Vigorous health in a nutshell
Don’t eat so often.
Don’t eat sugary crap.
Vegetable oils are poison, don’t eat food fried in them or made with them.
Stimulate your body effectively.
Chill and be mindful.
Get more sleep.
I could add more but we all know not to smoke, take crack cocaine and to always look when we cross the road.
It seems obvious so why is it that you see so many people so badly out of shape?
People watching, we all do it. At the airport or the service station or on the beach. Wherever you get a random sample of human beings you can’t help but be alarmed at the state that people are getting themselves into through their choices.
It might not be their fault. Unfortunately after you have read this it will be your fault if you join or remain in the ranks of the physically mediocre… the “dad bod” men and the “it’s my baby weight” mums.
Humans aren’t broken. We have the DNA to enable us to survive in the harshest of environments eating some portion of pretty much every genus of plant, animal and fungus that grows.
Happily people are becoming more informed now that we have stopped relying on TV propaganda. I have always been a dissident so I loved it when the Paleo movement started challenging the old dogma of heart healthy grains and the food pyramid…can’t believe that crap is still hanging on. Anyway,what was Paleo and how did it help?
The paleo movement gave us an insight into where we had been going wrong.
“ Eat and do what your ancestors did and you will be fixed”
Couldn’t agree more. Let’s look at my simple rules through the paleo lens;
Don’t eat so often.
Prehistoric humans would have gone through feast and famine. Especially the ones in more northerly latitudes. Kill a mammoth…eat until you’re rendered immobile. Find a few fruit trees…fructose frenzy. Of course there would have been times when some populations starved or came close.
Straightforward question. What would have happened to the human tribes that started getting flakey and needing a lie down after going without breakfast? Natural selection doesn’t give a shit about individuals or even tribes and would have recycled those snowflakes pretty quick. Their snowflakey genes died with them. The upshot is that you have a genome forged by the unmerciful crucible that is survival of the fittest.
Going without food for periods of time is entirely natural. Some wonderful things happen to the human body when you stop cramming it full of junk at the first pang of low blood sugar.
Don’t eat sugary crap
Animals pretty much live off of protein and fat. Bullshit… I hear you mutter into your phone as you pile in the Coco Pops..let me explain while you finish your breakfast
I just Googled “Random list of animals”.. here is what I got:
Walrus…..no sugar there…all omega threes and protein in molluscs
Baboon… these dudes eat mostly grass with berries, seeds, insects and meat…no sugar there either. Grass is fermented by bacteria in their colon that release short chain fatty acids- same as most animlas that eat grass..high fat diet…Boom.
Silver fox…I think they are getting confused with an old guy who drives a Porsche..probably an Americanism for Arctic fox…anyway..lemmings, birds eggs and carrion, Haribo it ain’t.
Finch…seeds…most of the calories in seeds come from fats, admittedly some plants give their offspring starch to get them started but this generosity has been exploited by artificial selection to give us the crops we incorporate into so much of our food today. Ancient grasses had tiny amounts of starch. Humans probably didn’t waste a great deal of time on them. Roots and tubers would have been a thing though but they tend to come with a fair bit of work to extract the calories and a ton of fibre.
Squirrel…nuts, shoots and seeds. They sometimes gnaw the bark off trees to get to the sugary sap but their willingness to do this hints more at the addictive properties of sugars than the benefits.
Panda…everyone knows what they eat…feel free to add your own joke.
Do it yourself, get someone to name some random animals. If they say, hummingbird, honey badger and Winney the Pooh then stop reading and go get yourself a coke and a Netflix subscription. Of course those exceptions prove the rule.
Millions of years of evolution taught us that sugar is a rare commodity so we should get it while we can. It does some important stuff in our bodies, red blood cells run on glucose, it’s one of the fuels that the brain and other cells can use, it helps us to make mucus and form glycoproteins. Get it when you can humanoid.. that’s the problem, we love it but our biology hasn’t had a chance to catch up with the superabundance. Look out for a sugar rant at a later date when I am revved up on ketones.
Vegetable oils are poison.
Our body fat is saturated, we run on diesel so why would it make sense to put petrol in the tank. A few handfuls of sunflower seeds is certainly not a bad thing but they come with a whole load of minerals, vitamins and fibre with the delicate oils in a pristine state. The processing that goes into making margarine is pretty gnarly and if you are too impatient to wait for the in depth hit piece from me then Google it. These oils are implicated in everything from diabetes to sunburn. They were sold to us as healthy because it suited the fact that they are cheap and easy to grow. Economic interests were put ahead of health…where have I heard that before?
Stimulate your body effectively.
Going to the gym does not count as exercise if you just stand around the water cooler comparing pictures of peoples’ asses on Instagram. Going for a jog so that you can have a biscuit? Just eat the effing biscuit and stop kidding yourself. As worthy as any exercise is, even walking can be of great benefit, you want bang for your buck. Time is the most finite of resources so unless you enjoy taking longer….the hottie in yoga pants can definitely make the gym a more difficult place to leave….you want to be as efficient as possible.
HIIT is very effective.
Compound lifts are the Ace, King, Queen and Jack. Squat, Dead lift, Bench and Military Press. Feel free to squabble about which is which in the comments.
Nothing stimulates your muscles, tendons and skeleton to grow in the same way as a scary lump of steel and iron being dragged towards the centre of the Earth with only your stubborn will stopping it. The benefits transcend the physical. It can become a metaphysical, quasi religious experience bringing confidence that will branch out into all areas of your life.
Chill and be mindful.
Stress kills you. I have experienced stress related illness, it’s shit at the time but even worse if you normalise it. It’s linked to heart disease, digestive problems, endocrinological imbalances and worst of all….impotence. Human ancestors had stress…of course but it was usually over one way or another pretty quick. You died or you partied in celebration that this time it wasn’t you.
Get more sleep.
If you are struggling to get out of bed you need more sleep…your ancestors would have gone to bed when it got dark or shortly after when they got bored shitless of listening to one of my ancestors going on about how to be more healthy. Some crazy facts out there on this one. The Monday after daylight saving in the US (clocks go forward one hour so everyone loses and hour in bed…yeah the shit one) Heart attacks go up 25%…conversely the cool one, where you get an extra hour drops Heart attacks by 21%. You can get a 46% lower chance of making Monday even worse just by getting to bed earlier. Your brain and body use sleep to repair and replenish. No shortcuts just get on with it.
If you enjoyed reading this let me know. Also, if you think I am talking out of my arse…1,2,3,4 I declare flame war…muhahaha
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