar.
 
 
See you next month
...thanks for reading
...spread the word 
...forward to friends
...be happy & stay healthy
                                       
 -Bill The Urban Caveman