If you’re new here, a little backstory is probably in order: I started the Mark’s Daily Apple blog way back in 2006 as a way of sharing the information I was learning and synthesizing as a part of my personal health transformation. That whole story is here if you’re interested.

For many years, I wrote just about every day on anything and everything related to how to be a healthy, happy, productive, fulfilled, and long-lived human. Along the way, I wrote books, developed digital programs, started an institute to train health coaches, and founded a company dedicated to making the best sauces, condiments, and pantry staples with the real ingredients I believed in.

At the end of 2023, we took down the Mark’s Daily Apple blog. The idea was to do some updates behind the scenes and get it back online in a matter of weeks. What’s that saying about the best laid plans? Yeah, ours went awry.

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But now we’re back with a new home on Substack. MDA will live on as an archive of the two decades of work we did at Mark’s Daily Apple and as a place to post some new content as well. For long-time members of the Mark’s Daily Apple community, this is a day we’ve all been waiting for and a cause for celebration.

I’m sure you also have some questions, which I’ll do my best to answer below. This has been a long time coming. I hope you’re as pleased as I am to see MDA revived.

Now on to your questions.

Where has MDA been?

The short answer is that after we took the blog down, we discovered that it wasn’t feasible to simply restore the blog on the scaffolding we’d built previously. A 20-year-old blog is downright elderly in technology years, not to mention that blogging as a creative and educational outlet changed dramatically during that time.

Given that, we started looking at alternatives from rebuilding from scratch to relaunching on a different platform. Each plan had pros and cons, but we are very happy where we landed here on Substack. This allows us to restore the archives and, hopefully, to also reach new people who can benefit from learning about all things Primal.

Where’s my favorite post on ______?

As I said, we thought a lot about the best way to bring MDA back online. Ultimately we decided to start with the core content and most popular and most recent posts, then work back through the archives.

Fun fact: MDA comprises more than 6,000 posts and pages all told, and we are reviewing every one.

Check the Archive tab and use the search function to see everything that’s here. If there’s a particular post you’d like to see republished, you can let me know here. My team and I will do our best to restore the most requested posts in a timely manner.

Are the recipes coming back?

Yes, just like the posts, we will be rolling (at least some of) them back out. You can request your favorites at that same link.

Am I going to have to pay for MDA now that it’s on Substack?

No! MDA is going to stay free and accessible to everyone as always.

Are you going to keep writing? Will we be getting new posts?

I definitely still have a lot of thoughts to share — whether that’s here, on my social media, or via newsletter — so make sure you’re subscribed.

I still send my (mostly) weekly Sunday with Sisson emails with my observations and musings, reactions to recent scientific studies, and the like. That’s a great way to stay up-to-date in addition to reading here. Join the list here.

Let me reiterate my thanks for your patience as we figured this all out. I hope this is the beginning of a great new chapter for Mark’s Daily Apple.

And now an ask: I need your help getting the word out.

• Follow Mark’s Daily Apple on Instagram or Facebook and share our posts so people know where to find us on our new home here on Substack.

• Subscribe and comment on the posts.

• Share them on Notes.

• And join the newsletter list to become and MDA insider stay up on all things Primal.

Thanks, everyone. Glad to be back.

Excited that Mark’s Daily Apple is back? Spread the word so more people find us.

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NEW TO MARK’S DAILY APPLE? NEED A REFRESH ON THE KEY PRINCIPLES OF PRIMAL LIVING?

START HERE.

Definitive Guide: The Primal Blueprint

What Is a Primal Diet?

How to Move and Get Fit the Primal Way

How to Embody a Primal Lifestyle

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

You can help more people find us by spreading the word:

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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and isn’t intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.

I get emails every day from people who are changing their lives for the better by following the guidelines I outline on Mark’s Daily Apple. Many are looking for more of what the Primal Blueprint has to offer. That is to say, they want a comprehensive breakdown of the elements that make up the Blueprint—a Primal primer, if you will.

In this extended article, you will find the basic building blocks needed to discover the Primal side of your life.

What does this mean?

• It means learning and understanding what it means to be human.

• It means using this knowledge to help you make important lifestyle choices.

• It means modeling your life after your ancestors in order to promote optimal health and wellness.

• And, most importantly, it means taking control of your body and mind.

It is my hope that you will use this information as a jumping-off point to build the healthiest possible body with the Primal Blueprint. Then share it with friends and loved ones who have yet to discover how they can use the Primal Blueprint to live awesome.

What Is the Primal Blueprint?

My basic premise is this:

The Primal Blueprint is a set of simple instructions that allows you to control how your genes express themselves in order to build the strongest, healthiest body possible, taking clues from evolutionary biology.

Sometimes we get so lost in the science of human biology that we just can’t see the forest for the trees. We overlook the simplicity and ease with which we could all be achieving exceptional health and fitness.

Living in modern society is extremely complex. With daily mind-boggling achievements in science, technology, and medicine, it’s no wonder that we often look for complicated scientific solutions to problems that really only require simple answers.

Of course, we should all be profoundly grateful for the advances that allow us to recover and heal from treatable infectious disease and trauma. Yet the fact remains that most of life is really much simpler than modern medicine and science would like to have you believe.

You can have a tremendous impact on how your genes express themselves simply by providing your cells with the right environments.

All you need is:

• A basic understanding of how your body works

• A simple philosophical roadmap to guide your health and fitness decisions

Primal Blueprint Origins and the Rules of Living Today

You may already have a fair understanding of how the human genome evolved to where it is today based on the environmental and behavioral factors that shaped our ancestors’ lives.

Anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, geneticists, and others have worked for over 100 years to piece together a detailed picture of the elements that influenced our development as a species.

Ironically, when we examine all these influences, we arrive at a very simple list of general behaviors our early ancestors followed.

This list is essentially the original Primal Blueprint—the behaviors that enabled them to become healthy, robust, and resilient human beings, and to pass those traits down to us.

The 10 Primal Blueprint Laws

The goal of the modern Primal Blueprint is not to revert to a caveman lifestyle.

Instead, it asks:

How can we learn from our past to shape a healthier future?

These 10 laws form the foundation of optimal health and longevity.

1. Eat lots of animals, insects, and plants

Focus on:

• Quality protein (meat, poultry, fish)

• Colorful vegetables

• Some fruits (mostly berries)

• Healthy fats (avocado, olive oil, nuts, full-fat dairy if tolerated)

Observe portion control over time rather than meal by meal.

2. Avoid poisonous things

Limit exposure to:

• Chemical toxins (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides)

• Processed foods

• Sugar and grains

• Trans and hydrogenated fats

• Mercury in certain fish

3. Move around a lot (mostly at a slow pace)

Walk as much as possible every day.

Aim for 2 to 5 hours per week of low-level aerobic activity:

• Walking

• Hiking

• Easy cycling

• Swimming

4. Lift heavy things

Spend 30–45 minutes, 2–3 times per week lifting weights or resistance.

Focus on full-body movements:

• Pushing

• Pulling

• Carrying

• Climbing

5. Run really fast every once in a while

Do occasional high-intensity sprint bursts, such as:

• Short hill sprints

• Beach sprints

• Intense cycling intervals

6. Get lots of sleep

Sleep is critical for:

• Energy

• Immune function

• Overall health

Prioritize it.

7. Play

Engage in active play regularly.

Play helps:

• Reduce stress

• Improve creativity

• Apply fitness in real life

8. Get some sunlight every day

Moderate sun exposure helps:

• Produce vitamin D

• Improve mood

Avoid burning, but don’t avoid the sun completely.

9. Avoid stupid mistakes

Eliminate obvious risks:

• Wear seat belts

• Avoid drugs and smoking

• Stay aware of your surroundings

10. Use your mind

Keep your brain active:

• Read

• Write

• Create

• Socialize

Why Follow the Primal Blueprint?

Let’s simplify the goal.

We all want to be:

• Healthy — free from illness

• Energetic — able to enjoy life fully

• Happy — motivated and positive

• Lean — metabolically balanced

• Strong — physically capable

• Bright — mentally sharp

• Productive — contributing to life and society

Our ancestors naturally embodied these traits—not as goals, but as a result of how they lived.

Now, understanding that everything we do affects our biology, we can apply these principles to modern life and create the same outcomes.

Thank you for reading!

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

You can help more people find us by spreading the word:

Share Mark's Daily Apple

And make sure you’re subscribed!

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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and isn’t intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.

Once you broke free of carb dependency and developed metabolic flexibility, you could trust your body to tell you what it needs. Over time, you would naturally fall into a pattern of eating that suited your lifestyle. 

However, I find that most people, when they make a commitment to following the Primal Blueprint, want to see how far they can take it. Once they discover how good they feel just from choosing Primal foods, it’s natural to ask whether there are additional levels of health and vitality waiting to be unlocked. This is where practices like intermittent fasting and experimenting with macronutrients come in. 

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Although the Primal Blueprint doesn’t prescribe specific macronutrient ratios, there are some best practices to consider here. Let’s dive in.

What Are Macronutrients? 

First, some basic terminology. Macronutrients, or “macros,” are the protein, carbohydrates, and fats in the foods you eat. These are the building blocks and energy substrates, separate from the water, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other compounds, including artificial ingredients, present in food. 

The calories in your food come from the macronutrients, with protein and carbohydrates each providing 4 calories per gram and fat providing 9 calories per gram.

Now I have a real problem with this. The body wants to burn fat and glucose (from carbs) for energy, but protein will always go first towards muscle protein synthesis and repair, or building cells, hormones, and enzymes. In that context, it hardly seems fair to assign it a “burn rate” of 4 calories per gram. It’s like saying the 2×4 studs that support the walls of your house can burn nicely if you run out of firewood. They will, but that’s hardly the point. 

Nevertheless, that’s how the math is done.

So let’s say you’re interested in conducting some sort of n=1 nutritional experiment. Maybe you want to up your protein intake during a hypertrophy cycle or drop your carbs to go keto. To determine how many grams of protein, carbs, and fat you’re consuming—and, therefore, how many calories you’re taking in—you’ll need to input all of your food into a tracker like Cronometer or My Fitness Pal. Tracking your food is tedious if you do it right, but the data can be eye opening. Most people don’t have a clue how much they’re actually eating. 

Once you’ve established a baseline, you can proceed to adjust your intake of certain macros up or down. As I said, the Primal Blueprint doesn’t specify exact macros to aim for, but here are some things to consider. 

