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First, let me preface this by saying I like eggs that come from happy chickens. The definition of a happy chicken probably isn’t universal, but it should be said as a preface to this coming confession: I like Egg McMuffins. They’re fine — not my favorite, and I certainly don’t seek them out. However, in the throes of time not being on my side, when I find myself in need of something to eat and hardly any options at all, the thing I’m most likely to go for is the Egg McMuffin.

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As we move into the colder months of the year, it becomes more apparent than ever that oatmeal is king of the breakfast table. It’s warm, satisfying, and hearty enough to carry us through to lunchtime. Beyond a hot bowl at breakfast, oats show up in pancakes, muffins, cookies, granola bars, and so much more.

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I was 9 years old the first time I heard the word “plateau.” At the time, I had been competing in gymnastics for 2 years. We practiced 9 hours a week, and for a couple of months straight, I hadn’t achieved any of the new tricks I had been working on. I was feeling frustrated and told my Mom I didn’t want to do gymnastics anymore. After working so hard and not seeing any results, I just wanted to quit. Luckily, she talked me out of it, and I eventually made progress and continued competing for 3 more years. I learned early on that lack of progress is extremely frustrating and while it may motivate some, it demotivates others.

There are a number of reasons why a person trying to make changes to her health, physique, or performance may experience a plateau.

Depending on your goals, you may be over- or underestimating your calories, not choosing the appropriate food sources, or you may not be following her training program correctly or consistently. All of these are extremely important of course, but what if you are doing those things? What if you’re nailing your nutrition and you’re consistent with the execution of your training program, and you’re still not seeing results?

In my experience, it’s usually one of two things:

1. You’re not tracking your progress
2. You’re not tracking the correct measures of progress

Tracking is a critical component of making progress over the long-haul.

Tracking Your Progress

Not tracking your progress can be problematic for several reasons, including but not limited to:

• If you’re making small losses/gains consistently over time, and you don’t have any data to refer back to, it’s difficult to see how far you’ve actually come.
• If you don’t have any information about whether or not what you’re doing is working, you never know when to adjust your nutrition or training program.
• If you’re not tracking and acknowledging the small progress milestones, you may mistakenly think you’re not making any progress, and you’ll feel less motivated to continue.

Of course, tracking progress isn’t just about weighing yourself or taking pictures. It’s helpful to track other measures of progress such as health, lifestyle, and performance markers as well, which you’ll read about in a moment.

Tracking The Correct Measures of Progress

Tracking the correct measures of progress is critical to your success. If you’re unknowingly tracking the wrong measure of progress, you won’t have accurate information about whether or not you’re making any. Here’s an example:

I hear a lot of women say, “I want to lose weight.” But I think that what most of these women are really saying is, “I want to lose fat.”  That is a very important distinction.

When you focus on the scale as the only indicator of progress, you don’t actually know what you’re losing. You don’t know if you’re losing fat, muscle, bone mass, water. If you want to lose fat, it’s really important that you don’t rely on the scale as your sole measure of progress.

You may have been told at some point to “throw the scale out the window!” If the number on the scale (or even the idea of stepping on the scale) affects your mood and well-being, then I totally agree with that advice. It’s absolutely not necessary to weigh yourself on a regular basis. However, it is data that when combined with other data, could provide a more detailed picture of what’s going on in your body.

For example, say that you do weigh yourself two weeks in a row, and also take girth measurements. You notice that your weight is the same, but your body is actually getting smaller. What does this mean? Well, you’ve most likely lost a little body fat and gained a little muscle! That’s the really cool thing about lean mass (muscle) compared to fat mass. Five pounds of lean mass take up significantly less space than five pounds of fat mass.

I know you’ve heard that “muscle weighs more than fat,” right? Well, that doesn’t make any sense, because five pounds is five pounds, whether it’s muscle or fat. However, muscle is more dense than fat, so five pounds of muscle will take up less space than five pounds of body fat, resulting in the same weight but smaller girth measurements.

Below are two pictures of me. The one on the left is from 2004, when I weighed 185 pounds, and the one on the right is from 2012 when I weighed 183.5 pounds.

