Dr. Loren Cordain and a few MD colleagues have recently published a paper (PDF) called “Organic Fitness: Physical Activity Consistent with Our Hunter-Gatherer Heritage.” It makes for a great companion piece to Primal Blueprint Fitness, and it encapsulates quite nicely the breadth of research into the physical activities of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Read the whole thing. There’s probably nothing really new to you guys already well-versed in this stuff, but it’s good having it all in one space, and it’s good having it from more sources (not just me). If someone ever asks you why you go barefoot, avoid weight machines,squat below parallel (don’t you know it’s bad for your knees!?!), go on hikes for fun without sunscreen, and hate treadmills, you can send along a nice, neat package including the PBF eBook and the Cordain paper. This isn’t a “nyah, nyah, proven right again!” type thing (well, kinda). This is a “buttressing the incoming unavoidable inexorable impossible-to-ignore flood of evidence in favor of listening to evolution in matters of health and fitness” type thing. The times they are a changin’, eh?

Anyway, let’s get to the meaty bits of the paper – to what they call the “fundamental elements of ‘organic exercise,’ which may serve as a template from which to design a fitness strategy for adults living in today’s modern industrialized culture.” I’ve bolded and italicized their words (from a section of which the title of this article is derived) and followed up with my commentary:

Or in other words, Move Frequently at a Slow Pace. Note that “6 to 16 km” per day is a fairly big range, and it’s the ideal – if you’re trying to perfectly emulate hunter-gatherer activity. This is neither necessarily optimum nor possible for most people. Now, If I could, I’d go on a two-hour leisurely paced hike through nature every single day, but I can’t, and so I don’t. I also don’t fret about it. If you get three to five hours (or more) of slow moving walking or hiking each week, you’re doing things right.

Vary your workouts and get plenty of rest, but stay active every day. Be a generalist, unless profession or dearly held extracurricular activities require specialization. That is, if you’re a high-level athlete or just an extremely passionate one, focus on your sport. Exercise should breed pleasure, after all. Hunter-gatherers were generalists by necessity; they had to be all-around physically capable, so it’s probably an optimal path – health-wise – for us, their descendants, but not if it negatively affects your enjoyment of life.

I’m in agreement with this – ditch the shoes altogether or opt for alternatives that promote natural locomotion – but  “natural surfaces” are probably less important for healthy moving in the grand scheme of things. What’s important is how we land and use our joints and muscles to absorb the impact. If you’re walking or running in species appropriate footwear that promote a healthy footfall, you will be more likely to handle the impact of that footfall whether you’re on concrete, a hardwood floor, or a dirt path. I will say that walking or running on uneven ground strewn both with large obstacles that you have to avoid or climb over (rocks, sticks, branches) and with small objects that you perceive underfoot and must subconsciously react to (pebbles, gravel, sharp stickers) is ideal, but if you live in a big city without regular access to the outdoors, what are you gonna do? Nothing? Pick the appropriate footwear (or lack thereof) and you’ll be most of the way there.

As I often say, make your long, easy workouts longer and easier, and make your short, intense workouts even shorter and more intense. Intensity is key for the best results in fitness, but you’ve gotta rest. Apply a stressful stimulus, allow your body to respond and adapt to that stimulus. It’s extremely simple and intuitive, yet so many get it so wrong. Add sprinting to your weekly routine if you haven’t already. The PBF protocol calls for one dedicated sprint day each week, with WOWs rounding out the weekly HIIT.

Again, the generalist approach. Competency across a broad range of movement patterns,activity types, and energy pathways. Joints should move freely and smoothly, lean massshould be visible and capable, and you shouldn’t get winded ascending a flight of stairs or going for a walk. These things – joint mobility and flexibility, basic physical strength, and adequate aerobic endurance – are valuable and useful to all people, everywhere, regardless of interest in formal exercise or sport.

Strength training is the foundation. It helps you build and maintain a powerful, stable base of operations (your body) from which to conduct daily business. I would add that these weight training sessions must be composed of compound, full-body movements, rather than isolation exercises, because, well, compound multijoint movements are simply how we move around in the world. If you’re an advanced trainee with a strong foundation built by years of compound exercises, go ahead and hit the curls and tricep kickbacks if you like, but if you’re trying to establish or enhance your actual strength, stick with compound movements. Bodyweight is sufficient for just about everyone, but barbells, kettlebells, and other weighted implements are awesome tools, too. The PBF protocol calls for 2 LHT (Lift Heavy Things) days each week.

Yep. (Have you ever seen Grok?) Furthermore, the obese are usually inactive, and activity – especially weight-bearing activity – increases the strength and thickness of connective tissue. So it’s a double whammy. Obesity increases wear and tear on joints that are already weakened by inactivity.