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Macronutrients in the Primal Diet

1. Start with protein

Of the three macronutrients, protein takes priority in my book. So much of the work I do comes down to one goal: maximizing healthspan. In other words, staying fit, healthy, and cognitively sharp for as long as possible. A cornerstone of that is maintaining mobility and strength and staving off age-related muscle loss and frailty. To do that, you need two things: building blocks (amino acids from protein) and stimuli that tell your body to invest in bone and muscle (exercise). 

For the average person, 0.7-1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight (1.6-2.2 g/kg) is a good target.

You can go higher than that if you want, and there may be some benefit, but this is a good starting point. Taking in a lot more than that isn’t dangerous, but you’ll soon start to see diminishing returns. 

Whenever I write about protein, I always get a bunch of follow-up questions: Should I use current body weight, lean body mass, or ideal body weight? How do age and gender factor in? 

I’ve written extensively in other posts about how much protein you should be eating if you’re an athlete or a person trying to lose weight, for example. The numbers vary somewhat, but if you’re in the range of 1 gram per pound of body weight, you’ll be fine. Likewise, if you do your calculations based on lean body mass instead of total body mass, you’ll fall in a similar range, especially if you’re already on the leaner side. Take a 180-pound individual who carries 20 percent body fat. The math works out to 126-180 grams per day based on total body weight or 100-144 grams per day based on lean body mass. Not terribly different. 

Also, don’t stress about getting the exact same amount of protein every day. Look at your protein intake across the past three to five days. Are you averaging around 1 gram per pound per day? Then you’re in good shape. 

What about collagen?

I’ve said many times that collagen should be classified as a macronutrient all its own. Collagen is a protein, being composed of amino acids, but it’s not a complete protein since it lacks tryptophan. As a general rule, you’re not supposed to count collagen toward your total protein intake when tracking your food, but I don’t fully agree with that. Collagen is protein. The amino acids are the same amino acids you’d get from a steak, though in different proportions.

I doubt too many people are using collagen peptides as a primary source of protein in their diets, but it’s probably worth stating: most of your protein needs should be met using complete protein from whole food sources. 

2. Set your carbohydrate intake

The Primal diet falls naturally on the lower-carbohydrate end of the spectrum compared to a typical modern diet. A person consuming a Standard American Diet can easily top 300 or 400 grams of carbs by dinnertime thanks to grains, sugar-sweetened beverages, and processed snack foods. In contrast, it’s tough to exceed 100 grams of carbs eating Primal foods, even with tons of colorful above-ground vegetables. Even if you eat a fair amount of fruit or starchy vegetables, you’ll be hard-pressed to exceed 150 grams of carbs on average per day. 

I’ve found that under 150 grams of carbs per day is most folks’ sweet spot for easily maintaining body composition and having plenty of energy.

However, if you specifically want to get into ketosis, you’ll need to drop below 50 grams per day, and you’ll need to be strict about it. 

On the other hand, endurance athletes who consistently burn a lot of calories and dip into glycogen stores on a regular basis might benefit from eating more carbs from additional fruits, tubers, and root vegetables, perhaps even some rice or oats. This isn’t mandatory, mind you. Plenty of athletes feel and perform great on moderate-carb or ketogenic diets. But super-active folks are also “earning” their carbs and shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with higher intakes, especially around tough workouts and competitions. 

Do you need to concern yourself with net versus total carbs?

I don’t. Net carbs are just the total carbs in your food minus the fiber. The great thing about eating Primally is that you don’t have to fuss about these kinds of details. 

Net carbs are really only relevant within the context of a keto diet, where you might want to distinguish between digestible carbohydrates, which are converted into glucose, and fiber, which does not impact insulin levels. In The Keto Reset Diet, I suggested that you don’t have to count carbs from above-ground non-starchy vegetables and avocados since their glucose/insulin impact is minimal thanks to their fiber content. Even that is optional, though. For tracking purposes, it’s easier to just cap your total daily carb intake at 50 grams per day and be done with it. 

3. Leverage fat

Once you’ve established your protein and carbohydrate intake, fat becomes the macro you leverage to increase or decrease energy (caloric) intake. 

Let’s say you typically eat 150 grams of protein a day and 100 grams of carbs. Each provides 4 calories per gram, so that’s 1,000 calories per day so far from those two macronutrients. The rest will come from fat at 9 calories per gram.

A primary goal of the Primal Blueprint is to turn you into a fat-burning machine, meaning that your cells are highly efficient at using fat for energy instead of relying heavily on glucose. That fat can come from your plate or your own adipose tissue. If you’re a smaller, moderately active woman who is trying to burn through some excess body fat, you might aim for an additional 500-800 calories per day, or 55-90 grams of fat, roughly. But if you’re a larger man who is aiming for a caloric excess during a bulking phase, you might need an additional 2,000 calories. Perhaps you bump your protein up by 50 grams, but that’s only 200 calories, and remember, protein isn’t the most efficient fuel anyway. In any case, this guy will need to consume closer to 200 grams of fat per day to hit his goal.

Putting It All Together

You never have to bother with macros on a Primal diet, particularly not if you are happy with your current body composition, performance in the gym, and general health. But, if you’re struggling to reduce those stubborn fat stores, you’re having a hard time gaining muscle, or you otherwise feel that your health could be better, AND you’re already eating Primally, playing around with the macronutrient composition of your diet could be a worthwhile endeavor. 

That last caveat is important. For folks coming from a standard modern diet, ditching grains, sugars, and sketchy oils is going to move the needle more than ratcheting fat intake up or down by 20 grams or whatever. Now, if your blood sugar is through the roof and you’re on a litany of meds for type 2 diabetes, getting carb intake down is also going to be a top priority. (In that case, make sure your doctor knows that you’re changing your diet, as you’ll likely need to adjust your medications concurrently.) 

In short, you’ll get more bang for your buck by getting the major Primal pillars of nutrition, movement, and lifestyle dialed in first before experimenting with meal timing, fasting, macros, etc. Lay the right foundation first, and then these details can turn your results from great to outstanding. 

Thank you for reading!

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

You can help more people find us by spreading the word:

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And make sure you’re subscribed!

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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and isn’t intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.

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As important as food and movement are, they are only two of the inputs that affect gene expression. There is a bigger picture to consider, another pillar encompassed within the Primal Blueprint—one that is often overlooked even by individuals who have made a sincere commitment to building healthy habits and taking care of their bodies for the long haul. These are the Primal Blueprint Lifestyle Laws.

The Primal Blueprint Lifestyle Laws

Primal Law #6: Get Plenty of Sleep

If I had to nominate the Primal Blueprint Law that is most neglected in the modern world—and it would be hard to pick just one—it would probably be sleep. At least with diet and exercise, most people pay lip service to how important they are, recognizing that they should care about them even if their day-to-day choices say otherwise. Yet how many times have you seen uber-successful people boasting about how little sleep they get on a nightly basis?

Our genes expect and need consistent, restful sleep, and plenty of it. Our ancestors got lots of sleep. Even after the discovery of fire, it wasn’t as if they stayed up all night partying. From sunset to sunrise it was safer to huddle together and rest. Long days of hunting and gathering and otherwise working hard for every bite of food also required sufficient time to repair and recover. Studies of modern hunter-gatherers suggest it wasn’t necessarily always an uninterrupted nine or ten hours, either. It’s likely that they slept together as families or as small tribes, keeping a watch out for predators, breastfeeding the baby or just dozing in and out throughout the night.

Of course, a restorative afternoon nap was also available when the urge hit, with no guilt about what else they really should have been doing. Our modern tendency toward poor quality, insufficient sleep has catastrophic consequences for physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Yet better sleep is almost always within reach with some simple (and sometimes not-so-easy) behavior modifications.

Read more about Primal Law #6.

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Primal Law #8: Get Plenty of Sunlight

(Primal Law #7 is Play. You can read about it in the Primal Movement post.)

Cavemen weren’t really men (or women) who lived their lives in caves all the time. Most of the day, they were in the great outdoors pursuing their various survival tasks. Regular exposure to sun provided lots of vitamin D, an all-important vitamin (really more like a hormone) which they could not easily obtain from food and which their bodies could not manufacture without direct sunlight.

Fast forward to today, and most people spend almost all their time inside—at home, at work, in the car or subway, at the grocery store, mall, movie theaters, bowling alleys, and on and on. Even most of exercise is now done inside gyms, dance studios, or garages. The net result is that an alarming proportion of the population does not get enough sun exposure. Couple that with widespread public health messages about avoiding the sun and using sunscreen every time you go out, and vitamin D deficiency is now widespread.

Not to mention, we are missing out on the other benefits of being in nature. While it’s never a good idea to burn, I think the far greater danger to most people is too little sun, not too much. Respect basic sun safety practices, but embrace the sun as the life-giving force that it is.

Read more about Primal Law #8.

Primal Law #9: Avoid Stupid Mistakes

You’re doing all these other things to live a long, healthy life—eating right, exercising, getting plenty of sleep, nurturing your social relationships—but it can all be cut short in the blink of an eye with one silly, preventable misstep. That’s why Primal Law #9 reminds you to exercise appropriate caution when navigating this dangerous world.

In our ancestors’ time, this mostly meant avoiding trauma that could lead to immediate death or serious injury that would prevent them from being active, participating members of their hunter-gatherer clan. Today it still means essentially the same thing, except the dangers we face are a far cry from the rogue tiger or poisonous mushroom that might have taken out Grok.

This doesn’t mean wrap yourself in bubble wrap and never take any risks whatsoever. Rather, this law exhorts you to use that highly evolved human brain of yours to calculate risk and take wise precautions as needed.

Read more about Primal Law #9.

Primal Law #10: Use Your Brain

Speaking of your big brain, the final Primal Law reminds you to use it. Use it to problem solve. Use it to create. Use it to imagine. Use it to dream big dreams and make them come true. Use it to reminisce about the past. Use it to learn from past mistakes. Use it to create the wild and wonderful life that is your birthright as a human.

Read more about Primal Law #10.      

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

You can help more people find us by spreading the word:

Share Mark's Daily Apple

* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and isn’t intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.

Movement is an essential part of the Primal Blueprint master plan for crafting your strongest, fittest, most dynamic, most enjoyable life. That’s what I want for all my readers—a long life well lived until the end. To reach that goal, you need a strong foundation of physical health and mobility, starting as young as possible to stave off the inevitable physical decline that comes with age. 

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Everyone knows how to move. We’ve all heard that exercise is important, that we should be aiming for 10,000 steps a day, building core strength, and actually using our gym memberships. Yet many, nay most, people don’t do the right amount, either moving too little or too much (the former being far more common). Nor do they move in diverse enough ways to achieve their optimal fitness and longevity potential.

