Marty Gallagher: March 2009 Archives

Mimicry of Primordial Man: I lead Dr. Jim Wright on a dawn high-intensity walk deep in the Pennsylvania Mountains. Surrounded by endless ice-glazed woods (the surreal remnants of an ice storm the night before) our footing was treacherous, the visual experience unforgettable and the cardio exercise both effective and invigorating. Primitive Man was lean, strong, fit and capable; a product of what he ate and how he lived.

Primordial Man was lean, muscular, fat-free and tough as nails. His very life depended on his degree of functional fitness. He had to be able to fight or flee in an instant and every single day he had to stalk and kill animals with spears, knives, snares, rocks and arrows. The ancient combination of all-natural diet and vigorous, intense daily activity created a phenomenally functional physique. Modern Man would be well advised to take some diet and exercise tips from Primordial Man. We should all aspire to achieve a primordial level of vibrant, capable fitness. With some clever and innovative substitutions we can create a remarkable facsimile of super-fit Primal Man.

From the dawn of humanity until its evolutionary apex, men worldwide consumed the same foods: lean protein and wild fruits and vegetables. The protein was uniformly lean and the carbohydrates overwhelmingly fibrous. Game produces exceedingly lean, nearly fat-free meat. Primal shore dwellers obtained their protein from the sea or lakes (fish and shellfish are nearly fat free) and saturated fat accounted for very little of primal man's daily caloric intake. Before the advent of agriculture, Primal Man ate fibrous carbohydrates to near exclusion. Potatoes, beans, corn and starch vegetables were exceedingly rare.

As a species Man has been in existence for roughly 250,000 years. Modern Man has been around for the last 40,000 years. From "year zero" until that unknown point in time when as a species we ceased evolving, everyone everywhere on earth ate the same foods. From first appearance of Homo Erectus 750,000 years ago, down through the appearance of Homo Sapiens 250,000 years ago, until that further point in time when we ceased moving down the evolutionary highway, men worldwide ate lean protein (obtained from game and seafood) along with wild fruits and vegetables - and little else - because there was little else.

As a species we became accustomed and acclimatized to consuming certain food for fuel. These foods were the ones we ate until our evolutionary apex was achieved. Once our evolution as a species ended, nutritionally, we were locked in. The optimal food/fuels were those foods eaten by man before the onset of our evolutionary apex.

Modern Man intent of achieving maximum fitness would be well advised to attempt to replicate Primordial Man's dietary and exercise template. To eat like an ancient nowadays requires a herculean degree of dietary restraint. Primordial Man had no problem staying true to his diet as he literally had no other food choices.

A primordial "replication diet" would consist of eating lots of lean protein and lots of fibrous fruits and vegetables and not much else...perhaps some nuts and seeds, a bit of starchy carbs, a limited amount of natural sugars and saturated animal fat. To stay true to primal man's diet in this day and age would require we consume organically-raised, seasonally appropriate foods selected from a very limited menu.

The bad news is a primal diet confines you to a narrow food selection.

The good news is you can eat lots of these foods, eat often, and still lose body fat.

In an interesting side note competitive bodybuilders tangentially confirmed the primal food/fuel thesis: the goal of the bodybuilder is to create maximum muscle mass while simultaneously reducing body fat down to single digit percentiles. Top bodybuilders will routinely reduce down to 5% (or less) body fat percentiles while maintaining tremendous muscle mass. Interestingly a procedural dietary consensus has emerged on how best to accomplish this: since the 1970s bodybuilders universally agree that eating lean protein and fiber carbs to the virtual exclusion of all other foods is the single most effective way to maintain maxim muscularity while becoming as lean as humanly possible. The most effective bodybuilding dietary template ever invented replicates almost exactly the dietary template of primordial man.

So how does modern man become healthy and lean?

• Modern manmade foods have proven toxic to the human machinery and need to be eliminated. We are a poisoned species in need of detoxification. If it is a manufactured food, avoid it.

• Intense exercise needs to be undertaken by modern man on a regularly reoccurring basis. Diet alone is not enough to transform from fat to fit; exercise alone is not enough; there are plenty of fit people that are also fat.

In order to replicate the primal exercise template, an exercise regimen needs to include a resistance training element and a cardiovascular training element. By combining heavy resistance training with intense cardio exercise and by underpinning the intense training with the consumption of ample amounts of lean protein and fibrous carbohydrates we are able to recreate a remarkable facsimile of Primordial Man.

Scientists point out that as mankind evolved people worldwide ate the same foods, over and over, ad infinitum. For 200,000 + years, men ate the same foods. Obviously the foods that the ancients consumed agreed with them: as a species they were lean, they were healthy, they were extremely muscular and they possessed low body fat percentiles. They had great strength and terrific aerobic capacities, obesity was unheard of; cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease were tens of thousands of years into the future.

So what happened?

Things began to unravel for the health of the species with introduction of agriculture. Approximately 10,000 years ago man started farming, specifically grains and starch vegetables such as corn. Now, for the first time in man's existence, foods came into existence that caused insulin to elevate. Neither fiber carbohydrates nor protein causes insulin to secrete. The widespread introduction of insulin-spiking foods proved problematic.

8,000 years before the birth of Christ men figured out how to grow wheat, barley, oats and corn. Men figured out how to create baked goods from grain and in about this same time sugar, salt and alcoholic beverages became widely available. Soon every culture began producing "artificial foods" on a widespread basis. The cultural elite became obese; initially obesity was embraced as a sign of affluence - obesity differentiated the elite from the underfed masses. Gout became the "Disease of Kings" as red meat high in fat, wine, starch and sugar became dominate in the diets of the wealthy.

Imagine a species that eats a limited and healthy diet for hundreds of thousands of years and suddenly the species begins eating foods that they had never been exposed to - much less adapted to. Adaptation requires tens of thousands of years. The consumption of these new foodstuffs resulted in a physiological disaster. Insulin spikes came into existence for the first time in the history of civilization. It is not coincidental that it is a virtually impossibility to exist on a diet of lean protein and fiber carbs and become obese. Why is that? You hear much talk from dietary experts that "a calorie is a calorie" yet primal evidence and evidence from elite bodybuilders points out a dramatic physiological fact: some calories are preferentially used to construct muscle and power activity (or be secreted) while other calories are preferentially stored as body fat.

Obviously Modern Man needs to exercise like a demon and eat primal foods preferentially used to build muscle while avoiding those foods preferentially shuttled into bodily fat storage compartments.

Body fat was precious to primal man. Stored body fat was the last line of defense against starvation and famine: for the first 240,000 years of man's existence excess body fat was unheard of. That changed for the worse with the widespread introduction and consumption of baked goods, sugar, saturated fat, high glycemic food and alcohol.

Take a clue from primal man and replicate a dietary strategy that emphasizes to near exclusion the consumption of those nutrients eaten by the ancients before the onset of the evolutionary apex.

Anyone interested in becoming a personal phone training client of Marty can contact him at www.mgso@embarqmail.com