Mark Sisson's Blog

Someone asked me what I’d recommend to someone taking GLP drugs. I’ve written posts and newsletters on this before, but there’s one newer bit of advice I haven’t mentioned before: eat more.

The thing with these drugs is that they work incredibly well. Whether it’s semaglutide (Ozempic), tirzepatide (Mounjaro), or the yet-to-be-FDA-approved retatrutide, these compounds are very good at getting you to eat less. They have other effects, too, like slowed gastric emptying, “slower” digestion, and others—some positive, some more negative.

But the one thing almost everyone reports is that you eat far less food on these things.

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That can be good if you need it. Most people eat too much. Even if it’s healthy food. I remember being at PrimalCon back in the day and being shocked by the amount of food people could put away. Everything was high quality, cooked in good fats, well-sourced, but people would routinely report that they gained weight at PrimalCon. Food is food. Volume is volume. And that’s why these drugs are having such powerful effects in the overweight and obese. They’re losing weight because they aren’t eating very much and, most importantly, they aren’t hungry doing it.

But what about when you start losing too much? When you start losing muscle, losing energy?

Everyone says the obvious: “make your calories count.” Get your micronutrients. Make it high quality, whole foods. With less volume coming in, the quality of what little volume you do get becomes increasingly important.

And they talk about protein, too, rightfully. A big part of countering the negative effects of GLP drugs, like muscle loss, requires that you stay active. Lift weights, and support that activity by eating protein.

These are all good, but you’ve heard them before.

The one piece of advice you might not have heard, that sounds a bit unconventional, but that becomes useful especially as you start approaching your ideal weight: eat more.

Try to eat a bit more than you feel like.

Many issues we see with these drugs are from undernourishment. You’re running a deficit and, depending on the drug in question, burning more energy. You need to eat a little more than you think.

It’ll still be “less,” don’t worry.

This post originally appeared in a Sunday with Sisson newsletter.

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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.

A surprisingly common query I get is colostrum vs. collagen—which is better? Maybe it’s the fact that they both start with the same three letters. Maybe it’s that they’re both alternative health darlings currently enjoying a huge uptick in interest.

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Whatever the reason for their connection in people’s minds, I thought it would be a good idea to do a quick write-up on how colostrum and collagen might interact in the body, what the relative benefits are, and whether you can take them both together.

Let’s dive right in.

Where Do Colostrum and Collagen Benefits Overlap?

Contrary to what the influencers might tell you, there isn’t a ton of research showing that bovine colostrum has a wide range of benefits for adults. It’s definitely helpful for newborns, since their guts are incredibly permeable, and colostrum is literally the first food they’re supposed to eat. Even cow colostrum has been shown to improve outcomes for newborns and premature infants. No arguments there.

But I’d caution against expecting too much from colostrum supplements. The best case for adding it to your diet as an adult is improving gut health, reducing intestinal permeability, and improving immune function—particularly for athletes.

Colostrum has been heavily researched for its ability to reduce gut permeability in various populations, including athletes, medical patients, and everyday folks.1-4 People who take bovine colostrum supplements often report better gut health and a more intact gut lining. Zonulin, a gut compound that increases permeability, frequently drops with colostrum intake.

Researchers aren’t entirely sure how bovine colostrum benefits the gut. Some people claim it regulates specific growth factors in the gut lining that help repair and support its structure. That’s colostrum’s primary role in infancy: improving gut viability so the immune system can develop, enabling digestion of food instead of relying on the womb for sustenance. Thanks in large part to colostrum benefits, this new member of the human race is able to handle what the world throws at it and develop a healthy immune response and gut lining

The challenge is that the adult gut isn’t as permeable as a newborn’s by design. For instance, the IGF-1 in bovine colostrum isn’t absorbed or utilized by adults.5

Colostrum can also regulate inflammation and help maintain iron balance in athletes, largely due to its lactoferrin content.6 Lactoferrin is an immune protein that improves iron absorption while reducing free iron—an inflammatory agent—circulating in the body. Athletes taking colostrum for instance see higher spikes in inflammation during workouts but lower resting inflammation, showing it promotes “smart” inflammation.