In short, they don't move in accordance with the Primal Blueprint. 

What Does It Mean to Move Primally?

Humans are designed to move through the world. To be active. To physically manipulate our environments.  Our ancestors, of course, had no choice in the matter. They didn’t worry about becoming strong or physically competent. Their fitness was a natural result of living in an unforgiving environment that required them to work for everything—food, shelter, water, transportation, socializing, defense, and every other aspect of survival.

But life is easy now, at least when it comes to physical demands. We modern folks do need to work at being fit.  When I was devising the Primal Blueprint, I considered how our ancestors moved, what qualities they embodied, and what, therefore, our genes need and expect for optimum health. Here’s what I came up with:

• Humans are designed to move a lot—mostly slowly, sometimes very fast. 

• The human body is meant to move through all planes of motion: to push, pull, lift, jump, spring, sprint, throw, and balance.

• Our ancestors had to be physically strong, powerful, and quick on their feet, with a good strength-to-body weight ratio and plenty of endurance.

With this in mind, I came up with the following Primal Blueprint movement laws.

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The Primal Blueprint Movement Laws

Four of the ten Primal Blueprint Laws speak to how you should be moving. It’s that important. 

Primal Law #3: Move frequently.

We know that our ancestors spent, on average, several hours each day moving about at what today’s exercise physiologists might describe as a “low-level aerobic pace.” They hunted, gathered, foraged, wandered, scouted, migrated, climbed, and crawled. This low level of activity prompted their genes to build strong muscles, bones, and joints; to build a robust cardiovascular system; and to burn fat for fuel.  Today’s sedentary-dominant lifestyle is about as far from this as we could possibly get. Yet, our genes still expect us to move frequently, mostly at a slow pace. From a chronic health perspective, this is arguably one of the most detrimental discrepancies between Primal and modern life. 

Read more about Primal Law #3. 

Primal Law #4: Lift heavy things.

By the same token, until relatively recently, there was simply no way to get by without moving heavy things like wood, stone, water, animals killed many miles from home, and one’s own body weight. Moving heavy things, what we’d now call “resistance training” when done in an exercise setting, makes you strong. 

Strength isn’t just about having an attractive physique or succeeding in sport, although those are perfectly good reasons to want to be strong. Muscle is metabolically active tissue and a major repository for blood glucose (glycogen). Too little muscle means a greater risk for insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. A weak musculoskeletal system equals frailty, and frailty is strongly associated with mortality as we age. 

Read more about Primal Law #4. 

Primal Law #5: Sprint once in a while.

Going all-out delivers a powerful signal to your genes, telling them, “Hey, we need to be ready to perform at maximum capacity at a moment’s notice.” For Primal humans, this would have been a matter of life and death. The resultant hormonal cascade and adaptation make the body fitter and more resilient to future challenges. 

Read more about Primal Law #5. 

Primal Law #7: Play.

(Yes, I skipped Law #6. It’s covered in the Primal Lifestyle Laws post.)

Hunter-gatherers generally worked fewer hours and had more leisure time than the average 40-hour-plus American worker. Once the day’s catch was complete, and the roots, shoots, nuts, and berries had been gathered, our ancestors spent hours involved in various forms of social interaction that we might categorize today as “play.” 

The net effect was to solidify social bonds and sort out the social hierarchy, stimulate creative thinking and problem solving, practice important skills like climbing or spear throwing in a low-stakes environment, and pass on wisdom. Play was also important to prompt the release of endorphins (feel-good brain chemicals) and to mitigate any lingering stress effects of life-threatening situations. You might not need to be adept at spear throwing in your daily life, but the other benefits of play remain as relevant today as ever for kids and adults alike. 

Read more about Primal Law #7.  

Putting the Movement Laws into Action

The Primal Blueprint Fitness Pyramid provides a handy visual reference for how I think the average person should move in a week’s time (more or less).

Within this general framework, there’s plenty of room for you to find ways to move that you enjoy. I think of the Primal Blueprint as endlessly malleable, eternally scalable. Maybe your goal is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Maybe it’s to be able to spend the whole day on your feet at Disney World with your family. Maybe you love CrossFit or you want to run your first 5k. Maybe your job requires that you meet certain physical fitness standards. Perhaps you just want to live a long, healthy life, but you never want to see the inside of a gym.

These are all valid. As I’ve said many times, the best exercise is the one you will do consistently. 

Crucially, the Primal Blueprint will also help you avoid the pitfalls of chronic cardio and other overly stressful exercise patterns. These movement laws provide the right formula for getting lean and functionally fit for life with minimal time commitment, pain, suffering, and sacrifice—and, more importantly, with as much fun, enjoyment and ease as possible.

It’s not the only way to get fit, but it might just be the most efficient, effective, and pleasurable way.

Thank you for reading!

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

You can help more people find us by spreading the word:

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And make sure you’re subscribed!

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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and isn’t intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.

To eat according to the Primal Blueprint means choosing foods that provide the body with all the building blocks it needs to function (amino acids, fatty acids, nutrients, and more) while avoiding foods, and modern “frankenfoods,” that erode your health. It means giving your body all the energy it needs to be strong, active, and well.

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In answer to the hugely contentious question of which diet—plant-based, vegan, carnivore, Mediterranean, “everything in moderation”—is best, the Primal Blueprint puts forth a simple answer: The best diet for humans is one comprising the foods that humans are designed to eat.

Primal Diet: Ancestral Eating in the Modern World

Despite what you might have heard about Primal, paleo, and the more general ancestral health movement, the goal isn’t to get you to eat “like a caveman.” For one thing, many of the foods that were around millennia ago have been changed by natural evolution and human agriculture. Furthermore, the foods your far-back ancestors ate depended entirely on the geographic location from which they hailed. 

The environments in which we eat are also different. Food has never been more abundant and easier to procure. We are more stressed, more rushed, and more sedentary. We are less exposed to dirt and the accompanying microbes that populate the gastrointestinal tract.  In short, the idea isn’t that we should be eating exactly like our ancestors did.

The Primal Blueprint takes lessons from human history and modern science to decide what, when, why, and how (much) to eat—and, importantly, what to avoid. 

The Primal Blueprint Diet Laws

The 10 Primal Laws start with diet because of all the environmental inputs we can leverage for proper gene expression, diet arguably has the biggest impact in the shortest time. 

Primal Law #1: Eat lots of animals and plants.

(Insects are optional.)

This is the basic description of everything our ancestors ate to get the protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phenols, fiber, water, and other nutrients necessary to sustain life, build strong muscles, expend lots of energy each day moving about,  maintain healthy immune systems, evolve larger brains, and raise healthy children. 

As you can see, this law leaves plenty of room for you to structure your diet according to your personal tastes, preferences, and needs. Perhaps you prefer to eat relatively more plants than animals, or vice versa. You might be a gourmand who takes great pleasure in creating elaborate dishes and trying new foods, or maybe you’re content to repeat a few simple meals over and over.

As long as you prioritize close-to-nature foods from these broad categories, you’re headed in the right direction. 

Learn more about Primal Law #1.

Primal Law #2: Avoid poisonous things.

Humans’ ability to exploit almost every corner of this earth was partly predicated on their ability to consume vastly different types of plant and animal life. Exploring a new environment and trying new foods posed a danger: the new food might contain potent toxins. 

You probably don’t have to fear food-borne illness anymore, aside from an occasional bout with non-lethal food poisoning. Instead, we contend with ubiquitous modern foods that undermine our health more slowly and more insidiously. Whereas our ancestors’ keen senses of smell and taste helped sort out the good from the bad, our ability to distinguish good from bad is now thwarted by food manufacturing and clever marketing.

Learn more about Primal Law #2.

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Other Considerations for Primal Eating

Understanding what to eat is only half the battle. You still have to translate that knowledge into action. Here are some other factors that come into play.

Macronutrient intake

Protein: 

Protein takes priority. The amino acids in protein don’t just go toward making muscle. They’re necessary for all structures in the body, for making hormones and neurotransmitters, and for facilitating enzymatic reactions.

Protein is also highly satiating, quelling excessive hunger and the urge to snack around the clock. Most people probably aren’t eating nearly enough protein, especially as they get on in years. 

Carbohydrates: 

Primal is a “low-carb diet” in comparison to the Standard American Diet, and similar ilks, in which grains and sugars run rampant. A primary goal of the Primal Blueprint is for you to become fat-adapted, so fat becomes a primary fuel instead of glucose (sugar).

That doesn’t mean Primal is anti-carb. Carbs are fuel, but excessive carb intake leads to chronically high insulin and the health consequences you can expect as a result. Limit your carb intake to nutrient-dense varieties and only in the amount that you need to provide glucose to the brain and fuel your activities. (Hint: it’s less than you probably think.) 

The Primal Blueprint Carbohydrate Curve lays out reasonable targets for carb intake.  

Fats: 

Learn to love them. Fats are the fuel of choice in the Primal Blueprint. Beside providing energy, they are necessary for certain crucial metabolic functions and have little to no impact on insulin. On a Primal eating style, the plurality of your calories will likely come from fats like avocado oil, olive oil, and the fats naturally occurring in animal products, avocados, coconut products, and nuts and seeds. 

What about calories?

Most popular diets look at overall calories as the main factor in weight loss, weight gain, and, by implication, overall health. They don’t care about where those calories come from. Despite that age-old Conventional Wisdom mantra that "a calorie is a calorie," a calorie is not a calorie. The different macronutrients we eat have different effects in the body, and diets that focus only on calorie restriction miss the point of eating to be healthy, not just skinny.

That doesn’t mean that calories don’t matter. They do. Or rather, it’s important not to intake a lot more energy than you expend over the course of weeks, months, and years. Energy excess is a catalyst for many downstream health issues. I just don’t think calorie counting is the answer for most people.

That’s why the Primal Blueprint doesn’t prescribe specific calorie intakes. Our genes want us to be lean and fit. And that starts with eating from the long list of Primal Blueprint healthy foods and trying to avoid that other list of grain-laden, sugary, processed, and otherwise unhealthy foods.

When: Meal timing, fasting, and seasonal eating

Remember that our genes are accustomed to the way our ancestors ate: intermittently, sporadically, sometimes in large quantities, and sometimes not at all for days. This random or “non-linear” eating pattern kept their bodies in a constant state of preparedness.

That said, for newcomers to the Primal Blueprint, what you eat is more important than when. There’s no point worrying about carb cycling or optimal meal timing if you’re still eating mostly grains and sugars. That’s all stuff you can worry about down the road. 