There’s only a 1.5 pound difference in those two pictures, but my body looks drastically different. That’s because I’d lost a significant amount of body fat, and gained a significant amount of muscle. If I’d just used the scale to measure what that progress looked like, it wouldn’t look like I had made much progress at all!

There are a few of things you can do to measure physical progress without focusing solely on weight.

Ways To Measure Aesthetic/Physical Progress:

1. Scale/Weight (only if it doesn’t make or ruin your day)
2. Girth measurements
3. Skinfold measurements
4. Pictures
5. Clothing

Scale/Weight

How to measure:  Weigh yourself on the same scale, on the same day of the week, at the same time of day (preferably first thing in the morning after emptying your bladder and bowels), wearing the exact same clothing, or no clothing (whichever you choose, be consistent).

Pros:  If you follow the advice above, digital scales are quite accurate measurements of how much your body weighs, and in conjunction with other measures, can be very telling in terms of progress.

Cons:  Scale weight doesn’t give you any indication of what the composition of the weight gained or lost is (water, fat, muscle, bone, etc.). It can also be psychologically difficult for some women to weigh themselves on a regular basis.

Good for:  People who want to lose fat, people who want to gain muscle, people who want both. This can also be valuable for people competing in a weight-class sport.

Recommended frequency: Weekly

Girth Measurements

How to measure:  Using a soft measuring tape, choose various sites on your body to take a girth measurement. Make sure you measure yourself on the same day of the week, at the same time of day (preferably first thing in the morning after emptying your bladder and bowels), wearing the exact same clothing or no clothing. Measure in the exact same spot each time, and don’t pull the tape too tight. It should be taut, but should not squeeze you. Also, keep in mind taking more measurements will provide a clearer picture of your progress.

Pros:  Girth measurements can be help you see not only whether you’re losing or gaining, but also what you’re losing or gaining (muscle or fat), especially in conjunction with other measures. For example, if you lose inches around your waist, but gain around your hips/glutes, there’s a good chance that you’re losing fat and gaining muscle.

Cons:  Measuring in the same spot each time can be tough, especially if you’re doing the measurements yourself instead of having someone else do them for you.

Good for:  People who want to lose fat, people who want to gain muscle, people who want both.

Recommended frequency:  Bi-weekly

Skinfold Measurements

How to measure:  A healthcare or fitness professional will use calipers to measure skinfolds on different areas of your body.

Pros:  This can be a very accurate measure of how your body fat is increasing or decreasing over time, and in conjunction with other measures of progress, can tell a lot about your overall body composition.

Cons:  These measurements are extremely difficult to take accurately. In my opinion, the professional taking the measurement should have taken at least a thousand skinfold measurements on dozens of different people before you would consider letting them take your skinfold measurements, and even then, it’s hard to guarantee that the measurements are accurate.

Good for:  People who want to lose fat, people who want to lose fat and gain muscle, and people who want to keep fat gain to a minimum while they gain muscle.

Recommended frequency:  Bi-weekly or monthly

Pictures

How to take them:  Have someone take pictures of you on the same day of the week, at the same time of day (preferably first thing in the morning after emptying your bladder and bowels), wearing the exact same clothing (or lack thereof), in the same room, with the same lighting, and from the same angle, every single time.

Pros:  Pictures, when take correctly, are an excellent representation of what’s happening with your body composition over time.

Cons:  Even the smallest change in lighting, angle, clothing, distance, or time of the month can result in pictures that aren’t comparable to one another. Consistency is key here.

Good for:  People who want to lose fat, people who want to gain muscle, people who want both. People competing in physique sports such as bodybuilding or figure, especially.

Recommended frequency:  Monthly

Clothing

How to measure:  Choose a piece of clothing you love and that currently is bit snug on you (jeans and fitted skirts/dresses generally work well). Try it on every 2-4 weeks to see if it fits differently over time.

Pros:  If you’re not great at taking girth measurements, trying on clothing can give you a good idea of whether you’re getting bigger or smaller, and in what areas. It can also be very motivating to get closer and closer to wearing one of your favorite pieces of clothing and feeling great wearing it.

Cons:  Depending on the clothing you choose, and how your body loses/gains weight, you may find that the clothing isn’t giving you much information. For example, if you choose a skirt that’s snug, and you lose fat in your upper body first, you might be losing fat, but not noticing any changes in how your skirt fits, because you haven’t lost much in your lower body or waist first.

