It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

My story won’t feature dramatic before and after shots. It won’t tell you that this diet will make you buff fast (though I think it will). Instead it portrays another reason many people go Primal – to address health issues – and outlines 25 years of health struggles, overcome.
I’ve never been more than 10 or 15 pounds overweight and I’ve always loved being outdoors and exercising. When I was in my mid-20s I started having terrible pain in the joints of my hips, hands, ankles, wrists […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Many of you may know that one of my favorite television shows is Survivor. It turns out that Mark Burnett, the producer of Survivor, has a new show called Expedition Impossible; an adventure series where contestants race through the deserts, rivers and mountains of Morocco. (Interest piqued.) It also turns out that one of the teams, the Gypsies, could just as well have been called team Grok. That’s right. John Post, Taylor Filasky and Eric Bach, contestants on the show, have all gone Primal.
Mark Burnett? Africa? Adventure race? Primal contestants? Ok, I’m hooked. Between attending to the media blitz that comes with starring on a new TV show and operating a recently purchased 27-acre farm (Sweet Peeps) with his sister and their two best friends, John Post found time to answer a few questions about his experience going Primal and being on Expedition Impossible (airs Thursdays, 9 pm PST on […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

A large part of learning to eat less is learning why we eat. Unfortunately, often times we go about this process in a very backwards manner.
We concentrate far to much on the final outcome of ‘what we ate’, rather than the underlying motives, causes and goals behind “Why do I eat”.
In order to really examine ‘why we eat’  we must remove any emotion or preconceptions about the food ate, and treat it more like ‘data’ than food.
If we try to figure out ‘why we ate’, while concentrating on ‘what we ate’, the results become skewed.
If ‘what you ate’ was a banana, you may quickly fall on the ‘it’s healthy’ side of things and decide that the reason you ate the banana was because it was ‘good for you’.
If ‘what you ate’ was a chocolate bar, you may quickly fall on the ‘it’s a treat’ side of things and decide that […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

A few months ago I wrote about the impact of noise – the constant din of traffic, flight patterns, crowds, etc. that we generally live with these days. Whether it’s an increased risk of cardiovascular disease or a decreased sense of mental well-being, we all pay a price for civilization’s soundtrack. I’ve been thinking a lot about the subject since that post and the thoughtful comments folks shared in response. (I have my contemplative moods like anyone else.) As is often the case with questions of health, the real issue isn’t just what to avoid (e.g. noise) but what to embrace in its stead. Loud and/or chronic noise is annoying, grating, even downright unhealthy. We agree we could all use less clamor in our lives, but is it as simple as turning down the volume in our society? Is silence just the absence of noise, or is there something deeper […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Ah, sleep. We need, we love it, we crave it, we promise ourselves that we’ll get more of it, and yet quality sleep remains out of reach for so many of us these days. Some do it to themselves, staying up late to watch bad TV (or great TV, which is more understandable) and browse blogs (health blogs that, ironically enough, often write about the importance of sleep). There, the answer is simple: stop staying up. Resisting technology’s allure might be difficult, but at least it’s completely within your power to do so. Others have it tougher. Shift workers, for example, can’t just up and switch careers or get a new schedule after reading a blog. Since this is not the “original affluent society,” we have to work to pay for food, shelter, and other basic necessities, and we have to take what we can get.

Questions from shift workers come […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Complete two cycles of the following, slowly:
12 Pushups
15 Squats
10 Pullups
2 Minute Plank

How-to:
Warmup: 30 second Grok Squat, lateral, forward, and backward leg swings (10 each leg).
I was privileged to speak at Bo Railey’s fabulous Indy HIT seminar last month in Indianapolis. While there, I had the the pleasure to train with Bo and Dr. Doug McGuff, of Body By Science fame, using the SuperSlow Systems equipment at one of Bo’s Exercise Inc. facilities. I did a row, an overhead press, and a leg press. “Pleasure” may not be the right word, because this was not pleasurable. It was over quickly, but it was intensely unpleasant in a good way. I’ll invite Doug to guest post on the concept in a few weeks.
I’m still not a machine guy – though I admit they are effective, especially when helmed by a guy like Doug or Keith Norris – but I thought it’d […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

When most people think about firing up the grill or stoking a campfire to cook an outdoor meal, lamb isn’t the first meat that comes to mind. Isn’t lamb the type of meat that should be served on a fancy platter with mint jelly on the side, not seared over a campfire and eaten with your hands?
Personally, we’ve never liked mint jelly or those silly, frilly white paper caps that chefs stick on lamb legs. We like our lamb seared over an open flame in tender bite-sized morsels that have been richly seasoned and tenderized in a marinade. We slide the meat right off the skewer and pop it in our mouth – it may not be fancy, but it sure is good.

Lamb is an ideal meat to skewer and cook over an open flame because it doesn’t take long to cook. If you’re wondering whether or not it’s done, […]

Original post by Worker Bee

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

Hey Mark,
It occurred to me after reading a number of other success stories that I myself had a success story to share, and while I believe that there are many to thank for helping me get where I am now, you have played a large part in my transformation.
So let me give you my back story.
Excuses I wish I had…
At this point it’s important I clarify a few things. I’m 45 and have been battling my weight for about 25 years. I can’t pin my body […]

Original post by Mark Sisson