De Vany, Exercise, Diet

From The New Evolution Diet

Why do we get fat and sick? They are odd questions from an evolutionary perspective, because ancestral humans were not overweight. Nor were they ill in the ways we become in our civilised world today. We began getting fat and suffering new diseases once we ceased to live as hunter-gatherers and instead became farmers. …

The modern human genome is about 50,000 to 100,000 years old. Little has changed during that time except for some variation in genes that are localised, population-specific adaptations to disease, and some recent ones that involve nutrition, such as the ability to metabolise the sugar lactose contained in milk. I began to look into the relationship between the original human diet that was consumed by hunter-gatherers and our genetic make-up. I focused on 40,000 BC , when fully modern humans emerged. The diet they consumed back then was strikingly similar to what my family and I had developed as we attempted to control diabetes. The current debate over fat versus carbohydrate in the diet is anchored totally in the modern idea of eating. This is really an argument over fads, because virtually every modern diet is just a small variation on bad nutritional thinking. …

Contemporary hunter-gatherers have legendary endurance even though they eat little carbohydrate and certainly do not carbo-load before an event the way modern athletes do. Members of the Aché tribe of Paraguay expend 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day foraging, with meat and fat as their primary fuels (they also eat high-energy tubers that make a small contribution to their intake). The Inuit Eskimo eat a diet of fat and protein with almost no carbohydrate. They hunt and fish in cold, difficult terrain with ease. Native Americans relied on pemmican as their fuel, a mixture of meat, fat and berries. They could live for days on the energy, protein and antioxidants it supplied. …

I [used] the dynamic statistical models I developed in my research to the movement of wild animals, children at play, sports events. I would eventually use this to understand the complex energy dynamics of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers as they foraged for food. There were periods of feast and famine and mixtures of physical activity that varied enormously in intensity and duration.

Hunger motivates movement. This is a genetically engineered survival tactic. If you are starving, you have a powerful reason to get up and do something about it. Hunger also alters your bloodstream – it releases adrenaline and growth hormone to mobilise fat as fuel. That’s a good moment to exercise, if you’re interested in getting maximum results. An experimenter once told me he could not get his lab rats to do their mandatory exercise unless they were hungry. One well-fed rat would just sit on the treadmill and let the wheel rub the fur of its behind.

What was most revealing about trying to model the Palaeolithic energy environment was how our ancestors moved. A hunter had to walk long distances, sprint, and then, in the kill, had to execute abrupt, violent motions. If the hunt were successful, he’d have to lift and haul a heavy load back home. A gatherer, too, walked far depending on what she sought, and then had to return home bearing a burden. Most of life was random and unpredictable. There was no such thing as a ‘typical’ activity. A hunter expended energy in great bursts of activity and treks of varying length, but then, for a lot of the time, did absolutely nothing [..]

Every living creature throughout history has gone hungry now and then. Intermittent fasting is embedded in our metabolism; food scarcity was a normal part of life for our ancestors. The research suggests that prehistoric hunter-gatherers spent about one third of their lives hungry, which is more deprivation than we need for our purposes. But a little self-imposed food scarcity is a good thing. …

[B]rief fasting reduces oxidative stress and improves insulin sensitivity and protein turnover in muscle. A little hunger turns on your body’s repair mechanisms. So, doing without the occasional feeding is a powerful way to slow ageing. I skip one dinner a week, chosen at random. On those nights, I go to bed early. You burn fat while you sleep, so the more sleep you get, the leaner you will be. Sometimes I skip breakfast and lunch but enjoy a big dinner. …

Intermittent fasting … has been found to decrease the incidence of tumours and kidney disease, and can increase resistance to dysfunction and degeneration in stroke and those who suffer with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Intermittent fasting enhances resistance to oxidative, metabolic and other types of stress. It is nice to know that our obsession with eating so regularly is so completely wrong. Go ahead and skip that meal, and reap the rewards of better metabolism and enhanced resistance to stress and disease.

Variety and play are the essential human attributes. By keeping your workouts brief and exhilarating you won’t get bored. By adding lots of outdoor activity and play, you will enjoy the power and fitness you gain. If you start a new sport, or pick up one long neglected, you will see how the power you gain improves your play. The feedback between the training and your new power in the sport will be habit-forming.

I fail to see how anyone can train five or six days a week in the gym and for hours at a time. That is factory or agricultural work, not anything human beings were evolved to do. And the paradox is that you will gain less strength and fitness if you over-train. You will join the thousands who quit exercising out of sheer boredom. …

I began to exercise less than ever before, but harder. There was no standard workout routine – I never did the same exercises in the same order twice. I still lifted, pushed, pulled, reached, but as the spirit moved me, not according to some textbook plan. I also varied the time of day I exercised, and the amount of time between workouts. I might spend a few minutes in the gym one day, an hour the next time, and then stay away altogether for a day or two, to give myself time to recover. Sometimes I’d just find a field nearby and try to simulate some brief but intense ‘fight or flight’ moments, as if I were chasing something (or something were chasing me).

It worked splendidly. Already muscular and lean, I hit new levels of both. A famous sculptress asked me to pose for her (I was in my late sixties at the time) and people at the gym started watching my workouts. They asked what I ate and did to look the way I did. They never believed me when I told them, because it went contrary to everything they ‘knew’ about fitness.

My diet and exercise had altered my metabolism to express my inner hunter- gatherer. I had become a 21st-century caveman. …

Ancient hunter-gatherers spent much of their time doing little or nothing. And then, every so often, they took action that would exhaust any 21st-century gym rat. Overall, they burned twice as much energy as we do. Lions sleep most of the time. But then they make up for it by chasing down, killing and carrying away an adult gazelle. The lion doesn’t try to maintain a steady output of moderate energy. It knows better. There are people at my gym who waste hours on treadmills and stairmasters, trudging away but never really pushing themselves to intensity. …

As in all exercise, intermittency and variety are the goals in aerobic workouts. You want to stop and start, go in an instant from walking to running at top speed for forty or fifty yards, then amble along until the urge to sprint overtakes you again. When you do this, you exercise all the different types of muscle fibre, whereas joggers work only the slow- and intermediate-twitch kinds. Jogging also wastes time because you need to do it for long periods to see any benefit. Mixing up sprints with walks is safer for your heart, too. And there’s less stress on your knees, ankles, hips, feet and back.

You are getting a good cardio workout just by lifting weights as I suggest, without much of a break between sets or stations. Your heart should be pumping and your lungs working when you do it vigorously and with a sense of purpose. If you still feel the need for more aerobic exercise, find a game to play. Tennis, squash and rollerblading, for instance, are intense, stop-and-start activities, meaning they burn all three kinds of muscle fibre. And they have the added advantage of being fun. …

Your brain and body expect you to live a life of movement and action, of challenge and response, of variety and adaptation. Your brain still ‘sees’ sensory inputs as though you are a hunter-gatherer and, at the instinctive level, directs your actions accordingly.