Good for:  People who want to lose fat, people who want to gain muscle, people who want both.

Recommended frequency:  Bi-weekly or monthly

Other Measures of Progress

While measuring aesthetic progress can be really fun and motivating, there are several other measures of progress you can track, including health markers, lifestyle markers, and performance markers. Of course, the lists below aren’t exhaustive; they’re just examples of information you might find helpful to you on your health and fitness journey.

Health markers:

• Blood pressure
• Resting heart rate (taken upon waking)
• Cholesterol
• Triglycerides
• Fasted insulin
• Fasted glucose
• Hormone panel

Tracking health markers can be really motivating on your health journey, especially if they are the reason you started exercising in the first place.

Lifestyle markers:

• Stress
• Energy
• Strength
• Mood
• Sleep

Tracking lifestyle markers can also be really motivating to watch improve, but further, they can give you valuable information about your progress.  For example, if you’ve been losing fat at a steady pace for 6 weeks, and suddenly, the last 2 weeks, you’ve hit a plateau, look at your sleep and stress levels.  If your sleep has been poor for the last 2 weeks, there’s a good chance you’ve found your culprit.  Had you not tracked your sleep level, you may have unnecessarily ramped up your workouts or cut calories when in actuality, you just needed more sleep.

Performance markers:

• Number of Push-ups completed
• Number of Pull-ups/Chin-ups completed
• 5-rep max on Squat
• 5-rep max on Deadlift
• 1-mile run time
• Broad jump
• Vertical jump

It may seem obvious that tracking performance markers is important when performance is your goal, but you’d be shocked at how many people still don’t track it. You can choose any performance markers that are most relevant to your specific goals, but I’ve listed a few above that you might want to track.

One more thing

Finally, in addition to tracking the values mentioned above, make sure you’re logging your workouts as well. Many women, unless they’re prompted to increase the weight they’re using for their workouts, will continue to use the same weight day after day, week after week. That’s not how you get stronger and continue to make progress in the gym. It’s really important to know how much weight you’re using, for how many reps, and how it feels so that you can continue to push yourself.

When you’re increasing your weight on an exercise always leave 1-2 reps “in the tank” so you can stay safe while still challenging yourself. Keeping 1-2 reps in the tank means that if you think you can do 10 and that’s your absolute max, then you’re going to use that weight for only 8 or 9 reps.

Example: You’re comfortably performing Dumbbell Bench Press using the 30-pound dumbbells for 3 sets of 8, which is what your program calls for. At this point, it’s time to increase to the 35-pound dumbbells. Because that’s a 17% increase in weight, you probably won’t be able to make that big of a jump, and still complete all the sets and reps with good form.

You might do something like this instead:

• 1 set of 8 with 35 pounds
• 1 set of 6 or 7 reps with 35 pounds
• Drop back down and complete your last set of 8 reps with 30 pounds

If you hadn’t been logging your workouts, you would not have known that 3 sets of 8 with 30 pounds was challenging, but you could do a little bit more. You might never progress up to the 35-pound dumbbells.

As you can see, there are a number of reasons that tracking your progress in different areas is important to making and troubleshooting progress overall. We aren’t recommending that everyone track all of these numbers all the time. That can be daunting, and there are definitely periods in our lives when keeping things simple is the main goal. However, if you’re not making progress, and you want to know why, tracking the correct measures of progress over time is critical.

What’s Next?

If you’re frustrated with your lack of progress and you want to learn more, you’ll love our Girls Gone Strong Progress Handbook.  Within this Handbook, we discuss:

• How to define progress for yourself, so you’re always working towards what you want, instead of the goals you think you should set for yourself.
• Why strength training is a critical part of your program, no matter what your goal is.
• Why the Minimal Effective Dose method is a key component to long-term progress.
• 7 strategies to progress your workouts the right way to avoid training and physique plateaus.
• Why training too hard may hurt your progress, and what 4 recovery strategies you can use to help prevent that.
• Much more!

This week only, we’re offering the Girls Gone Strong Progress Handbook at the introductory price of just only $7.

==> Get yours here!

