Starting EF
Welcome to our new subscribers and thanks. You are probably all wondering what to do now and how to get started. There are some things you need to know about this site and my philosophy.
First, everyone has to find their own way within the paradigm of Evolutionary Fitness. There is no one size fits all, because everyone is different genetically and behaviorally. Many who may struggle with their weight or health come with a long history of difficulties with food or a disinterest in exercise. Others may be here to stave off aging. Still others may wish to achieve superior bodies or athletic performance. There is a way here for all of them.
But, my attitude is to present the science and try to make it understandable so that you may begin making your own choices, informed with the new science of Evolutionary Fitness. It is all about making good choices informed through new paradigm represented by Evolutionary Fitness. It is, as Bryan Appleyard so aptly put it in his article about me, a new way to think about these things that is informed by new science and the evolutionary perspective.
Weight problems or metabolic diseases are the result of choices we make. Virtually every chronic modern disease is the result of choices we make over our life times. If you don’t take personal responsibility for your choices, and you have made a good start by being here, you will not accomplish your goals. Your choices need to be better informed and many of you have been led astray by the bewildering, conflicting and incorrect advice.
What you will find here is a new paradigm or model that will inform you so you make consistently good choices. That is the beginning of the new lifeway that you will live by following Evolutionary Fitness. It is not a diet, it is a way of life.
To begin, read my introductory Essay on Evolutionary Fitness. It lays out the evolutionary context and most of the tools for living the EF Way. Note, the Essay is available to subscribers only and is copyrighted. So, do not distribute them to others.
To go further, watch the DVD lectures, see the purchase link in the header of this page. The whole of Evolutionary Fitness is laid out there in roughly 7 hours of lectures and discussion.
Read the archives, there are many posts and essays there and deeper discussions of the active genotype and the wrongful perceptions and beliefs engendered by steady state or homeostatic thinking.
Ask questions. Most of our readers, including Bryan Appleyard, can answer questions for you and guide you in your transformation. I will respond as well. We have a community here to assist you. But, you have a lot to learn.
I won’t lay out a command and control menu as most diet or fitness programs do. They don’t work. Look at just about anyone in the gym or on a diet and you will see for yourself. Sweating and starving chronically are not productive. You will lose lean body mass and lower your metabolic rate. You may lose a bit of weight, but gain weight more readily after and continue on the up and down path, as Bryan did until he met me.
This is a sketch of the key ideas of Evolutionary Fitness.
1. The human mind and body are non-linear dynamic systems poised in a far-
from-equilibrium attractor. Health, fitness and diet are dynamic concepts.
Linear, static thinking (counting calories consumed and expended) is com-
pletely inadequate for devising effective strategies for health and fitness.
2. Human form and energy metabolism are adaptations to the evolutionary
environment. Virtually all of our human and prehuman ancestors lived as
hunter-gatherers in an environment dominated by Ice Ages.
3. Insulin resistance spares glucose for the brain and was an essential adaptation
to the glucose scarcity during the Ice Ages. In a modern world abundant
in cheap and readily available carbohydrate, insulin resistance sets us up
for hyperinsulemia (chronically elevated insulin) which is a major factor in
almost all modern diseases.
4. Hyperinsulemia and hypoexertion (wasting away of the lean mass of the
body through inactivity) are the most important health risks (the National
Institutes of Health) in Western cultures.
5. A conservative and effective strategy for attaining superior health and fitness
is to counter hyperinsulemia and hypoexertion by incorporating diet and ac-
tivity patterns from our evolutionary past.
6. An evolutionary diet is not a ”diet”. In the conventional meaning, being
on a ”diet” implies that you are restricting calories (as in a prescription)
and eating in a habitual manner. Evolutionary eating is not a diet, but a
natural way of eating. Properly considered, the purpose of a diet is to provide
nutrition and maintain health, not to lose weight.
7. In the Evolutionary Fitness Diet you consume abundant simple, fresh plant
foods rich in minerals, flavonoids, phenols, and phytochemicals, substances
that coevolved over millenia with humans and that no manufactured drugs or
substances could reproduce with present technology. The low carbohydrate
and near zero raw glucose content of the diet, combined with the natural
antioxidants provide protection from glucose-mediated oxidative damage to
body proteins; the advanced glycation end products that accelerate aging and
the stiffness caused by cross-linked proteins in connective tissues.
8. You do not eat in a habitual and highly regulated way; indeed, variation in
foods and caloric intake is an essential element of natural eating. Your food
is high in protein (by modern standards, but moderate in terms of the protein
intakes of hunter-gatherers), moderate in fat (but balanced in Omega 3 and
6 composition), and low in carbohydrate. It contains no grains, milk, beans
or processed foods. There is no caloric restriction because you eat only
nutritionally dense, low calorie food and your appetite is reset to become a
healthy guide to your nutritional needs.
9. An evolutionary activity pattern is mixed and varied. It contains brief, in-
termittent episodes of highly intense physical action mixed with languid pe-
riods and play. Healthy activities mimic the patterns of wild animals and
contain elements of chaos and order. Power laws that are typical of self-
organized, far-from-equilibrium, dynamic systems, describe such patterns.
10. Power law training, which is developed in the book, mimics the ancestral
activity pattern and promotes hormone drives that counter hyperinsulemia
and build lean body mass.
11. Most fitness programs, whether aerobics or weight training, are too unvaried
and routine; they result in overtraining, depletion of the body’s antioxidant
stores, compromised immunity, and are a chronic load on the body. They
take too much time and are ineffective. Dieting has a 95% failure rate wastes
lean body mass, and is unhealthful.
12. The evolutionary fitness diet and exercise program is very effective, takes
little time, and is fun. It is the right way to feed and care for your hunter-
gatherer body and mind.
You have much to explore here. What you learn and where you go from here are up to you.