This is a huge aspect of fitness (and health) that goes relatively unheeded. While you can still get an extremely effective workout in a cloistered gym, outdoor workouts provide added benefits. This isn’t rocket science. I think most people understand this intuitively. Which would you prefer: a 45 minute treadmill run in a gray room with artificial light, or a game of Ultimate Frisbee in a park on a sunny day? Or how about the choice between yoga in a studio and yoga on a cliff overlooking the ocean? Time spent in nature is undeniably good for our psychological and physiological well-being. I still hit up the gym for certain routines and for the camaraderie, but more and more I put an emphasis on getting back to nature – to get my daily dose of rays and to recharge in a more natural environment.

Look at the popularity, success, and effectiveness of something like CrossFit. People are willing and able to subject their bodies to immense amounts of pain and suffering in the presence of others undergoing a similar experience. We are social animals who derive great satisfaction from being with likeminded individuals. Empathy is a powerful thing, and it’s there for a reason. We’re able to transfer the suffering, to spread it out across the group and make the pain a bit more bearable. You don’t have to take a spin class or go for a Zumba session or even do CrossFit, necessarily, to get the benefits of mixing social bonding with fitness. Simply adding a single workout partner will make things easier and help you stick to the regimen. Or, you could play sports, either in pickup game form or by joining a formal league.

I get my best workouts (most enjoyable, certainly) with my yellow lab, Buddha. He exudes confidence and serenity almost to the point of enlightenment, and I’m convinced that my appreciation of my dog isn’t just learned. These furry guys have been living, sleeping, working, hunting, and bonding with us humans for tens of thousands of years. It’s entirely feasible that genetic advantages to having a dog (for both parties involved) have arisen and persist today. I’ve actually written about what we can learn from and how to exercise with dogs. Read it and then get outdoors for some fractal fun.

As long as we’ve been drumming our hands, fingers, and sticks against objects to form rudimentary rhythmic patterns (tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years), we’ve been moving our bodies along with them. In other words, dance is unabashedly, absolutely Primal. I put dance in the play category, in that it’s that type of exercise that you do for the heck of it, because it’s fun (or you’re trying to procure a mate) and don’t realize you’re actually getting an amazing mental and physical workout. So dance, and don’t worry about looking ridiculous. You’re just acknowledging the presence of aural rhythms in the air with your body. It’s unnatural not to do so.

Some would say that this is the most Primal activity of them all. I won’t go too deeply into this one, not for prudishness, but because I’m planning a dedicated post on the topic in the near future. Stay tuned for that one. It will, sadly and by necessity, be relatively SFW.

Fitting that this is the last one, because it’s what everyone always forgets about (if they ever knew it at all) or ignores. Exercise is utterly pointless and even counterproductive without proper rest, relaxation, and sleep. You need to eat well and eat enough, let your muscles rest and regrow, and have enough downtime to reap the benefits of exercise. I mean, you’re doing this to increase the quality of life, right? You want to be strong and able to run fast and far so that life is easier and you don’t have to worry about your body, right? Get your rest and sleep, then. It’s the only way forward.

200 Calories is 200 Calories. Right?

“What’s that in the road ahead?”

vs.

“What’s that in the road!? A head!?”

Context is important.

Many people think weight loss is simply about cutting calories. But context counts here, too. Calories do have context and that’s what I want to explore today. Is a calorie from fat the same as a calorie from protein or carbohydrate? Depends on the context. Does day-to-day calorie monitoring make any difference if your week-to-week weight and energy expenditure are dialed in? Maybe not.

Most people (even many scientists) believe that the body composition challenge is a relatively simple equation: to lose weight you must reduce calories (either eat less or burn more), to gain weight you must add calories, and to maintain weight you keep calories constant. Calories in over calories out.

The truth is, it’s more like a complex equation where you have to factor in many other very important variables: Do I want to lose weight or just body fat? Do I want to gain weight or just muscle? How much muscle do I want to put on and how fast? What is my personal genetic “range” or limit for body fat or muscle? These are all different contexts. And these are further affected by supply (types and quantity of foods as well as frequency of meals) and metabolic demand (your relative immediate need for either energy, repair, or building). In the short-term, they are rate-limited by hormones (insulin, glucagon, epinephrine, nor-epinephrine, cortisol etc). And in the long-term the range (or limits) of possible outcomes is determined by gene expression (5’8” ectomorphs simply can’t become 275-lb body-builders, but they can be well-proportioned 165-lb men or 135-lb women.). The context can also change day-to-day. That’s where you come in as the director.