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As you learned from my recent blog posts about our latest releases Fruit Belly and The Primal Prescription, things are cranking up in the Primal Blueprint Publishing world. Over the past couple of years, we took a bit of a respite from our usual pace of releasing titles to focus on some big internal projects, namely the Primal Blueprint Expert Certification program, the Don’t Just Sit There program, and the Primal Endurance book, which Brad Kearns and I have been hard at work on for the past two years.

In Primal Endurance, we return to our roots and introduce endurance athletes to the familiar Primal Blueprint principles of becoming stress balanced and fat adapted. Release date is early January, but I wanted to show you a sneak preview of the beautiful cover, created by our artistic grandmaster Janée Meadows and shot at the famous Malibu sand dune by Leslie Klenke (content details follow).

After a few years of frustration and false starts, Carrie has finally found her true and authentic voice and has nearly completed the manuscript for Primal Woman. Carrie explains the numerous project delays: “I’m not a writer, but I was trying to be one, or trying to outsource parts of the process that really shouldn’t be! One day at lunch with Mark and Brad, I revealed that I was at my wits’ end and about to completely give up. They reminded me that my gift is storytelling, finding meaning in the ordinary moments, bringing inspirational quotes into daily life, and transferring inspiration into action through my training in life coaching and spiritual psychology. Can you guess where this is going? That’s right—I junked the book writing fundamentals of chapters and a patterned narrative and decided to just start telling stories! So Primal Woman is a collection of stories with life lessons and even actionable steps at the end to formulate intentions and manifest them in your daily life.”

We actually have a whopping ten books in our development pipeline right now. Here’s a quick overview of what’s coming and when. And at the end of the post, I have an important message for the real bookies out there who want to go the extra mile and read and publish thoughtful reviews on Amazon.com and elsewhere.

January 11: Primal Endurance, by Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns. Slow down, balance out, chill out, eat primally, introduce high-intensity strength and sprint workouts, and integrate complementary movement and lifestyle practices and advanced recovery techniques to become a complete and balanced endurance athlete, instead of an unhealthy, narrowly focused, carb-dependent mileage junkie. Of primary importance is learning how to transition out of chronic cardio and carbohydrate dependency to become a fat burning beast! You’ve seen me second-guess the chronic cardio ethos of the endurance community many times on this website, and lament the health challenges that arose from my own chronic training patterns. I don’t plan to be out there on a marathon starting line any time soon, but for those captivated by the extremely popular endurance movement, we describe in detail how to do things right—how to protect your health and delay aging instead of accelerate aging, which essentially is what happens when you follow the conventional approach. This book is for all manner of endurance athletes (Spartan/mud run/adventure racer, 5k, 10k, 13.1, marathon, and ultramarathon runners, sprint, long, and ultra distance triathletes, mountaineers, etc.), both casual and competitive—anyone who wants to do this stuff and stay healthy, really.

Our initial vision for this book was to produce a simple little Primal Blueprint spinoff guide to help acquaint endurance athletes with primal principles, but we had so much good stuff to share from our past (I coached Brad during the prime years of his career on the pro circuit), and from our observations of the disastrously flawed conventional approach in today’s booming endurance sports scene, that this thing turned into a magnificent beast. It’s an 8” x 10” oversized paperback of nearly 400 pages of detailed information, lively storytelling, emphatic urging (to slow down, ditch bad carbs, become intuitive instead of robotic, to learn from our mistakes instead of repeat them, and so forth) and memorable images (including long lost old school pics from dusty attics, like this gem) and cartoons (from book designer Caroline DeVita), with our first full-color interior design production. If you are an endurance athlete, you absolutely must read this book. It will blow your mind and radically alter your approach such that your endurance passions can support your health instead of compromise it. If you’re an endurance athlete and you refuse to read this book, you should probably quit.