Meanwhile, collagen benefits for gut health are much more direct. Collagen provides the actual building blocks—amino acids like glycine—for repairing and growing the gut lining. Whether it turns out that colostrum does indeed trigger growth factors that help the gut repair itself (by no means confirmed), or if it just lowers inflammation via lactoferrin which allows the repair to proceed, you’ll need extra collagen to make those repairs.

Colostrum assists with gut repair while collagen provides a substrate required for the repair to occur.

And so the two compounds are not competing with each other, but potentially complementary. Both colostrum and collagen improve gut health, enhance skin health and appearance, and boost immune function by different but complementary routes.

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Can You Take Them Together?

Yes, you can absolutely take collagen and colostrum together. In fact, I’d argue that if colostrum works, they’re almost made for each other. You don’t need to mix them in the same shake or take them simultaneously; just include both in your routine for maximum benefit.

Adding both colostrum and collagen supplements can create a synergistic effect, particularly for gut and immune health. Collagen serves as the substrate, while colostrum provides potential activation via growth factors.

When Is One More Useful Than the Other?

It depends on your dietary needs. If you only take one, take collagen. Collagen is like the fourth macronutrient, providing glycine—an amino acid we no longer get enough of in modern diets. This makes collagen essential for maintaining skin, bones, blood vessels, and more. It’s also widely beneficial, whether you’re looking for joint health, anti-aging, or gut support.

If you regularly consume foods like bone broth, gelatinous meats, or stews, you may already be getting plenty of collagen. In that case, colostrum supplements could add more value, especially for individuals with immune or gut issues that dietary changes haven’t resolved.

Colostrum, derived from the mature milk of cows after giving birth, is essentially absent from the diet unless you specifically seek it out. It’s best suited for people dealing with gut inflammation or immune dysregulation. Athletes might benefit from colostrum’s ability to regulate iron and inflammation, while others may see improved resistance to respiratory infections.

Here’s How I Break It Down:

Who should take collagen?

Everyone.

Who should take colostrum?

Athletes with iron balance issues.

Adults prone to upper respiratory tract infections.

Individuals with leaky gut or gut inflammation.

If you’re on a budget, you can likely replicate most of the colostrum supplement benefits with a high-quality whey isolate (which contains some lactoferrin, but not as much as colostrum) and a dedicated lactoferrin supplement. My guess is that lactoferrin is doing much of the heavy lifting for colostrum’s benefits.

Final Thoughts on Colostrum vs. Collagen

Both colostrum and collagen offer unique benefits, but collagen stands out as the more universally essential supplement. Its role in collagen production, gut lining repair, and overall health makes it indispensable for most people. Bovine colostrum can complement collagen, especially in specific scenarios, but it isn’t as necessary or widely applicable.

For most, collagen is the clear winner. Still, if you have unique needs or simply want to experiment with bovine colostrum benefits, adding both to your regimen can offer the best of both worlds.

References

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38361...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41226...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31123...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...

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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 am notoriously lukewarm about using fitness trackers to track sleep, HRV, and general “readiness,” whatever that means. When it comes to training decisions or assessing how well-rested I am, I do not want to outsource my own intuition and common sense to a watch or a ring or a wrist strap.

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That doesn’t mean I’m a total Luddite, however. You might be surprised to learn there is one piece of fitness tech I use regularly—and I don’t mean my standup paddle board or my fat bike.

Can you guess what it is?

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People ask me all the time about exercise tech. Do I have any tools, gadgets, gizmos, or devices I’m using or would recommend? After all, the world of fitness tech has exploded. There are things you can strap on, attach to your body, loop around your wrist, or wear on your finger that all claim to make getting fit easier and more enjoyable (and more trackable).

I don’t see the point. If I ever need a device to tell me if I had a great workout or if I’m sleepy or not, it’s time to throw in the towel.

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You can spend $1000 on a smartwatch with a $30 a month subscription fee plus Strava, plus Peloton workout subscription, plus the new model every year, plus the smart ring, plus the heart rate variability monitor, plus the meditation app subscription to help you get that HRV back up… or you could spend good money on a high-quality piece of equipment that will last forever and make training enjoyable again.