Fat burning, glucose burning, ketone burning, glycogen storage, fat storage, gluconeogenesis, and protein turnover. All of these energy-related processes are going on simultaneously in each of us at all times. But the rate at which each of these processes happens is different in each of us and they can increase or decrease (sometimes dramatically) depending on the context of our present circumstances and our long term goals. All of these contexts utilize the same gene-based principles of energy metabolism – the biochemical machinery that we all share – but because they all involve different starting points as well as different goals or possible outcomes, they often require different action plans. We can alter the rate at which each of these metabolic processes happens simply by changing what and when we eat. We can change the context.

The RD’s will tell you that protein has four calories per gram, so when you figure your daily intake, budget calories accordingly. But protein is used by the body mostly for maintaining structure and function. Yes, it can be burned as fuel, but really only as a secondary source, and even then, it must be converted to glucose to be utilized. So, depending on the need within the body, the first 10, 20 or 30 grams of protein might go towards repair and growth – not energy. Do we therefore discount those first 30 grams when we “count calories?” Depends on the context. If you don’t exercise much and eat frequently and copiously all the time, maybe most of the protein you eat will count more towards your calorie budget (since your structural protein turnover is relatively less). On the other hand, if you run yourself ragged, are under a great deal of stress (lots of catabolic hormones) and generally don’t get much protein, maybe most of that one high-protein meal goes toward repair and won’t be called upon as fuel for days or weeks. Or maybe you’re coming off an IF day. Does it really count as calories today if it isn’t burned or stored as fat? If those protein calories today go to adding lean mass (muscle) that is retained for years, do those calories count today? Then again, as muscle it does offer a potential long-term stored source of energy when gluconeogenesis is increased. See what I mean? Depends on the context.

Fats aren’t just for fuel either. They can be integral parts of all cell membranes and hormones and can serve as critical protective cushioning for delicate organs. At what point do the fats we consume stop becoming structural and start becoming calorically dense fuel? Depends again on the context. If there’s a ton of carbohydrates accompanying the fat on a daily basis, it’s pretty certain that that fat will be stored as adipose tissue sooner rather than later. That’s nine calories per gram in the tank for future use (if ever). And that’s what adds up over time when you weigh yourself. OTOH, if you’ve withheld carbs for a few days and your insulin remains low, the fats from this meal might be used quickly to provide fuel for normal resting metabolic processes.

Keep your carbs low enough long enough and you get into ketosis, a fat-burning state that creates what many now refer to as the “metabolic advantage.” In this context, fats are fueling most of the body’s energy demands either directly as fatty acids or as the fat-metabolism byproducts called ketones. To the delight of those looking to burn off unwanted fat, it gets better. The body balances the acidic effect of any excess ketones by either excreting them in the urine (in today’s $5 a gallon economy, isn’t that wasting fuel?) and by using ketones and fatty acids to create a bit more glucose for the brain via gluconeogenesis in a fairly “energy inefficient” process.

Finally, let’s look at the lowly carbohydrate and its four calories per gram. All carbs are broken down into simple sugars, and eventually (and almost always) into glucose. The primary use of glucose from all carbohydrate food is as fuel, whether burned immediately as it passes by different organs and muscles or whether stored for later use. The brain, red blood cells, and nerve cells prefer glucose as primary fuel (but don’t absolutely require it – they can use ketones). Muscles that are working hard will prefer glucose if it is available, but don’t absolutely require it unless they are working very hard for very long. If it is not burned immediately as fuel, excess glucose will be first stored as glycogen in muscle and liver cells and then, if or when these glycogen storage depots are full, it will be converted to fatty acids and stored in fat cells as fat. The things to remember about carbs and to put into context: Carbs are not used as structural components in the body – they are used only as a form of fuel; glucose in the bloodstream is toxic to humans UNLESS it is being burned immediately as fuel. (For reference, “normal” blood sugar represents only about one teaspoon of glucose dissolved in the entire blood pool in your body). That’s why insulin is so critical to taking it out of the bloodstream and putting it somewhere FAST, like muscle cells or fat cells. Moreover, humans can exist quite easily without ever eating carbs, since the body has several mechanisms for generating glucose from the fat and proteins consumed, as well as from proteins stripped from muscle tissue. For all these reasons, in the PB-style of eating, carbs are lowest priority. Unless your context includes lots of endurance activities (or storing fat) there’s little reason to overdo the carbs (USDA and RDs’ recommendations notwithstanding).

So what’s the take home message from all this? To be honest, I thought maybe you could tell me! Maybe it’s that by understanding how these metabolic processes work, and knowing that we can control the rates at which each one happens through our diet (and exercise) we needn’t agonize over the day-to-day calorie counting. As long as we are generally eating a PB-style plan and providing the right context, our bodies will ease into a healthy, fit, long-lived comfort zone rather effortlessly.