April 19: Primal Woman, by Carrie Sisson features a collection of personal and impactful stories and anecdotes from Carrie on themes like Family & Parenting, Forgivness, Relationships, Health & Vitality, and Manifesting Your Intentions. Carrie’s empowering messages emanate from her devoted study of spiritual psychology and role as a facilitator to students around the world. She inspires you to be true to your own voice and intuitive signals, reject the harmful cultural forces that compromise female health, beauty, and happiness, and simply take time daily to enjoy your own company, chase your passions, and continually refocus your priorities. With Carrie’s warm, light-hearted approach, Primal Woman is an entertaining and enlightening journey for women of all ages who want to live the happy, healthy life they deserve. This collection of life experiences is presented in funny, lighthearted, raw, and honest prose that will motivate readers to go out and live a life beyond their wildest dreams. Each story is a lesson in and of itself, and is most often tied to an actionable exercise designed for readers to incorporate into their daily lives as they see fit.

May 17: Good Fat, Bad Fat, by Romy Dollè. We are translating another popular title from the author of the recently released Fruit Belly. Good Fat, Bad Fat provides a comprehensive, easy-to-read education on all aspects of dietary fat, and dismantles the misinformation that has created decades long “fat phobia” in the general population. The book provides a breakdown of assorted forms of dietary fat—the fats that are healthy and important, and the ones that are best avoided.

If you’ve ever been influenced by fat phobia, and might still be influenced by fat phobia, then this book is for you. Romy shows you how to improve your relationship with this vital macronutrient—because fat makes life worth living! The book is supplemented with 70 delicious primal recipes, easy-to-understand summaries of scientific studies, psychological insights, and personal experiences in collaboration with sports nutritionist and former competitive athlete Dr. Torsten Albers.

June 14: Paleo Thyroid Solution, by Elle Russ. Our very own Elle Russ (you may know her as the Primal Blueprint Podcast Hostess with the mostess; she is also one of our founding Primal Blueprint Certified Experts and program development consultant) details her arduous journey to health after ten years of suffering at the hands of dozens of uniformed doctors and endocrinologists. Blending medical research, alternative health care, and primal-style dietary modification, she diagnosed and resolved two severe bouts of hypothyroidism, including an acute case of Reverse T3/Thyroid Hormone Resistance.

The Paleo Thyroid Solution dispels the numerous myths surrounding hypothyroidism and exposes the shoddy science and big Pharma practices that have fostered widespread medical mistreatment of hypothyroid patients by doctors since the 1950s. Elle’s book provides the comprehensive, step-by-step guidance you need to navigate confusing medical advice, dial in your prescription regimen, and maximize your thyroid hormone metabolism through diet and lifestyle. The Paleo Thyroid Solution will help you transform from fat, foggy, and fatigued, to fit, vibrant, and energetic.

November 2016: Primal Blueprint 2017 Page A Day Calendar: Haven’t we had enough of Calvin & Hobbes by now? How about some daily reminders to stay motivated for primal living, or to learn interesting new tidbits, or rip off a recipe page for the fridge? I think it’s long overdue, so we’re designing a calendar for 2017 to make primal living even easier.

Peel a day off the pad and save your favorites, and enjoy a creative and informative new message each day of the year. Each month has a theme relating to one of the ten Primal Blueprint lifestyle laws and the ten Primal Connection habits, while each day of the week repeats with a theme of recipe, exercise, nature experience/connection, reflective journal exercise, and so on.

This desktop calendar in the familiar 6-inch square format is a fabulous gift idea for your favorite primal enthusiast. It also serves as a great introduction to primal living by providing simple, bite-sized inspirations and practical tips to enjoy primal living one day at a time!

December 2016: Kitchen Intuition, by Devyn Sisson. Yep, you read that author name correctly—Kitchen Intuition marks my daughter Devyn’s debut as an author. I am constantly astounded at my daughter’s kitchen intuition. I have to admit—even with a stack of great cookbooks and a folder of magazine clippings on the shelf, sometimes it’s hard to get my creative juices flowing in the kitchen. And then, in steps Devyn. I encouraged her to put her artistic culinary skills into writing…so here, for the first time, is a book dedicated to awakening your inner master chef and helping you become adventurous, creative, and empowered in the kitchen.