When you’re ready, I’ve written about intermittent fasting extensively on the blog. As I’ve said many times, when it comes to health and longevity, most of the magic happens when we aren’t eating. It’s important to give your body time to engage in the maintenance, repair, and building processes that are inherent to health and healthy aging. Intermittent fasting has incredible benefits, and you have options when it comes to implementation.

Lastly, seasonal eating isn’t mandatory, but it can be a great way to vary your carb sources and keep your food interesting. If you’re shopping at your local farmer’s markets, you’ll naturally find different options in the summer, fall, winter, and spring.

A Final Word about Food Quality

Although it’s not explicitly covered by the Primal laws, food quality is an important consideration for Primal eating.

In a perfect world, a Primal diet would comprise grass-fed/pastured beef and dairy products, pastured chicken and pork, wild seafood, and produce raised organically or pesticide-free.  The world isn’t perfect, of course, and the “ideal” foods aren’t always available or budget-friendly (although it’s worth pointing out that few things are a better investment of time and money than high-quality food).

The goal of a Primal diet is to eat the best foods you can, understanding that you might need to compromise on organic or buy conventionally raised meat sometimes. Don’t sell yourself short, but also don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

I started Primal Kitchen in order to make eating real food easier and more delicious. Selfishly, I was sick of having to make all my own condiments at home. I also heard over and over from people in the Primal community that convenience was a major barrier to fully embracing a Primal way of eating. So, I made sauces, dressings, and other pantry staples with ingredients I feel good about so that if you do have to compromise, it won’t be on flavor or ingredient integrity.

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Let's break away from the conventional and immerse ourselves in a summer fitness experience like no other. Brace yourself for an exhilarating journey to the best shape of your life.

Here are my 6 basic principles for proper summer fitness.

Train Outside

You can certainly train in the gym during summer. I do a lot of my training in the gym, indoors, throughout all seasons. But gym training isn’t unique to summer. Plus, it’s the default option for most people. I’m trying to get you to try something you haven’t tried before, to train in a way you can’t always train.

Sure, if it’s 100 degrees out, you might want to do the gym. You might want to get some shade. But summer affords you the opportunity to train outside in most locales.

Train barefoot in your background or a park. If you have gym equipment, simply take it outside and do what you normally do in the garage, only on the grass or dirt.

Train in the forest. Climb trees, lift logs, throw boulders.

Train at the beach or at the lake or river. Bring a kettlebell out there and get to work.

Focus on Fun

The key to great summer fitness? Making it not just about the sweat and effort, but about the sheer joy of movement, the exhilaration of performance. If you make training fun, you actually look forward to it. You enjoy it in the moment, not just when it’s over.

And just because it’s fun doesn’t mean you’re not going to be working hard or getting a great training effect from it. It means the workout is intrinsically valuable in the moment, and therefore more sustainable.

The picture of this begins in your backyard, under the bright summer sun. In your hands, a kettlebell, that deceivingly simple yet incredibly effective piece of equipment. You swing it, lift it, press it, transforming each movement into an opportunity to build muscle, endurance, and strength. Each swing is met with a cool breeze, each lift underlined by the sun's rays bestowing upon you a golden glow and a healthy dose of vitamin D.

Transition your training ground from your yard to the vast, blue expanse of a lake or an ocean. Envision yourself gracefully cruising on a stand-up paddle board, or perhaps navigating the waves in a kayak. It's not just a workout; it's an intimate connection with water, an element that has been entwined with our existence since evolutionary times. Comfort in water is a fitness staple, and summer is the ideal time to master it.

On dry land, there's an entirely different adventure waiting for you. Picture yourself biking on winding trails or rollerblading down the coastline. Consider these not just as fitness tools, but as vessels of exploration. The goal isn't merely to burn calories but to soak in the surroundings, to integrate with the elements, to experience the freedom that summer brings.

These tools— the humble kettlebell, your watercraft, and your chosen mode of land exploration— they are your partners in fitness, enabling you to tap into the unexplored power of outdoor training. What makes them special is that they aren't just exercising equipment; they are a part of your summer fitness story, enhancing the quality of your workout and your overall experience.

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Go on Adventures

Instead of just using the rower at the gym, go kayaking down the river, through some sea caves, or across the lake (for time, if you wish to increase the intensity). Or, as I do, paddle down Miami canals, often meeting dolphins and manatees along the way.

Instead of only walking on the treadmill, do a backpacking trek for a day or two. Carry your belongings up and down mountains, over boulders, through meadows and across rivers. You'll log far more steps than you ever would on the treadmill while getting an incredible sensory experience out of it.

The gym is great. I use it myself all the time, no matter the season. But the point is to take your conventional gym training and use it to conquer the world and go on adventures.

Be Efficient

I’m not going to tell you what specific exercises to do. Deadlifts, squats, pull-ups, push-ups, presses, rows, swings, muscle ups, dips, lunges, step ups, hip thrusts… they’re all fantastic options. You know what you like to do. I am going to tell you to try being a bit more intuitive and “touchy feely” when you train. That’s what summer is: a season for intuition and feeling and spontaneity. Foster that summer spirit with your rep schemes.

Here’s what I mean.

Say you’re doing push-ups, kettlebell swings, pull-ups, and squats. Or dips, trap bar deadlifts, rows, and lunges. A push, a pull, a row, and a knee flexion.
Instead of hitting a set amount of reps, do the first exercise (push-ups) until you go just shy of failure. 2-3 reps left in the tank.

Move on to the next one (kettlebell swings) and do the same. Feel that deep burn but keep a few reps in the tank. When you’re ready, return to the first exercise and do the same. Then do the same for the next one.

When you’ve hit 3-4 sets of these, move on to the next two exercises and repeat the process.

You’re learning how to feel when you’ve approached your limit. You’re getting the training effect for your muscles but you’re also training your intuition. That’s summer.

Embrace the Elements

Summer, for all its joys, brings with it an intense heat. But instead of letting it bog you down, let it fuel you. Embrace the warmth, revel in the sweat. Get filthy, dirty, dusty, muddy. Summer is your chance to build heat tolerance and improve your overall fitness level.

It's also the time to use water to your advantage. Whether it's plunging through the waves at the beach, diving into a crystal clear alpine lake, swimming with (or against) the current in a river, or even doing laps and underwater pool workouts, the water is an entirely new playground for your fitness exploits.

Solar Training

When the sun climbs the sky, don't hide indoors. Go outside and train in the oldest, biggest gym in the world. Soak up as much sunlight as you can, safely—don’t get burned, of course. It isn't just a pathway to a glowing tan, nor is it only a source of vitamin D, which is a crucial prohormone involved in muscle protein synthesis, bone density accrual, and hormonal health. It also increases nitric oxide production, which can improve the transmission of oxygen and important nutrients to your muscles and other tissues as well as enhance the “pump” you get when you lift weights.Furthermore, training in hot weather can add an additional stressor—the heat—that can enhance the training effect. However it is a stressor and you may need more recovery from an outdoor sun drenched workout, but you can also derive greater benefits.

Just make sure that you stay hydrated. Add high quality salt to your water or make an electrolyte mix. I like to add a packet of LMNT to water plus collagen and creatine, then sip that before and during my workout. Hydration will improve not just your workouts but also your skin’s resistance to UV light.

In essence, summer fitness is about embracing the inherent power of the season—the heat, sunlight, sand, water, and the calming energy of nature.

Summer fitness is an exploration, an adventure. The sun-soaked season invites you to push beyond the typical, to break free from monotony and create a summer fitness routine that reflects the unique opportunities of the season. The world is your gym. Now go out there, embrace the heat, the sun, the water, and make your summer fitness journey an unforgettable one.

How do you approach fitness in summer? What are your basic summer fitness principles?

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Just because your ancestors did all the hard work and set the stage for your big intelligent brain today doesn’t absolve you of the need to use it.

How We Used Our Brains

Humans have always used their brains no matter where or when they lived:

• Cataloging thousands of different plant and animal species according to their toxicity, nutritional value, and synergistic interactions with each other.

• Iterating on hunting weapons to better kill prey.

• Tracking dozens of different animals, identifying their prints and understanding when they passed and in what direction.

• Exploring the South Pacific on outrigger canoes, reading the tides and knowing where land lies based on contextual clues involving currents, birds, fish, clouds, and stars.

• Inventing writing.

• Art and literature.

• Telling stories.

• Hypothesizing about the nature of reality and the world around us.

After all, humans didn’t just evolve these impossibly complex brains for no reason. They were central to our survival and progression as a species.

How to Use Your Brain Today

Exercise your brain daily as our ancestors did. Be inventive, creative, and aware. If your work is not stimulating (or even if it is), find time to read, write, play an instrument, and interact socially. 

• Do the crossword in the morning.

• Play sudoku.

• Have board game nights.

• Learn an instrument.

• Learn another language.

• Play cards with your buddies.

• Read challenging books, both fiction and non-fiction.

• Solve problems in your environment. Identify problems and fix them. 

• Get involved with your community. Coach Little League (wrangling all those high-energy kids to form a team requires a lot of mental energy). Join the school board.

These are just some options, but what’s important is that you exercise your mind on a daily basis.

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They personified Primal Blueprint Law #9: Avoid Stupid Mistakes. Remember that a twisted knee or a broken ankle could spell death to anyone who couldn’t run away from danger. In fact, along with high infant mortality, it was probably trauma (or a brief careless lapse in judgment) that was most responsible for the low average life expectancy of our ancestors, despite their otherwise robust good health. Avoid trauma, and there was a very good chance you could live into your 70s and be extremely healthy, mobile, and fit. Modern day hunter-gatherers maintain strength and health often well into their 80s.

Stupid Mistakes to Avoid

The threats today are different, but the foundational truth remains: avoiding stupid mistakes is how we live healthy, happy, long lives. 

Eliminate self-destructive behaviors. These concepts are self-evident to most people, like wear seat belts, don’t text and drive, don’t walk and text, don’t smoke or abuse drugs, watch your alcohol intake, don’t dive into shallow water—but so many of us live our lives oblivious to impending danger. Develop a keen sense of awareness of your surroundings and heed the logic of potential consequences.

When you’re lifting or exercising, know your limits. Listen to the little voice inside you saying to “stop the set short” or “take a break.” That’s often your nervous system trying to get you to avoid a stupid mistake in the weight room or on the playing field. 

It’s an exceedingly safe world from the standpoint of physical security. We don’t hunt for food or fight our neighbor for resources. What we often do is let the world pass us by. We stay too safe and avoid taking the chances that could get us a big win. 