These are my picks.

Get a good watercraft.

Maybe it’s a kayak. Maybe it’s a standup paddle board. Maybe it’s a surfboard or windsurfing rig. Most people reading this will have some level of water access—and I urge you all to avail yourselves of it. There’s nothing quite so Primal and human as traversing a natural body of water. Spend as much as you’re comfortable, and don’t be afraid to buy used.

My personal recommendation is a standup paddleboard from Starboard. Hard board, if you have the storage for it.

Get a good adventure bike.

I say “adventure bike” because while you can take a mountain or fat tire bike out on the road, you can’t take a road bike on the trails or sand. I know, I know, riding a mountain bike or fat tire bike on the road isn’t “optimal” or “efficient,” but this is all about fun, and having a bike that can go almost everywhere is far more conducive to fun than a bike designed for only one specific type of environment.

I’m partial to Trek for both mountain and fat tire bikes. I have a Trek Farley I use twice a week minimum on Miami Beach, and it’s probably my favorite bike I’ve ever owned. And yes, it works on the street.

Get a good weight vest or rucksack.

For as long as hominids have been bipeds, we’ve been supporting heavy loads and walking for miles underneath them. A million years ago, it was the haunch of an antelope we successfully stole from a larger predator thrown over the shoulder. 2000 years ago, it was 50 pounds of armor, weapons, and personal affects piled on our backs on some campaign in the Mediterranean. Whether you were a farmer, explorer, naturalist, prospector, soldier, or parent, you were carrying heavy things while walking across the environment.

Some call this rucking, some call it loaded carries. The point is that we are designed to carry heavy loads and walk. It’s the entire reason why we have opposable thumbs (for grabbing) and bipedalism (to free up our hands and give us an upright posture that can better support a load).

I recommend GoRuck if you want to ruck and Aduro if you want a weight vest. They go up to 30 pounds, so if you want heavier, I’d go with Rogue.

A gym membership.

For the price of a high end fitness watch, Peloton bike, fancy treadmill, indoor rower, and all the other doodads you want, with monthly subscriptions for all of them, you could find a great gym with a sauna, pool, cold plunge, extensive free and machine weight collection and cardio equipment and, most importantly, a pool of interesting members you can socialize with. I’ve met many great friends and business partners at the gym, and they’re often what kept me coming back day in and day out.

Get good footwear.

Footwear is everything. It’s how we interact with the world and how we generate force—by pushing off to start the battle against gravity. No matter what exercise or sport or activity you’re doing, your kinetic chain starts with the feet. If you’re starting with suboptimal footwear, you’re short-changing yourself.

I recommend Peluva, of course—my own footwear brand that I built from the ground up to be the closest approximation to actually going barefoot. I’d love it if we could go barefoot everywhere, but the modern world we’ve built simply doesn’t allow it. Most of the surfaces we walk, run, and move across aren’t meant for bare feet.

What would you add to the list?

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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.

Yes and no.

Keto dieting’s popularity rose and peaked in the late 20-teens, declined for a few years, and has more or less held steady since 2023. So says Google Trends anyway. During the keto heyday, it felt like every time I went to the grocery store there were a dozen new products proclaiming “KETO” on the label. Most of the reader questions sent my way had to do with troubleshooting their keto diets. For a while, it was the topic I covered most frequently on the blog—what to eat and avoid, how to supplement, how to make it work for specific populations.

Not so much anymore.

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But don’t be fooled. Although keto is no longer front and center in most diet and weight loss conversations—that distinction goes to GLP-1s—people are still discovering keto diets and trying them for themselves. Plenty of folks, including friends of mine, have been keto for many years, some even predating the keto boom. New books are still being written. Bloggers are still putting out keto recipe guides.

Keto is here to stay. It just looks a little different, as I say in the video.

Remember, the liver starts producing ketones when insulin is low and liver glycogen becomes depleted. Many roads lead to this outcome. Any way of eating that restricts daily carb intake below about 50 grams per day will trigger ketosis. Intermittent fasting paired with a Primal-style diet could do it. Carnivore diets can do it. Even a moderately low-carb diet paired with long or intense training sessions can do it. I’d wager that a fair number of you reading this are in ketosis at least some of the time, whether or not you’re intentionally following a keto diet. I’m sure I am too, although I don’t measure my ketone levels.