Devyn prepared this unique book to help transport you beyond the logistics of good cooking and into the realm of intuition—cultivating a harmonious connection between mind, body, and food. She truly is a self-taught chef and foodie extraordinaire, and she’ll get you acquainted with your body’s nutritional needs, your palate’s likes and dislikes, and the emotional elements that shape your cravings and deep satisfactions with meals. I am so proud of her for elegantly chronicling her personal journey of healing her body through healthful eating and creating this masterful guide to show you how you too can build up health, confidence, and self-esteem from intuitive cooking that transfers into all other areas of life. Devyn says, “This is the book I wish I had read years ago but instead find myself writing. Cooking doesn’t have to be scary, intimidating, difficult, or boring. Cooking can be fun, inexpensive, romantic, and adventurous, when you cultivate your intuition in the kitchen.”

January 1, 2017: Primal Blueprint Comprehensive Update, Expansion, and Revision: It’s hard to believe it’s been almost seven years since I delivered the original final draft manuscript of The Primal Blueprint to my publisher. When we went to paperback format in 2011, we added some extra content (especially the color success story insert) and did some general editing and revisions. Meanwhile, behind the scenes I’ve been enthusiastically canvassing research, listening to the leading voices in the movement, and taking copious notes about topics to revise what was originally written in the Primal Blueprint. As I state often here, I strive to be open-minded, adaptable and capable of revising my stance on all aspects of primal living.

I’m pleased to announce that a comprehensive update, expansion and revision of the original Primal Blueprint, slated to publish around December of 2016. We’re planning for a beautiful four-color presentation with photos and illustrations throughout for an easy and entertaining read. Even if you have a copy of the current Primal Blueprint hardcover or paperback, the 2017 version will be a must-have to represent the ultimate text on primal living.

Alcohol is one example of a topic that I have thought about, studied and done some personal experimentation with over the past seven years, the results of which have compelled me to make a material revision in the original Primal Blueprint stance. Alcohol has historically been listed as a “sensible indulgence” along with dark chocolate in the PB lore. We even threw awesome red wine and chocolate parties in the evenings at PrimalCon. Well, after doing my own personal abstention experiment, talking to many primal enthusiasts who struggle to drop excess body fat despite primal-aligned eating (but copping to a fair amount of alcohol consumption), and reviewing the latest research (particularly alcohol’s little appreciated connection to leaky gut syndrome), I have changed the official Primal Blueprint position on alcohol. It’s now part of Law #2: Avoid Poisonous Things. After all, alcohol is a toxic agent, it significantly interferes with fat metabolism (and promotes fat storage when consumed together with carbs), has been linked recently to leaky gut syndrome (I found this to be relevant when I did my abstention), and can hamper optimal hormone function, including the synthesis of important sex hormones and anti-aging hormones. Yes, red wine is a viable source of antioxidants, but we mustn’t forget that it’s the grapes delivering the antioxidants, not the alcohol.

Here are a few more projects in the early stages of development, but will be here before you know it!

Spring 2017: Primal Sleep: Here’s a high concept title that needs little explanation. But one thing that’s been on my mind the past couple years is that we primal enthusiasts seem to have reached a summit with the important big-ticket lifestyle items like diet. I mean, if you are locked into primal-style eating, how much cleaner can you eat? How many more hairs do we need to split ranking nuts by health benefit, or debating whether avocado oil is better to cook with than coconut oil (answer: they are both way better than oxidized vegetable oil!). If you are struggling with your foundation—ditching sugars and grains, emphasizing primal foods, covering the exercise laws, using too much screen and not enough pillow, by all means keep your focus there.

But once nutrition is tackled, it’s worthwhile to turn your attention to some oft-neglected primal behaviors, such as catching more zzz’s. When it comes to sleep, even the biggest enthusiasts seem to just pay lip service to the topic and spout off a generalization like “seven to eight hours a night is important.” Lately, I’ve become more and more interested in the nuances of sleep. I presented some significant information and practical tips in the Primal Blueprint Expert Certification, and since then I’ve been delving deeper into the subject with research and personal experimentation. Expect a book in early 2017 with a comprehensive take on the subject from a primal perspective.

2017: Fit Over Fifty: People say I don’t look my age, for whatever that’s worth. I guess if they thought I looked my age, they wouldn’t say anything? Anyway, Carrie hears that a lot too, which is cool since we’re a couple! It happens that I’ve prioritized health and wellness my entire life, and now at 62 I’m deeply committed to aging gracefully. The time feels ripe to share some primal-style anti-aging strategies with you…in particular the topic of how to balance peak performance goals with longevity, because there is sometimes a tradeoff there (Brad Kearns and I got into this subject nicely on a recent Primal Blueprint Podcast, Episode #87.)