Another big stupid mistake so many people make is letting your relationships suffer in favor of the external rewards of the “world.” Skipping the soccer game to work an extra couple hours. Forgetting date night. Cultivate and maintain your personal relationships before all else. Let them buttress you as you seek your fortune. 

As you can see, the world is more complicated than it used to be. There are more mistakes to make, and although they’re stupid mistakes, they’re sneaky. Identifying the stupid mistakes is often harder now. They’re more diffuse, not so clear-cut as a dangerous snake or an enemy tribe. You won’t always see them coming, so make sure you’re staying on top of things, staying alert, and avoiding the easy ones. 

Thank you for reading!

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Even when we were inside, we were half outside. We sheltered in open-air structures, caves, lean-tos, and huts. We weren’t sealed up surrounded by impermeable climate-controlled walls, roofs, and windows. The air flowed, the sunlight streamed in, and there wasn’t such a big difference between being inside and out.  

Benefits of Sun Exposure

The sun offers many vital health benefits:

• It maintains our circadian rhythm by which every cell and organ of our body operates. If we don’t get sun exposure throughout the morning, noon, and afternoon, our circadian rhythm goes haywire and things don’t work correctly.

• It helps us get to sleep at night. Sun in the day, darkness at night sets the physiological pathways that enable good sleep.

• It provides vitamin D. When sunlight strikes our skin, the cholesterol contained there converts to vitamin D—an important compound controlling immunity, sex hormones, bone formation and density, cognitive function, and physical performance. Vitamin D is closer to a hormone than a vitamin.

• It improves endothelial function. Sunlight hitting the skin also triggers the production of nitric oxide, a compound that improves blood flow and helps the heart pump nutrients and oxygen to the tissues that need them.

• It improves mood. We have endogenous opioid systems that exposure to sunlight triggers. Sunlight literally gets us high. 

• It improves eyesight. Kids who spend too much time indoors are at a greater risk of myopia. True sun exposure appears to improve eyesight. Note: this doesn’t mean staring into the sun.

Getting Sun Safely

It’s true that you have to expose yourself to the sun safely. You still can burn, and if you burn often and badly enough, you can get skin cancer.

To do it safely:

• Get morning sunlight. The infrared light present at sunrise primes your skin for greater resistance to UV damage when stronger sun arrives later in the day.

• Build your solar callus slowly. Get as much sun as you can tolerate without burning, then get under shade. Eventually, you’ll be able to add more and more sun as your tolerance increases. Building the solar callus should start in late Fall, or whenever the sun reappears.

• Avoid burning. This goes without saying but I’ll still say it. Burning is bad. 

• Wear clothing, use shade, and use high-quality mineral sunblock (containing zinc oxide or titanium dioxide) when necessary. 

Today we spend 8 hours a day sealed up in impermeable climate-controlled offices surrounded by walls and roofs. If we even see the sun it’s through a window, which filters out many of the beneficial wavelengths of sunlight. That has to change.

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Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

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In fact, one of the most consistent observations across a wide variety of mammals is that they play. Cats, rats, and mice play. Monkeys and apes definitely play. Aquatic mammals, like dolphins and orcas, play. And humans play. That means the common ancestor of mammals was probably a big player, too, and that play confers some evolutionary benefit to fitness. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been preserved.

What is Play?

The official definition of play:

• It’s fun and intrinsically pleasurable.

• It’s voluntary.

• It has no obvious survival value.

• Diminishes your sensation of time—time flies. Flow state.

• It’s improvisational.

The interesting thing about play is that it is metabolically costly. It expends energy that could otherwise be dedicated to obtaining calories, securing shelter, or, in today’s world, making money. Play doesn’t come free in other words, and it doesn’t offer any direct material benefits, so why do we do it?

Benefits of Play

Studies in animals find that play “prunes” the cerebellum as they mature. It weeds out the immaterial or counterproductive connections in the brain and establishes the pathways that work, make sense, and help fitness. Rats in one study who didn’t play as pups had less efficient cerebral pruning than the rats who got to play.

In kids, play teaches them how to deal with other people. How to give and take, how to lose well and be magnanimous in victory. If you can play games and have fun without burning bridges, you’ll have friends—it’s grade school networking.

As adults, play is how we maintain connections. It breaks boundaries between people, and, maybe more importantly, boundaries within us.

Play also increases neuroplasticity. To enter into situations that require spontaneous reactions and improvisation and incorporate physical movement, the brain has to adjust. It has to coordinate different regions and trailblaze new pathways. Play is like training free weights for the mind.

Play can also be a great way to stay in physical shape. If you can turn your fitness practice into play, it stops being work. You no longer have to force yourself to “train,” because now you’re playing. Something like an obstacle course is a great way to exercise without realizing you’re doing it.

Play keeps you young. It creates a gene expression signal of “this person is young, vibrant, and full of life.”

Finally and most importantly, it’s fun. Fun isn’t unimportant. Fun is good for its own sake—it keeps us wanting to stay alive.

Thank you for reading!

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

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Today it’s reversed. If we want to get to sleep at a reasonable time, we have to make an effort. There are a million worries, devices, and streaming services vying for our attention that we must ignore or reject. Our houses are filled with artificial lights whose blue wavelengths disrupt our melatonin production, tricking our bodies into thinking it’s still daytime. We may even have jobs that require us to stay awake long into the night.

It’s a total mess.

Why Sleep is Important

That’s why Primal Blueprint Law #6 is “Get Plenty of Sleep.” It’s not something we can take for granted anymore. We have to make a concerted effort just to approach the ancestral sleep expectations of our ancient genes. 

Because without adequate sleep, everything in the body goes wrong:

• Cortisol goes up: the stress hormone cortisol rises in response to sleep deprivation, increasing our risk of gaining body fat, opposing the beneficial effects of our sex hormones, and setting the stage for degenerative diseases.

• Brain function declines: When we don’t sleep, our mental performance suffers. Our memory is worse and our reaction time is slower. And one of the best predictors of dementia later in life is poor sleep.

• Physical performance suffers: Poor sleep makes exercise harder to do and more dangerous, throwing off our balance and making us more prone to mistakes. Driving on a bad night’s sleep is arguably as dangerous as drunk driving.

• Immunity plummets: Inadequate sleep is a strong predictor of getting sick. The less you sleep, the more likely you are to succumb to all the bugs floating around.

• Cravings increase: After a bad night’s sleep, junk food is literally more attractive to your brain’s reward systems. 

Sleep is a physiological non-negotiable.

How to Prioritize Sleep

You have to make sleep a priority. 

• Set a bedtime, and stick to it.

• Get a bedtime routine that lets your body know it’s time to sleep.

• Get natural light throughout the day, especially in the morning.

• Turn off electronics two hours before bed. If you must use a device, wear blue blocking goggles.

• Handle all your responsibilities during the day so nothing is left hanging over you.

Finally, heed all the other Primal Blueprint Laws, because they all work together. Exercise, sunlight, and healthy eating habits all promote better sleep—and vice versa.

Thank you for reading!

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

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Humans are the best walkers on earth, but we’re probably the worst sprinters. In a 100-meter dash, just about any quadruped would outpace us. This doesn’t diminish the importance of sprinting in our repertoire of Primal Blueprint movement—sprinting remains one of the foundational human movement patterns.

That’s why “Sprint Once in a While” is Primal Blueprint Law #5.

Why We Need to Sprint

We aren’t good compared to other species, but sprinting is an essential part of being human. A set of footprints, discovered in Australia and dating back almost 20,000 years, revealed something extraordinary. Researchers analyzed these prints and concluded that the man who left them was running at about 23 miles per hour—a speed on par with modern Olympic sprinters—in the mud.

Another clue lies in observing children. Notice how they sprint instinctively when they want to get somewhere. They are creatures of desire, and sprinting is their most fundamental way of achieving what they want in the shortest possible time. This instinctive behavior underlines the importance of sprinting, not just as a form of exercise, but as an essential human movement.

Our anatomy also speaks to this: the glutes are among the strongest muscles in the human body, primarily driving explosive movements like sprints. This is a clear indication of our natural inclination for sprinting.

Barring previous injury, we’re all meant to sprint—which is why it’s a staple of Primal fitness. It builds both anaerobic and aerobic capacity while promoting growth hormone secretion, fat mobilization, and maximum power development. Simply put, if you want to build lean mass and burn body fat, sprinting at least once a week is the way to achieve both.

Sprinting Rules

Sprinting isn’t just about running fast. There’s a methodology to it:

• Sprinting should be about maximum effort at all times. When you feel yourself slowing down, end the sprint.

• Take as long as you need to recharge and recover between sprints. Remember: maximum effort.

• If your feet are strong enough and you’ve spent a lot of time preparing your bare feet, I recommend getting a pair of barefoot shoes like Peluvas or, if the running surface allows, going barefoot.

• Your session shouldn’t take much longer than ten or fifteen minutes. Any longer and you’re probably no longer sprinting. Anywhere from 4-8 sprints is plenty for most people.

• Do it once a week at most unless you’re a sprint athlete. Every 7-10 days is plenty for most people and provides ample recovery time.

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Ways to Sprint

Sprinting doesn’t have to be running on a flat track, either. There are many sprint alternatives:

• Beach sprints

• Hill sprints

• Stair machines

• Bikes

• Rowers

• Ellipticals

• Rope pulldowns

• Swimming

• Jump rope

• Versaclimber

Do some form of intense anaerobic sprint bursts several times a week. This could be as simple as six or eight (or more) short sprints up a hill, on the grass, at the beach… or repeated intense sessions on a bicycle (stationary, road or mountain bike). These short bursts also increase human growth hormone release (HGH is actually released in proportion to the intensity (not the duration) of the exercise).

Sprinting is Relative

And finally, sprinting is relative. What’s sprinting for you might look very different than sprinting for a high school athlete. Sprinting once in a while is about giving maximum effort in a safe manner.

If that’s running 100 m repeats on a track, perfect.

If that’s doing 10 second sprints on a stationary bike with 90 seconds of rest in between, perfect.

Just give max effort in a manner congruent with the health of your tissues and joints, get plenty of rest and recovery in between individual sprints, and you are sprinting.

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Humans are weight-bearing animals. We aren’t as absolutely strong as other animals our size, but we have unique attributes that make us better at lifting than most animals. We have opposable thumbs and highly mobile hip and shoulder joints to allow us to manipulate real-world objects through time and space, defying gravity. We have giant brains that allow us to strategize how to lift objects and coordinate the different joints through complex movements.

