Conventional Wisdom always gets an eyebrow raise from me. I can’t help it. Eventually, I take an honest look at whatever the experts are saying, but skepticism gets first dibs. I’d call it an instinct if it weren’t learned behavior from years of being burned. For example, I once took to task the most pervasive “truth” around: that everyone needs to drink eight glasses of water a day or risk kidney failure, toxin buildup, bladder cancer, and debilitating constipation. It was pretty easy to do.
But it’s not all BS. Smoking is bad for you, for example. See? I can admit when they’re right!

I wonder about the CW position on sleep, though. We generally agree on the recommended duration of sleep. “About eight solid hours” is what you’ll see everywhere, from official governmental health guides to paleo nutrition blogs (I’m sure there’s some niche community out there claiming to have “transcended” […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Last week, my post on the “Myriad Benefits of Intermittent Fasting” opened up a can of worms. In it I discussed how fasting can have a positive impact on human longevity, blood lipids, diet compliance and neurological health to name just a few of the potential health benefits. Naturally, many readers wondered if they’ve been missing the boat on IFing, and whether they should start skipping breakfast, lunch and dinner ASAP. In fact, who needs food anymore when you have IF! Not so fast.
Fasting can be an effective lifestyle hack, but is it right for everyone?
Not exactly. Not always. In other words, no. Let’s take a closer look.
Intermittent fasting is a tool that can be used – or misused – in the pursuit of health. As Keith Norris might put it, it’s something to add to the quiver. A tool to be drawn upon when the time is right. You know […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

There is a simple reason why John Barban and I say you can eat anything you wish and still lose weight. And that reason is this ==> We don’t think you are an idiot. In fact, we kinda think you’re smart.
Funny, but true.
Our belief is that you’re goal is to lose weight and to be healthy.
So while some people like to use the logical fallacy of Reductio Ad Absurdum and state that since we say you can eat anything you wish and lose  weight, what we are really saying is that you SHOULD eat nothing but candy and chocolate for the rest of your life….nothing could be farther from the truth.
But as silly as it sounds, I guess that’s what other health professionals think you will do.
That’s why they give you complicated rules, because if they didn’t you’d obviously think that sitting down to eat your way through a […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

Today’s edition of Monday Musings is a quick account of two recent studies that highlight actual, literal threats to the fruitfulness and productivity of the human male loin. For years, the average male sperm count has been decreasing, especially in Western industrialized nations, by about 1% to 2% per year. Globally, of course, populations have been increasing, so sperm is successful by playing the numbers game, but we’re worried about the individual. We’re concerned with per capita sperm count. And it’s been dropping.
But why?

For candidate number one, let’s look to the bones. Bones, as you know, are active, living organs rather than passive inert structures. They grow (in response to a complex soup of hormonal messaging), they densify (in response to weight-bearing activity), they even atrophy (in response to a lack of weight-bearing activity and/or gravity). The primary regulators of bone growth and function are the sexual organs, which manufacture […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Complete 4 cycles of:
25 Meter Log Flip
25 Meter Backward Log Drag

How-to:
Warmup: 30 second Grok Squat, three light sprints at 70%.
It was the unholy confluence of corporate ethics lapses and shortsightedness, governmental/corporate collusion, and personal irresponsibility that set the stage for the “Flip That House” phenomenon, and we’ve seen what damage it wrought. As a nation, we’re still reeling from the effects. This week’s WOW, dubbed “Flip That Log,” also requires a triumvirate of preconditions – strength, speed, and a heavy log (or log analog) – for successful implementation, and it too will cause great microtrauma, only this time to your musculature. And the effects will only be felt for a day or two, rather than years. And it will all be beneficial.
“Flip That Log” is simple: flip a log end over end (using explosive hip extension to get the log up to chest height, then drive it up and over […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Some people don’t like to eat game because it’s too, well, gamey. Others prize wild meat for exactly this quality. Lack of gaminess, one might argue, is lack of any real flavor in meat. When we bought venison this week, we found tons of recipes that claimed to mask the gamey flavor, but this seemed to defeat the whole purpose of eating venison. Isn’t trying to take the gaminess out of venison like trying to take the beefiness out of beef?
Meat from grass-fed animals has more flavor than meat from animals fed only grain, so it just makes sense that meat from animals feasting in the wild on everything from ragweed to wild clover to dandelions has the most flavor of all. In venison, this flavor comes across as slightly sweet and very rich, with a bit of a grassy, herbal quality to it. Truly wild venison has a stronger, […]

Original post by Worker Bee

Eric Daye of Tru Body Fitness proving that to get lean, you have to get light (162 in the first, 143 in the second)

Getting Lean is weird for guys.
We wanna be lean – 6% body fat lean, but we don’t want to be light.
Call it social pressure or whatever, it makes for an interesting conundrum.
But here’s the truth.
Most of the time to get lean you are going to have to be lighter than you probably think is acceptable.
I’ll use myself as an example:
I’m 5′10″
I have about 150-ish pounds of LBM, for sake of arguement lets say 155 pounds
Right now I have a fasted weight of around 172 pounds and around 10% body fat.
Now here’s the reality:
If I want to be 6% body fat, I’m going to have to weigh less then I do now (obvious).
In fact, I’ll probably have to weigh 165 pounds.
For me and my personal biases there’s something..weird… […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Friday Success Story to bring you a timely and critical look at this week’s Hottest Health Headline. And who better to tackle the research in question than expert study-dismantler Denise Minger? You may remember Denise from the recent article she wrote for MDA in which she went toe-to-toe with a study linking a high fat diet with breast cancer. Today she takes on our nemesis, our foe, our mortal enemy – the Whole Grain. And now, Denise…
A headline-grabbing study just hit the press, and on the surface, it looks like a home run for team Healthy Whole Grain. This chunk of research – officially titled “Dietary Fiber Intake and Mortality in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study” – followed a pool of over half a million adults and found that, across the board, the folks eating the most fiber had lower rates of death from […]

Original post by Mark Sisson