Aging gracefully is an important concept to embrace, one that will enable you to set appropriate goals and accept an inevitable gradual decline in fitness and overall function that comes with chronology. This book will include suggestions to recalibrate one’s competitive goals based on age and lifestyle circumstances, adopting a healthy mindset about the inevitabilities of moving along past your peak performance years, along with other anti-aging strategies that might just surprise you.

2017: What To Expect When You’re Expecting, Primal Style!: The multitalented Julie Festa de Lagarde, popular Los Angeles acupuncturist, author, life coach, and super mom, is hard at work writing a book for primal pregnancy. We’ve had dreams of developing a primal pregnancy book for a long time, as fertility/pregnancy/childbirth is arguably one of the most, if not the most, important time to get your diet, exercise, and overall well-being dialed in. Julie is a real live active working mom with the comprehensive knowledge and real-world perspective to bring this message to primal enthusiasts, and hopefully interest people in going primal in conjunction with their fertility goals.

Calling All Big Time Book Lovers – Wanna Join Our Review Team?

We are looking for a select group of dedicated readers who would like to receive advance copies of our new books in the hopes that you will read and prepare thoughtful reviews on Amazon.com (and other places where you’d like to offer feedback, including your own blog or other communication resources). Your authentic review will help interest other readers in grabbing the book. We are not trying to stuff the ballot box with a barrage of insincere 5-star reviews, but rather to support those special folks in our community who really love to read and share their feedback with others.

Here’s how it works: just express your interest in this program, we’ll mail you new books (yep, a bunch of them in the coming months but we surely won’t keep this pace up indefinitely!) a bit before they even go on sale to the public, you enjoy the book at a sensible pace, and then post your review. Now, we won’t hunt you down and reclaim our book if you don’t post reviews, but we really hope that you are a good fit for the program and will participate in the spirit intended. How does that sound? If you have a U.S. address and would like to be added to the list, simply complete this form. (Limited to 300 people.)

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A few weeks ago, I taught a seminar for clinicians in Pennsylvania. During the Q&A period, someone asked what I think is a very important—and underrated—question: what is health?

The concept of health is so familiar that many of us have never thought much about what it really means. That was certainly true for me prior to my decade-long struggle with chronic illness that began in my early 20s.

If asked, I suspect most people would define health as “the absence of disease.” And in fact, if you look up “health” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you’ll find a very similar definition: “the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially: freedom from physical disease or pain.”

Is health really just the absence of disease?

While this common definition of health certainly has merit, I think it’s too limiting and reductionistic.

Imagine someone (Person A) who is the picture of physical health: he has boundless energy, perfect digestion, a sharp mind, no chronic, inflammatory conditions, and rarely (if ever) get colds and flus. But in other areas of life, this person is a wreck: he has terrible relationships, he’s selfish and doesn’t contribute to the lives of others, he has no sense of humor, rarely has fun, and is miserable most of the time.

Now consider someone (Person B) that is in many ways the opposite of Person A: perhaps she has an autoimmune disease, she struggles with low energy, her digestion is weak, and she sometimes has difficulty sleeping. But unlike Person A, her life is incredibly rich and satisfying: she has deep, nourishing relationships with others, she does meaningful work that makes a difference in the world, she is full of joy and humor, and she loves to have a good time.

Which of these people is truly “healthy”? Both? Neither? If you had to choose between these alternatives, which would you choose?

Of course, there is another possibility: Person C. Person C is healthy physically as well as mentally, emotionally, and socially. This is certainly what most of us aspire to, and it’s a perfectly natural and valid goal.

The problem is that it’s not always attainable.

When “perfect health” isn’t possible

During the course of my long struggle with chronic illness, I had a lot of time to think about this question of what health is and what it really means to me.

At one stage in my journey, after trying everything I could possibly imagine to get well without a lot of success, I had a breakdown. I reached a point where I just couldn’t see the future I had always imagined for myself when I was a “healthy” person: a successful career, a family, and an active and energetic life. These things no longer seemed possible for me, given how sick I was.