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Modern life has made lifting an extracurricular activity. No longer do we have to lift and carry haunches of prey for miles to camp if we want to eat. Most of us don’t have to build our own living structures or carry water or physically exert ourselves if we don’t want to. But the physiological requirement for lifting heavy things remains, thus it's addition within the Primal Blueprint Movement. Without it, we simply aren’t very healthy.

Benefits of Lifting Heavy Things

Lifting heavy things makes us stronger. If we’re stronger, we are happier and healthier, and we maintain our ability to function longer as we age. We simply have more options open to us as we interact with the world. We aren’t limited by physical strength, whether it’s playing with our kids, climbing the stairs, or doing anything else requiring our muscles.

Lifting heavy things gives us better balance. The stronger our muscles and the more coordinated they are, the less likely we are to trip and fall. We are better at navigating the environment and maintaining a solid base.

Lifting heavy things gives us stronger, denser, more robust bones, so even though we have better balance and are less likely to fall, if we do fall our bones won’t fracture as easily.

Lifting heavy things also increases organ reserve, meaning we can bounce back from injuries and hospital stays and downtime more easily.

Lifting heavy things builds more muscle, which is metabolically active. The more muscle you have, the more storage you have for glycogen, the more likely you are to be insulin sensitive, and the less likely you are to develop metabolic disease.

In short, the more muscle we have, the better we live. The longer we live. The more capable we are in life. And the better we look, feel, and perform.

It’s important to understand that this is all relative: not everyone is going to end up looking like Schwarzenegger or be able to do a dozen pull-ups in a row. What will happen if you lift heavy things is getting stronger muscles and bones and improving your capacity to enjoy life.

How to Lift Heavy Things

Lift weights for 25-40 minutes, 2-3 times a week. Focus on movements that involve the entire body and in wider ranges of motion—not just on isolating body parts. This can happen in the gym, in your home gym, or outside in nature. The weights you lift can be barbells, kettlebells, machines, or your own bodyweight. Whatever setting you choose, emulate the movements of our ancestors:

• Knee flexion: back squats, front squats, lunges, reverse lunges, step ups, skater squats, pistol squats, or hack squats

• Hip extension: deadlifts, romanian deadlifts, kettlebell swings, Nordic curls, or glute ham raises

• Horizontal pressing: bench press, pushups, or chest press

• Overhead pressing: military press, handstand pushup, dumbbell overhead press, kettlebell press, incline press, or decline pushups

• Downward pressing: dips, decline bench press, incline pushups, or tricep pulldowns

• Horizontal pulls: bent over rows, machine rows, dumbbell rows, or inverted row

• Overhead pulls: pullups, lat pulldowns, or assisted pullups

• Arms: bicep curls, tricep extensions, or tricep pulldowns

Hit each of these movement patterns at least twice a week for 2-3 sets, making sure you approach failure or at least “feel it.” Your sets should be hard.

This will stimulate your genes to increase muscle strength and power, increase bone density, improve insulin sensitivity, stimulate growth hormone secretion, and consume stored body fat. The biochemical signals created by these very brief but intense muscle contractions generate a slight surge in growth hormone and testosterone and a reduction in myostatin gene expression, prompting an increase in muscle size and power; particularly fast twitch fibers.

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While people often discuss humans as being suited for endurance running, sprinting, or strength activities, our primary attribute is walking. Humans are the best walkers on the planet. We walk upright, surveying our environment with stereoscopic vision that allows us to see far into the distance, and we have opposable thumbs to carry tools and weapons while on the move.

The best evidence, drawn from studying existing hunter-gatherer cultures worldwide, suggests that 10 to 15 miles per day was the average walking range for humans throughout history. We conquered the planet by walking across it. Walking arguably made us who we are today.

Why We Need to Move Frequently at a Slow Pace

We know that our ancestors spent an average of several hours each day moving about at what today’s exercise physiologists might describe as a “low level aerobic pace.” They hunted, gathered, foraged, wandered, scouted, migrated, climbed and crawled. This low level of activity prompted their genes to build a stronger capillary (blood vessel) network to fuel each muscle cell, to be able to store some excess food as fat, but also to be readily able to convert the stored fat back into energy. It relied primarily on stored fat for energy rather than exogenous carbohydrates. Note that they did NOT go out and “jog” at 80% of their MAX Heart Rate for long periods of time as Conventional Wisdom suggests you do today for "cardio."

It's important to recognize that long walks aren’t about traditional exercise, working out, or burning calories.

People who walk the most have the lowest risk of mortality and diseases of aging like dementia, diabetes, and cancer, and among the elderly natural walking speed is a strong predictor of mortality risk. The faster you walk and the more you walk, the longer and better you live. Moving frequently is essentially a baseline for basic health and fitness.

How Frequently?

Today we do some form of low level aerobic activity 2-5 hours a week, whether it is walking, hiking, easy bike riding or swimming. Ideally, and when possible, find time to go barefoot or wear as little foot support as possible. Low-level activity is necessary (especially if you find yourself chained to a desk every day). The combined effect will be an increase in capillary perfusion, fat-burning and overall integration of muscle strength and flexibility.

If you’re looking for a step target, aim for 10,000 steps a day, in addition to other physical activities like workouts, sprints, and cardio. However, the real goal is constant movement. This could be going for longer walks, walking your dog, taking a stroll after dinner, or engaging in more concerted efforts like backpacking trips, gardening, playing with your kids, or choosing stairs over elevators. All these activities contribute to a solid baseline of fitness, making the more intense workouts easier and more effective.

How Slowly?

Almost anything can be an aerobic activity. Naturally, the fitter you are, the higher the intensity of movement you can handle while still considering it slow movement. The key is to do what feels slow and easy for you throughout the day, whether that’s walking around town on a flat path or power-walking up a mountain.

One good way to gauge whether the movement you’re doing qualifies as a “low level aerobic pace” is tracking your heart rate. If you’re able to maintain a heart rate of 180 minus your age, you’re “moving frequently at a slow pace.” This intensity won’t be stressful, won’t increase cortisol, and will allow you to primarily burn fat for energy.

If you don’t want to track heart rate, you can estimate whether the movement is slow and low intensity-enough by holding a conversation. If you can easily talk without losing your breath, you’re moving slow.

Accumulating as much slow movement throughout the day as you can is one of the most vital Primal Blueprint Laws—it’s the foundation for fitness and health.

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For example, plants that were incredibly toxic and would kill you or make you immediately sick after eating. Or meat and other animal products that had gone bad or hosted food borne pathogens that could quickly kill or weaken you.

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In the modern world, acute poisons are pretty much absent from the food supply. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of years to figure out how to avoid the foods that are acutely toxic, and food safety laws, for the most part, do a good job of limiting exposure to food borne pathogens.

What we have to worry about, and what our ancestors by and large did not, are foods to which we have not adapted. Modern foods that were largely unavailable before the advent of agriculture, and that were completely unavailable before the industrial food system.

Avoiding poisonous things these days means avoiding the sources of hidden dangers in our food system. 

Avoid Grains

Grains employ chemical anti-nutrients to prevent or dissuade animals from eating them. After all, grains are seeds, and for a seed to propagate, it must avoid digestion by an animal and survive to germinationl. These anti-nutrients include things like phytates and lectins, and even the primary proteins in grains like gluten.

These compounds won’t kill you over the course of a day, a week, a month, or even a year, but they can suppress the immune system, impair mineral absorption, and negatively impact gut health over the long term. Eaten as a staple food, grains can make the diet less nutritious than it appears on paper, and it can result in nutrient deficiencies, poor growth, and impaired vitality.

The grains to limit, in order from worst to least bad:

1. Wheat: Wheat is the richest source of gluten in the diet, and even if you aren’t celiac or gluten-sensitive, there’s evidence that it triggers zonulin—the compound that opens up the gut to invaders.

2. Ancient wheats like emmet, spelt, korasan: The more ancestral forms of wheat don’t have all the same issues as modern dwarf wheat. They contain less gluten, and the gluten they contain isn’t as pernicious to the gut lining. They often are produced in a more organic manner that uses fewer pesticides. And since they retain the deeper root systems, they tend to be richer in minerals.

3. Rye and barley: Rye and barley both contain gluten, but it’s a weaker, less potent form of the gluten found in wheat.

4. Millet: Millet is an ancient grain with a long history of use by humans, albeit one with anti-thyroid effects. In fact, in vivo studies show that eating normal amounts of millet can elicit anti-thyroid effects similar to anti-thyroid pharmaceuticals.

5. Oats: Oats aren’t the worst kind of grain, nor are they the best. Oats do have high levels of phytic acid, which can inhibit mineral absorption if you rely too much on it, but it also has some beneficial attributes like beta-glucan. 

6. Corn: Corn isn’t the worst. Just make sure to eat nixtamalized or sprouted corn when possible.

7. Rice: Rice is fairly innocuous. White rice especially has little to no anti-nutrients and is a nice source of pure carbohydrate (if you need that sort of thing). Good for replenishing glycogen after hard workouts.

Avoid Refined Sugar

Refined sugar is another. In nature, in whole foods, sugar comes attached to nutrients and other compounds that aid and maintain our ability to metabolize sugar. The phytonutrients in fruits, the fiber in fruits, minerals like magnesium and potassium, improve glucose tolerance and help us process sugar and remain insulin sensitive.

That’s why, in modern clinical trials, people have vastly different metabolic responses to honey, which is a whole food source of sugar, versus white sugar, which is a refined sugar stripped of all nutrients. That’s why a piece of fruit is very different from a bottle of Coke. Heck, that’s why a glass of orange juice is very different from a glass of Coke. Even though the orange juice has just as much sugar as Coke, it also comes with phytonutrients and vitamins and minerals that change the metabolic consequences of consuming it.

Avoid Industrial Seed Oils

Industrial seed oils represent perhaps the biggest change to the human dietary landscape in the last 10,000 years with the introduction and wholesale replacement of traditional animal fats with industrial seed oils. The fat we eat is used to build our cell membranes. The fat we eat literally determines the structure of our bodies, and a body built out of seed oils is very different from a body built out of traditional fats. Cells made of polyunsaturated linoleic acid found in industrial seed oils are more prone to oxidative damage and more prone to mitochondrial dysfunction, which means we can’t generate enough ATP to power the cells of our bodies. And our tissue's composition of highly unsaturated fats helps determine our inflammatory response. If we eat too many industrial seed oils and have highly unsaturated omega-6-rich tissues, the result is a more inflammatory baseline.

Industrial seed oils are not just prone to oxidation in the body but also in the kitchen. Most restaurants use seed oils extensively in their deep fryers, in their pans, and in their sauces and dressings. The processed food industry also loads their products with seed oils because they’re cheap, they make food taste good, and they promote the formation of endocannabinoids that make us crave more junk food.