I still believe that keto is one of the best tools any of us have in our metabolic toolboxes for losing weight, tackling insulin resistance, and building that all-important metabolic flexibility.

I don’t really care how someone chooses to label their way of eating as long as it works for them.

In some ways, it is good that keto flies more under the radar now. At the height of its popularity, keto attracted a lot of negative press. (Paleo got the same treatment when it became popular 20 years ago. People love to bash anything that flouts conventional wisdom and asks them to give up their morning donuts and 500 calorie latte treats.) Now folks are free to try it without hearing every day about how it keto is a dangerous fad diet (it’s not) that will make their heart or kidneys explode (it won’t).

If you’re interested in exploring keto and trying a Keto Reset, the Primal method of approaching a keto diet, start here:

The Definitive Guide to Keto

How Does the Keto Reset Fit Into the Primal Blueprint?

Where I Part Ways with the Popular Keto Movement

Is Constant Ketosis Necessary—or Even Desirable?

Let me know, have you tried keto in the past? Are you still doing it? Why or why not?

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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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* 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.

A recent paper is fueling the plant-based crowd. In it, the authors found that protein restriction turned off many genetic and molecular signals of aging.

It was a synthesis of over 350 existing studies, a mix of in vitro research, animal research, and human trials, and the overall finding was that restricting protein elicited favorable levels and changes to mTOR, FGF21, oxidative stress, and other things associated with or contributory to aging.

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Now, the study had some interesting things, right? There was some nuance there. They readily admitted that protein restriction acts differently in sedentary versus active individuals. Those who are actively training have a higher supposedly “safe” window of protein consumption. Maybe they have a higher tolerance for protein. But overall, the thrust of the paper, and what most people will take away from it, and what your vegan friends are no doubt bragging to you about, is that less protein is better for longevity.

I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Let me explain.

Does Eating Meat Reduce Longevity?

Much of the research rests on the assumption that specific amino acids in excess promote aging. The one they say most is methionine. It’s found in dairy, muscle meat, eggs, and other animal products, and absolutely, excessive amounts of it can promote aging in animal models, and likely humans. No argument there.

But what these studies never explore is the reality that methionine is balanced by another amino acid: glycine. Glycine is almost entirely absent from the classic animal protein products like meat or eggs or dairy, and it’s found almost exclusively in connective tissue, bones, and skin.

There is a classic study where they put rodents on a high-methionine diet, and sure enough, those rats died pretty young. But they took another group and gave them glycine, same amount of methionine, just with extra glycine, and those guys lived long, healthy lives, just as long as the rodents who lived on a restricted-methionine diet.1-2

We see echoes of this in the human literature. Tons of research finds that low glycine levels in the serum predict type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and many of the other diseases classically linked to meat consumption.

Now let’s look at Hong Kong, which is one of the longest-living populations on Earth, who also happen to eat the most meat of anyone on Earth. But the meat they’re eating is not just steaks and burgers and roasts. They’re also eating skin, snouts, feet, and other animal foods that are high in glycine.

This is why collagen is so essential for the modern meat eater who doesn’t want to eat the obscure stuff like skin and bones. Thirty to 40 grams of collagen a day provides enough glycine to balance out all the muscle meat and other animal protein you eat. And although we don’t have direct human trials of balancing out methionine with glycine and looking at lifespan, the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that it’s going to have good effects.

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Except that in the real world, when you see people who actually practice this, these are people who live this lifestyle, they’ve read the studies, they’ve convinced themselves that protein restriction is key to living long. They are generally pretty unwell. They’re frail, always cold, have low energy, and generally aren’t the picture of health we are imagining for ourselves.

Now, they may be better off and look better than the general population in some ways. They tend to be thinner, at least, and, you know, even their biomarkers look pretty good. But I refuse to believe that this is the path to optimal health. You may limp by a bit longer. You may slowly walk into old age, but can you still run hills? Can you play? Are you strong?