This led to a period of deep depression and despair—and it was without a doubt the darkest and most difficult time of my life.

But as the saying goes, the darkest hour is just before dawn. At some point during this “dark night of the soul,” I realized that the depression and despair I was feeling was the direct result of comparing my actual experience with an idea of what I thought my experience should be. I saw that I was striving for an ideal of health that was—at least at that point—unattainable, and that this was the cause of most of my suffering.

How we define health has tremendous power

These realizations led to a profound shift for me. Up until that time, I had been focusing almost exclusively on figuring out the cause of my illness and “fixing” it: I saw doctors all over the country and the world, I took countless medications, herbs, and supplements, and did every special diet you can imagine.

But after this “dark night,” my focus began to shift. I continued to eat well, but I let go of “finding the answer” for a while. I stopped seeing doctors, taking supplements, and obsessively researching new treatments.

Instead, I focused on bringing more joy, pleasure, and meaning into my life. I spent more time with my friends. I took regular walks in the woods and surfed as much as I could. I volunteered to teach meditation at the San Francisco County Jail. I signed up for an improvisation class. I did a massage trade with a friend and got acupuncture once a week. And after a while, I decided to go back to school to study integrative medicine so I could use what I had learned to help others.

Several months after making these changes, the depression and despair were gone, and I was feeling more connected, alive, and hopeful than I had in a long time. But that’s not all that changed; my physical health started to improve as well. I had more energy, my digestion was better, my sleep was less interrupted, and I began to put weight on again (which had been impossible until then). These improvements rejuvenated me and gave me the boost I needed to continue searching for new treatments that ultimately led to further physical recovery.

This time in my life taught me a very important lesson: how we frame and perceive our experience has tremendous power—even the power to change it.

If I had continued to define health only as “the absence of disease,” what would my life have been like? A constant experience of disappointment, “not enough,” frustration, and failure.

But as my definition of health expanded and became more inclusive, new possibilities opened up. I was able to find ways to experience joy, pleasure, meaning, and ultimately, health—even in the midst of physical pain and discomfort. What’s more, the reframing of my definition of health didn’t just lead to more happiness, it ended up improving my physical health as well.

An alternative definition of health: the ability to live your dreams

Several years have passed since the period I described above, but I continue to think a lot about what health means to me. It’s a subject I am fascinated by and never stop learning and reading about.

In all of that time, I think the best definition of health that I’ve come across is “the ability to live your dreams.” This comes from a man named Moshé Feldenkrais, the creator of the Feldenkrais method (designed to improve human functioning by increasing self-awareness through movement).

I like this definition because it does not refer to the absence of pain, discomfort, or disease. Instead, it points more toward a quality of life and way of being in the world.

An example that comes to mind is my late Zen teacher, Darlene Cohen. She had rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune inflammatory condition affecting the joints, for more than 30 years. When the disease first struck her, she lost 40 pounds and was forced to stay in bed. She couldn’t dress herself, hold the phone receiver, or get up from the toilet unassisted. From her book:

In four months of deterioration, I lost everything that meant anything to me: reliance on a strong, young body; my achievements and the sense of self-worth they brought me; my pleasure in being a sexually attractive woman; my identity as a mother; and my ability to do the required practices and sustain myself in the community in which I lived as a student of Zen meditation. I became isolated from everyone I knew by my pain and fear and ultimately even by the consuming effort I had to make to do any little thing – like get up from a chair, pick up a cup of tea.

While Darlene eventually recovered from the worst of her symptoms described above, she continued to struggle with the severe pain, stiffness, and reduced mobility that many people with rheumatoid arthritis experience.

Yet Darlene never let her physical limitations stand in the way of living her dreams. She was one of the wisest, funniest, most joyful and vibrant human beings that I ever met, and she dedicated her life to relieving the suffering of others.

In my opinion, this is true health. Not boundless energy, or perfect digestion, or being able to run a marathon, or living until you’re 120, but the ability to live your dreams regardless of your circumstances.

Now I’d like to hear from you. How do you define health? What does it mean to you? How do you feel about defining health as “the ability to live your dreams”? Let us know in the comments section.

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