In nature, in whole foods, concentrated sources of linoleic acid come with antioxidant nutrients and vitamins, like vitamin E, that protect the fragile fats from oxidizing and going rancid. But once you turn those seeds into a slurry that you treat with hexane and other solvents to extract the oil, you produce a fragile source of concentrated linoleic acid that is prone to oxidizing, either in the kitchen or in your cells.

It’s also worth noting that most wild animals we evolved consuming were lower in linoleic acid than modern animals like poultry, pork, and farmed fish. The concentrated dose of linoleic acid found in seed oils and processed foods made with seed oils are an evolutionary anomaly we simply aren’t equipped to handle. 

The oils to avoid:

• Soybean oil

• Sunflower/safflower oil

• Canola/rapeseed oil

• Grapeseed oil

• Rice bran oil

• Cottonseed oil

• Peanut oil

Thank you for reading!

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

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This provided all the fuel and building blocks that, along with specific exercise, prompted their genes to create strong muscles and enabled them to expend lots of energy each day moving about, to maintain healthy immune systems, to evolve larger brains, and to raise healthy children. The core of the physiologically appropriate human diet consists of plants and animals, specifically whole foods that are relatively unprocessed and can be made edible and nourishing with simple preparation techniques like cooking with fire, cutting, and mashing.

What food can you eat on the Primal diet?

• Animals from the land: Beef, lamb, bison, pork, poultry (and their eggs), all matter of game. Favor grass-fed and pastured animals, which have better fatty acids and contain more vitamins and minerals (and taste better). Insects, too, fall under this category. Dairy products (preferably full-fat) are optional but allowed.

• Animals from the sea: Fish of the large and small, oily varieties, crustaceans (crab, lobster, prawns, shrimp), bivalves (clams, mussels, oysters, scallops), cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish). Wild-caught fish are best, but farmed shellfish are usually raised exactly like wild shellfish and thus are fine.

• Unlimited produce: Leafy greens of all kinds, colorful plants, cruciferous vegetables, roots, alliums, and tubers. When it comes to fruit, berries are best. Otherwise, prioritize in-season options. 

• Nuts and seeds: Macadamias, walnuts, cashews, almonds, pecans, brazil nuts, pistachios, hazelnuts; pumpkin, squash, sunflower, chia, hemp seeds.

• Fats: Butter (especially grass-fed), coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, red palm and regular palm oil, ghee, and animal fats (lard, tallow, duck fat, etc.).

• Herbs and spices: Spices and herbs like cumin, coriander, thyme, rosemary, sage, chili powder, mint, turmeric, paprika, garlic, and cayenne add flavor to dishes and prevent the breakdown of vital nutrients during cooking so that when you add spices or herbs, your food tastes better and is actually healthier for you.

This foundational diet excludes modern interpretations of animal products, such as chicken nuggets or other forms of mechanically and industrially processed meats. Additionally, it does not incorporate significant quantities of refined grains, processed sugars, and industrial seed oils, which either necessitate extensive processing to make them digestible or are devoid of their intrinsic nutrients that aid in their consumption and metabolism.

Support for this foundational human diet comes from three principal avenues of evidence: archaeological, anatomical, and clinical trials.

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Archaeological findings

Archaeological findings are clear-cut: these were the foods consumed by ancient humans.

• Enormous herbivores like mammoths etched with cut marks from human tools are found in our archaeological records.

• We find bones with marrow extracted in ways no other species but humans could achieve, and numerous ancient slaughter sites with remains of antelope, deer, and rabbits.

• Enormous shell middens along coastlines, dating back tens and even hundreds of thousands of years, point to seafood as a consistent source of protein and fat.

• The presence of humans has historically been followed by the decline of large herbivores in the same regions, suggesting that we were good at catching, killing, and eating them.

Human anatomy and physiology

Human anatomy and physiology reveal that we are built to digest both meat and plants. The human gut presents high acidity levels akin to those of carnivorous wildlife, indicating a diet rich in easily digestible meat and animal fats. Our digestive tract is also relatively short, signaling an adaptation towards foods that do not require the extensive digestive systems found in herbivores, which have larger or multiple stomachs for breaking down fibrous plant matter. While not strictly carnivorous, the human anatomy is clearly adapted to an omnivorous diet that includes both plant and animal sources.

Clinical evidence

The clinical evidence, while not as conclusive—mostly due to the logistical and financial challenges of conducting large-scale dietary trials in humans—still offers insights.

• Certain foods that have been a part of the human diet for millennia, like red meat, are shown to promote health and provide essential nutrients unavailable from other sources, such as vitamin B12, carnitine, and creatine. Studies involving senior citizens have demonstrated that a diet rich in red meat can lower inflammation and improve muscle strength, handgrip strength, daily functionality, and even cognitive function.^1,2 If red meat were truly detrimental and inflammatory, we would expect these vulnerable populations to show adverse effects, yet the evidence suggests they become healthier and more robust.

• Animal protein from meat and even processed dairy outperforms plant protein extracted from strange sources like beans and grains using industrial processes unavailable for most of human history.³

• Fish consumption improves attention in children, and these changes are linked to increased omega-3 levels in tissue.⁴

• Human trials where participants are given colorful fruits, berries, and vegetables, tubers like potatoes and sweet potatoes, crucifers like broccoli and cauliflower, and leafy greens like kale or arugula are almost uniformly positive. 

• Even small human trials of diets that emulate the ancestral or paleolithic foods our ancestors would have consumed are uniformly positive.⁵

All relevant evidence points to plants and animals forming the basis of a healthy human diet. The amounts of each component are up to you, but you can’t escape the need for plants and animals.

References

1. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24477043 ↩

2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28721837/ ↩

3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25702958/ ↩

4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32529206/ ↩

5. https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/33/6/596/6104/Marked-Improvement-in-Carbohydrate-and-Lipid ↩

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Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

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But planks get boring. And sometimes, a basic plank isn’t providing the right amount of stimulus to the right spots for your goals. That’s when you turn to plank variations that make the exercise more interesting, target different tissues, and force different adaptations.

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Here are ten of the best variations on the standard plank.

Knee Plank

This exercise helps strengthen your core, and improves stability and posture without being quite so intense as the standard plank. It's probably the best place for someone to start who's never done a plank before and worries about their ability to perform one. To perform this, position your elbows directly below your shoulders and raise your body off the ground, supporting your weight on your forearms and knees. Your body should form a straight line from head to knees. Try to hold this position for as long as you can.

Muscles hit: Engages the transverse abdominis, rectus abdominis, and obliques, along with the glutes, shoulders. Because of the knee resting position, the quads are mostly taken out of it.

High Plank

This variation is essentially the top of a push-up position. It targets the core, but also engages the shoulders, chest, and quads. Start in a push-up position with your palms flat on the ground, hands shoulder-width apart, and arms straight. Your body should form a straight line from head to heels.

Muscles hit: The high plank hits all the same muscles as the standard plank with a bit more emphasis on the upper body, including the shoulders and triceps.

Side Plank

This variation targets the obliques, the muscles on the side of your torso. Begin on your side with your feet together and one forearm directly below your shoulder. Raise your hips until your body is straight from head to feet. Hold this position without letting your hips drop. Repeat on the other side.

Muscles hit: The side plank is very good at targeting the obliques.

Shoulder Tap Plank

Adding shoulder taps to a high plank can increase the intensity of the exercise and engage your upper body more actively. From a high plank position, lift one hand off the ground and tap your opposite shoulder. Keep your core engaged and try to avoid rocking your hips.

Muscles hit: The shoulder tap places some engagement on the deltoids, but most of it comes from forcing the core musculature to support the movement and lack of support from the arm.

Plank with Knee to Opposite Elbow

This plank variation not only targets your core, but also works your lower body. From a high plank position, bring one knee up towards the elbow on the opposite side. Return to the starting position and repeat with the other leg.

Muscles hit: This is a real ab shredder.

Spiderman Plank

Imagine Spiderman crawling along a skyscraper and you'll get the feel for this variation, which can help increase hip mobility and core strength—particularly the serratus and transverse abdominis  From a high plank position, bring one knee out to the side, trying to touch your elbow. Return to the starting position and repeat on the other side.

Muscles hit: The obliques and hip flexors are hardest hit, while there's also intense activation of the transverse abdominis and rectus abdominis (which can be difficult to train directly).

Reverse Plank

This plank variation targets the posterior chain muscles, including the glutes, hamstrings, lower back, and triceps. Sit on the floor with your legs extended in front of you. Place your palms on the floor behind you, fingers pointing towards your feet. Push through your palms and lift your hips and torso towards the ceiling.

Muscles hit: Perhaps the most unique variation, the reverse plank targets the posterior chain, including the glutes, hamstrings, lower back, and triceps, but also works the anterior deltoids and pectorals. There's less "direct" activation of the core musculature.

Three-Point Plank

This plank variation challenges your balance and engages your core even more intensively. From a high plank position, lift one foot off the ground and hold. Keep your body steady and your hips level. Try switching to lifting one hand off the ground and hold while keeping both feet down.

You can also try the Two-Point Plank, where you alternate between lifting left elbow/right foot and right elbow/left foot.

Muscles hit: In addition to the core muscles which are hit from a unique angle and bias, the gluteus medius and minimus on the lifted leg's side also activate to support the leg.

Plank Jacks

This is a dynamic plank variation that combines cardiovascular exercise with strength training. From a high plank position, jump your feet out wide like you're doing a jumping jack, then back together.

If that's too easy, try jumping out your hands as well.

Muscles hit: The transverse abdominis, rectus abdominis, and obliques are all engaged along with the glutes and hip abductors. The tibialis (shin bone) anterior also helps absorb the impact.

Plank Up-Downs

This plank variation provides a full body workout, particularly engaging the shoulders and core. Start in a high plank position. Lower one elbow to the ground, then the other, coming into a forearm plank. Then, place one hand on the ground, then the other, pushing back up into a high plank.

Muscles hit: The dynamic movement between high and forearm plank position engages the triceps, pectorals, and deltoids plus smaller stabilizer muscles of the shoulder girdle in addition to the normal core muscles targeted by planks.

I hope you enjoy some of these variations. Let me know in comment section which ones you do!

Thank you for reading!

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

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Enter the plank. Planks seem like the simplest exercise imaginable, and while they aren’t that complicated, there are a few things to keep in mind if you want to get the most bang for your buck.