And that’s where the study loses me.

My Beef with the Findings

Nothing against the authors themselves. It’s pretty impossible to cover every angle, and as I said before, they did a pretty fair job of noting that active exercisers have a higher tolerance of protein. But the true path to health is on the teeter-totter, the seesaw, the waxing and the waning.

It’s a big steak after a workout and then maybe skipping breakfast the next day and just having some fish with salad for lunch. It’s periods of abundance and periods of restriction. It is high-protein days and lower-protein days. We see this everywhere. We see it in wild animals, predators who eat and gorge themselves for a day or two and then go for several days without eating anything. You see this in the fasting habits of monks and other religious men. Christianity even has protein fasting built into it.

No, I’m not saying that you should fast for three days after you eat a big steak like a tiger or wolf, or eliminate protein for a 14-day period. I’m just saying that the world is cyclical. That seems embedded in our environment and also our biology.

This is why, over the years, I have settled on not daily protein targets, but four- to five-day protein targets, even weekly protein targets. I want to eat an average of 120 grams of protein a day over the course of a week. Some days it’ll be 180, other days it’ll be 70. It doesn’t matter so much day-to-day as it does across the week.

Do studies like this give you pause, or do you remain confident—as I do—in the healthfulness of an “high” (read, “sufficient”) protein omnivorous diet? Let me know in the comments.

References

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/a...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3668700/

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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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* 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.

Getting enough protein is imperative. Protein is also the most satiating macronutrient, and some people struggle to hit their daily targets. Ask anyone on a GLP-1 drug.

Intermittent fasting is beneficial and for many people, myself included, it’s the most natural eating pattern. But a compressed eating window adds another layer of complexity when you’re trying to get 100 or more grams of protein a day. Not everyone wants to eat 40-50 grams of protein in a single meal.

If you have a hard time doing both, which wins? Is it better to eat slightly less protein or expand your eating window, giving up some of the benefits of intermittent fasting?

Mark’s Daily Apple is back!

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.

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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

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 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.

Build the Healthiest Possible Body with the Primal Blueprint

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.

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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.

There’s lots of talk about Zone 1, 2, 3, and 4 cardio, with each “zone” based on the level of aerobic or anaerobic energy you’re utilizing. The lower the zone, the more aerobic you are and the more fat you’re burning as percentage of total energy. The higher the zone, the more anaerobic you are the more glucose and glycogen you’re burning. Lower zones are easier and slower. Higher zones are harder and faster. 

This is a sound way to think about “cardio,” but it doesn’t cover every zone. There’s one big training zone missing from the conversation: Zone Fun.

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In Zone Fun, intensity doesn’t matter. It can be high or low. You can go fast or slow. Intense or easy. Zone Fun oscillates across all the heart rate zones. Because the prime concern and determinant is whether or not you’re having fun, the other stuff melts away. Not in importance—all the aerobic zones still matter, intensity still matters—but in what you have to consciously pay attention to.

You can just keep going as long as you’re having fun and moving your body.

I’d go so far as to say that hitting Zone Fun is the most important metric for your cardiovascular training. If you reach Zone Fun, if you’re moving fast and slow and medium and moving with intensity and then slowing things down, you are doing the right thing. You are improving your health and fitness. Having fun is a good barometer for doing the right thing health wise. Your body intrinsically “knows” when you’re improving skills, increasing VO2max, building an aerobic base and your ability to tolerate anaerobic discomfort, strengthening muscle—fun is the tell. 

We have evidence that Zone Fun training is even more effective than other kinds. When you subject rodents in the lab to forced exercise—sticking them on a rodent wheel, making them tread water, tying weights to their tails and making them drag them and climb ladders—you see moderately beneficial effects, but sometimes negative effects. When you give rodents the opportunity to engage in voluntary exercise like free access to a wheel, and they choose to do it, the benefits are greater. For instance, one study found that mice doing a ten week voluntary running program had more favorable shifts in muscle tissue fiber development than mice doing ten weeks of forced running.1 Another even found that mice with colitis had higher mortality and inflammation when they were forced to exercise and lower inflammation and mortality when they chose to exercise.2

Okay, so what are some ways to practice Zone Fun training?