Proper Plank Form

1. Get in the pushup position, but put your forearms on the ground instead of your hands. Your elbows should line up directly underneath your shoulders. Toes on the ground.

2. Squeeze your glutes and tighten your abdominals. Imagine you're pinching a quarter between your butt cheeks.

3. Look at the ground to keep a neutral neck and spine. You may feel like your chin is tucked a bit.

4. Tuck your pelvis. Instead of arching your back, do a slight pelvic tuck to really engage your abs. The pelvic tuck also allows you to use your quads and push against the ground with your feet.

5. Push against the ground. Shoulder blades should protract.

6. Create a straight, strong line from head to toes. A single cohesive piece. In other words, a plank.

7. Hold that position.

What Muscles Do Planks Work?

The plank is a total body effort. When you're in the plank position, every fiber of your being is resisting the pull of gravity. You must engage and tighten every inch of musculature in your body to resist collapse and maintain coherence throughout the line your body forms. During a plank, you are quite literally holding the line against the most omnipresent force in the known universe.

• Your abs are working to keep the spine from collapsing.

• Your glutes are contracting to support your lower back.

• Your erector spinae muscles are engaged to keep your spine cohesive and neutral.

• Your quads are contracting to stabilize your legs.

• Your hip flexors are activated to prevent your hips from breaking.

• Your serratus anterior is working to stabilize your shoulders.

And on and on and on. You're placing your spinal column in the most disadvantageous position imaginable, exposed along every inch to the pull of gravity. You're working everything during a plank.

Plank Benefits

Research shows that planks make you stronger, particularly in the trunk muscle. They can even increase the thickness of your abdominal muscles. In people who are fairly untrained, simply doing nothing but planks for a few weeks will increase their overall fitness levels. Not just trunk strength, that is, but general fitness.¹

Studies show that incorporating planks into the training of athletes can reduce injury rates by making their bodies more resilient. It turns out that having strong, stable trunk muscles makes you more resistant to all the various forces acting on you during athletic activity.²

In short, planks are exercise, and exercise improves almost every health marker you can imagine. The thing about planks is that they appear to be a low intensity, easy exercise that most people never even consider doing. To the uninitiated, a plank might look like doing nothing at all.

Plank Variations

If you get bored of the traditional plank, there are other versions you can try.

Long Lever Plank

Instead of placing your elbows directly underneath your shoulders, place them several inches in front of your shoulders, thereby lengthening the lever and increasing the difficulty. Research shows that this increases activation of various trunk muscles.³ The more your elbows stray ahead of your shoulders, the harder it gets.

Side Plank

Do the plank on your side, supporting yourself with one hand placed on the ground and one edge of your foot wedged against the ground. Switch sides.

Contralateral Plank

Get in the traditional plank position, only support yourself contra laterally—either your left elbow and right foot touching or your right elbow and left foot touching.

Find more plank variations in THIS POST.

Things to Remember

1. Don’t let your hips sag down to the ground. Sagging hips makes the exercise initially easier, but it’s not a plank and it defeats the purpose of the exercise.

2. Don't look up! Look down at the ground. This is a good prompt for maintaining a neutral neck position.

3. Don't go to failure. When your form begins to suffer, pull the plug. You’re only benefiting from the plank by actually doing the plank with proper technique.

4. Don't overly arch your back. Keep that pelvis tucked.

Even if you never progress (or choose to progress) to the other plank variations, the basic plank, performed properly, will be sufficient for developing good core stability, strength, and overall resilience.

Got any more questions about planks? Drop them in the comments.

References

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34441051/ ↩

2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29558776/ ↩

3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25325773/ ↩

Mark’s Daily Apple is still under construction. My team and I are actively working to repost the archives. Check back regularly to find posts that are new to you and revisit old favorites. Looking for a specific post? Let us know here.

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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and isn’t intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.

Many tell me how much they love the concept. It’s a feature that makes the Primal lifestyle possible for them.

Others suggest that it leaves too much room for backsliding.

Still others find it confusing—does it mean living 100% Primal only 80% of the time and partying it up that other 20%? Or does it mean living 80% Primal 100% of the time? (The answer is neither, as you’ll see.)

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I love having these kinds of discussions within the community. Your perspectives help me to continue to grow and evolve my thinking even after all these years. So let me share my perspective on the 80/20 principle, and I encourage you to share your own thoughts in the comments as well. Just because I’m “the Primal guy” doesn’t mean I get to dictate how you interpret what it means to live Primally, nor how you embody these teachings in your own life. It’s obviously a general principle and, as such, it’s intended to mean different things to different people.

What Is the 80/20 Principle, And What Is It NOT?

In short, the 80/20 principle is designed make Primal doable in the context of the modern world. It’s a feature that makes the Primal Blueprint a fully achievable, enduring lifestyle that reconciles with the grind and disruptions of daily life.

Let me put it this way: the 80/20 principle is an acknowledgment that we’re adults who take full responsibility for every choice but occasionally find ourselves in circumstances that aren’t conducive to adhering fully to the Primal Laws.

You should always have the intention to do your best, to aim for 100%. But you should not let your commitment to Primal living become a source of stress or anxiety, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up or throw in the towel when perfection isn’t possible.

You have agency and reasoning skills, so you should be able to make conscious compromises. Perhaps you’re on vacation and really want the experience of sampling the local cuisine. For you, it’s part of the adventure. You authentically choose within the 80/20 principle to make the most of your hard earned adventure. (Personally, this is my favorite manifestation of the principle.) Maybe it’s a special anniversary or family gathering. You don’t use the situation as an excuse to wildly abandon your commitment to health and longevity. You loosen the strings enough to find the best balance between short-term experience and long-term goals.

Sometimes the 80/20 principle is a matter of feasibility. Travel doesn’t always present the most ideal Primal options. A difficult period in your life (new baby, death or serious illness in the family) may temporarily disrupt your focus or ability to do all the good things you normally incorporate into your routine.

There are also the Primal ideals, especially when it comes to food. I know not everyone has ready access to or the budget for grass-fed beef, pastured butter, organic produce, or a wide diversity of produce year round. This is where that old saying comes in: “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” The majority of the health benefits from Primal come from eliminating the grains, sugars, and nasty oils. Worrying about organic, local, and so on is the cherry on top. Likewise, if all you manage right now is walking and microworkouts, but you haven’t found a way to build sprints into your routine yet, you’re still miles ahead of the person who is still sedentary.

Sometimes you just have to do the best you can. It’s not a question of motivation or commitment but the influence of external conditions. Think of it as a cushion, not a cop-out, and focus on the big picture. Primal success is less about what you do at any one meal or single bout at the gym and more about what you do over the course of a given week or month.

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And What Is It Not?

Most importantly, it isn’t permission to only shoot for 80% compliance or success. If you set out to make your Primal commitment 80%, guess what. It will likely fall well below that. If you set out to make your commitment 100%, you’ll probably settle in somewhere between 80 and 95%.

It doesn’t mean getting 20% of your calories from ice cream and the other 80% from meats and salads. The 80/20 principle isn’t about “cheating” 20% of the time.

It isn’t intended as a “get-out-of-Primal-free card” for flocking to grains, skimping on fat or protein, or ignoring a continuing sleep deficit.

It doesn’t mean you’re perfect during the week and then go on a bender on the weekend.

It doesn’t mean working out 10 months of the year and then taking two months off to veg on the couch.

It doesn’t mean picking your favorite 8 of the 10 Primal Blueprint laws and scrapping the other two.

And let me be clear: there’s nothing wrong with achieving 100%. If you find the Primal Laws easy to incorporate fully into your life, that’s cause for celebration, not concern. I would never suggest that you’re missing out on life because you don’t feel the need to indulge in conscious compromises. More power to you if you’re happy and fulfilled without them.

Is This the Same as the 80/20 Rule Diet?

Decidedly no, but I’ve gotten this question a fair amount, so let’s clear it up. When people talk about the 80/20 diet, they usually mean the eating strategy attributed to Australian nutritionist, chef, and personal trainer Teresa Cutter. In this approach, you are supposed to “be good” 80% of the time, but you are allowed to indulge the other 20% of the time within reason. No foods are off the table. It’s a “have your cake and eat it too” diet, and it’s very much NOT what the Primal 80/20 principle represents.

The Primal 80/20 principle isn’t a diet at all; it’s more of a mindset. It’s about giving yourself permission not to be perfect, not actually planning dietary excursions into your week. By the same token, the 80/20 principle isn’t carb cycling, alternate day fasting, or any other structured eating pattern. With those, the assumption is that you're (mostly) sticking to Primal foods but eating at specific times or with certain macronutrient ratios.

And of course, the Primal Blueprint encompasses more than nutrition, so the Primal 80/20 principle does as well. All aspects of Primal living—movement, sleep, stress management, social connection, cognitive challenge—fall under the 80/20 umbrella. There are probably some aspects you’re closer to 100% on most of the time and others you struggle with. For me, the food part is easy, but I’ve historically struggled with the stress bit.

When Does the 80/20 Principle NOT Apply?

There are times when 100% compliance—or something close to it—is important. One example that comes to mind is when someone is using an elimination diet (autoimmune protocol, low-FODMAP, etc.) to explore chronic symptoms. Unless they are strict about eliminating and then systematically reintroducing potential trigger foods, the diet probably won’t be much use.

Another time when it makes sense to be stricter is during the transition to a keto diet. Ketosis is a notoriously fragile metabolic state. Eat a single high-carb meal or snack, and wham, you’re out. When you’re in the process of adapting to keto, it makes sense to be consistent for at least the first four to six weeks to facilitate the process. Even after that, there’s little wiggle room if staying in ketosis is important to you.

The Bottom Line

At its core, the 80/20 principle is a recognition that life isn’t totally predictable and that we’re not in Grok’s Kansas anymore. Denying that reality and trying to fit Primal principles perfectly into modern life can be like jamming a square peg into a round hole.

As the Primal Blueprint cements itself in your routine, it generally becomes easier (and more desirable) to live well above that 80%. That was my experience, and I can't even count how many people have told me the same over the years.  The Primal Blueprint comes naturally for me now because my entire lifestyle revolves around it and I've been doing it so long. It’s so much a part of my routine that I don’t often think about it except when I travel. It will become your normal as well, but the chance that you’ll always be the perfect Primal specimen are small. I’m not, and I’m fine with that.

I encourage everyone to focus on the process and the big picture, not simply the daily details. The Primal Blueprint is first and foremost about taking full responsibility for your life and health. No excuses, no guilt.

As always, thanks for reading, and keep the questions and comments coming!

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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and isn’t intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.