Ultimate Frisbee

My favorite way to get into Zone Fun is with the greatest sport of all time: Ultimate Frisbee. Sadly, I don’t get to do this as often as I’d like to. But when I lived in Malibu, I had a weekly game set aside with the same group of guys. It was a mix of running, jumping, throwing, jostling for positioning, sprinting, and jogging. Most importantly, it was fun. It was a game. It was a game requiring strategy, planning, and intense concentration. Because when you’re concentrating or when you’re thinking ahead and thinking in the moment, you’re having fun. You’re not thinking about the hard work that you’re doing. You don’t even realize that you’re breathing hard, that you’re starting to get sore. You don’t notice the burning. And therein lies the beauty of Zone Fun.

Fat tire biking

I’ve taken fitness influencers out on the sand that are half my age and they always tell me it’s the hardest workout of their lives and can barely keep up. No joke. But the thing is, you keep going because riding through sand next to the beautiful water, seeing all the lovely sights that one sees, invigorates and makes the work worth it.

Standup paddling

Paddling is my other method of Zone Fun training. Up on the paddleboard, I get into my rhythm and flow, and the hours just melt away. I'm never quite breathing hard. My serratus anterior muscles are getting an incredible workout (there's no better ab exercise). My heart is working, the blood is flowing, and the fat is burning. This is a gentle form of training.

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Play sports

The perfect way to access Zone Fun training is to play sports.

Pick a sport that you used to really enjoy when you were younger. The trick to training is that it shouldn’t feel like work. You also shouldn’t feel like you’re learning to play. You should come into it fairly naturally. So, if you’re playing basketball, you should be able to dribble the ball, make a layup, and generally feel comfortable with the flow of the game. If you’re trying to pick up a game of soccer, make sure that you’re comfortable handling the ball, passing, shooting, and generally move with the way the game moves. And that’s true for anything. You don’t want to be learning the fundamentals when you’re trying to engage in Zone Fun. You don’t have to be an all-star, but you shouldn’t be a total beginner.

Make the boring interesting

Another way to use Zone Fun training is to take what might normally be a boring form of movement and make it more interesting and fun. For example, instead of running on a treadmill, go for a trail run. Changing topography, textural shifts, rising and climbing the trail, plus all the plants and animals and beautiful smells around you, will make what’s normally a boring plod around the track much more interesting and fun. Deep into the endurance world, I did most of my training on trails and mountain passes just because it was so much more interesting than just running around the track or on a treadmill. It was the only way I could make the incredibly uncomfortable training bearable.

Another substitution might be mountain biking instead of road biking. Insead of zoning out on a road, you have to constantly stay alert for roots, rocks, jumps, drops, and trees. You have to stay immersed in the moment—you can’t just bear down and suffer like you can on the road. This gives you just as good a workout without feeling like it.

Rock scrambling

Rock scrambling is my absolute favorite way to traverse the wild. I grew up in a small fishing town in Maine, scrambling all over the rocks that lined the coast. I think this was how I got most of my movement and training foundation. There's something so satisfying about scrambling on all fours up extremely steep rock faces. It’s just pure fun and I think it triggers something primordial within us.

Loaded partner carries

Here's what I mean by loaded partner carries:

Get a group of at least two people together. Choose a walking path, ideally with an incline. Up a mountain is best. Then, pick a heavy object, at least one per person. If you have two people, choose 1-2 objects. If you're a group of three, choose 2-3 objects. And then you go on the walk while carrying the objects and switching off with each other.

A kettlebell and a weighted sandbag. A big log and a heavy rock. A pair of dumbbells. A barbell and a rucksack. You get the idea. Just go on the walk with a friend or friends, taking turns carrying the objects you brought. This is very hard work, but because you're working together, it's fun. You have each other to lean on and nobody wants to let the other people down. Turns out that camaraderie is extremely motivating.

Those are my favorite ways to train Zone Fun. What about yours? How will you incorporate more Zone Fun training into your regimen?

References

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33118... ↩

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23707... ↩

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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.

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.